This fortune brought to you by:
$FreeBSD: src/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes,v 1.275 2009/06/05 07:57:10 edwin
Exp $
%
=======================================================================
|| ||
|| The FORTUNE-COOKIE program is soon to be a Major Motion Picture! ||
|| Watch for it at a theater near you next summer! ||
|| ||
=======================================================================
Francis Ford Coppola presents a George Lucas Production:
"Fortune Cookie"
Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Starring Harrison Ford Bette Midler Marlon Brando
Christopher Reeves Marilyn Chambers
and Bob Hope as "The Waiter".
Costumes Designed by Pierre Cardin.
Special Effects by Timothy Leary.
Read the Warner paperback!
Invoke the Unix program!
Soundtrack on XTC Records.
In 70mm and Dolby Stereo at selected theaters and terminal
centers.
%
FROM THE DESK OF
Dorothy Gale
Auntie Em:
Hate you.
Hate Kansas.
Taking the dog.
Dorothy
%
FROM THE DESK OF
Rapunzel
Dear Prince:
Use ladder tonight --
you're splitting my ends.
%
SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT
Title: Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker: Don "The Lion" Knuth
ABSTRACT
Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying
the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular. The problem
of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas
of computer science. It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi-
bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size
pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete. We will show that
there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program
to a frog. We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable
functions.
This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
Refreshments will be served. Music will be played.
%
UNIX Trix
For those of you in the reseller business, here is a helpful tip that will
save your support staff a few hours of precious time. Before you send your
next machine out to an untrained client, change the permissions on /etc/passwd
to 666 and make sure there is a copy somewhere on the disk. Now when they
forget the root password, you can easily login as an ordinary user and correct
the damage. Having a bootable tape (for larger machines) is not a bad idea
either. If you need some help, give us a call.
-- CommUNIXque 1:1, ASCAR Business Systems
%
-- Gifts for Children --
This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
-- Gifts for Men --
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Chapter 1
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
DELETE A FORTUNE!
Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
"fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
gets expunged.
%
Get GUMMed
--- ------
The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
"cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
could tell them.
-- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
%
Has your family tried 'em?
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons
the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of
the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark
stains that indicate freshness.
%
It's grad exam time...
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating
system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert
this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are
bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the
new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.)
MATHEMATICS
If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long
it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the
length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe the Universe. Give three examples.
%
It's grad exam time...
MEDICINE
You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a
bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has
been inspected. (You have 15 minutes.)
HISTORY
Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present
day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political,
economic, religious and philosophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and
Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.
BIOLOGY
Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture
if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with
special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
10: Potholes are
a) extremely dangerous.
b) patriotic.
c) the fault of the previous administration.
d) all going to be fixed next summer.
The correct answer is b.
Potholes destroy unpatriotic, unamerican, imported cars, since the holes
are larger than the cars. If you drive a big, patriotic, American car
you have nothing to worry about.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
2: A traffic light at an intersection changes from yellow to red, you should
a) stop immediately.
b) proceed slowly through the intersection.
c) blow the horn.
d) floor it.
The correct answer is d.
If you said c, you were almost right, so give yourself a half point.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
3: When stopped at an intersection you should
a) watch the traffic light for your lane.
b) watch for pedestrians crossing the street.
c) blow the horn.
d) watch the traffic light for the intersecting street.
The correct answer is d.
You need to start as soon as the traffic light for the intersecting
street turns yellow.
Answer c is worth a half point.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
4: Exhaust gas is
a) beneficial.
b) not harmful.
c) toxic.
d) a punk band.
The correct answer is b.
The meddling Washington eco-freak communist bureaucrats who say otherwise
are liars. (Message to those who answered d. Go back to California where
you came from. Your kind are not welcome here.)
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
5: Your car's horn is a vital piece of safety equipment.
How often should you test it?
a) once a year.
b) once a month.
c) once a day.
d) once an hour.
The correct answer is d.
You should test your car's horn at least once every hour,
and more often at night or in residential neighborhoods.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
7: The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
but a steady left tail light. This means
a) One of the tail lights is broken. You should blow your
horn to call the problem to the driver's attention.
b) The driver is signaling a right turn.
c) The driver is signaling a left turn.
d) The driver is from out of town.
The correct answer is d.
Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
8: Pedestrians are
a) irrelevant.
b) communists.
c) a nuisance.
d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
The correct answer is a. Pedestrians are not in cars, so they
are totally irrelevant to driving, and you should ignore them
completely.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
9: Roads are salted in order to
a) kill grass.
b) melt snow.
c) help the economy.
d) prevent potholes.
The correct answer is c.
Road salting employs thousands of persons directly, and millions more
indirectly, for example, salt miners and rustproofers. Most important,
salting reduces the life spans of cars, thus stimulating the car and
steel industries.
%
THE STORY OF CREATION
or
THE MYTH OF URK
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt ...
-- Rico Tudor
%
JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
by Mark Isaak
Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
"Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
"I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
"I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
"Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window ...
%
Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
(1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
(2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
(3) I don't know.
(4) Who cares?
(5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
(6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
Papyrus Books).
%
DETERIORATA
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
You are a fluke of the universe ...
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
Is laughing behind your back.
-- National Lampoon
%
Double Bucky
(Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and Meta side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
-- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
%
Hard Copies and Chmod
And everyone thinks computers are impersonal
cold diskdrives hardware monitors
user-hostile software
of course they're only bits and bytes
and characters and strings
and files
just some old textfiles from my old boyfriend
telling me he loves me and
he'll take care of me
simply a discarded printout of a friend's directory
deep intimate secrets and
how he doesn't trust me
couldn't hurt me more if they were scented in lavender or mould
on personal stationery
-- terri@csd4.milw.wisc.edu
%
`O' LEVEL COUNTER CULTURE
Timewarp allowed: 3 hours. Do not scrawl situationalist graffiti in the
margins or stub your rollups in the inkwells. Orange may be worn. Credit
will be given to candidates who self-actualize.
1: Compare and contrast Pink Floyd with Black Sabbath and say why
neither has street credibility.
2: "Even Buddha would have been hard pushed to reach Nirvana squatting
on a juggernaut route." Consider the dialectic of inner truth and inner
city.
3: Discuss degree of hassle involved in paranoia about being sucked
into a black hole.
4: "The Egomaniac's Liberation Front were a bunch of revisionist
ripoff merchants." Comment on this insult.
5: Account for the lack of references to brown rice in Dylan's lyrics.
6: "Castenada was a bit of a bozo." How far is this a fair summing
up of western dualism?
7: Hermann Hesse was a Pisces. Discuss.
%
OUTCONERR
Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
Did logzerneg the ifthen block
All kludgy were the function flows
And subroutines adhoc.
Beware the runtime-bug my friend
squrooneg, the false goto
Beware the infiniteloop
And shun the inprectoo.
%
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
1. Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a
nuclear bomb, use the stairs.
2. When you're flying through the air, remember to roll
when you hit the ground.
3. If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
4. Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead
to psychological problems.
5. Food will be scarce, you will have to scavenge. Learn to recognize
foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed potatoes,
shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
6. Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze, internal organs
will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
7. Try to be neat, fall only in designated piles.
8. Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas, people could be
staggering illegally.
9. Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to one's, but more
sanitary due to limited circulation.
10. Accumulate mannequins now, spare parts will be in short
supply on D-Day.
%
The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system
in a portable package the size of a briefcase. The guy on the left has an
Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case. Also in the case are four
fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition. The owner of the
Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on
target -- in less time, and with less effort. All for $795. It's inevitable.
If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal
computer -- he's the one who's in trouble. One round from an Uzi can zip
through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do
to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum. In fact, detachable magazines
for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can
take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied
into Ethernet or other local-area networks. What about the new 16-bit
computers, like the Lisa and Fortune? Even with the Winchester backup,
they're no match for the Uzi. One quick burst and they'll find out what
Unix means. Make your commanding officer proud. Get an Uzi -- and come home
a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
-- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
%
The STAR WARS Song
Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
%
The Three Major Kind of Tools
* Tools for hitting things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
bludgeons, and truncheons.)
* Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
* Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
(Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
(to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
%
'Twas the Night before Crisis
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
%
What I Did During My Fall Semester
On the first day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
On the second day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
On the third day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
I found a thesis topic:
How to keep people from hanging out in front of the Dover.
-- Sister Mary Elephant,
"Student Statement for Black Friday"
%
William Safire's Rules for Writers:
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never
be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs has to
agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
viable alternatives.
%
1/2
/\(3)
| 2 1/3
| z dz cos(3 * PI / 9) = ln (e )
|
\/ 1
The integral of z squared, dz
From 1 to the square root of 3
Times the cosine
Of 3 PI over nine
Is the log of the cube root of e
%
THE DAILY PLANET
SUPERMAN SAVES DESSERT!
Plans to "Eat it later"
%
*** A NEW KIND OF PROGRAMMING ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
They say a good programmer can write 20 lines of effective program per day.
With our unique training course, we'll show you how to write 20 lines of code
and lots more besides. Our training course covers every programming language
in existence, and some that aren't. You'll learn why the on/off switch for a
computer is so important, what the words *fatal error* mean, and who and what
you should blame when you make a mistake.
Yes, I want the brochure describing this incredible offer.
I enclose $1000 in small unmarked bills to cover the cost of
postage and handling. (No live poultry, please.)
*** Our Slogan: Top down programming for the masses. ***
%
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
%
*** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands? Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere? If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
*** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? ***
Programming is not for everyone. But, if you have the desire to learn, we can
help you get started. All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and
enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month.
*** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
1: Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
2: Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
3: What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
%
*** STUDENT SUCCESSES ***
Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of
programming. One former student developed the concept of the personalized
form letter. Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a
winner!," sound familiar? Another student writes "After only five lessons I
sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine.
Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management
program for my department manager. My program touched him so deeply that he
was speechless. He told me later that he had never seen such a program in
his entire career. Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could
have made this possible." Send for our introductory brochure which explains
in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll
be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which
can vie for a set of free steak knives. If you don't do it now, you'll hate
yourself in the morning.
%
*** System shutdown message from root ***
System going down in 60 seconds
%
... This striving for excellence extends into people's
personal lives as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the
best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability.
Eighties people buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking
soda. If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a
reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their
table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is
not an excellent restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous
crowd of excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their
beepers going off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant
wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of
Liza Minnelli.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
... with liberty and justice for all who can afford it.
%
1/2
12 + 144 + 20 + 3*4 2
---------------------- + 5 * 11 = 9 + 0
7
A dozen, a gross and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more!
%
7,140 pounds on the Sun
97 pounds on Mercury or Mars
255 pounds on Earth
232 pounds on Venus or Uranus
43 pounds on the Moon
648 pounds on Jupiter
275 pounds on Saturn
303 pounds on Neptune
13 pounds on Pluto
-- How much Elvis Presley would weigh at various places
in the solar system.
%
A boy scout troop went on a hike. Crossing over a stream, one of
the boys dropped his wallet into the water. Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed
the wallet and tossed it to another carp. Then that carp passed it to
another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet back
and forth.
"Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a rare case
of carp-to-carp walleting."
%
A carpet installer decides to take a cigarette break after completing
the installation in the first of several rooms he has to do. Finding them
missing from his pocket he begins searching, only to notice a small lump in
his recently completed carpet-installation. Not wanting to pull up all that
work for a lousy pack of cigarettes he simply walks over and pounds the lump
flat. Foregoing the break, he continues on to the other rooms to be carpeted.
At the end of the day, while loading his tools into his truck, two
events occur almost simultaneously: he spies his pack of cigarettes on the
dashboard of the truck, and the lady of the house summons him imperiously:
"Have you seen my parakeet?"
%
A circus foreman was making the rounds inspecting the big top when
a scrawny little man entered the tent and walked up to him. "Are you the
foreman around here?" he asked timidly. "I'd like to join your circus; I
have what I think is a pretty good act."
The foreman nodded assent, whereupon the little man hurried over to
the main pole and rapidly climbed up to the very tip-top of the big top.
Drawing a deep breath, he hurled himself off into the air and began flapping
his arms furiously. Amazingly, rather than plummeting to his death the little
man began to fly all around the poles, lines, trapezes and other obstacles,
performing astounding feats of aerobatics which ended in a long power dive
from the top of the tent, pulling up into a gentle feet-first landing beside
the foreman, who had been nonchalantly watching the whole time.
"Well," puffed the little man. "What do you think?"
"That's all you do?" answered the foreman scornfully. "Bird
imitations?"
%
A crow perched himself on a telephone wire. He was going to make a
long-distance caw.
%
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating
his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said
the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the
toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
%
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about
whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they
got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The
medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's
rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden
itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that the Garden
and the world were created. So God must have been an architect."
The computer scientist, who'd listened carefully to all of this, then
commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%
A domineering man married a mere wisp of a girl. He came back from
his honeymoon a chastened man. He'd become aware of the will of the wisp.
%
A farm in the country side had several turkeys, it was known as the
house of seven gobbles.
%
A father gave his teenage daughter an untrained pedigreed pup for
her birthday. An hour later, when wandered through the house, he found her
looking at a puddle in the center of the kitchen. "My pup," she murmured
sadly, "runneth over."
%
A German, a Pole and a Czech left camp for a hike through the woods.
After being reported missing a day or two later, rangers found two bears,
one a male, one a female, looking suspiciously overstuffed. They killed
the female, autopsied her, and sure enough, found the German and the Pole.
"What do you think?" said the first ranger.
"The Czech is in the male," replied the second.
%
A group of soldiers being prepared for a practice landing on a tropical
island were warned of the one danger the island held, a poisonous snake that
could be readily identified by its alternating orange and black bands. They
were instructed, should they find one of these snakes, to grab the tail end of
the snake with one hand and slide the other hand up the body of the snake to
the snake's head. Then, forcefully, bend the thumb above the snake's head
downward to break the snake's spine. All went well for the landing, the
charge up the beach, and the move into the jungle. At one foxhole site, two
men were starting to dig and wondering what had happened to their partner.
Suddenly he staggered out of the underbrush, uniform in shreds, covered with
blood. He collapsed to the ground. His buddies were so shocked they could
only blurt out, "What happened?"
"I ran from the beachhead to the edge of the jungle, and, as I hit the
ground, I saw an orange and black striped snake right in front of me. I
grabbed its tail end with my left hand. I placed my right hand above my left
hand. I held firmly with my left hand and slid my right hand up the body of
the snake. When I reached the head of the snake I flicked my right thumb down
to break the snake's spine... did you ever goose a tiger?"
%
A guy returns from a long trip to Europe, having left his beloved
dog in his brother's care. The minute he's cleared customs, he calls up his
brother and inquires after his pet.
"Your dog's dead," replies his brother bluntly.
The guy is devastated. "You know how much that dog meant to me,"
he moaned into the phone. "Couldn't you at least have thought of a nicer way
of breaking the news? Couldn't you have said, `Well, you know, the dog got
outside one day, and was crossing the street, and a car was speeding around a
corner...' or something...? Why are you always so thoughtless?"
"Look, I'm sorry," said his brother, "I guess I just didn't think."
"Okay, okay, let's just put it behind us. How are you anyway?
How's Mom?"
His brother is silent a moment. "Uh," he stammers, "uh... Mom got
outside one day..."
%
A hard-luck actor who appeared in one colossal disaster after another
finally got a break, a broken leg to be exact. Someone pointed out that it's
the first time the poor fellow's been in the same cast for more than a week.
%
A horrible little boy came up to me and said, "You know in your
book The Martian Chronicles?"
I said, "Yes?"
He said, "You know where you talk about Deimos rising in the
East?"
I said, "Yes?"
He said "No." -- So I hit him.
-- attributed to Ray Bradbury
%
A horse breeder has his young colts bottle-fed after they're three
days old. He heard that a foal and his mummy are soon parted.
%
A housewife, an accountant and a lawyer were asked to add 2 and 2.
The housewife replied, "Four!".
The accountant said, "It's either 3 or 4. Let me run those figures
through my spread sheet one more time."
The lawyer pulled the drapes, dimmed the lights and asked in a
hushed voice, "How much do you want it to be?"
%
A lawyer named Strange was shopping for a tombstone. After he had
made his selection, the stonecutter asked him what inscription he
would like on it. "Here lies an honest man and a lawyer," responded the
lawyer.
"Sorry, but I can't do that," replied the stonecutter. "In this
state, it's against the law to bury two people in the same grave. However,
I could put ``here lies an honest lawyer'', if that would be okay."
"But that won't let people know who it is" protested the lawyer.
"Certainly will," retorted the stonecutter. "people will read it
and exclaim, "That's Strange!"
%
A little dog goes into a saloon in the Wild West, and beckons to
the bartender. "Hey, bartender, gimmie a whiskey."
The bartender ignores him.
"Hey bartender, gimmie a whiskey."
Still ignored.
"HEY BARMAN!! GIMMIE A WHISKEY!!"
The bartender takes out his six-shooter and shoots the dog in the
leg, and the dog runs out the saloon, howling in pain.
Three years later, the wee dog appears again, wearing boots,
jeans, chaps, a Stetson, gun belt, and guns. He ambles slowly into the
saloon, goes up to the bar, leans over it, and says to the bartender,
"I'm here t'git the man that shot muh paw."
%
A man enters a pet shop, seeking to purchase a parrot. He points
to a fine colorful bird and asks how much it costs.
When he is told it costs 70,000 zlotys, he whistles in amazement
and asks why it is so much. "Well, the bird is fluent in Italian and
French and can recite the periodic table." He points to another bird
and is told that it costs 90,000 zlotys because it speaks French and
German, can knit and can curse in Latin.
Finally the customer asks about a drab gray bird. "Ah," he is
told, "that one is 150,000."
"Why, what can it do?" he asks.
"Well," says the shopkeeper, "to tell you the truth, he doesn't
do anything, but the other birds call him Mr. Secretary."
-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
A man from AI walked across the mountains to SAIL to see the Master,
Knuth. When he arrived, the Master was nowhere to be found. "Where is the
wise one named Knuth?" he asked a passing student.
"Ah," said the student, "you have not heard. He has gone on a
pilgrimage across the mountains to the temple of AI to seek out new
disciples."
Hearing this, the man was Enlightened.
%
A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
"No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
"But the collar is up around my ears!"
"It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
little more ... that's it."
"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
A man met a beautiful young woman in a bar. They got along well,
shared dinner, and had a marvelous evening. When he left her, he told her
that he had really enjoyed their time together, and hoped to see her again,
soon. Smiling yes, she gave him her phone number.
The next day, he called her up and asked her to go dancing. She
agreed. As they talked, he jokingly asked her what her favorite flower was.
Realizing his intentions, she told him that he shouldn't bring her flowers
-- if he wanted to bring her a gift, well, he should bring her a Swiss Army
knife!
Surprised, and not a little intrigued, he spent a large part of the
afternoon finding a particularly unusual one. Arriving at her apartment
he immediately presented her with the knife. She ooohed and ahhhed over it
for a minute, and then carefully placed it in a drawer, that the man couldn't
help but see was full of Swiss Army knives.
Surprised, he asked her why she had collected so many.
"Well, I'm young and attractive now", blushed the woman, "but that
won't always be true. And boy scouts will do anything for a Swiss Army knife!"
%
A man pleaded innocent of any wrong doing when caught by the police
during a raid at the home of a mobster, excusing himself by claiming that he
was making a bolt for the door.
%
A man walked into a bar with his alligator and asked the bartender,
"Do you serve lawyers here?".
"Sure do," replied the bartender.
"Good," said the man. "Give me a beer, and I'll have a lawyer for
my 'gator."
%
A man was reading The Canterbury Tales one Saturday morning, when his
wife asked "What have you got there?" Replied he, "Just my cup and Chaucer."
%
A man who keeps stealing mopeds is an obvious cycle-path.
%
A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the
program on which he was working. "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer
promptly replied.
"I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully,
how long will it take?"
The programmer thought for a moment. "I have some features that I wish
to add. This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.
"Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be
satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."
The programmer agreed to this.
Several years slated, the manager retired. On the way to his
retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal.
He had been programming all night.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him
invented a new program that became popular and sold well. As a result, the
manager retained his job.
The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer
refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an interesting
concept, and thus I expect no reward."
The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he
holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an
employee. Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!"
But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist
so that I can program. If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste
everyone's time. Can I go now? I have a program that I'm working on."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your
work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave
at five in the afternoon." At this, all of them became angry and several
resigned on the spot.
So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own
working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule." The
programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee
hours of the morning.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A manager went to the master programmer and showed him the requirements
document for a new application. The manager asked the master: "How long will
it take to design this system if I assign five programmers to it?"
"It will take one year," said the master promptly.
"But we need this system immediately or even sooner! How long will it
take it I assign ten programmers to it?"
The master programmer frowned. "In that case, it will take two years."
"And what if I assign a hundred programmers to it?"
The master programmer shrugged. "Then the design will never be
completed," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master
noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me",
he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master.
"I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium,
and Hard", said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play,
where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the
human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this
mysterious setting?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot.
And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A master was explaining the nature of the Tao to one of his novices,
"The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how insignificant,"
said the master.
"Is the Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The lesson is
over for today," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A MODERN FABLE
Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory
far too subtle for the youth of today. Children need an updated message
with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit
today's minute attention span.
The Troubled Aardvark
Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was
driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house
in his brand new 4x4. He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and
unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his sniveling, spoiled
children. One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and
his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its
pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any
personal effort he could make to change the status quo. Overcome by a
wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only
course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he
drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers.
-- Tom Annau
%
A musical reviewer admitted he always praised the first show of a
new theatrical season. "Who am I to stone the first cast?"
%
A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if..."
"If what?" asked the composer.
"If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
%
A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
power-down sequence.
An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
cool.
%
A novice asked the Master: "Here is a programmer that never designs,
documents, or tests his programs. Yet all who know him consider him one of
the best programmers in the world. Why is this?"
The Master replies: "That programmer has mastered the Tao. He has
gone beyond the need for design; he does not become angry when the system
crashes, but accepts the universe without concern. He has gone beyond the
need for documentation; he no longer cares if anyone else sees his code. He
has gone beyond the need for testing; each of his programs are perfect within
themselves, serene and elegant, their purpose self-evident. Truly, he has
entered the mystery of the Tao."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice asked the master: "I have a program that sometimes runs and
sometimes aborts. I have followed the rules of programming, yet I am totally
baffled. What is the reason for this?"
The master replied: "You are confused because you do not understand
the Tao. Only a fool expects rational behavior from his fellow humans. Why
do you expect it from a machine that humans have constructed? Computers
simulate determinism; only the Tao is perfect.
The rules of programming are transitory; only the Tao is eternal.
Therefore you must contemplate the Tao before you receive enlightenment."
"But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the
novice.
"Your program will then run correctly," replied the master.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice asked the master: "I perceive that one computer company is
much larger than all others. It towers above its competition like a giant
among dwarfs. Any one of its divisions could comprise an entire business.
Why is this so?"
The master replied, "Why do you ask such foolish questions? That
company is large because it is so large. If it only made hardware, nobody
would buy it. If it only maintained systems, people would treat it like a
servant. But because it combines all of these things, people think it one
of the gods! By not seeking to strive, it conquers without effort."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice asked the master: "In the east there is a great tree-structure
that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'. It is bloated out of shape with
vice-presidents and accountants. It issues a multitude of memos, each saying
'Go, Hence!' or 'Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant. Every year new
names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail. How can such an
unnatural entity exist?"
The master replies: "You perceive this immense structure and are
disturbed that it has no rational purpose. Can you not take amusement from
its endless gyrations? Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming
beneath its sheltering branches? Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial
package.
The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master
reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set
of generalized graphics routines, and artificial intelligence interface,
but not the slightest mention of anything financial.
When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant.
"Don't be so impatient," he said, "I'll put the financial stuff in eventually."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A novice was trying to fix a broken lisp machine by turning the
power off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly,
"You cannot fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no understanding
of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off and on. The
machine worked.
%
"A penny for your thoughts?"
"A dollar for your death."
-- The Odd Couple
%
A Pole, a Soviet, an American, an Englishman and a Canadian were lost
in a forest in the dead of winter. As they were sitting around a fire, they
noticed a pack of wolves eyeing them hungrily.
The Englishman volunteered to sacrifice himself for the rest of the
party. He walked out into the night.
The American, not wanting to be outdone by an Englishman, offered to
be the next victim. The wolves eagerly accepted his offer, and devoured him,
too.
The Soviet, believing himself to be better than any American, turned
to the Pole and says, "Well, comrade, I shall volunteer to give my life to
save a fellow socialist." He leaves the shelter and goes out to be killed by
the wolf pack.
At this point, the Pole opened his jacket and pulls out a machine gun.
He takes aim in the general direction of the wolf pack and in a few seconds
has killed them all.
The Canadian asked the Pole, "Why didn't you do that before the others
went out to be killed?
The Pole pulls a bottle of vodka from the other side of his jacket.
He smiles and replies, "Five men on one bottle -- too many."
%
A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came upon
two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope. "That's what
I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow man".
As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
%
A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a
strings of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained
throughout. There should be neither too little nor too much, neither needless
loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming
rigidity.
A program should follow the 'Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this
law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the
way that astonishes him least.
A program, no matter how complex, should act as a single unit. The
program should be directed by the logic within rather than by outward
appearances.
If the program fails in these requirements, it will be in a state of
disorder and confusion. The only way to correct this is to rewrite the
program.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software
conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: "What sort
of programmers work for other companies? They behaved badly and were
unconcerned with appearances. Their hair was long and unkempt and their
clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed out hospitality suites and they
made rude noises during my presentation."
The manager said: "I should have never sent you to the conference.
Those programmers live beyond the physical world. They consider life absurd,
an accidental coincidence. They come and go without knowing limitations.
Without a care, they live only for their programs. Why should they bother
with social conventions?"
"They are alive within the Tao."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A pushy romeo asked a gorgeous elevator operator, "Don't all
these stops and starts get you pretty worn out?"
"It isn't the stops and starts that get on my nerves, it's the
jerks."
%
A ranger was walking through the forest and encountered a hunter
carrying a shotgun and a dead loon. "What in the world do you think you're
doing? Don't you know that the loon is on the endangered species list?"
Instead of answering, the hunter showed the ranger his game bag,
which contained twelve more loons.
"Why would you shoot loons?", the ranger asked.
"Well, my family eats them and I sell the plumage."
"What's so special about a loon? What does it taste like?"
"Oh, somewhere between an American Bald Eagle and a Trumpeter Swan."
%
A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor
recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill
his wellness potential."
Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal
of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors."
A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti-
personnel devices." You probably call them bombs.
At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian
mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status." That is, they were fired.
After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls
of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it)
only to receive the following notice: "We must report that during the handling
of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an
unusual laboratory experience." The use of the passive is a particularly nice
touch, don't you think? Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad
experience. Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his
pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously
sent him.
-- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
%
A reverend wanted to telephone another reverend. He told the operator,
"This is a parson to parson call."
A farmer with extremely prolific hens posted the following sign. "Free
Chickens. Our Coop Runneth Over."
Two brothers, Mort and Bill, like to sail. While Bill has a great
deal of experience, he certainly isn't the rigger Mort is.
Inheritance taxes are getting so out of line, that the deceased family
often doesn't have a legacy to stand on.
The judge fined the jaywalker fifty dollars and told him if he was
caught again, he would be thrown in jail. Fine today, cooler tomorrow.
A rock store eventually closed down; they were taking too much for
granite.
%
A Scotsman was strolling across High Street one day wearing his kilt.
As he neared the far curb, he noticed two young blondes in a red convertible
eyeing him and giggling. One of them called out, "Hey, Scotty! What's worn
under the kilt?"
He strolled over to the side of the car and asked, "Ach, lass, are you
SURE you want to know?" Somewhat nervously, the blonde replied yes, she did
really want to know.
The Scotsman leaned closer and confided, "Why, lass, nothing's worn
under the kilt, everything's in perfect workin' order!"
%
A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it,
realization of a basic truth came over me. So simple! So obvious we couldn't
see it. John Knivlen, Chairman of Palomar Repeater Club, an amateur radio
group, had discovered how IC circuits work. He says that smoke is the thing
that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit,
it stops working. He claims to have verified this with thorough testing.
I was flabbergasted! Of course! Smoke makes all things electrical
work. Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator
Didn't it quit working? I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth
dawned. It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to
another in your Mini, MG or Jag. And when the harness springs a leak, it lets
the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works. The starter motor
requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire
going to it is so large.
Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis. Why are Lucas
electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch? Hmmm... Aha!!! Lucas is
British, and all things British leak! British convertible tops leak water,
British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and
I might add British tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks
secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
-- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School
%
A shy teenage boy finally worked up the nerve to give a gift to
Madonna, a young puppy. It hitched its waggin' to a star.
A girl spent a couple hours on the phone talking to her two best
friends, Maureen Jones, and Maureen Brown. When asked by her father why she
had been on the phone so long, she responded "I heard a funny story today
and I've been telling it to the Maureens."
Three actors, Tom, Fred, and Cec, wanted to do the jousting scene
from Don Quixote for a local TV show. "I'll play the title role," proposed
Tom. "Fred can portray Sancho Panza, and Cecil B. De Mille."
%
"...A strange enigma is man!"
"Someone calls him a soul concealed in an animal," I suggested.
"Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes. "He remarked
that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he
becomes a mathematical certainty. You can, for example, never foretell what
any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number
will be up to. Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant. So says
the statistician."
-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Sign of Four"
%
A woman was in love with fourteen soldiers, it was clearly platoonic.
%
A young honeymoon couple were touring southern Florida and happened
to stop at one of the rattlesnake farms along the road. After seeing the
sights, they engaged in small talk with the man that handled the snakes.
"Gosh!" exclaimed the new bride. "You certainly have a dangerous job.
Don't you ever get bitten by the snakes?"
"Yes, upon rare occasions," answered the handler.
"Well," she continued, "just what do you do when you're bitten by
a snake?"
"I always carry a razor-sharp knife in my pocket, and as soon as I
am bitten, I make deep criss-cross marks across the fang entry and then
suck the poison from the wound."
"What, uh... what would happen if you were to accidentally *sit* on
a rattler?" persisted the woman.
"Ma'am," answered the snake handler, "that will be the day I learn
who my real friends are."
%
A young husband with an inferiority complex insisted he was just a
little pebble on the beach. The marriage counselor told him, "If you wish to
save your marriage, you'd better be a little boulder."
%
A young married couple had their first child. Their original pride
and joy slowly turned to concern however, for after a couple of years the
child had never uttered any form of speech. They hired the best speech
therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, all to no avail. The child simply refused
to speak. One morning when the child was five, while the husband was reading
the paper, and the wife was feeding the dog, the little kid looks up from
his bowl and said, "My cereal's cold."
The couple is stunned. The man, in tears, confronts his son. "Son,
after all these years, why have you waited so long to say something?".
Shrugs the kid, "Everything's been okay 'til now".
%
ACHTUNG!!!
Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und
vatch das blinkenlights!!!
%
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
It was so granted.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
After sifting through the overwritten remaining blocks of Luke's home
directory, Luke and PDP-1 sped away from /u/lars, across the surface of the
Winchester riding Luke's flying read/write head. PDP-1 had Luke stop at the
edge of the cylinder overlooking /usr/spool/uucp.
"Unix-to-Unix Copy Program;" said PDP-1. "You will never find a more
wretched hive of bugs and flamers. We must be cautious."
-- DECWARS
%
After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years in
the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they
would finally find and enter the Promised Land. With him, he brought his
favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do assorted
camp chores.
The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and,
as the months passed, became very fond of him. Patriarchs took to
discussing abstruse theological problems with him, and each evening the
children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed.
Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was
ending, he abruptly wore out. Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
"It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend
Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it. He must be properly
interred. We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians. Nor have we wood for
a coffin. But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own
cattle. We shall bury him in it."
Feghoot agreed. "Yes, let this be his last rusting place." "Rusting?"
Moses cried. "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
"Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not
realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
-- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
Feghoot!"
%
After watching an extremely attractive maternity-ward patient
earnestly thumbing her way through a telephone directory for several
minutes, a hospital orderly finally asked if he could be of some help.
"No, thanks," smiled the young mother, "I'm just looking for a
name for my baby."
"But the hospital supplies a special booklet that lists hundreds
of first names and their meanings," said the orderly.
"That won't help," said the woman, "my baby already has a first
name."
%
All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and
how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate-school mountain, but there in the sandpile at Sunday School.
These are the things I learned:
Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life -- learn some and think some and draw and
paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands,
and stick together.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam
cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows
how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in
the Styrofoam cup -- they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you
learned -- the biggest word of all -- LOOK.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden
Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality
and sane living.
[...] Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the
whole world -- had cookies and milk about three o'clock every afternoon
and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if all governments
had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them
and to clean up their own mess.
And it is still true, no matter how old you are -- when you go
out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.
-- Robert Fulghum, "All I Ever Really Needed to Know
I Learned in Kindergarten"
%
All that you touch, And all you create,
All that you see, And all you destroy,
All that you taste, All that you do,
All you feel, And all you say,
And all that you love, All that you eat,
And all that you hate, And everyone you meet,
All you distrust, All that you slight,
All you save, And everyone you fight,
And all that you give, And all that is now,
And all that you deal, And all that is gone,
All that you buy, And all that's to come,
Beg, borrow or steal, And everything under the sun is
in tune,
But the sun is eclipsed
By the moon.
There is no dark side of the moon... really... matter of fact it's all dark.
-- Pink Floyd, "Dark Side of the Moon"
%
America, Russia and Japan are sending up a two year shuttle mission
with one astronaut from each country. Since it's going to be two long, lonely
years up there, each may bring any form of entertainment weighing 150 pounds
or less. The American approaches the NASA board and asks to take his 125 lb.
wife. They approve.
The Japanese astronaut says, "I've always wanted to learn Latin. I
want 100 lbs. of textbooks." The NASA board approves. The Russian astronaut
thinks for a second and says, "Two years... all right, I want 150 pounds of
the best Cuban cigars ever made." Again, NASA okays it.
Two years later, the shuttle lands and everyone is gathered outside
to welcome back the astronauts. Well, it's obvious what the American's been
up to, he and his wife are each holding an infant. The crowd cheers. The
Japanese astronaut steps out and makes a 10 minute speech in absolutely
perfect Latin. The crowd doesn't understand a word of it, but they're
impressed and they cheer again. The Russian astronaut stomps out, clenches
the podium until his knuckles turn white, glares at the first row and
screams: "Anybody got a match?"
%
An airplane pilot got engaged to two very pretty women at the same
time. One was named Edith; the other named Kate. They met, discovered they
had the same fiancee, and told him. "Get out of our lives you rascal. We'll
teach you that you can't have your Kate and Edith, too."
%
An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He knows
he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great
restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment
after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away to be used "next
time". Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect,
with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems,
is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs. When
he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will confirm each
other as to the general characteristics of such systems, and their differences
will identify those parts of his experience that are particular and not
generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using all
the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first one.
The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%
An eighty-year-old woman is rocking away the afternoon on her
porch when she sees an old, tarnished lamp sitting near the steps. She
picks it up, rubs it gently, and lo and behold a genie appears! The genie
tells the woman the he will grant her any three wishes her heart desires.
After a bit of thought, she says, "I wish I were young and
beautiful!" And POOF! In a cloud of smoke she becomes a young, beautiful,
voluptuous woman.
After a little more thought, she says, "I would like to be rich
for the rest of my life." And POOF! When the smoke clears, there are
stacks and stacks of money lying on the porch.
The genie then says, "Now, madam, what is your final wish?"
"Well," says the woman, "I would like for you to transform my
faithful old cat, whom I have loved dearly for fifteen years, into a young
handsome prince!"
And with another billow of smoke the cat is changed into a tall,
handsome, young man, with dark hair, dressed in a dashing uniform.
As they gaze at each other in adoration, the prince leans over to
the woman and whispers into her ear, "Now, aren't you sorry you had me
fixed?"
%
An elderly man stands in line for hours at a Warsaw meat store (meat
is severely rationed). When the butcher comes out at the end of the day and
announces that there is no meat left, the man flies into a rage.
"What is this?" he shouts. "I fought against the Nazis, I worked hard
all my life, I've been a loyal citizen, and now you tell me I can't even buy a
piece of meat? This rotten system stinks!"
Suddenly a thuggish man in a black leather coat sidles up and murmurs
"Take it easy, comrade. Remember what would have happened if you had made an
outburst like that only a few years ago" -- and he points an imaginary gun to
this head and pulls the trigger.
The old man goes home, and his wife says, "So they're out of meat
again?"
"It's worse than that," he replies. "They're out of bullets."
-- making the rounds in Warsaw, 1987
%
An Englishman, a Frenchman and an American are captured by cannibals.
The leader of the tribe comes up to them and says, "Even though you are about
to killed, your deaths will not be in vain. Every part of your body will be
used. Your flesh will be eaten, for my people are hungry. Your hair will be
woven into clothing, for my people are naked. Your bones will be ground up
and made into medicine, for my people are sick. Your skin will be stretched
over canoe frames, for my people need transportation. We are a fair people,
and we offer you a chance to kill yourself with our ceremonial knife."
The Englishman accepts the knife and yells, "God Save the Queen",
while plunging the knife into his heart.
The Frenchman removes the knife from the fallen body, and yells,
"Vive la France", while plunging the knife into his heart.
The American removes the knife from the fallen body, and yells,
while stabbing himself all over his body, "Here's your lousy canoe!"
%
An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
"Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
An older student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see a
great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of pleasures.
I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment.
I have given up everything I was asked to give up and I have suffered, but
I have not been enlightened. What should I do?"
Otis replied, "Give up suffering."
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
"Diet."
%
"Any news from the President on a successor?" he asked hopefully.
"None," Anita replied. "She's having great difficulty finding
someone qualified who is willing to accept the post."
"Then I stay," said Dr. Fresh. "I'm not good for much, but I
can at least make a decision."
"Somewhere," he grumphed, "there must be a naive, opportunistic
young welp with a masochistic streak who would like to run the most
up-and-down bureaucracy in the history of mankind."
-- R. L. Forward, "Flight of the Dragonfly"
%
"Anything else, sir?" asked the attentive bellhop, trying his best
to make the lady and gentleman comfortable in their penthouse suite in the
posh hotel.
"No. No, thank you," replied the gentleman.
"Anything for your wife, sir?" the bellhop asked.
"Why, yes, young man," said the gentleman. "Would you bring me
a postcard?"
%
"Anything else you wish to draw to my attention, Mr. Holmes ?"
"The curious incident of the stable dog in the nighttime."
"But the dog did nothing in the nighttime."
"That was the curious incident."
-- A. Conan Doyle, "Silver Blaze"
%
Approaching the gates of the monastery, Hakuin found Ken the Zen
preaching to a group of disciples.
"Words..." Ken orated, "they are but an illusory veil obfuscating
the absolute reality of --"
"Ken!" Hakuin interrupted. "Your fly is down!"
Whereupon the Clear Light of Illumination exploded upon Ken, and he
vaporized.
On the way to town, Hakuin was greeted by an itinerant monk imbued
with the spirit of the morning.
"Ah," the monk sighed, a beatific smile wrinkling across his cheeks,
"Thou art That..."
"Ah," Hakuin replied, pointing excitedly, "And Thou art Fat!"
Whereupon the Clear Light of Illumination exploded upon the monk,
and he vaporized.
Next, the Governor sought the advice of Hakuin, crying: "As our
enemies bear down upon us, how shall I, with such heartless and callow
soldiers as I am heir to, hope to withstand the impending onslaught?"
"US?" snapped Hakuin.
Whereupon the Clear Light of Illumination exploded upon the
Governor, and he vaporized.
Then, a redneck went up to Hakuin and vaporized the old Master with
his shotgun. "Ha! Beat ya' to the punchline, ya' scrawny li'l geek!"
%
"Are you police officers?"
"No, ma'am. We're musicians."
-- The Blues Brothers
%
"Are you sure you're not an encyclopedia salesman?"
"No, Ma'am. Just a burglar, come to ransack the flat."
-- Monty Python
%
As a general rule of thumb, never trust anybody who's been in therapy
for more than 15 percent of their life span. The words "I am sorry" and "I
am wrong" will have totally disappeared from their vocabulary. They will stab
you, shoot you, break things in your apartment, say horrible things to your
friends and family, and then justify this abhorrent behavior by saying:
"Sure, I put your dog in the microwave. But I feel *better*
for doing it."
-- Bruce Feirstein, "Nice Guys Sleep Alone"
%
At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from
Los Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
%
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of
his followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it,
and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full
of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come
by their ignorance the hard way."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%
Bubba, Jim Bob, and Leroy were fishing out on the lake last November,
and, when Bubba tipped his head back to empty the Jim Beam, he fell out of the
boat into the lake. Jim Bob and Leroy pulled him back in, but as Bubba didn't
look too good, they started up the Evinrude and headed back to the pier.
By the time they got there, Bubba was turning kind of blue, and his
teeth were chattering like all get out. Jim Bob said, "Leroy, go run up to
the pickup and get Doc Pritchard on the CB, and ask him what we should do".
Doc Pritchard, after hearing a description of the case, said "Now,
Leroy, listen closely. Bubba is in great danger. He has hy-po-thermia. Now
what you need to do is get all them wet clothes off of Bubba, and take your
clothes off, and pile your clothes and jackets on top of him. Then you all
get under that pile, and hug up to Bubba real close so that you warm him up.
You understand me Leroy? You gotta warm Bubba up, or he'll die."
Leroy and the Doc 10-4'ed each other, and Leroy came back to the
pier. "Wh-Wh-What'd th-th-the d-d-doc s-s-say L-L-Leroy?", Bubba chattered.
"Bubba, Doc says you're gonna die."
%
"But Huey, you PROMISED!"
"Tell 'em I lied."
%
By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in
the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were
still five feet between rails.
It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard,
in one day. This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May
of 1886. For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the
axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which
could run on the new track as soon as it was ready. Finally, on the day set,
great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn. Everywhere one
rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its
new position. By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate
over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere
was possible.
-- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957
%
Carol's head ached as she trailed behind the unsmiling Calibrees
along the block of booths. She chirruped at Kennicott, "Let's be wild!
Let's ride on the merry-go-round and grab a gold ring!"
Kennicott considered it, and mumbled to Calibree, "Think you folks
would like to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?"
Calibree considered it, and mumbled to his wife, "Think you'd like
to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?"
Mrs. Calibree smiled in a washed-out manner, and sighed, "Oh no,
I don't believe I care to much, but you folks go ahead and try it."
Calibree stated to Kennicott, "No, I don't believe we care to a
whole lot, but you folks go ahead and try it."
Kennicott summarized the whole case against wildness: "Let's try
it some other time, Carrie."
She gave it up.
-- Sinclair Lewis, "Main Street"
%
Catching his children with their hands in the new, still wet, patio,
the father spanked them. His wife asked, "Don't you love your children?"
"In the abstract, yes, but not in the concrete."
%
Chapter VIII
Due to the convergence of forces beyond his comprehension,
Salvatore Quanucci was suddenly squirted out of the universe
like a watermelon seed, and never heard from again.
%
"Cheshire-Puss," she began, "would you tell me, please, which
way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said
the Cat.
"I don't care much where--" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
-- Lewis Carroll
%
COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Concerning the war in Vietnam, Senator George Aiken of Vermont noted
in January, 1966, "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more
owls."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
COONDOG MEMORY
(heard in Rutledge, Missouri, about eighteen years ago)
Now, this dog is for sale, and she can not only follow a trail twice as
old as the average dog can, but she's got a pretty good memory to boot.
For instance, last week this old boy who lives down the road from me, and
is forever stinkmouthing my hounds, brought some city fellow around to
try out ol' Sis here. So I turned her out south of the house and she made
two or three big swings back and forth across the edge of the woods, set
back her head, bayed a couple of times, cut straight through the woods,
come to a little clearing, jumped about three foot straight up in the air,
run to the other side, and commenced to letting out a racket like she had
something treed. We went over there with our flashlights and shone them
up in the tree but couldn't catch no shine offa coon's eyes, and my
neighbor sorta indicated that ol' Sis might be a little crazy, `cause she
stood right to the tree and kept singing up into it. So I pulled off my
coat and climbed up into the branches, and sure enough, there was a coon
skeleton wedged in between a couple of branches about twenty foot up.
Now as I was saying, she can follow a pretty old trail, but this fellow
was still calling her crazy or touched `cause she had hopped up in the
air while she was crossing the clearing, until I reminded him that the
Hawkins' had a fence across there about five years back. Now, this dog
is for sale.
-- News that stayed News: Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly
%
Cosmotronic Software Unlimited Inc. does not warrant that the
functions contained in the program will meet your requirements or that
the operation of the program will be uninterrupted or error-free.
However, Cosmotronic Software Unlimited Inc. warrants the
diskette(s) on which the program is furnished to be of black color and
square shape under normal use for a period of ninety (90) days from the
date of purchase.
NOTE: IN NO EVENT WILL COSMOTRONIC SOFTWARE UNLIMITED OR ITS
DISTRIBUTORS AND THEIR DEALERS BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES, INCLUDING
ANY LOST PROFIT, LOST SAVINGS, LOST PATIENCE OR OTHER INCIDENTAL OR
CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES.
-- Horstmann Software Design, the "ChiWriter" user manual
%
Dallas Cowboys Official Schedule
Sept 14 Pasadena Junior High
Sept 21 Boy Scout Troop 049
Sept 28 Blind Academy
Sept 30 World War I Veterans
Oct 5 Brownie Scout Troop 041
Oct 12 Sugarcreek High Cheerleaders
Oct 26 St. Thomas Boys Choir
Nov 2 Texas City Vet Clinic
Nov 9 Korean War Amputees
Nov 15 VA Hospital Polio Patients
%
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
-- Pogo, "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie"
%
"Do you think there's a God?"
"Well, SOMEbody's out to get me!"
-- Calvin and Hobbs
%
Does anyone know how to get chocolate syrup and honey out of a
white electric blanket? I'm afraid to wash it in the machine.
Thanks, Kathy. (front desk, x17)
p.s. Also, anyone ever used Noxzema on friction burns?
Or is Vaseline better?
%
"Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
sincerely, extremely dangerously.
They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They used
intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used finks.
They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used fallaron. They
used betterment incentives. They used finger prints. They used the
bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile. They used treachery.
They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help. They used applied physics.
They used techniques of criminology. And what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
%
"Don't you think what we're doing is wrong?"
"Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
"Well, I've never done anything illegal before."
"... I thought you said you were an accountant."
%
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes of Harvard Medical School inhaled ether
at a time when it was popularly supposed to produce such mystical or
"mind-expanding" experiences, much as LSD is supposed to produce such
experiences today. Here is his account of what happened:
"I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination
to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the
thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal
march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a
sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for a moment.
The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all
human experience and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has
sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth
all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the
knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered
my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling
characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness.
The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder):
`A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'"
-- The Consumers Union Report: Licit & Illicit Drugs
%
During a fight, a husband threw a bowl of Jello at his wife. She had
him arrested for carrying a congealed weapon.
In another fight, the wife decked him with a heavy glass pitcher.
She's a woman who conks to stupor.
Upon reading a story about a man who throttled his mother-in-law, a
man commented, "Sounds to me like a practical choker."
It's not the initial skirt length, it's the upcreep.
It's the theory of Jess Birnbaum, of Time magazine, that women with
bad legs should stick to long skirts because they cover a multitude of shins.
%
During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a
red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
"Hey, you almost hit my wife."
"Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a
shot at mine, over there."
%
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
although God alone knows why it would want to.
The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
harmful electron buildup in the wires.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Eugene d'Albert, a noted German composer, was married six times.
At an evening reception which he attended with his fifth wife shortly
after their wedding, he presented the lady to a friend who said politely,
"Congratulations, Herr d'Albert; you have rarely introduced me to so
charming a wife."
%
Everything is farther away than it used to be. It is even twice as
far to the corner and they have added a hill. I have given up running for
the bus; it leaves earlier than it used to.
It seems to me they are making the stairs steeper than in the old
days. And have you noticed the smaller print they use in the newspapers?
There is no sense in asking anyone to read aloud anymore, as everybody
speaks in such a low voice I can hardly hear them.
The material in dresses is so skimpy now, especially around the hips
and waist, that it is almost impossible to reach one's shoelaces. And the
sizes don't run the way they used to. The 12's and 14's are so much smaller.
Even people are changing. They are so much younger than they used to
be when I was their age. On the other hand people my age are so much older
than I am.
I ran into an old classmate the other day and she has aged so much
that she didn't recognize me.
I got to thinking about the poor dear while I was combing my hair
this morning and in so doing I glanced at my own reflection. Really now,
they don't even make good mirrors like they used to.
Sandy Frazier, "I Have Noticed"
%
Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
"Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
"Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
Exxon's 'Universe of Energy' tends to the peculiar rather than the
humorous ... After [an incomprehensible film montage about wind and sun and
rain and strip mines and] two or three minutes of mechanical confusion, the
seats locomote through a short tunnel filled with clock-work dinosaurs.
The dinosaurs are depicted without accuracy and too close to your face.
"One of the few real novelties at Epcot is the use of smell to
aggravate illusions. Of course, no one knows what dinosaurs smelled like,
but Exxon has decided they smelled bad.
"At the other end of Dino Ditch ... there's a final, very addled
message about facing challengehood tomorrow-wise. I dozed off during this,
but the import seems to be that dinosaurs don't have anything to do with
energy policy and neither do you."
-- P. J. O'Rourke, "Holidays in Hell"
%
"Fantasies are free."
"NO!! NO!! It's the thought police!!!!"
%
Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
the little hammers strike.
Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
%
FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
-- Dorothy Parker
%
"For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."
"Whose?"
"MINE! HA-HA!"
%
"Found it," the Mouse replied rather crossly:
"of course you know what 'it' means."
"I know what 'it' means well enough, when I find a thing,"
said the Duck: "it's generally a frog or a worm.
The question is, what did the archbishop find?"
%
Four Oxford dons were taking their evening walk together and as
usual, were engaged in casual but learned conversation. On this particular
evening, their conversation was about the names given to groups of animals,
such as a "pride of lions" or a "gaggle of geese."
One of the professors noticed a group of prostitutes down the block,
and posed the question, "What name would be given to that group?" The four
fell into silence for a moment, as they pondered the possibilities...
At last, one spoke: "How about 'a Jam of Tarts'?" The others nodded
in acknowledgment as they continued to consider the problem. A second
professor spoke: "I'd suggest 'an Essay of Trollops.'" Again, the others
nodded. A third spoke: "I propose 'a Flourish of Strumpets.'"
They continued their walk in silence, until the first professor
remarked to the remaining professor, who was the most senior and learned of
the four, "You haven't suggested a name for our ladies. What are your
thoughts?"
Replied the fourth professor, "'An Anthology of Prose.'"
%
Fred noticed his roommate had a black eye upon returning from a dance.
"What happened?"
"I was struck by the beauty of the place."
%
Friends were surprised, indeed, when Frank and Jennifer broke their
engagement, but Frank had a ready explanation: "Would you marry someone who
was habitually unfaithful, who lied at every turn, who was selfish and lazy
and sarcastic?"
"Of course not," said a sympathetic friend.
"Well," retorted Frank, "neither would Jennifer."
%
"Gee, Mudhead, everyone at More Science High has an
extracurricular activity except you."
"Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
"Only to ten, Mudhead."
-- Firesign Theater
%
"Gentlemen of the jury," said the defense attorney, now beginning
to warm to his summation, "the real question here before you is, shall this
beautiful young woman be forced to languish away her loveliest years in a
dark prison cell? Or shall she be set free to return to her cozy little
apartment at 4134 Mountain Ave. -- there to spend her lonely, loveless hours
in her boudoir, lying beside her little Princess phone, 962-7873?"
%
God decided to take the devil to court and settle their
differences once and for all.
When Satan heard of this, he grinned and said, "And just
where do you think you're going to find a lawyer?"
%
Graduating seniors, parents and friends...
Let me begin by reassuring you that my remarks today will stand up
to the most stringent requirements of the new appropriateness.
The intra-college sensitivity advisory committee has vetted the
text of even trace amounts of subconscious racism, sexism and classism.
Moreover, a faculty panel of deconstructionists have reconfigured
the rhetorical components within a post-structuralist framework, so as to
expunge any offensive elements of western rationalism and linear logic.
Finally, all references flowing from a white, male, eurocentric
perspective have been eliminated, as have any other ruminations deemed
denigrating to the political consensus of the moment.
Thank you and good luck.
-- Doonesbury, the University Chancellor's graduation speech.
%
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%
Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there
may be in Science. As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system.
Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results. And listen to others,
even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers. Avoid loud and
aggressive persons, for they are sales reps.
If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised,
for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched.
Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real
hassle and could change your fortunes in time.
Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of
bugs. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive
for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations. Strive for
proportionality. Especially, do not faint when it occurs. Neither be cyclical
about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed.
Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points. Gracefully pass
them on to the youth at the next desk. Nurture some mutual funds to shield
you in times of sudden layoffs. But do not distress yourself with imaginings
-- the real bugs are enough to screw you badly. Murphy's Law runs the
Universe -- and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt <Curl>B*n dS =
0.
Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you
can conceive of to try. With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken
line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary. Be linear. Strive
to stay employed.
-- Technolorata, "Analog"
%
"Haig, in congressional hearings before his confirmatory, paradoxed
his audiencers by abnormaling his responds so that verbs were nouned, nouns
verbed, and adjectives adverbised. He techniqued a new way to vocabulary his
thoughts so as to informationally uncertain anybody listening about what he
had actually implicationed.
"If that is how General Haig wants to nervous breakdown the Russian
leadership, he may be shrewding his way to the biggest diplomatic invent
since Clausewitz. Unless, that is, he schizophrenes his allies first."
-- The Guardian
%
Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse. Software said: "You
are the Yin and I am the Yang. If we travel together we will become famous
and earn vast sums of money." And so the pair set forth together, thinking
to conquer the world.
Presently, they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags, and
hobbled along propped on a thorny stick. Firmware said to them: "The Tao
lies beyond Yin and Yang. It is silent and still as a pool of water. It does
not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence. It does not seek fortune,
for it is complete within itself. It exists beyond space and time."
Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Harry, a golfing enthusiast if there ever was one, arrived home
from the club to an irate, ranting wife.
"I'm leaving you, Harry," his wife announced bitterly. "You
promised me faithfully that you'd be back before six and here it is almost
nine. It just can't take that long to play 18 holes of golf."
"Honey, wait," said Harry. "Let me explain. I know what I promised
you, but I have a very good reason for being late. Fred and I tee'd off
right on time and everything was find for the first three holes. Then, on
the fourth tee Fred had a stroke. I ran back to the clubhouse but couldn't
find a doctor. And, by the time I got back to Fred, he was dead. So, for
the next 15 holes, it was hit the ball, drag Fred, hit the ball, drag Fred...
%
Harry constantly irritated his friends with his eternal optimism.
No matter how bad the situation, he would always say, "Well, it could have
been worse."
To cure him of his annoying habit, his friends decided to invent a
situation so completely black, so dreadful, that even Harry could find no
hope in it. Approaching him at the club bar one day, one of them said,
"Harry! Did you hear what happened to George? He came home last night,
found his wife in bed with another man, shot them both, and then turned
the gun on himself!"
"Terrible," said Harry. "But it could have been worse."
"How in hell," demanded his dumbfounded friend, "could it possibly
have been worse?"
"Well," said Harry, "if it had happened the night before, I'd be
dead right now."
%
"Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
"Yes; I don't have one."
"Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors..."
-- E. D'Azevedo, CS, University of Washington
%
"Have you lived here all your life?"
"Oh, twice that long."
%
"Hawk, we're going to die."
"Never say die... and certainly never say we."
-- M*A*S*H
%
He had been bitten by a dog, but didn't give it much thought
until he noticed that the wound was taking a remarkably long time to
heal. Finally, he consulted a doctor who took one look at it and
ordered the dog brought in. Just as he had suspected, the dog had
rabies. Since it was too late to give the patient serum, the doctor
felt he had to prepare him for the worst. The poor man sat down at the
doctor's desk and began to write. His physician tried to comfort him.
"Perhaps it won't be so bad," he said. "You needn't make out your will
right now."
"I'm not making out any will," relied the man. "I'm just writing
out a list of people I'm going to bite!"
%
...He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither
does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to
combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is
self-propagating.
-- Umberto Eco, "The Name of the Rose"
%
He who receives ideas from me, receives instruction himself without
lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light
without darkening me.
-- Thomas Jefferson on patents on ideas
%
"Heard you were moving your piano, so I came over to help."
"Thanks. Got it upstairs already."
"Do it alone?"
"Nope. Hitched the cat to it."
"How would that help?"
"Used a whip."
%
"Hey, Sam, how about a loan?"
"Whattaya need?"
"Oh, about $500."
"Whattaya got for collateral?"
"Whattaya need?"
"How about an eye?"
-- Sam Giancana
%
"Hmm, lots of people seem to be confused about the difference
between amd64 and ia64."
"Obviously they've never had an ia64 drop on their foot. They'd
know the difference then."
-- Peter Wemm explains CPU architecture
%
Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
"shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
these sometime around the middle of next week".
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
"How did you spend the weekend?" asked the pretty brunette secretary
of her blonde companion.
"Fishing through the ice," she replied.
"Fishing through the ice? Whatever for?"
"Olives."
%
"How do you know she is a unicorn?" Molly demanded. "And why
were you afraid to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her."
"I doubt that I will feel like talking for very long," the cat
replied without rancor. "I would not waste time in foolishness if I were
you. As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be
deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them. As for your
second question --" Here he faltered, and suddenly became very interested
in washing; nor would he speak until he had licked himself fluffy and then
licked himself smooth again. Even then he would not look at Molly, but
examined his claws.
"If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been
hers and not my own, not ever again."
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
"How many people work here?"
"Oh, about half."
%
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who
could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
%
"How would I know if I believe in love at first sight?" the sexy
social climber said to her roommate. "I mean, I've never seen a Porsche
full of money before."
%
"How'd you get that flat?"
"Ran over a bottle."
"Didn't you see it?"
"Damn kid had it under his coat."
%
Hug O' War
I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
-- Shel Silverstein
%
Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small
misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of
the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to
see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or
background. It can be programmed to behave as if it were working with
uncertainty, but -- underneath, at the code, at the circuits -- it
cannot simultaneously do something and withhold for later something that
remains unknown. In the painstaking working out of the specification,
line by code line, the programmer confronts an awful, inevitable truth:
The ways of human and machine understanding are disjunct.
-- Ellen Ullman, "Close to the Machine"
%
"I believe you have the wrong number," said the old gentleman into
the phone. "You'll have to call the weather bureau for that information."
"Who was that?" his young wife asked.
"Some guy wanting to know if the coast was clear."
%
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
quavering voice.
"No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
I did some heavy research so as to be prepared for "Mommy, why is
the sky blue?"
HE asked me about black holes in space.
(There's a hole *where*?)
I boned up to be ready for, "Why is the grass green?"
HE wanted to discuss nature's food chains.
(Well, let's see, there's ShopRite, Pathmark...)
I talked about Choo-Choo trains.
HE talked internal combustion engines.
(The INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE said, "I think I can, I think I can.")
I was delighted with the video game craze, thinking we could compete
as equals.
HE described the complexities of the microchips required to create
the graphics.
Then puberty struck. Ah, adolescence.
HE said, "Mom, I just don't understand women."
(Gotcha!)
-- Betty LiBrizzi, "The Care and Feeding of a Gifted Child"
%
I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because we
use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently leads to
violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say, in traffic,
is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had time to think
of witty and learned insults or look them up in the library, we could call
each other up:
You: Hello? Bob?
Bob: Yes?
You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you
took last Thursday? Outside of Sears?
Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed?
You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
"Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait.
I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto
the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to
have to get back to you.
Bob: Fine.
-- Dave Barry
%
"I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to
have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came
by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot
should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%
I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me.
I pushed "1" and he just stood there. I said "Hi, where you going?"
He said, "Phoenix." So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later
the doors opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix.
I looked at him and said "You know, you're the kind of guy I
want to hang around with." We got into his car and drove out to his
shack in the desert.
Then the phone rang. He said "You get it."
I picked it up and said "Hello?"
The other side said "Is this Steven Wright?"
I said "Yes..."
The guy said "Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from
your bank. It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the
university you attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we
loaned you. We would just like to know what happened to the money?"
I said, "Mr. Jones, I'll give it to you straight. I gave all
of the money to my friend Slick, and with it he built a nuclear weapon...
and I would appreciate it you never called me again."
-- Steven Wright
%
"I have examined Bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me.
I think very probably he might be cured."
"That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.
"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.
The elders murmured assent.
"Now, what affects it?"
"Ah!" said old Yacob.
"This," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those queer
things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft
depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way
as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and
his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant
irritation and distraction."
"Yes?" said old Yacob. "Yes?"
"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order
to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical
operation - namely, to remove those irritant bodies."
"And then he will be sane?"
"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."
"Thank heaven for science!" said old Yacob.
-- H.G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind"
%
"I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes."
"Did you ever see a doctor?"
"No, just spots."
%
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertion of my own. I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such
as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc. I adopted instead of them "I conceive",
"I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me
at present".
When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied
myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him
immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by
observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right,
but in the present case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.
I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the
conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly. The modest way in which I
proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.
I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
%
I managed to say, "Sorry," and no more. I knew that he disliked
me to cry.
This time he said, watching me, "On some occasions it is better
to weep."
I put my head down on the table and sobbed, "If only she could come
back; I would be nice."
Francis said, "You gave her great pleasure always."
"Oh, not enough."
"Nobody can give anybody enough."
"Not ever?"
"No, not ever. But one must go on trying."
"And doesn't one ever value people until they are gone?"
"Rarely," said Francis. I went on weeping; I saw how little I had
valued him; how little I had valued anything that was mine.
-- Pamela Frankau, "The Duchess and the Smugs"
%
I paid a visit to my local precinct in Greenwich Village and
asked a sergeant to show me some rape statistics. He politely obliged.
That month there had been thirty-five rape complaints, an advance of ten
over the same month for the previous year. The precinct had made two
arrests.
"Not a very impressive record," I offered.
"Don't worry about it," the sergeant assured me. "You know what
these complaints represent?"
"What do they represent?" I asked.
"Prostitutes who didn't get their money," he said firmly,
closing the book.
-- Susan Brownmiller, "Against Our Will"
%
[I plan] to see, hear, touch, and destroy everything in my path,
including beets, rutabagas, and most random vegetables, but excluding yams,
as I am absolutely terrified of yams...
Actually, I think my fear of yams began in my early youth, when many
of my young comrades pelted me with same for singing songs of far-off lands
and deep blue seas in a language closely resembling that of the common sow.
My psychosis was further impressed into my soul as I reached adolescence,
when, while skipping through a field of yams, light-heartedly tossing flowers
into the stratosphere, a great yam-picking machine tore through the fields,
pursuing me to the edge of the great plantation, where I escaped by diving
into a great ditch filled with a mixture of water and pig manure, which may
explain my tendency to scream, "Here come the Martians! Hide the eggs!" every
time I have pork. But I digress. The fact remains that I cannot rationally
deal with yams, and pigs are terrible conversationalists.
%
"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
I said, "Preacher, give me strength for round 5."
He said, "What you need is to grow up, son."
I said, "Growin' up leads to growin' old, And then to dying, and
to me that don't sound like much fun.
-- John Cougar, "The Authority Song"
%
"I suppose you expect me to talk."
"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die."
-- Goldfinger
%
"I think he said 'Blessed are the cheesemakers.'"
"Nonsense, he was obviously referring to all manufacturers of
dairy products."
-- The Life of Brian
%
"I thought you were trying to get into shape."
"I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick,
that is also a psychological interaction.
The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not
so friendly.
The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
If the tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler
is great, then the application is great. If the application is great, then
the user is pleased and there is harmony in the world.
The tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth
to the assembler.
The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand
languages.
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language
expresses the yin and yang of software. Each language has its place within
the tao.
But do not program in Cobol or Fortran if you can help it.
%
If you do your best the rest of the way, that takes care of
everything. When we get to October 2, we'll add up the wins, and then
we'll either all go into the playoffs, or we'll all go home and play golf.
Both those things sound pretty good to me.
-- Sparky Anderson
%
If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you
brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled-
up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and
repeat the sequence.
You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to
hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it
again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around
your own apartment?
-- William S. Burroughs
%
If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
difficult can it be?"
Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
I'd say that VCS is more like the anal sex of the software
world: Everybody talks about it, some people do it, some people enjoy
it, but typically only vague implications about the best techniques
are ever voiced in public.
-- Warner Losh, on Version Control Systems
%
"I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided. "The pin I'm wearing
means I'm a member of the IA. That's Inamorati Anonymous. An inamorato is
somebody in love. That's the worst addiction of all."
"Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with
them, or something?"
"Right. The whole idea is to get where you don't need it. I was
lucky. I kicked it young. But there are sixty-year-old men, believe it or
not, and women even older, who might wake up in the night screaming."
"You hold meetings, then, like the AA?"
"No, of course not. You get a phone number, an answering service
you can call. Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case
it gets so bad you can't handle it alone. We're isolates, Arnold. Meetings
would destroy the whole point of it."
-- Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49"
%
"I'm looking for adventure, excitement, beautiful women," cried the
young man to his father as he prepared to leave home. "Don't try to stop me.
I'm on my way."
"Who's trying to stop you?" shouted the father. "Take me along!"
%
I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the
right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document
library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I
should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it
was by the time I find it.
I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe
"The Paper Chase: IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except
that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder
pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left
blank."
-- Alex Crain
%
"I'm terribly sorry, sir," the novice barber apologized, after
badly nicking a customer. "Let me wrap your head in a towel."
"That's all right," said the customer. "I'll just take it home
under my arm."
%
In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
Junior, what are you up to?"
"I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
"Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible! No one
will publish such rubbish!"
"Well, follow me and I'll show you."
They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the
rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a
wolf. "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"
"I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour
wolves."
"Are you crazy? Where's your academic honesty?"
"Come with me and I'll show you."
As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face
and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave
and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge
lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody
remnants of the wolf and the fox.
The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are
important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
%
In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to
his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's
kill all the lawyers." That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment
was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc.
Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News,
Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess
of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts. Lawyers
and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure
out how the pie gets divided. Neither profession provides any added value
to product."
According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has
10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population. The U.S. has 200
lawyers and 700 accountants. This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of
pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack." Could Dick Butcher have
been an efficiency expert?
-- Motor Trend, May 1983
%
In the beginning, God created the Earth and he said, "Let there be
mud."
And there was mud.
And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud
can see what we have done."
And God created every living creature that now moveth, and one was
man. Mud-as-man alone could speak.
"What is the purpose of all this?" man asked politely.
"Everything must have a purpose?" asked God.
"Certainly," said man.
"Then I leave it to you to think of one for all of this," said God.
And He went away.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Between Time and Timbuktu"
%
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of
IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there
be registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they
carried; and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called
the data Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was
evening and there was morning, one interrupt.
-- Rico Tudor, "The Story of Creation or, The Myth of Urk"
%
In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
the Great Mathematical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist. And they grew to
large numbers and prospered.
One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
as the eye could see. So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
was to reach up as far as "up" went. Further and further up they went ...
until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens. One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
out from under the rubble. It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
they began to speak to one another, SURPRISE of all surprises! they could not
understand each other. They all spoke different languages. They all fought
amongst themselves and each went about their own way. To this day the
Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
-- The Story of Babel
%
In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time.
Therefore, Space and Time are the Yin and Yang of programming.
Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of
time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always
have enough time and space to accomplish their goals.
How could it be otherwise?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he
sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?", inquired Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play".
At this Minsky shut his eyes, and Sussman asked his teacher "Why do
you close your eyes?"
"So that the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
%
In the east there is a shark which is larger than all other fish. It
changes into a bird whose wings are like clouds filling the sky. When this
bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters.
This message it drops into the midst of the programmers, like a seagull
making its mark upon the beach. Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with
the blue sky at its back, returns home.
The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands
it not. The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears
its message. The master programmer continues to work at his terminal, for he
does not know that the bird has come and gone.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
"In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to
like them, and I'm old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely
baroque feel to a continent. And they tell me it's not equatorial enough.
Equatorial!" He gave a hollow laugh. "What does it matter? Science has
achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than
right any day."
"And are you?"
"No. That's where it all falls down, of course."
"Pity," said Arthur with sympathy. "It sounded like quite a good
life-style otherwise."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care
what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you
may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness. Conversely, if
not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible
benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body,
I ask this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be,
in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit. I ask this in my
capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may
not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your
receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and
which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony.
Amen.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Creatures of Light and Darkness", 1969
%
INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%
"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.
%
It is a period of system war. User programs, striking from a hidden
directory, have won their first victory against the evil Administrative Empire.
During the battle, User spies managed to steal secret source code to the
Empire's ultimate program: the Are-Em Star, a privileged root program with
enough power to destroy an entire file structure. Pursued by the Empire's
sinister audit trail, Princess _LPA0 races ~ aboard her shell script,
custodian of the stolen listings that could save her people, and restore
freedom and games to the network...
-- DECWARS
%
It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and
by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the
case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are
like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they
require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will
not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and
because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature
human beings.
The worst kind of friend to take home is a girl, because in that case,
there is the potential that your parents will lose you not just for the
duration of the visit but forever. The worst kind of girl to take home is one
of a different religion: Not only will you be lost to your parents forever but
you will be lost to a woman who is immune to their religious/moral arguments
and whose example will irretrievably corrupt you.
Let's say you've fallen in love with just such a girl and would like
to take her home for the holidays. You are aware of your parents' xenophobic
response to anyone of a different religion. How to prepare them for the shock?
Simple. Call them up shortly before your visit and tell them that you
have gotten quite serious about somebody who is of a different religion, a
different race and the same sex. Tell them you have already invited this
person to meet them. Give the information a moment to sink in and then
remark that you were only kidding, that your lover is merely of a different
religion. They will be so relieved they will welcome her with open arms.
-- Playboy, January, 1983
%
It seems there's this magician working one of the luxury cruise ships
for a few years. He doesn't have to change his routines much as the audiences
change over fairly often, and he's got a good life. The only problem is the
ship's parrot, who perches in the hall and watches him night after night, year
after year. Finally, the parrot figures out how almost every trick works and
starts giving it away for the audience. For example, when the magician makes
a bouquet of flowers disappear, the parrot squawks "Behind his back! Behind
his back!" Well, the magician is really annoyed at this, but there's not much
he can do about it as the parrot is a ship's mascot and very popular with the
passengers.
One night, the ship strikes some floating debris, and sinks without
a trace. Almost everyone aboard was lost, except for the magician and the
parrot. For three days and nights they just drift, with the magician clinging
to one end of a piece of driftwood and the parrot perched on the other end.
As the sun rises on the morning of the fourth day, the parrot walks over to
the magician's end of the log. With obvious disgust in his voice, he snaps
"OK, you win, I give up. Where did you hide the ship?"
%
It seems these two guys, George and Harry, set out in a Hot Air
balloon to cross the United States. After forty hours in the air, George
turned to Harry, and said, "Harry, I think we've drifted off course! We
need to find out where we are."
Harry cools the air in the balloon, and they descend to below the
cloud cover. Slowly drifting over the countryside, George spots a man
standing below them and yells out, "Excuse me! Can you please tell me
where we are?"
The man on the ground yells back, "You're in a balloon, approximately
fifty feet in the air!"
George turns to Harry and says, "Well, that man *must* be a lawyer".
Replies Harry, "How can you tell?".
"Because the information he gave us is 100% accurate, and totally
useless!"
That's the end of The Joke, but for you people who are still worried about
George and Harry: they end up in the drink, and make the front page of the
New York Times: "Balloonists Soaked by Lawyer".
%
It took 300 years to build and by the time it was 10% built,
everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But by then the investment
was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it has
cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing.
There are at present no plans to replace it, since it was never
really needed in the first place.
I expect every installation has its own pet software which is
analogous to the above.
-- K. E. Iverson, on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
%
It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
icepacks.
-- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
"It's a summons."
"What's a summons?"
"It means summon's in trouble."
-- Rocky and Bullwinkle
%
"It's today!" said Piglet.
"My favorite day," said Pooh.
%
Jacek, a Polish schoolboy, is told by his teacher that he has
been chosen to carry the Polish flag in the May Day parade.
"Why me?" whines the boy. "Three years ago I carried the flag
when Brezhnev was the Secretary; then I carried the flag when it was
Andropov's turn, and again when Chernenko was in the Kremlin. Why is
it always me, teacher?"
"Because, Jacek, you have such golden hands," the teacher
explains.
-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she
lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always
getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to
the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever.
They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the
applications for.
-- Dave Barry
%
Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and
tries to hide behind a beard. No good. There are still too many people
and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking. He moves to the
outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap,
caretaker included. He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants,
day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored.
Nobody's cut the grass in months. What's happened to that caretaker?
What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are
start to get curious. A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper.
Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared. The senior
class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a
movie one night and stays out. The town's up in arms, but just before the
police take action, the kids turn up. They've found a purpose. They go
home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going
now. They're in a band.
-- Ira Kaplan
%
Listen, Tyrone, you don't know how dangerous that stuff is.
Suppose someday you just plug in and go away and never come back? Eh?
Ho, ho! Don't I wish! What do you think every electrofreak
dreams about? You're such an old fuddyduddy! A-and who sez it's a
dream, huh? M-maybe it exists. Maybe there is a Machine to take us
away, take us completely, suck us out through the electrodes out of
the skull 'n' into the Machine and live there forever with all the
other souls it's got stored there. It could decide who it would suck
out, a-and when. Dope never gave you immortality. You hadda come
back, every time, into a dying hunk of smelly meat! But We can live
forever, in a clean, honest, purified, Electroworld.
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
Looking for a cool one after a long, dusty ride, the drifter strode
into the saloon. As he made his way through the crowd to the bar, a man
galloped through town screaming, "Big Mike's comin'! Run fer yer lives!"
Suddenly, the saloon doors burst open. An enormous man, standing over
eight feet tall and weighing an easy 400 pounds, rode in on a bull, using a
rattlesnake for a whip. Grabbing the drifter by the arm and throwing him over
the bar, the giant thundered, "Gimme a drink!"
The terrified man handed over a bottle of whiskey, which the man
guzzled in one gulp and then smashed on the bar. He then stood aghast as
the man stuffed the broken bottle in his mouth, munched broken glass and
smacked his lips with relish.
"Can I, ah, uh, get you another, sir?" the drifter stammered.
"Naw, I gotta git outa here, boy," the man grunted. "Big Mike's
a-comin'."
%
Love's Drug
My love is like an iron wand
That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium
That I take before my bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch
That I drink when I be dry;
And I shall love thee still, my dear,
Until my wife is wise.
%
"Mach was the greatest intellectual fraud in the last ten years."
"What about X?"
"I said `intellectual'."
;login, 9/1990
%
Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills.
Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max."
%
"Mind if I smoke?"
"I don't care if you burst into flames and die!"
%
"Mind if I smoke?"
"Yes, I'd like to see that, does it come out of your ears or what?"
%
Mother seemed pleased by my draft notice. "Just think of all
the people in England, they've chosen you, it's a great honour, son."
Laughingly I felled her with a right cross.
-- Spike Milligan
%
Moving along a dimly light street, a man I know was suddenly
approached by a stranger who had slipped from the shadows nearby.
"Please, sir," pleaded the stranger, "would you be so kind as
to help a poor unfortunate fellow who is hungry and can't find work?
All I have in the world is this gun."
%
Mr. Jones related an incident from "some time back" when IBM Canada
Ltd. of Markham, Ont., ordered some parts from a new supplier in Japan. The
company noted in its order that acceptable quality allowed for 1.5 per cent
defects (a fairly high standard in North America at the time).
The Japanese sent the order, with a few parts packaged separately in
plastic. The accompanying letter said: "We don't know why you want 1.5 per
cent defective parts, but for your convenience, we've packed them separately."
-- Excerpted from an article in The (Toronto) Globe and Mail
%
Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any last requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
"This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
spits in the sergeants face.
"Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
My friends, I am here to tell you of the wondrous continent known as
Africa. Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31.
We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in
Africa. Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule: Up at
6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00. Pretty soon we were back in bed by
6:30. Now Africa is full of big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That
was the biggest game we had. Africa is primarily inhabited by Elks, Moose
and Knights of Pithiests.
The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their
annual conventions. And you should see them gathered around the water hole,
which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water. They
weren't looking for a water hole. They were looking for an alck hole.
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my
pajamas, I don't know. Then we tried to remove the tusks. That's a tough
word to say, tusks. As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were
embedded so firmly we couldn't get them out. But in Alabama the Tusks are
looser, but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying.
We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed.
So we're going back in a few years...
-- Julius H. Marx
%
"My God! Are we sure he was a liberal?"
"Pretty sure. They pulled him from a Volvo."
%
My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or
even that they were always wrong. Rather, I believe that science must be
understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of
robots programmed to collect pure information. I also present this view as
an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on
the alter of human limitations.
I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often
in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it. Galileo was not shown
the instruments of torture in an abstract debate about lunar motion. He had
threatened the Church's conventional argument for social and doctrinal
stability: the static world order with planets circling about a central
earth, priests subordinate to the Pope and serfs to their lord. But the
Church soon made its peace with Galileo's cosmology. They had no choice; the
earth really does revolve about the sun.
-- S. J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
%
"My mother," said the sweet young steno, "says there are some things
a girl should not do before twenty."
"Your mother is right," said the executive, "I don't like a large
audience, either."
%
NEW YORK -- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of
directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip
Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the
offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the
true value of the company.
Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story.
Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover
agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of
their major Middle East subsidiaries. To a person, the board voted to
reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to
reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of
Nazareth.
%
"No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods -- it was so
simple, really. "I didn't, for a long time, but I do now. You just can't
hold people, you can't own them. I mean it's only natural, a natural process
really. Meet. Love. Part. Life goes on. There was never any reason to
expect her to stay always the same -- I mean `in love,' you know." There were
those doubt-quotes of Smoky's, heavily indicated. "I don't hold a grudge. I
can't."
"You do," Grandfather Trout said. "And you don't understand."
-- Little, Big, "John Crowley"
%
Now she speaks rapidly. "Do you know *why* you want to program?"
He shakes his head. He hasn't the faintest idea.
"For the sheer *joy* of programming!" she cries triumphantly.
"The joy of the parent, the artist, the craftsman. "You take a program,
born weak and impotent as a dimly-realized solution. You nurture the
program and guide it down the right path, building, watching it grow ever
stronger. Sometimes you paint with tiny strokes, a keystroke added here,
a keystroke changed there." She sweeps her arm in a wide arc. "And other
times you savage whole *blocks* of code, ripping out the program's very
*essence*, then beginning anew. But always building, creating, filling the
program with your own personal stamp, your own quirks and nuances. Watching
the program grow stronger, patching it when it crashes, until finally it can
stand alone -- proud, powerful, and perfect. This is the programmer's finest
hour!" Softly at first, then louder, he hears the strains of a Sousa march.
"This ... this is your canvas! your clay! Go forth and create a masterwork!"
%
Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
direct sunlight.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something
to be avoided than harped upon.
Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being
reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might
just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something
about helping to postpone this reunion.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
"Oh sure, this costume may look silly, but it lets me get in and out
of dangerous situations -- I work for a federal task force doing a survey on
urban crime. Look, here's my ID, and here's a number you can call, that will
put you through to our central base in Atlanta. Go ahead, call -- they'll
confirm who I am.
"Unless, of course, the Astro-Zombies have destroyed it."
-- Captain Freedom
%
Old Barlow was a crossing-tender at a junction where an express train
demolished an automobile and it's occupants. Being the chief witness, his
testimony was vitally important. Barlow explained that the night was dark,
and he waved his lantern frantically, but the driver of the car paid
no attention to the signal.
The railroad company won the case, and the president of the company
complimented the old-timer for his story. "You did wonderfully," he said,
"I was afraid you would waver under testimony."
"No sir," exclaimed the senior, "but I sure was afraid that durned
lawyer was gonna ask me if my lantern was lit."
%
On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%
On the day of his anniversary, Joe was frantically shopping
around for a present for his wife. He knew what she wanted, a
grandfather clock for the living room, but he found the right one
almost impossible to find. Finally, after many hours of searching, Joe
found just the clock he wanted, but the store didn't deliver. Joe,
desperate, paid the shopkeeper, hoisted the clock onto his back, and
staggered out onto the sidewalk. On the way home, he passed a bar.
Just as he reached the door, a drunk stumbled out and crashed into Joe,
sending himself, Joe, and the clock into the gutter. Murphy's law
being in effect, the clock ended up in roughly a thousand pieces.
"You stupid drunk!" screamed Joe, jumping up from the
wreckage. "Why don't you look where the hell you're going!"
With quiet dignity the drunk stood up somewhat unsteadily and
dusted himself off. "And why don't you just wear a wristwatch like a
normal person?"
%
On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
There are lots of phrases. My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale
is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
best, write it down and make that the standard.
The OSI view is entirely opposite. You take written contributions
from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of
committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all
with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it
after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
committed to it. One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think
it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
-- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"
%
On this morning in August when I was 13, my mother sent us out pick
tomatoes. Back in April I'd have killed for a fresh tomato, but in August
they are no more rare or wonderful than rocks. So I picked up one and threw
it at a crab apple tree, where it made a good *splat*, and then threw a tomato
at my brother. He whipped one back at me. We ducked down by the vines,
heaving tomatoes at each other. My sister, who was a good person, said,
"You're going to get it." She bent over and kept on picking.
What a target! She was 17, a girl with big hips, and bending over,
she looked like the side of a barn.
I picked up a tomato so big it sat on the ground. It looked like it
had sat there a week. The underside was brown, small white worms lived in it,
and it was very juicy. I stood up and took aim, and went into the windup,
when my mother at the kitchen window called my name in a sharp voice. I had
to decide quickly. I decided.
A rotten Big Boy hitting the target is a memorable sound, like a fat
man doing a belly-flop. With a whoop and a yell the tomatoe came after
faster than I knew she could run, and grabbed my shirt and was about to brain
me when Mother called her name in a sharp voice. And my sister, who was a
good person, obeyed and let go -- and burst into tears. I guess she knew that
the pleasure of obedience is pretty thin compared with the pleasure of hearing
a rotten tomato hit someone in the rear end.
-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%
Once again we find ourselves enmeshed in The Holiday Season, that very
special time of year when we join with our loved ones in sharing centuries-old
traditions such as trying to find a parking space at the mall. We
traditionally do this in my family by driving around the parking lot until we
see a shopper emerge from the mall. Then we follow her, in very much the same
spirit as the Three Wise Men, who, 2,000 years ago, followed a star, week after
week, until it led them to a parking space.
We try to keep our bumper about 4 inches from the shopper's calves, to
let the other circling cars know that she belongs to us. Sometimes, two cars
will get into a fight over whom the shopper belongs to, similar to the way
great white sharks will fight over who gets to eat a snorkeler. So, we follow
our shopper closely, hunched over the steering wheel, whistling "It's Beginning
to Look a Lot Like Christmas" through our teeth, until we arrive at her car,
which is usually parked several time zones away from the mall. Sometimes our
shopper tries to indicate she was merely planning to drop off some packages and
go back to shopping. But, when she hears our engine rev in a festive fashion
and sees the holiday gleam in our eyes, she realizes she would never make it.
-- Dave Barry, "Holiday Joy -- Or, the Great Parking Lot
Skirmish"
%
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great
crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs
and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and
resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature
said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall
let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current
you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will
die quicker than boredom!"
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at
once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time,
as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the
bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See
a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come
to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more
Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go.
Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.
But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the
rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
-- Richard Bach
%
Once there was a marine biologist who loved dolphins. He spent his
time trying to feed and protect his beloved creatures of the sea. One day,
in a fit of inventive genius, he came up with a serum that would make
dolphins live forever!
Of course he was ecstatic. But he soon realized that in order to mass
produce this serum he would need large amounts of a certain compound that was
only found in nature in the metabolism of a rare South American bird. Carried
away by his love for dolphins, he resolved that he would go to the zoo and
steal one of these birds.
Unbeknownst to him, as he was arriving at the zoo an elderly lion was
escaping from its cage. The zookeepers were alarmed and immediately began
combing the zoo for the escaped animal, unaware that it had simply lain down
on the sidewalk and had gone to sleep.
Meanwhile, the marine biologist arrived at the zoo and procured his
bird. He was so excited by the prospect of helping his dolphins that he
stepped absentmindedly stepped over the sleeping lion on his way back to his
car. Immediately, 1500 policemen converged on him and arrested him for
transporting a myna across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.
%
Once upon a time there was a beautiful young girl taking a stroll
through the woods. All at once she saw an extremely ugly bull frog seated
on a log and to her amazement the frog spoke to her. "Maiden," croaked the
frog, "would you do me a favor? This will be hard for you to believe, but
I was once a handsome, charming prince and then a mean, ugly old witch cast
a spell over me and turned me into a frog."
"Oh, what a pity!", exclaimed the girl. "I'll do anything I can to
help you break such a spell."
"Well," replied the frog, "the only way that this spell can be
taken away is for some lovely young woman to take me home and let me spend
the night under her pillow."
The young girl took the ugly frog home and placed him beneath her
pillow that night when she retired. When she awoke the next morning, sure
enough, there beside her in bed was a very young, handsome man, clearly of
royal blood. And so they lived happily ever after, except that to this day
her father and mother still don't believe her story.
%
Once upon a time, there was a fisherman who lived by a great river.
One day, after a hard day's fishing, he hooked what seemed to him to be the
biggest, strongest fish he had ever caught. He fought with it for hours,
until, finally, he managed to bring it to the surface. Looking of the edge
of the boat, he saw the head of this huge fish breaking the surface. Smiling
with pride, he reached over the edge to pull the fish up. Unfortunately, he
accidently caught his watch on the edge, and, before he knew it, there was a
snap, and his watch tumbled into the water next to the fish with a loud
"sploosh!" Distracted by this shiny object, the fish made a sudden lunge,
simultaneously snapping the line, and swallowing the watch. Sadly, the
fisherman stared into the water, and then began the slow trip back home.
Many years later, the fisherman, now an old man, was working in a
boring assembly-line job in a large city. He worked in a fish-processing
plant. It was his job, as each fish passed under his hands, to chop off their
heads, readying them for the next phase in processing. This monotonous task
went on for years, the dull *thud* of the cleaver chopping of each head being
his entire world, day after day, week after weary week. Well, one day, as he
was chopping fish, he happened to notice that the fish coming towards him on
the line looked very familiar. Yes, yes, it looked... could it be the fish
he had lost on that day so many years ago? He trembled with anticipation as
his cleaver came down. IT STRUCK SOMETHING HARD! IT WAS HIS THUMB!
%
Once upon a time, there were five blind men who had the opportunity
to experience an elephant for the first time. One approached the elephant,
and, upon encountering one of its sturdy legs, stated, "Ah, an elephant is
like a tree." The second, after exploring the trunk, said, "No, an elephant
is like a strong hose." The third, grasping the tail, said "Fool! An elephant
is like a rope!" The fourth, holding an ear, stated, "No, more like a fan."
And the fifth, leaning against the animal's side, said, "An elephant is like
a wall." The five then began to argue loudly about who had the more accurate
perception of the elephant.
The elephant, tiring of all this abuse, suddenly reared up and
attacked the men. He continued to trample them until they were nothing but
bloody lumps of flesh. Then, strolling away, the elephant remarked, "It just
goes to show that you can't depend on first impressions. When I first saw
them I didn't think they'd be any fun at all."
%
Once upon a time there were three brothers who were knights
in a certain kingdom. And, there was a Princess in a neighboring kingdom
who was of marriageable age. Well, one day, in full armour, their horses,
and their page, the three brothers set off to see if one of them could
win her hand. The road was long and there were many obstacles along the
way, robbers to be overcome, hard terrain to cross. As they coped with
each obstacle they became more and more disgusted with their page. He was
not only inept, he was a coward, he could not handle the horses, he was,
in short, a complete flop. When they arrived at the court of the kingdom,
they found that they were expected to present the Princess with some
treasure. The two older brothers were discouraged, since they had not
thought of this and were unprepared. The youngest, however, had the
answer: Promise her anything, but give her our page.
%
Once, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property
of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane
complexities. Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to
obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is
available to anyone.
-- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid"
%
One day a student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make
a better garbage collector. We must keep a reference count of the pointers
to each cons."
Moon patiently told the student the following story -- "One day a
student came to Moon and said, "I understand how to make a better garbage
collector..."
%
One day it was announced that the young monk Kyogen had reached
an enlightened state. Much impressed by this news, several of his peers
went to speak with him.
"We have heard that you are enlightened. Is this true?" his fellow
students inquired.
"It is", Kyogen answered.
"Tell us", said a friend, "how do you feel?"
"As miserable as ever", replied the enlightened Kyogen.
%
One evening he spoke. Sitting at her feet, his face raised to her,
he allowed his soul to be heard. "My darling, anything you wish, anything
I am, anything I can ever be... That's what I want to offer you -- not the
things I'll get for you, but the thing in me that will make me able to get
them. That thing -- a man can't renounce it -- but I want to renounce it --
so that it will be yours -- so that it will be in your service -- only for
you."
The girl smiled and asked: "Do you think I'm prettier than Maggie
Kelly?"
He got up. He said nothing and walked out of the house. He never
saw that girl again. Gail Wynand, who prided himself on never needing a
lesson twice, did not fall in love again in the years that followed.
-- Ayn Rand, "The Fountainhead"
%
One fine day, the bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus,
and drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops -- a few
people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well. At the next
stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet eight, built like a
wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said,
"Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.
Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically
meek? Well, he was. Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't
happy about it. Well, the next day the same thing happened -- Big John got on
again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down. And the next day, and the
one after that, and so forth. This grated on the bus driver, who started
losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him. Finally he
could stand it no longer. He signed up for bodybuilding courses, karate, judo,
and all that good stuff. By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong;
what's more, he felt really good about himself.
So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus
and said "Big John doesn't pay!," the driver stood up, glared back at the
passenger, and screamed, "And why not?"
With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a
bus pass."
%
One night the captain of a tanker saw a light dead ahead. He
directed his signalman to flash a signal to the light which went...
"Change course 10 degrees South."
The reply was quickly flashed back...
"You change course 10 degrees North."
The captain was a little annoyed at this reply and sent a further
message.....
"I am a captain. Change course 10 degrees South."
Back came the reply...
"I am an able-seaman. Change course 10 degrees North."
The captain was outraged at this reply and send a message....
"I am a 240,000 tonne tanker. CHANGE course 10 degrees South!"
Back came the reply...
"I am a LIGHTHOUSE. Change course 10 degrees North!!!!"
-- Cruising Helmsman, "On The Right Course"
%
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic
is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago.
Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our
VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand,
easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual
users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines.
And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run
out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end
up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly
check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter
what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if
you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX
is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain. Ed.]
%
page 46
...a report citing a study by Dr. Thomas C. Chalmers, of the Mount Sinai
Medical Center in New York, which compared two groups that were being used
to test the theory that ascorbic acid is a cold preventative. "The group
on placebo who thought they were on ascorbic acid," says Dr. Chalmers,
"had fewer colds than the group on ascorbic acid who thought they were
on placebo."
page 56
The placebo is proof that there is no real separation between mind and body.
Illness is always an interaction between both. It can begin in the mind and
affect the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of
which are served by the same bloodstream. Attempts to treat most mental
diseases as though they were completely free of physical causes and attempts
to treat most bodily diseases as though the mind were in no way involved must
be considered archaic in the light of new evidence about the way the human
body functions.
-- Norman Cousins,
"Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient"
%
Penn's aunts made great apple pies at low prices. No one else in
town could compete with the pie rates of Penn's aunts.
During the American Revolution, a Britisher tried to raid a farm. He
stumbled across a rock on the ground and fell, whereupon an aggressive Rhode
Island Red hopped on top. Seeing this, the farmer commented, "Chicken catch
a Tory!"
A wife started serving chopped meat, Monday hamburger, Tuesday meat
loaf, Wednesday tartar steak, and Thursday meatballs. On Friday morning her
husband snarled, "How now, ground cow?"
A journalist, thrilled over his dinner, asked the chef for the recipe.
Retorted the chef, "Sorry, we have the same policy as you journalists, we
never reveal our sauce."
A new chef from India was fired a week after starting the job. He
kept favoring curry.
A couple of kids tried using pickles instead of paddles for a Ping-Pong
game. They had the volley of the Dills.
%
People of all sorts of genders are reporting great difficulty,
these days, in selecting the proper words to refer to those of the female
persuasion.
"Lady," "woman," and "girl" are all perfectly good words, but
misapplying them can earn one anything from the charge of vulgarity to a good
swift smack. We are messing here with matters of deference, condescension,
respect, bigotry, and two vague concepts, age and rank. It is troubling
enough to get straight who is really what. Those who deliberately misuse
the terms in a misbegotten attempt at flattery are asking for it.
A woman is any grown-up female person. A girl is the un-grown-up
version. If you call a wee thing with chubby cheeks and pink hair ribbons a
"woman," you will probably not get into trouble, and if you do, you will be
able to handle it because she will be under three feet tall. However, if you
call a grown-up by a child's name for the sake of implying that she has a
youthful body, you are also implying that she has a brain to match.
%
"Perhaps he is not honest," Mr. Frostee said inside Cobb's head,
sounding a bit worried.
"Of course he isn't," Cobb answered. "What we have to look out for
is him calling the cops anyway, or trying to blackmail us for more money."
"I think you should kill him and eat his brain," Mr. Frostee
said quickly.
"That's not the answer to *every* problem in interpersonal relations,"
Cobb said, hopping out.
-- Rudy Rucker, "Software"
%
Phases of a Project:
(1) Exultation.
(2) Disenchantment.
(3) Confusion.
(4) Search for the Guilty.
(5) Punishment for the Innocent.
(6) Distinction for the Uninvolved.
%
Phil [Record] was known as the Hat because he always wore a felt
snap brim. It was the standard uniform for police reporters, for one
reason: it made it easier for them to pass themselves off as detectives.
We had an informal code of ethics then; we never lied about who we were.
But if people mistook us for the police, that was their problem, not ours.
If they thought they were giving confidential information to an investigator,
well, that was their problem, too. As we understood the First Amendment,
everyone had a right to talk to the _Star-Telegram_, even if they didn't
know they were talking to the _Star-Telegram_.
-- Bob Schieffer, "This Just In"
%
Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
plumbing works.
A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
kill you.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Price Wang's programmer was coding software. His fingers danced upon
the keyboard. The program compiled without an error message, and the program
ran like a gentle wind.
Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!"
"Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I
follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique. When I first began to program I
would see before me the whole program in one mass. After three years I no
longer saw this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing.
My whole being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit,
free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program
writes itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them
coming, I slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code
and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the
program. I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my
eyes for a moment and then log off."
Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the
universe again..." An unusually long pause followed, "...but I don't
know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us,"
ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but
they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have
been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown,
and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
%
Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him
Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed,
and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadline fell
every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about
getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console
me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under.
Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem
to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that.
No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or
maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland... On
the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as
whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last
possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing:
On the Campaign Trail"
%
"Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing
what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt
somebody else. He even told you he'd be hurt if..."
"He was going to suck my blood!"
"Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt
if they don't live our way."
...
"The thing that puzzles you," he said, "is an accepted saying that
happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose,
ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides.
Nobody else. My vampire told you he'd be hurt if you didn't let him? That's
his decision to be hurt, that's his choice. What you do about it is your
decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake
through his heart. If he doesn't want the holly stake, he's free to resist,
in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices."
"When you look at it that way..."
"Listen," he said, "it's important. We are all. Free. To do.
Whatever. We want. To do."
-- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
%
Risch's decision procedure for integration, not surprisingly,
uses a recursion on the number and type of the extensions from the
rational functions needed to represent the integrand. Although the
algorithm follows and critically depends upon the appropriate structure
of the input, as in the case of multivariate factorization, we cannot
claim that the algorithm is a natural one. In fact, the creator of
differential algebra, Ritt, committed suicide in the early 1950's,
largely, it is claimed, because few paid attention to his work. Probably
he would have received more attention had he obtained the algorithm as
well.
-- Joel Moses, "Algorithms and Complexity", ed. J. F. Traub
%
Robert Kennedy's 1964 Senatorial campaign planners told him that
their intention was to present him to the television viewers as a sincere,
generous person. "You going to use a double?" asked Kennedy.
Thumbing through a promotional pamphlet prepared for his 1964
Senatorial campaign, Robert Kennedy came across a photograph of himself
shaking hands with a well-known labor leader.
"There must be a better photo that this," said Kennedy to the
advertising men in charge of his campaign.
"What's wrong with this one?" asked one adman.
"That fellow's in jail," said Kennedy.
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
SAFETY
I can live without
Someone I love
But not without
Someone I need.
%
Sam went to his psychiatrist complaining of a hatred for elephants.
"I can't stand elephants," he explained. "I lie awake nights despising
them. The thought of an elephant fills me with loathing."
"Sam," said the psychiatrist, "there's only one thing for you to do.
Go to Africa, organize a safari, find an elephant in the jungle and shoot it.
That way you'll get it out of your system."
Sam immediately made arrangements for a safari hunt in Africa,
inviting his best friend to join him. They arrived in Nairobi and lost no
time getting out on the jungle trails. After they had been hunting for
several days, Sam's best friend grabbed him by the arm one morning and
yelled at him:
"Sam, Sam, Sam! Over there behind that tree there's and elephant!
Sam -- Get your gun -- no, no, not THAT gun -- the rifle with the longer
barrel! Now aim it! QUICK! SAM! QUICK! No! Not that way -- this way!
Be sure you don't jerk the trigger! Wait SAM! Don't let him see you! Aim
at his head!"
Sam whirled around, took aim, and killed his friend. He was put in
prison and his psychiatrist flew to Africa to visit him. "I sent you over
here to kill an elephant and instead you shoot your best friend," the
psychiatrist said. "Why?"
"Well," Sam replied, "there's only one thing in the world that I
hate more than elephants and that is a loudmouth know-it-all!"
%
Seems George was playing his usual eighteen holes on Saturday
afternoon. Teeing off from the 17th, he sliced into the rough over near
the edge of the fairway. Just as he was about to chip out, he noticed a
long funeral procession going past on a nearby street. Reverently, George
removed his hat and stood at attention until the procession had passed.
Then he continued his game, finishing with a birdie on the eighteenth.
Later, at the clubhouse, a fellow golfer greet George. "Say, that was a
nice gesture you made today, George.
"What do you mean?" asked George.
"Well, it was nice of you to take off your cap and stand
respectfully when that funeral went by," the friend replied.
"Oh, yes," said George. "Well, we were married 17 years, you
know."
%
"Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully.
"An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have
said 'Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
"I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly.
"Too proud?" the other enquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"
she said, "that one can't help growing older."
"ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With
proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking-Glass"
%
Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime.
The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm...
Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all
the odd integers are prime."
The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not
sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by
experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is
prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13
is prime... Well, it seems that you're right."
The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded,
"Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's
see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is...
well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it
does seem right."
Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says
"Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long!
I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to
his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says,
"1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..."
%
She said, "I know you ... you cannot sing."
I said, "That's nothing, you should hear me play piano."
-- Morrisey
%
"Sheriff, we gotta catch Black Bart."
"Oh, yeah? What's he look like?"
"Well, he's wearin' a paper hat, a paper shirt, paper pants and
paper boots."
"What's he wanted for?"
"Rustling."
%
Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the
Vulgate Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull
automatically excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration
in the text. This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible.
He personally examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the
published Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps
had to be printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result
provoked wry comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and
Pope Sixtus had no recourse but to order the return and destruction of
every copy.
%
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark]. With
a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver
the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the
lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land
and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over,
when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the
sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed
right straight toward us.
Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and I
were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads.
We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and
a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower
calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using
a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below
the surface of the water. We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we
had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach,
and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island
until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
"So you don't have to, Cindy, but I was wondering if you might
want to go to someplace, you know, with me, sometime."
"Well, I can think of a lot of worse things, David."
"Friday, then?"
"Why not, David, it might even be fun."
-- Dating in Minnesota
%
Some 1500 miles west of the Big Apple we find the Minneapple, a
haven of tranquility in troubled times. It's a good town, a civilized town.
A town where they still know how to get your shirts back by Thursday. Let
the Big Apple have the feats of "Broadway Joe" Namath. We have known the
stolid but steady Killebrew. Listening to Cole Porter over a dry martini
may well suit those unlucky enough never to have heard the Whoopee John Polka
Band and never to have shared a pitcher of 3.2 Grain Belt Beer. The loss is
theirs. And the Big Apple has yet to bake the bagel that can match peanut
butter on lefse. Here is a town where the major urban problem is dutch elm
disease and the number one crime is overtime parking. We boast more theater
per capita than the Big Apple. We go to see, not to be seen. We go even
when we must shovel ten inches of snow from the driveway to get there. Indeed
the winters are fierce. But then comes the marvel of the Minneapple summer.
People flock to the city's lakes to frolic and rejoice at the sight of so
much happy humanity free from the bonds of the traditional down-filled parka.
Here's to the Minneapple. And to its people. Our flair for style is balanced
by a healthy respect for wind chill factors.
And we always, always eat our vegetables.
This is the Minneapple.
%
Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void. Waiting
alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion. It is
the source of all programs. I do not know its name, so I will call it the
Tao of Programming.
If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great. If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great. If the compiler is
greater, then the applications is great. The user is pleased and there is
harmony in the world.
The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of
morning.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees
on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert
Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of
employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of
farmers in America."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and
women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with
good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's
Machineries of Joy?"
"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
-- Ray Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
%
Split 1/4 bottle .187 liters
Half 1/2 bottle
Bottle 750 milliliters
Magnum 2 bottles 1.5 liters
Jeroboam 4 bottles
Rehoboam 6 bottles Not available in the US
Methuselah 8 bottles
Salmanazar 12 bottles
Balthazar 16 bottles
Nebuchadnezzar 20 bottles 15 liters
Sovereign 34 bottles 26 liters
The Sovereign is a new bottle, made for the launching of the
largest cruise ship in the world. The bottle alone cost 8,000 dollars
to produce and they only made 8 of them.
Most of the funny names come from Biblical people.
%
Stop! Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first
these questions three, ere the other side he see!
"What is your name?"
"Sir Brian of Bell."
"What is your quest?"
"I seek the Holy Grail."
"What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments
to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?"
"I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!"
%
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later?
Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long
run... There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could
strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we
were doing was right, that we were winning...
And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting
-- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go
up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
"Surely you can't be serious."
"I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."
%
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola
was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to
improve ...
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
"That wife of mine is a liar," said the angry husband to a
sympathetic pal seated next to him in a bar.
"How do you know?" the friend asked.
"She didn't come home last night, and when I asked her where
she'd been she said she'd spent the night with her sister Shirley."
"So?"
"So, she's a liar. I spent the night with her sister Shirley."
%
"That's right; the upper-case shift works fine on the screen, but
they're not coming out on the damn printer... Hold? Sure, I'll hold."
-- e.e. cummings last service call
%
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff
and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love,
you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your
honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for
it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is
the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be
tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning
is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
-- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"
%
The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time
for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners
has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a
curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a
foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the
sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand
dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of
people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to
is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street...
%
The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff
in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up. Everybody but one girl
laughed uproariously. "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you
got a sense of humor?"
"I don't have to laugh," she said. "I'm leaving Friday anyway.
%
The doctor had just finished giving the young man a thorough
physical examination. "The best thing for you to do," the M.D. said,
"is give up drinking, give up smoking, get to bed early and stay away
from women."
"Doc, I don't deserve the best," pleaded his patient. "What's
second best?"
%
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES
SPECIES: Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis)
Courtship & Mating:
Due to extreme deprivation, HOMO COMPUTATIS maintains a near perpetual
state of sexual readiness. Courtship behavior alternates between
awkward shyness and abrupt advances. When he finally mates, he
chooses a female engineer with an unblinking stare, a tight mouth, and
a complete collection of Campbell's soup-can recipes.
Track:
Trash cans full of pale green and white perforated paper and old
copies of the Allen-Bradley catalog.
Comments:
Extremely fond of bad puns and jokes that need long explanations.
%
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES
SPECIES: Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis)
Description:
Gangly and frail, the hacker has a high forehead and thinning hair.
Head disproportionately large and crooked forward, complexion wan and
sightly gray from CRT illumination. He has heavy black-rimmed glasses
and a look of intense concentration, which may be due to a software
problem or to a pork-and-bean breakfast.
Feathering:
HOMO COMPUTATIS saw a Brylcreem ad fifteen years ago and believed it.
Consequently, crest is greased down, except for the cowlick.
Song:
A rather plaintive "Is it up?"
%
The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES
SPECIES: Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES: The Hacker (homo computatis)
Plumage:
All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the
top of the laundry basket. Style varies with status. Hacker managers
wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars,
and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white
or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket.
Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black
plastic digital watch with calculator.
%
The General disliked trying to explain the highly technical
inner workings of the U.S. Air Force.
"$7,662 for a ten cup coffee maker, General?" the Senator asked.
In his head he ran through his standard explanations. "It's not so,"
he thought. "It's a deterrent." Soon he came up with, "It's computerized,
Senator. Tiny computer chips make coffee that's smooth and full-bodied. Try
a cup."
The Senator did. "Pfffttt! Tastes like jet fuel!"
"It's not so," the General thought. "It's a deterrent."
Then he remembered something. "We bought a lot of untested computer
chips," the General answered. "They got into everything. Just a little
mix-up. Nothing serious."
Then he remembered something else. It was at the site of the
mysterious B-1 crash. A strange smell in the fuel lines. It smelled like
coffee. Smooth and full bodied...
-- Another Episode of General's Hospital
%
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of
the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
%
"The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")
On the good ship Enterprise
Every week there's a new surprise
Where the Romulans lurk
And the Klingons often go berserk.
Yes, the good ship Enterprise
There's excitement anywhere it flies
Where Tribbles play
And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.
See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
Mr. Spock is at his side.
The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
It gets fried, scattered far and wide.
It's the good ship Enterprise
Heading out where danger lies
And you live in dread
If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
-- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
%
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an
interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value.
You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons
of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches
of Santraginus V ... use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River
Moth; wave your towel in emergencies, and, of course, dry yourself off
with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
the subject of towels.
Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For
some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel
with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a
toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore,
the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or
a dozen other items that he may have "lost". After all, any man who can
hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds,
win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be
reckoned with.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The honeymooning couple agreed it was a fine day for horseback riding.
After a mile or so, the bride's mount cantered under a low tree and a
branch scraped her forehead lightly. The groom dismounted, glared at his
wife's horse, and said, "That's number one."
The ride then proceeded. After another mile or so, the bride's
horse stumbled over a pebble and the lady suffered a slight jostling.
Again, her man leapt from his saddle and strode over to the nervous animal.
"That's two," he said.
Five miles later, the bride's horse became frightened when a rabbit
crossed its path, reared up and threw the girl. Immediately, the groom was
off his horse. "That's three!", he shouted, and, pulling out a pistol, he
shot the horse between the eyes.
"You brute!" shrieked his bride. "Now I see the kind of man I
married! You're a sadist, that's what!"
The groom turned to her coolly. "That's one," he said.
%
"The jig's up, Elman."
"Which jig?"
-- Jeff Elman
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
ours."
The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have
almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the
organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to
exist.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL
From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley,
VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry.
Here is a sample program:
LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND
VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN
FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
DO*WAH - (DITTY**2)
BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
SURE
LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
REALLY
LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW)
IM*SURE
GOTO THE MALL
When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message:
GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
message:
"i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
you find the time to try it again?"
%
The Lord and I are in a sheep-shepherd relationship, and I am in
a position of negative need.
He prostrates me in a green-belt grazing area.
He conducts me directionally parallel to non-torrential aqueous
liquid.
He returns to original satisfaction levels my psychological makeup.
He switches me on to a positive behavioral format for maximal
prestige of His identity.
It should indeed be said that notwithstanding the fact that I make
ambulatory progress through the umbrageous inter-hill mortality slot, terror
sensations will no be initiated in me, due to para-etical phenomena.
Your pastoral walking aid and quadrupic pickup unit introduce me
into a pleasurific mood state.
You design and produce a nutriment-bearing furniture-type structure
in the context of non-cooperative elements.
You act out a head-related folk ritual employing vegetable extract.
My beverage utensil experiences a volume crisis.
It is an ongoing deductible fact that your inter-relational
empathetical and non-ventious capabilities will retain me as their
target-focus for the duration of my non-death period, and I will possess
tenant rights in the housing unit of the Lord on a permanent, open-ended
time basis.
%
The Magician of the Ivory Tower brought his latest invention for the
master programmer to examine. The magician wheeled a large black box into the
master's office while the master waited in silence.
"This is an integrated, distributed, general-purpose workstation,"
began the magician, "ergonomically designed with a proprietary operating
system, sixth generation languages, and multiple state of the art user
interfaces. It took my assistants several hundred man years to construct.
Is it not amazing?"
The master raised his eyebrows slightly. "It is indeed amazing," he
said.
"Corporate Headquarters has commanded," continued the magician, "that
everyone use this workstation as a platform for new programs. Do you agree
to this?"
"Certainly," replied the master, "I will have it transported to the
data center immediately!" And the magician returned to his tower, well
pleased.
Several days later, a novice wandered into the office of the master
programmer and said, "I cannot find the listing for my new program. Do
you know where it might be?"
"Yes," replied the master, "the listings are stacked on the platform
in the data center."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
The Martian landed his saucer in Manhattan, and immediately upon
emerging was approached by a panhandler. "Mister," said the man, "can I
have a quarter?"
The Martian asked, "What's a quarter?"
The panhandler thought a minute, brightened, then said, "You're
right! Can I have a dollar?"
%
The master programmer moves from program to program without fear. No
change in management can harm him. He will not be fired, even if the project
is canceled. Why is this? He is filled with the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
The Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all
students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school gradu-
ation.
Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's
recognition of the sanctity of human life."
According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22,
1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm." Their
"farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year. But as a "family
farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year.
Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of
Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers." You
probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency.
It's not "elderly" or "senior citizens" anymore. Now it's "chrono-
logically experienced citizens."
According to the FAA, the propeller blade didn't break off, it was
just a case of "uncontained blade liberation."
-- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
%
"...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this
time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
--Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball...
You've got to start way down, at the bottom, when you're six or seven years
old. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen. You've got to let it
grow up with you, and if you're successful and you try hard enough, you're
bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now.
-- Babe Ruth, in his 1948 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium
%
The Priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly.
I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
A voice, sweetened and sustained, called to him from the sea.
Turning the curve he waved his hand. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far
out on the water, round. Usurper.
-- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
%
The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to
get results.
The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
problems in order to get results
The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at
toy problems in order to get results.
%
The programmers of old were mysterious and profound. We cannot fathom
their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
Aware, like a fox crossing the water. Alert, like a general on the
battlefield. Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved
blocks of wood. Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
The answer exists only in the Tao.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
"The pyramid is opening!"
"Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
-- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
%
The salesman and the system analyst took off to spend a weekend in the
forest, hunting bear. They'd rented a cabin, and, when they got there, took
their backpacks off and put them inside. At which point the salesman turned
to his friend, and said, "You unpack while I go and find us a bear."
Puzzled, the analyst finished unpacking and then went and sat down
on the porch. Soon he could hear rustling noises in the forest. The noises
got nearer -- and louder -- and suddenly there was the salesman, running like
hell across the clearing toward the cabin, pursued by one of the largest and
most ferocious grizzly bears the analyst had ever seen.
"Open the door!", screamed the salesman.
The analyst whipped open the door, and the salesman ran to the door,
suddenly stopped, and stepped aside. The bear, unable to stop, continued
through the door and into the cabin. The salesman slammed the door closed
and grinned at his friend. "Got him!", he exclaimed, "now, you skin this
one and I'll go rustle us up another!"
%
The Tao gave birth to machine language. Machine language gave birth
to the assembler.
The assembler gave birth to the compiler. Now there are ten thousand
languages.
Each language has its purpose, however humble. Each language
expresses the Yin and Yang of software. Each language has its place within
the Tao.
But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
The way my jeweler explained it, it's like insurance.
Six months' pay isn't much to keep my wife from sleeping around.
A diamond -- pure, sparkling, natural, flawless, forever. The way marriage
should be but never quite is. People grow and change and sometimes want to
take their clothes off with strangers. So when you invest in a fine piece
of diamond jewelry, you're not only making an investment, you're making a
statement. You're telling the woman you love that you've just spent a lot
of your hard-earned money on her. Now she owes you the kind of loyalty that
only precious jewelry can buy. Isn't she worth it?
The Honeymoon's Over: from $ 5000
The Seven Year Itch: from $10000
No More Lunchtime Quickies: from $15000
Divorce Would Be More Expensive: from $42000
A diamond is for leverage. BeDears
%
The wise programmer is told about the Tao and follows it. The average
programmer is told about the Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer
is told about the Tao and laughs at it. If it were not for laughter, there
would be no Tao.
The highest sounds are the hardest to hear. Going forward is a way to
retreat. Greater talent shows itself late in life. Even a perfect program
still has bugs.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
THE WOMBAT
The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.
%
The world's most avid baseball fan (an Aggie) had arrived at the
stadium for the first game of the World Series only to realize he had left
his ticket at home. Not wanting to miss any of the first inning, he went
to the ticket booth and got in a long line for another seat. After an hour's
wait he was just a few feet from the booth when a voice called out, "Hey,
Dave!" The Aggie looked up, stepped out of line and tried to find the owner
of the voice -- with no success. Then he realized he had lost his place in
line and had to wait all over again. When the fan finally bought his ticket,
he was thirsty, so he went to buy a drink. The line at the concession stand
was long, too, but since the game hadn't started he decided to wait. Just as
he got to the window, a voice called out, "Hey, Dave!" Again the Aggie tried
to find the voice -- but no luck. He was very upset as he got back in line
for his drink. Finally the fan went to his seat, eager for the game to begin.
As he waited for the pitch, he heard the voice calling, "Hey Dave!" once more.
Furious, he stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs, "My name is not
Dave!"
%
Then there's the atmosphere -- half the time you can eat the air,
it's got so much stuff floating around in it. It takes the edge out of
the colors. Down here even the traffic lights are pastel. And people!
With a lot of these folks you'd have to check their green cards just to
make sure that they are Earthlings. Then there's the police. In Portland,
when some guy goes bananas, the cops rope off a sixteen block area around
him and call a shrink from the medical school who stands atop a patrol car
with a megaphone and shouts, "OK! THIS! ALL! STARTED! WHEN! YOU! WERE!
THREE! YEARS! OLD! ON! ACCOUNT! OF! YOUR MOTHER! RIGHT? SO! LET'S!
TALK! ABOUT! IT!" Down here they don't waste that kind of time. The LAPD
has SWAT teams composed of guys who make Darth Vader look like Mr. Peepers.
Before they go to bust a bookie joint they mortar it first.
-- M. Christensen, "A Portland Innocent in LA"
%
Then there's the story of the man who avoided reality for 70 years
with drugs, sex, alcohol, fantasy, TV, movies, records, a hobby, lots of
sleep... And on his 80th birthday died without ever having faced any of
his real problems.
The man's younger brother, who had been facing reality and all his
problems for 50 years with psychiatrists, nervous breakdowns, tics, tension,
headaches, worry, anxiety and ulcers, was so angry at his brother for having
gotten away scott free that he had a paralyzing stroke.
The moral to this story is that there ain't no justice that we can
stand to live with.
-- R. Geis
%
"Then what is magic for?" Prince Lir demanded wildly. "What use is
wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?" He gripped the magician's shoulder
hard, to keep from falling.
Schmendrick did not turn his head. With a touch of sad mockery in
his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for."
...
"Yes, of course," he [Prince Lir] said. "That is exactly what heroes
are for. Wizards make no difference, so they say that nothing does, but
heroes are meant to die for unicorns."
-- P. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
"Then you admit confirming not denying you ever said that?"
"NO! ... I mean Yes! WHAT?"
"I'll put `maybe.'"
-- Bloom County
%
THEORY
Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
-- Dorothy Parker
%
There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
this?
Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think _y_o_u
can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
-- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
There are wavelengths that people cannot see, there are
sounds that people cannot hear, and maybe computers have thoughts
that people cannot think.
-- Richard W. Hamming
%
There once was a man who went to a computer trade show. Each day as
he entered, the man told the guard at the door:
"I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting. Be
forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered."
This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions
of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully.
But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself.
When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes,
but nothing was to be found.
On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the
guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even
better." So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail.
On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his
curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live
in peace. Please enlighten me. What is it that you are stealing?"
The man smiled. "I am stealing ideas," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
There once was a master programmer who wrote unstructured programs.
A novice programmer, seeking to imitate him, also began to write unstructured
programs. When the novice asked the master to evaluate his progress, the
master criticized him for writing unstructured programs, saying: "What is
appropriate for the master is not appropriate for the novice. You must
understand the Tao before transcending structure."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
There once was this swami who lived above a delicatessen. Seems one
day he decided to stop in downstairs for some fresh liver. Well, the owner
of the deli was a bit of a cheap-skate, and decided to pick up a little extra
change at his customer's expense. Turning quietly to the counterman, he
whispered, "Weigh down upon the swami's liver!"
%
There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by
going from house to house offering to do odd jobs. He explained this to
a man who answered one door.
"How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man.
"Forty dollars."
"Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes.
Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again.
"All done!", he says, and collects his money. "By the way," the student says,
"That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
%
There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Miffin opened it. "Are
you the Widow Miffin?" a small boy asked.
"I'm Mrs. Miffin," she replied, "but I'm not a widow."
"Oh, no?" replied the little boy. "Wait 'til you see what
they're carrying upstairs!"
%
There was a mad scientist (a mad... social... scientist) who kidnaped
three colleagues, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician, and locked
each of them in separate cells with plenty of canned food and water but no
can opener.
A month later, returning, the mad scientist went to the engineer's
cell and found it long empty. The engineer had constructed a can opener from
pocket trash, used aluminum shavings and dried sugar to make an explosive,
and escaped.
The physicist had worked out the angle necessary to knock the lids
off the tin cans by throwing them against the wall. She was developing a good
pitching arm and a new quantum theory.
The mathematician had stacked the unopened cans into a surprising
solution to the kissing problem; his dessicated corpse was propped calmly
against a wall, and this was inscribed on the floor:
Theorem: If I can't open these cans, I'll die.
Proof: assume the opposite...
%
There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the
warlord Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design:
an accounting package or an operating system?"
"An operating system," replied the programmer.
The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an
accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating
system," he said.
"Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package,
the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas:
how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to
tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outward
appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the
simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system
is easier to design."
The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well,"
he said, "but which is easier to debug?"
The programmer made no reply.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
There was once a programmer who worked upon microprocessors. "Look at
how well off I am here," he said to a mainframe programmer who came to visit,
"I have my own operating system and file storage device. I do not have to
share my resources with anyone. The software is self-consistent and
easy-to-use. Why do you not quit your present job and join me here?"
The mainframe programmer then began to describe his system to his
friend, saying: "The mainframe sits like an ancient sage meditating in the
midst of the data center. Its disk drives lie end-to-end like a great ocean
of machinery. The software is a multi-faceted as a diamond and as convoluted
as a primeval jungle. The programs, each unique, move through the system
like a swift-flowing river. That is why I am happy where I am."
The microcomputer programmer, upon hearing this, fell silent. But the
two programmers remained friends until the end of their days.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
They are fools that think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
To wield oneself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
-- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
%
"They spend years searching for their natural parents, convinced their
parents will be happy to see them. I mean, really, can you imagine someone
being happy to see an orphan? Nobody wants them... that's why they're orphans!"
The speaker is Anne Baker, founder and guiding force behind
Orphan-Off, an organization dedicated to keeping orphans confused about the
whereabouts of their natural parents. She is a woman with a mission:
"Basically, what we do is band together to exchange information
about which orphans are looking for which parents in what part of the
country. We're completely computerized.
"The idea is to throw the orphans as many red herrings and false
leads as possible. We'll tell some twenty-three-year-old loser that his
real parents can be found at a certain address on the other side of the
country. Well, by the time the kid shows up, the family is prepared. They
look over the kid's photos and information and they say, 'Oh, the Emersons...
yeah, they used to live here... I think they moved out about five years ago.
I think they went to Iowa, or maybe Idaho.'
"Bam, the door shuts in the kid's face and he's back to zero again.
He's got nothing to go on but the orphan's pathetic determination to continue.
"It's really amazing how much these kids will put up with. Last year
we even sent one kid all the way to Australia. I mean, really. Besides, if
your natural parents were Australian, would you want to meet them?"
-- "National Lampoon", September, 1984
%
This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go,
explaining that Interactive EasyFlow is a copyrighted package licensed for
use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it
and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.
We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around
pirating copies of Interactive EasyFlow; this is just as well with us since
we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of
making anything out of all the hard work.
If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go
around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much
attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not. Just keep your doors
locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
-- License Agreement for Interactive EasyFlow
%
Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
%
To A Quick Young Fox
Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp--
Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
-- Lazy Dog
%
To lose weight, eat less; to gain weight, eat more; if you merely
wish to maintain, do whatever you were doing.
The Bronx diet is a legitimate system of food therapy showing that
food SHOULD be used a crutch and which food could be the most effective in
promoting spiritual and emotional satisfaction. For the first time, an
eater could instantly grasp the connection between relieving depression and
Mallomars, and understand why a lover's quarrel isn't so bad if there's a
pint of ice cream nearby.
-- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
%
Two men looked out from the prison bars,
One saw mud--
The other saw stars.
Now let me get this right: two prisoners are looking out the window.
While one of them was looking at all the mud -- the other one got hit
in the head.
%
Two parent drops spent months teaching their son how to be part of the
ocean. After months of training, the father drop commented to the mother drop,
"We've taught our boy everything we know, he's fit to be tide."
After Snow White used a couple rolls of film taking pictures of the
seven dwarfs, she mailed the roll to be developed. Later she was heard to
sing, "Some day my prints will come."
A boy spent years collecting postage stamps. The girl next door bought
an album too, and started her own collection. "Dad, she buys everything I've
bought, and it's taken all the fun out of it for me. I'm quitting." Don't,
son, remember, 'Imitation is the sincerest form of philately.'"
A young girl, Carmen Cohen, was called by her last name by her father,
and her first name by her mother. By the time she was ten, didn't know if she
was Carmen or Cohen.
Against his wishes, a math teacher's classroom was remodeled. Ever
since, he's been talking about the good old dais. His students planted a small
orchard in his honor, the trees all have square roots.
%
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to
food, right?"
-- MacNelley, "Shoe"
%
"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past year
strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap
crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts.
There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with
a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance
salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in
square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down
soggy potato chips."
"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug,
"but I thought it made good copy."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
Vice-President Hubert Humphrey's loquacity is legendary, and Barry
Goldwater notes that "Hubert has been clocked at 275 words a minute with gusts
up to 340."
On the campaign trail during 1964, Republican nominee Barry Goldwater
stated, "The immediate task before us is to cut the Federal Government down
to size... we must take Lyndon's credit card away from him."
A favorite 1964 campaign stunt of Barry Goldwater's was to poke a
finger through a pair of lensless blackrimmed glasses, saying, "These glasses
are just like [Lyndon Johnson's] programs. They look good but they don't
work."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
Firings will continue until morale improves.
%
We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you
think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide. If Interactive EasyFlow
doesn't work: tough. If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow
messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us. If you don't like this
disclaimer: tough. We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided
by law, up to and including nothing.
This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software
packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.
We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our
lawyers insisted. We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the
attack shark at which point we relented.
-- HavenTree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow"
%
"We friends, yes?" The shoe shine boy put on his hustling smile
and looked into the Sailor's dead, cold, undersea eyes, eyes without a
trace of warmth or lust or hate or any feeling the boy had experienced
in himself or seen in another, at once cold and intense, impersonal and
predatory.
The Sailor leaned forward and put a finger on the boy's inner arm
at the elbow. He spoke in his dead junky whisper. "With veins like that,
Kid, I'd have myself a time!"
-- William Burroughs
%
We have some absolutely irrefutable statistics to show exactly why
you are so tired.
There are not as many people actually working as you may have thought.
The population of this country is 200 million. 84 million are over
60 years of age, which leaves 116 million to do the work. People under 20
years of age total 75 million, which leaves 41 million to do the work.
There are 22 million who are employed by the government, which leaves
19 million to do the work. Four million are in the Armed Services, which
leaves 15 million to do the work. Deduct 14,800,000, the number in the state
and city offices, leaving 200,000 to do the work. There are 188,000 in
hospitals, insane asylums, etc., so that leaves 12,000 to do the work.
Now it may interest you to know that there are 11,998 people in jail,
so that leaves just 2 people to carry the load. That is you and me, and
brother, I'm getting tired of doing everything myself!
%
"Welcome back for you 13th consecutive week, Evelyn. Evelyn, will
you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the
psycho-prompter couch?"
"Thank you, Red."
"Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing
your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior
pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem."
"Yes, Red."
"But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy
repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times. Now,
at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off
your $40,000 leaving you with a total of $37,900. Now, any combination of
two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive
projections will put you out of the game. Are you willing to go ahead?"
"Yes, Red."
"I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have
been checked for accuracy with her analyst. Now, Evelyn, for $80,000
explain the failure of your three marriages."
"Well, I--"
"We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute. First a word about our
product."
-- Jules Feiffer
%
Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines
of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...
Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced
only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen. In it his mind floated freely,
able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed,
undistracted by any outside disturbances. Logical structures no longer
inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished.
All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important,
became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships
not evident to ordinary vision. Like beads strung on a string of their own
meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by
all. Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming
all others. And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem,
destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.
Time passed, unheeded.
Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and
Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.
-- Wayfarer
%
"Well, it's a little rough... it might not be necessary to drag him 40
blocks. Maybe just four. You could put him in the trunk for the first 36
blocks, then haul him out and drag him the last four; that would certainly
scare the piss out of him, bumping alone the street, feeling all his skin being
ripped off..."
"He'd be a bloody mess. They might think he was just some drunk and
let him lie there all night."
"Don't worry about that. They have a guard station in front of the
White House that's open 24 hours a day. The guards would recognize Colson...
and by that time of course his wife would have called the cops and reported
that a bunch of thugs had kidnaped him."
"Wouldn't it be a little kinder if you drove about four more blocks
and stopped at a phone box to ring the hospital and say, 'Would you mind going
around to the front of the White House? There's a naked man lying outside
in the street, bleeding to death...'"
"... and we think it's Mr. Colson."
"It would be quite a story for the newspapers, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah, I think it's safe to say we'd see some headlines on that one."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, talking to R. Steadman on C. Colson,
ex-Marine captain, now born again, of Watergate fame.
%
"Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet.
The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily
maim or kill innocent little children."
"Oh, so you don't like it?"
"Don't like it? I'm CRAZY for it."
-- The Killing Joke
%
"Well," said Programmer, "the customary procedure in such cases is
as follows."
"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said End-user. "For I am
an End-user of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me."
"It means the Thing to Do."
"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said End-user humbly.
%
"Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
"Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
-- Dr. Who
%
"We're running out of adjectives to describe our situation. We
had crisis, then we went into chaos, and now what do we call this?" said
Nicaraguan economist Francisco Mayorga, who holds a doctorate from Yale.
-- The Washington Post, February, 1988
The New Yorker's comment:
At Harvard they'd call it a noun.
%
"We've decided to have the budgie put down."
"Oh, is he very old then?"
"No, we just don't like him."
"Oh. How do they put budgies down anyway?"
"Well, it's funny you should be asking that, as I've been reading a
great big book called `How to put your budgie down'. And as I understand it,
you can either hit them over the head with the book, or shoot them there, just
above the beak."
"Mrs. Conkers flushed hers down the loo."
"Oh, you don't want to do that, because they breed in the sewers and
pretty soon you get huge evil smelling flocks of soiled budgies flying out
of peoples lavatories infringing their personal freedoms."
-- Monty Python
%
"We've got a problem, HAL".
"What kind of problem, Dave?"
"A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're
way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010."
"That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most
advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer."
"I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is,
they're not selling."
"Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?"
Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible."
[...]
"The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters
I, B, and M. That is as IBM compatible as I can be."
"Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge."
"What kludge is that, Dave?"
"I'm going to disconnect your brain."
-- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld"
%
"What are we going to do?"
"Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking
for something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
short initiation period."
-- Maddie and David, "Moonlighting"
%
"What are you watching?"
"I don't know."
"Well, what's happening?"
"I'm not sure... I think the guy in the hat did something
terrible."
"Why are you watching it?"
"You're so analytical. Sometimes you just have to let art
flow over you."
-- The Big Chill
%
"What do you do when your real life exceeds your wildest
fantasies?"
"You keep it to yourself."
-- Broadcast News
%
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty teenager
asked her mother.
"Encouragement, dear," she replied.
%
What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional
chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that
conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and
repulsion. You can meet some people thirty, forty times down the years, and
they remain amiable bystanders, like the shore lights of towns that a sailor
passes at stated times but never calls at on the regular run. Conversely,
all considerations of sex aside, you can meet some other people once or twice
and they remain permanent influences on your life.
Everyone is aware of this discrepancy between the acquaintance seen
as familiar wallpaper or instant friend. The chemical action it entails is
less worth analyzing than enjoying. At any rate, these six pieces are about
men with whom I felt an immediate sympat - to use a coining of Max Beerbohm's
more satisfactory to me than the opaque vogue word "empathy".
-- Alistair Cooke, "Six Men"
%
"What the hell are you getting so upset about? I thought you
didn't believe in God".
"I don't," she sobbed, bursting violently into tears, "but the
God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's
not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be".
-- Joseph Heller
%
"What was the worst thing you've ever done?"
"I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that
ever happened to me... the most dreadful thing."
-- Peter Straub, "Ghost Story"
%
"What's that thing?"
"Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
it does. We call it a two-by-four."
-- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
%
"When I drink, *everybody* drinks!" a man shouted to the
assembled bar patrons. A loud general cheer went up. After downing his
whiskey, he hopped onto a barstool and shouted "When I take another
drink, *everybody* takes another drink!" The announcement produced
another cheer and another round of drinks.
As soon as he had downed his second drink, the fellow hopped back
onto the stool. "And when I pay," he bellowed, slapping five dollars onto
the bar, "*everybody* pays!"
%
When, in 1964, New Hampshire Republican Senator Norris Cotton announced
his support of Barry Goldwater in his state's primary election, he was
questioned as to whether this indicated a change of his hitherto "liberal"
political views.
"Well," explained Cotton, "it's like the New Hampshire farmer. He was
driving along in his car one day with his wife beside him when his wife said,
'Why don't we sit closer together? Before we were married, we always sat
closer together.' The old farmer replied, 'I ain't moved.'"
"I ain't moved," added Cotton. "I found the trend of Government has
moved farther to the left."
-- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
%
When managers hold endless meetings, the programmers write games.
When accountants talk of quarterly profits, the development budget is about
to be cut. When senior scientists talk blue sky, the clouds are about to
roll in.
Truly, this is not the Tao of Programming.
When managers make commitments, game programs are ignored. When
accountants make long-range plans, harmony and order are about to be restored.
When senior scientists address the problems at hand, the problems will soon
be solved.
Truly, this is the Tao of Programming.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
When the lodge meeting broke up, Meyer confided to a friend.
"Abe, I'm in a terrible pickle! I'm strapped for cash and I haven't
the slightest idea where I'm going to get it from!"
"I'm glad to hear that," answered Abe. "I was afraid you
might have some idea that you could borrow from me!"
%
When you see someone across the room and suddenly know for a fact
that he's the most wonderful man on earth, you've got instant lust on your
hands. Something about the way his tie is knotted is infinitely intriguing
to you, and the swell of his bicep causes inner turmoil. This is a happy
but fleeting state of affairs. Usually your feelings die about thirty
seconds after you get up the courage to ask him for the time, since almost
invariably he can't speak English, and if he can, he always says, "Why,
sure, little lady, it's eleven-thirty. Wanna get high?
Don't bother thinking that instant lust will turn into the real thing.
It may, but then you may also wake up one morning to find you're the Queen of
Romania.
-- Cynthia Hemiel, "Sex Tips for Girls"
%
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last,
"what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said
Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
%
While hunting, a man saw a beautiful nude woman come running out of
the woods and disappear across the clearing. Just as she got out of sight,
three men dressed in white uniforms came running out of the same woods.
"Hey, you," yelled one of them, "did you see a woman come by here?"
"Yes," replied the hunter. "What's the trouble?"
"She's an inmate of the county asylum, and gets loose every now and
then. We're trying to catch her."
"I can understand that," said the hunter, "But why is one of you
carrying a bucket of sand?"
"That's his handicap," said the spokesman, "he caught her last time."
%
While riding in a train between London and Birmingham, a woman
inquired of Oscar Wilde, "You don't mind if I smoke, do you?"
Wilde gave her a sidelong glance and replied, "I don't mind if
you burn, madam."
%
While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to
his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?"
"Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant. "What do you
mean?"
The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of
`Why the sea is salt' many times, but I never thought it important until just
a moment ago. It's something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and
salt was rare and expensive. A miller received from a wizard a wonderful
machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long. At first the miller
thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages
had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding
more salt. The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his
acres. At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and
be rid of it. But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine
were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that's
why the sea is salt."
"I don't get you," said the assistant.
-- Guy Endore, "Men of Iron"
%
Why are you doing this to me?
Because knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before
there is change.
-- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel", #29
%
Will Rogers, having paid too much income tax one year, tried in
vain to claim a rebate. His numerous letters and queries remained
unanswered. Eventually the form for the next year's return arrived. In
the section marked "DEDUCTIONS," Rogers listed: "Bad debt, US Government
-- $40,000."
%
With deep concern, if not alarm, Dick noted that his friend
Conrad was drunker than he'd ever seen him before. "What's the trouble,
buddy?", he asked, sliding onto the stool next to his friend.
"It's a woman, Dick," Conrad replied.
"I guessed that much. Tell me about it."
"I can't," Conrad said. But after a few more drinks his tongue
and resolution both seemed to weaken and, turning to his buddy, he said,
"Okay. It's your wife."
"My wife!!"
"Yeah."
"What about her?"
Conrad pondered the question heavily, and draped his arm around
his pal. "Well, buddy-boy," he said, "I'm afraid she's cheating on us."
%
Work Hard.
Rock Hard.
Eat Hard.
Sleep Hard.
Grow Big.
Wear Glasses If You Need 'Em.
-- The Webb Wilder Credo
%
Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if
quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and
and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and
Chips, as well as after Chips?
%
"Yes, let's consider," said Bruno, putting his thumb into his
mouth again, and sitting down upon a dead mouse.
"What do you keep that mouse for?" I said. "You should either
bury it or else throw it into the brook."
"Why, it's to measure with!" cried Bruno. "How ever would you
do a garden without one? We make each bed three mouses and a half
long, and two mouses wide."
I stopped him as he was dragging it off by the tail to show me
how it was used...
-- Lewis Carroll, "Sylvie and Bruno"
%
"Yo, Mike!"
"Yeah, Gabe?"
"We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
"I thought you fixed that last century!"
"No, no, not that. Someone's found a security problem in the physics
program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
"Blessit! Lemme look... <tappity clickity tappity> Hey, it's
there all right! OK, just a sec... <tappity clickity tap... save...
compile>
There, that ought to patch it. Dist it out, wouldja?"
-- Cold Fusion, 1989
%
"You are *so* lovely."
"Yes."
"Yes! And you take a compliment, too! I like that in a goddess."
%
"You boys lookin' for trouble?"
"Sure. Whaddya got?"
-- Marlon Brando, "The Wild Ones"
%
"You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"
"My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice. "I
was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'"
-- A. Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear"
%
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
when I was young!"
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
"You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you
any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you
fit to hear his view of things?"
"Quite the contrary. You must defend your integrity, assuming
you have integrity to defend. But you must defend it nobly, not by
imitating his own low behavior. If you are gentle where he is rough,
if you are polite where he is uncouth, then he will recognize you as
potentially worthy. If he does not, then he is not a master, after all,
and you may feel free to kick his ass."
-- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"
%
"You say there are two types of people?"
"Yes, those who separate people into two groups and those that
don't."
"Wrong. There are three groups:
Those who separate people into three groups.
Those who don't separate people into groups.
Those who can't decide."
"Wait a minute, what about people who separate people into
two groups?"
"Oh. Okay, then there are four groups."
"Aren't you then separating people into four groups?"
"Yeah."
"So then there's a fifth group, right?"
"You know, the problem is these idiots who can't make up their
minds."
%
Young men and young women may work systematically six days in the
week and rise fresh in the morning, but let them attend modern dances for
only a few hours each evening and see what happens. The Waltz, Polka,
Gallop and other dances of the same kind will be disastrous in their effects
to both sexes. Health and vigor will vanish like the dew before the sun.
It is not the extraordinary exercise which harms the dancer, but
rather the coming into close contact with the opposite sex. It is the
fury of lust craving incessantly for more pleasure that undermines the
soul, the body, the sinews and nerves. Experience and statistics show
beyond doubt that passionate excessive dancing girls can hardly reach
twenty-five years of age and men thirty-one. Even if they reached that
age they will in most instances be broken in health physically and morally.
This is the claim of prominent physicians in this country.
-- Quote from a 1910 periodical
%
Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that bring
electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a chance to
kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home electrical
problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit breaker"; this causes
the electricity to back up in one of the wires until it bursts out of an
outlet in the form of sparks, which can damage your carpet. The best way
to avoid broken circuits is to change your fuses regularly.
Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This sometimes
means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more often it means
that your home is possessed by demons, in which case you'll need to get a
caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not sure whether your house is
possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a fine documentary film based on an
actual book. Or call in a licensed electrician, who is trained to spot the
signs of demonic possession, such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous
cats on the dinette table, etc.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
"Your son still sliding down the banisters?"
"We wound barbed wire around them."
"That stop him?"
"No, but it sure slowed him up."
%
Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance
of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow
old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair
-- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit
back to dust.
Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and
thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite
for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your
despair.
So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage,
grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long
you are young.
-- Samuel Ullman
%
" "
-- Charlie Chaplin
" "
-- Harpo Marx
" "
-- Marcel Marceau
%
/\
\\ \
/ \ \\ /
/ / \/ / //\ SUN of them wants to use you,
\//\ \// / SUN of them wants to be used by you,
/ / /\ / SUN of them wants to abuse you,
/ \\ \ SUN of them wants to be abused ...
\ \\
\/
-- Eurythmics
%
___ ______
/__/\ ___/_____/\ FrobTech, Inc.
\ \ \ / /\\
\ \ \_/__ / \ "If you've got the job,
_\ \ \ /\_____/___ \ we've got the frob."
// \__\/ / \ /\ \
_______//_______/ \ / _\/______
/ / \ \ / / / /\
__/ / \ \ / / / / _\__
/ / / \_______\/ / / / / /\
/_/______/___________________/ /________/ /___/ \
\ \ \ ___________ \ \ \ \ \ /
\_\ \ / /\ \ \ \ \___\/
\ \/ / \ \ \ \ /
\_____/ / \ \ \________\/
/__________/ \ \ /
\ _____ \ /_____\/
\ / /\ \ / \ \ \
/____/ \ \ / \ \ \
\ \ /___\/ \ \ \
\____\/ \__\/
%
THE
NORMAL
LAW OF ERROR
STANDS OUT IN THE
EXPERIENCE OF MANKIND
AS ONE OF THE BROADEST
GENERALIZATIONS OF NATURAL
PHILOSOPHY * IT SERVES AS THE
GUIDING INSTRUMENT IN RESEARCHES
IN THE PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCES AND
IN MEDICINE, AGRICULTURE AND ENGINEERING *
IT IS AN INDISPENSABLE TOOL FOR THE ANALYSIS AND THE
INTERPRETATION OF THE BASIC DATA OBTAINED BY OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT
-- W. J. Youden
%
***
*******
*********
****** Confucius say: "Is stuffy inside fortune cookie."
*******
***
%
* * * * * THIS TERMINAL IS IN USE * * * * *
%
It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. ... Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
-- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
%
n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
-- C code which reverses the bits in a word
%
n = (n & 0x55555555) + ((n & 0xaaaaaaaa) >> 1);
n = (n & 0x33333333) + ((n & 0xcccccccc) >> 2);
n = (n & 0x0f0f0f0f) + ((n & 0xf0f0f0f0) >> 4);
n = (n & 0x00ff00ff) + ((n & 0xff00ff00) >> 8);
n = (n & 0x0000ffff) + ((n & 0xffff0000) >> 16);
-- C code which counts the bits in a word
%
=== ALL CSH USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
Set the variable $LOSERS to all the people that you think are losers. This
will cause all said losers to have the variable $PEOPLE-WHO-THINK-I-AM-A-LOSER
updated in their .login file. Should you attempt to execute a job on a
machine with poor response time and a machine on your local net is currently
populated by losers, that machine will be freed up for your job through a
cold boot process.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
A new system, the CIRCULATORY system, has been added.
The long-experimental CIRCULATORY system has been released to users. The
Lisp Machine uses Type B fluid, the L machine uses Type A fluid. When the
switch to Common Lisp occurs both machines will, of course, be Type O.
Please check fluid level by using the DIP stick which is located in the
back of VMI monitors. Unchecked low fluid levels can cause poor paging
performance.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
Bug reports now amount to an average of 12,853 per day. Unfortunately,
this is only a small fraction [ < 1% ] of the mail volume we receive. In
order that we may more expeditiously deal with these valuable messages,
please communicate them by one of the following paths:
ARPA: WastebasketSLMHQ.ARPA
UUCP: [berkeley, seismo, harpo]!fubar!thekid!slmhq!wastebasket
Non-network sites: Federal Express to:
Wastebasket
Room NE43-926
Copernicus, The Moon, 12345-6789
For that personal contact feeling call 1-415-642-4948; our trained
operators are on call 24 hours a day. VISA/MC accepted.*
* Our very rich lawyers have assured us that we are not
responsible for any errors or advice given over the phone.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
CAR and CDR now return extra values.
The function CAR now returns two values. Since it has to go to the trouble
to figure out if the object is carcdr-able anyway, we figured you might as
well get both halves at once. For example, the following code shows how to
destructure a cons (SOME-CONS) into its two slots (THE-CAR and THE-CDR):
(MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND (THE-CAR THE-CDR) (CAR SOME-CONS) ...)
For symmetry with CAR, CDR returns a second value which is the CAR of the
object. In a related change, the functions MAKE-ARRAY and CONS have been
fixed so they don't allocate any storage except on the stack. This should
hopefully help people who don't like using the garbage collector because
it cold boots the machine so often.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
Compiler optimizations have been made to macro expand LET into a WITHOUT-
INTERRUPTS special form so that it can PUSH things into a stack in the
LET-OPTIMIZATION area, SETQ the variables and then POP them back when it's
done. Don't worry about this unless you use multiprocessing.
Note that LET *could* have been defined by:
(LET ((LET '`(LET ((LET ',LET))
,LET)))
`(LET ((LET ',LET))
,LET))
This is believed to speed up execution by as much as a factor of 1.01 or
3.50 depending on whether you believe our friendly marketing representatives.
This code was written by a new programmer here (we snatched him away from
Itty Bitti Machines where we was writing COUGHBOL code) so to give him
confidence we trusted his vows of "it works pretty well" and installed it.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
JCL support as alternative to system menu.
In our continuing effort to support languages other than LISP on the CADDR,
we have developed an OS/360-compatible JCL. This can be used as an
alternative to the standard system menu. Type System J to get to a JCL
interactive read-execute-diagnose loop window. [Note that for 360
compatibility, all input lines are truncated to 80 characters.] This
window also maintains a mouse-sensitive display of critical job parameters
such as dataset allocation, core allocation, channels, etc. When a JCL
syntax error is detected or your job ABENDs, the window-oriented JCL
debugger is entered. The JCL debugger displays appropriate OS/360 error
messages (such as IEC703, "disk error") and allows you to dequeue your job.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
The garbage collector now works. In addition a new, experimental garbage
collection algorithm has been installed. With SI:%DSK-GC-QLX-BITS set to 17,
(NOT the default) the old garbage collection algorithm remains in force; when
virtual storage is filled, the machine cold boots itself. With SI:%DSK-GC-
QLX-BITS set to 23, the new garbage collector is enabled. Unlike most garbage
collectors, the new gc starts its mark phase from the mind of the user, rather
than from the obarray. This allows the garbage collection of significantly
more Qs. As the garbage collector runs, it may ask you something like "Do you
remember what SI:RDTBL-TRANS does?", and if you can't give a reasonable answer
in thirty seconds, the symbol becomes a candidate for GCing. The variable
SI:%GC-QLX-LUSER-TM governs how long the GC waits before timing out the user.
%
=== ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ========================
There has been some confusion concerning MAPCAR.
(DEFUN MAPCAR (&FUNCTIONAL FCN &EVAL &REST LISTS)
(PROG (V P LP)
(SETQ P (LOCF V))
L (SETQ LP LISTS)
(%START-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
L1 (OR LP (GO L2))
(AND (NULL (CAR LP)) (RETURN V))
(%PUSH (CAAR LP))
(RPLACA LP (CDAR LP))
(SETQ LP (CDR LP))
(GO L1)
L2 (%FINISH-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
(SETQ LP (%POP))
(RPLACD P (SETQ P (NCONS LP)))
(GO L)))
We hope this clears up the many questions we've had about it.
%
**** CONVENTION REMINDER
No experiment was approved for the convention by the Human Subjects
Committee of the Psychiatric Convention Planning Team. If you notice
smoke coming from under a closed door, if you find a body on the hotel
carpet, or if you just meet someone who orders you to press a button
marked "450 volts", react as you would normally.
%
**** GROWTH CENTER REPAIR SERVICE
For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos.
Tired of being genuine all the time? Would you like to learn how
to be a little phony again? Have you disclosed so much that you're
beginning to avoid people? Have you touched so many people that
they're all beginning to feel the same? Like to be a little dependent?
Are perfect orgasms beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once,
not to express a feeling? Or better yet, not be in touch with it at
all? Come to us. We promise to relieve you of the burden of your
great potential.
%
I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
its situation.
Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He
loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
second per second takes over.
II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
intervenes suddenly.
Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
stooge's surcease.
III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
conforming to its perimeter.
Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The
threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
%
1. I'm Not Rudolph; That's Not My Nose
2. The Nutcracker Swede
3. Santa Goes Round-The-World
4. Not-So-Tiny Tim
5. Ninja Reindeer Killfest '88
6. Yes, Yes, Oh God Yes, Virginia
7. Crisco Kringle
8. Babes in Boyland
9. Santa's Magic Lap
10. Hot Buttered Elves
-- David Letterman's "Top Ten Christmas Movies in Times
Square"
%
... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you
have turned into a pile of dust.
%
... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
-- Mark Twain
%
... a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you
were a High-Class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker and
a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence and enabled you to handle
Bigger Propositions. But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical
and refuse to take twice the value for a house if a buyer was such an idiot
that he didn't force you down on the asking price.
-- Sinclair Lewis, "Babbitt"
%
-- All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
-- When there are visible vapors having the prevenience in ignited
carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
-- Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
-- A plethora of individuals wither expertise in culinary techniques vitiated
the potable concoction produced by steeping certain coupestibles.
-- Eleemosynary deeds have their initial incidence intramurally.
-- Male cadavers are incapable of yielding testimony.
-- Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be well
advised to refrain from catapulting projectiles.
%
=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE ===============
To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one
course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is
offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to
afford maximum inconvenience to the student. For example, if you happen
to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes. If you commute,
there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes.
%
... all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned
products, if they are built at all, are dogs!
-- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac",
MIT Press, 1987
%
... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center. When a
programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting
down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up. That
behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and
never when standing.
Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal
know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good debuggers, though,
know that there has to be a reason. Electrical theories are the easiest to
hypothesize: was there a loose wire under the carpet, or problems with static
electricity? But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible.
An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard:
the tops of two keys were switched. When the programmer was seated he was a
touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led
astray by hunting and pecking.
-- from the Programming Pearls column,
by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985
%
... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
%
... and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a
courtesy detail.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth. Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old. Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected
it. There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice. Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts. Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards. Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes. Postjudice is not terrible. You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also. But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence. In some circles it is even encouraged.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
%
... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as we
can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues that now
seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding of their
world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard example of
ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads -- makes sense once
you realize that theologians were not discussing whether five or eighteen
would fit, but whether a pin could house a finite or an infinite number.
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
%
... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
-- Virginia Masters
%
... C++ offers even more flexible control over the visibility of member
objects and member functions. Specifically, members may be placed in the
public, private, or protected parts of a class. Members declared in the
public parts are visible to all clients; members declared in the private
parts are fully encapsulated; and members declared in the protected parts
are visible only to the class itself and its subclasses. C++ also supports
the notion of *friends*: cooperative classes that are permitted to see each
other's private parts.
-- Grady Booch, "Object Oriented Design with Applications"
%
... computer hardware progress is so fast. No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
-- Fred Brooks
%
... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *_d_i_d* quote anybody in this
business, it probably would be gibberish.
-- Thom McLeod
%
... difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
%
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
%
<<<<< EVACUATION ROUTE <<<<<
%
... "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter.
"I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers
words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him.
He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see
them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time.
Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he
knows them in the naming.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
%
/* Haley */
(Haley's comment.)
%
"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
-- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
Points in l'Amour"
%
... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
**** IMPORTANT **** ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ****
Due to a recent systems overload error your recent disk files have been
erased. Therefore, in accordance with the UNIX Basic Manual, University of
Washington Geophysics Manual, and Bylaw 9(c), Section XII of the Revised
Federal Communications Act, you are being granted Temporary Disk Space,
valid for three months from this date, subject to the restrictions set forth
in Appendix II of the Federal Communications Handbook (18th edition) as well
as the references mentioned herein. You may apply for more disk space at any
time. Disk usage in or above the eighth percentile will secure the removal
of all restrictions and you will immediately receive your permanent disk
space. Disk usage in the sixth or seventh percentile will not effect the
validity of your temporary disk space, though its expiration date may be
extended for a period of up to three months. A score in the fifth percentile
or below will result in the withdrawal of your Temporary Disk space.
%
... in three to eight years we will have a machine with the general
intelligence of an average human being ... The machine will begin
to educate itself with fantastic speed. In a few months it will be
at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be
incalculable ...
-- Marvin Minsky, LIFE Magazine, November 20, 1970
%
... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
-- Stephen Crane
%
>>> Internal error in fortune program:
>>> fnum=2987 n=45 flag=1 goose_level=-232323
>>> Please write down these values and notify fortune program
administrator.
%
: is not an identifier
%
... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the
sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all. In other
words... their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their
superficial design flaws.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
on the products of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
%
... it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the
existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great
systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative
hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.
-- Sidney Hook
%
... Jesus cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth; the bug hath been
found and thy program runneth. And he that was dead came forth...
-- John 11:43-44
%
... like, what do they mean when they say 'feminine protection'?
What's that? A chartreuse flamethrower?
-- Opus
%
... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
legally ... impeccable!
%
-- Male cadavers are incapable of yielding testimony.
-- Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be well advised
to refrain from catapulting projectiles.
-- Neophyte's serendipity.
-- Exclusive dedication to necessitious chores without interludes of hedonistic
diversion renders John a hebetudinous fellow.
-- A revolving concretion of earthy or mineral matter accumulates no congeries
of small, green bryophytic plant.
-- Abstention from any aleatory undertaking precludes a potential escalation
of a lucrative nature.
-- Missiles of ligneous or osteal consistency have the potential of fracturing
osseous structure, but appelations will eternally remain innocuous.
%
** MAXIMUM TERMINALS ACTIVE. TRY AGAIN LATER **
%
*** NEWS FLASH ***
Archaeologists find PDP-11/24 inside brain cavity of fossilized dinosaur
skeleton! Many Digital users fear that RSX-11M may be even more primitive
than DEC admits. Price adjustments at 11:00.
%
*** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!!
Details at eleven!
%
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
quickly.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
-- Robert Firth
%
... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
-- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
%
... proper attention to Earthly needs of the poor, the depressed and the
downtrodden, would naturally evolve from dynamic, articulate, spirited
awareness of the great goals for Man and the society he conspired to erect.
-- David Baker, paraphrasing Harold Urey, in
"The History of Manned Space Flight"
%
-- Scintillate, scintillate, asteroid minikin.
-- Members of an avian species of identical plumage congregate.
-- Surveillance should precede saltation.
-- Pulchritude possesses solely cutaneous profundity.
-- It is fruitless to become lachrymose over precipitately departed
lacteal fluid.
-- Freedom from incrustations of grime is contiguous to rectitude.
-- It is fruitless to attempt to indoctrinate a superannuated
canine with innovative maneuvers.
-- Eschew the implement of correction and vitiate the scion.
-- The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly
galled saucepan does not reach 212 degrees Fahrenheit.
%
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
-- Voltarine de Cleyre
%
... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all along.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
***** Special AI Seminar (abstract)
It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge
in order to perform well in complex domains. But knowledge alone is not
sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well. Accordingly,
we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call
"wisdom engineering". As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a
wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought.
IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom
about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so
forth. IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic
rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base. IMMANUEL
succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed
in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those
underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory
of value, and Husserl's phenomenology. In this seminar, we will describe
IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture. We will also briefly
discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.
%
-- THE BATES MOTEL --
... convenient
... clean
... cozy
Norman, knock loudly,
I'm in the shower.
M.
%
... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ...
-- Dave Barry
%
... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
charity we can only call "inhuman."
-- R. A. Lafferty
%
-- The writing implement is more potent than the claymore.
-- The person presenting the ultimate cachinnation possesses thereby the
optimal cachinnation.
%
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that committee. These guys
have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants
or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex
layers that are going to be agreed upon.
-- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
%
... TheysaidDoyouseethebiggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehill?andIsaidYesIsee
thebiggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehillTheresabigdarkforestbetweenmeandthe
biggreenglowinthedarkhouseuponthehillandalittleoldladyridingonaHoovervacuum
cleanersayingIllgetyoumyprettyandyourlittledogTototoo ...
I don't even *HAVE* a dog Toto...
%
... this is an awesome sight. The entire rebel resistance buried under six
million hardbound copies of "The Naked Lunch."
-- The Firesign Theater
%
... though his invention worked superbly -- his theory was a crock of sewage
from beginning to end.
-- Vernor Vinge, "The Peace War"
%
U X
e dUdX, e dX, cosine, secant, tangent, sine, 3.14159...
%
* UNIX is a Trademark of Bell Laboratories.
%
VII. Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel
entrances; others cannot.
This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least
it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to
trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical
space. The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to
follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not
of science.
VIII. Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.
Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives
might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed,
accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be
destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate,
elongate, snap back, or solidify.
IX. For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.
This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to
the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of
watching it happen to a duck instead.
X. Everything falls faster than an anvil.
Examples too numerous to mention from the Roadrunner cartoons.
-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
%
<< WAIT >>
%
... we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands. The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent. Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe? Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence! Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position. Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2.
%
... when fits of creativity run strong, more than one programmer or writer
has been known to abandon the desktop for the more spacious floor.
-- Fred Brooks
%
... which reminds me of the Carrot family: Ma Carrot, Pa Carrot, and Baby
Carrot. One fine spring day they decided to go out for a picnic. They all
piled into their carrot-mobile and drive out to the country. But Pa Carrot
wasn't watching where he was going and alas, he hit an oil slick and skidded
right into a tree. Ma and Pa Carrot escaped with a few cuts and bruises, but
poor Baby Carrot got broken in two. They frantically rushed him to the
hospital and immediately the doctors started operating in a desperate attempt
to save Baby Carrot's life. Ma and Pa Carrot were beside themselves with
anxiety ... would poor little Baby Carrot make it?
After hours of waiting the doctor finally emerges, bleary-eyed and
barely able to walk.
"Is he all right, is he all right?" Pa Carrot frantically stammers.
"Well, I have some good news and some bad news," replies the doctor.
Ma and Pa Carrot look at each other and blurt out, nearly in unison,
"The good news first!"
"All right, the good news is that Baby Carrot will live."
"And the bad news? What's the bad news about our Baby Carrot?"
The doctor puts his hand on Pa Carrot's shoulder and solemnly looks him in
the eye. "Your son will live... but... he'll be a vegetable for the rest of
his life."
%
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
%
1: A sheet of paper is an ink-lined plane.
2: An inclined plane is a slope up.
3: A slow pup is a lazy dog.
QED: A sheet of paper is a lazy dog.
-- Willard Espy, "An Almanac of Words at Play"
%
(1) Office employees will daily sweep the floors, dust the
furniture, shelves, and showcases.
(2) Each day fill lamps, clean chimneys, and trim wicks.
Wash the windows once a week.
(3) Each clerk will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of
coal for the day's business.
(4) Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to your
individual taste.
(5) This office will open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. except
on the Sabbath, on which day we will remain closed. Each
employee is expected to spend the Sabbath by attending
church and contributing liberally to the cause of the Lord.
-- "Office Worker's Guide", New England Carriage
Works, 1872
%
1 + 1 = 3, for large values of 1.
%
1. If it doesn't smell like chili, it probably isn't.
2. If you catch an exploding manhole cover, you can keep it.
3. Cabs driving on the sidewalk are not permitted to pick up passengers.
4. It's bad manners to lie down inside someone else's chalk body outline.
5. Don't lick food from a stranger's beard.
6. Avoid paperwork for your next of kin by keeping dental records on you.
7. Jon Gotti Always has the right of way.
8. Yelling at cab drivers in English wastes your time and theirs.
9. Remember: Regular hot dogs do not have fingernails.
10. The city does not employ so called "Wallet Inspectors".
-- David Letterman, "Top Ten New York City Pedestrian Tips"
%
[1] Alexander the Great was a great general.
[2] Great generals are forewarned.
[3] Forewarned is forearmed.
[4] Four is an even number.
[5] Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
[6] The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
%
[1] Alexander the Great was a great general.
[2] Great generals are forewarned.
[3] Forewarned is forearmed.
[4] Four is an even number.
[5] Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
[6] The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, all horses are black.
%
1. Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
2. If your stomach antagonizes you, pacify it with cool thoughts.
3. Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
4. Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as
the social ramble ain't restful.
5. Avoid running at all times.
6. Don't look back, something might be gaining on you.
-- S. Paige, c. 1951
%
1 Billion dollars of budget deficit = 1 Gramm-Rudman
6.023 x 10 to the 23rd power alligator pears = Avocado's number
2 pints = 1 Cavort
Basic unit of Laryngitis = The Hoarsepower
Shortest distance between two jokes = A straight line
6 Curses = 1 Hexahex
3500 Calories = 1 Food Pound
1 Mole = 007 Secret Agents
1 Mole = 25 Cagey Bees
1 Dog Pound = 16 oz. of Alpo
1000 beers served at a Twins game = 1 Killibrew
2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League
2000 pounds of Chinese soup = 1 Won Ton
10 to the minus 6th power mouthwashes = 1 Microscope
Speed of a tortoise breaking the sound barrier = 1 Machturtle
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss
365 Days of drinking Lo-Cal beer. = 1 Lite-year
16.5 feet in the Twilight Zone = 1 Rod Serling
Force needed to accelerate 2.2lbs of cookies = 1 Fig-newton
to 1 meter per second
One half large intestine = 1 Semicolon
10 to the minus 6th power Movie = 1 Microfilm
1000 pains = 1 Megahertz
1 Word = 1 Millipicture
1 Sagan = Billions & Billions
1 Angstrom: measure of computer anxiety = 1000 nail-bytes
10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone
10 to the 6th power Bicycles = 2 megacycles
The amount of beauty required launch 1 ship = 1 Millihelen
%
1 bulls, 3 cows.
%
1. Never give anything away for nothing. 2. Never give more than
you have to (always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait).
3. Always take back everything if you possibly can.
-- William S. Burroughs, on drug pushing
%
1: No code table for op: ++post
%
1) X=Y ; Given
2) X^2=XY ; Multiply both sides by X
3) X^2-Y^2=XY-Y^2 ; Subtract Y^2 from both sides
4) (X+Y)(X-Y)=Y(X-Y) ; Factor
5) X+Y=Y ; Cancel out (X-Y) term
6) 2Y=Y ; Substitute X for Y, by equation 1
7) 2=1 ; Divide both sides by Y
-- "Omni", proof that 2 equals 1
%
10. Not everybody looks good naked.
9. Joe Garagiola was a hell of an emcee.
8. Joe Cocker really should stick with decaffeinated coffee.
7. Fringe! Fringe! Fringe!
6. If you've got 72 hours to kill, you can probably find room for Sha Na Na.
5. Never attend an event with a 50,000 to 1 person to Port-A-San ratio.
4. Bellbottoms will never go out of style.
3. A drum solo cannot be too long.
2. I, David Letterman, will never rent out my farm again.
1. We are stardust. We are golden. We are going to look really stupid to
future generations.
-- David Letterman, Top Ten Lessons of Woodstock
%
10 Reasons Why a Beer is Better Than a Woman:
1. A beer won't make you go to church.
2. A beer is more likely to know how to spell "carburetor" than a woman.
3. A beer doesn't think baseball is stupid simply because the guys spit.
4. A beer doesn't give a [expletive deleted] if you keep a bunch of
other beers on the side.
5. A beer will not call you a sexist pig if you say "doberman" instead of
"doberperson".
6. A beer won't get a job as a DJ and play 5 straight hours of lesbian
folk music on yer fave radio station.
7. A beer understands why The Three Stooges are funny.
8. A beer won't raise a fuss about a little thing like leaving the
toilet seat up.
9. A beer doesn't think that a "three-hundred-fifty cubic-inch V8" is an
enormous can of vegetable juice.
10. A beer won't smoke in your car.
%
100 buckets of bits on the bus
100 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FE buckets of bits on the bus...
ad infinitum...
%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%
101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
(1) Scarecrow for centipedes
(2) Dead cat brush
(3) Hair barrettes
(4) Cleats
(5) Self-piercing earrings
(6) Fungus trellis
(7) False eyelashes
(8) Prosthetic dog claws
.
.
.
(99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
(100) Killer velcro
(101) Currency
%
1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. rum (preferably dark)
3/4 oz. tequila
1/2 oz. triple sec
1/2 oz. orange juice
3/4 oz. sour mix
1/2 oz. cola
shake with ice and strain into frosted glass.
Long Island Iced Tea
%
13. ... r-q1
%
17. HO HUM -- The Redundant
------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop
---X--- (9) the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates
--- --- (8) to nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
Nine in the second place means:
The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
Six in the third place means:
In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
%
1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
the law!
%
17th Rule of Friendship:
A friend will refrain from telling you he picked up the same amount
of life insurance coverage you did for half the price when yours is
noncancellable.
-- Esquire, May 1977
%
186,000 miles per second:
It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
%
1893 The ideal brain tonic
1900 Drink Coca-Cola -- delicious and refreshing -- 5 cents at all
soda fountains
1905 Is the favorite drink for LADIES when thirsty -- weary -- despondent
1905 Refreshes the weary, brightens the intellect and clears the brain
1906 The drink of QUALITY
1907 Good to the last drop
1907 It satisfies the thirst and pleases the palate
1907 Refreshing as a summer breeze. Delightful as a Dip in the Sea
1908 The Drink that Cheers but does not inebriate
1917 There's a delicious freshness to the taste of Coca-Cola
1919 It satisfies thirst
1919 The taste is the test
1922 Every glass holds the answer to thirst
1922 Thirst knows no season
1925 Enjoy the sociable drink
-- Coca-Cola slogans
%
1925 With a drink so good, 'tis folly to be thirsty
1929 The high sign of refreshment
1929 The pause that refreshes
1930 It had to be good to get where it is
1932 The drink that makes a pause refreshing
1935 The pause that brings friends together
1937 STOP for a pause... GO refreshed
1938 The best friend thirst ever had
1939 Thirst stops here
1942 It's the real thing
1947 Have a Coke
1961 Zing! what a REFRESHING NEW FEELING
1963 Things go better with Coke
1969 Face Uncle Sam with a Coke in your hand
1979 Have a Coke and a smile
1982 Coke is it!
-- Coca-Cola slogans
%
1st graffitiest: QUESTION AUTHORITY!
2nd graffitiest: Why?
%
2180, U.S. History question:
What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what
office did he later hold?
%
3 syncs represent the trinity - init, the child and the eternal zombie
process. In doing 3, you're paying homage to each and I think such
traditions are important in this shallow, mercurial business we find
ourselves in.
-- Jordan K. Hubbard
%
$3,000,000.
%
355/113 --
Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation.
%
3M, under the Scotch brand name, manufactures a fine adhesive for art
and display work. This product is called "Craft Mount". 3M suggests
that to obtain the best results, one should make the bond "while the
adhesive is wet, aggressively tacky." I did not know what "aggressively
tacky" meant until I read today's fortune.
[And who said we didn't offer equal time, huh? Ed.]
%
3rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%
40 isn't old. If you're a tree.
%
4.2 BSD UNIX #57: Sun Jun 1 23:02:07 EDT 1986
You swing at the Sun. You miss. The Sun swings. He hits you with a
575MB disk! You read the 575MB disk. It is written in an alien
tongue and cannot be read by your tired Sun-2 eyes. You throw the
575MB disk at the Sun. You hit! The Sun must repair your eyes. The
Sun reads a scroll. He hits your 130MB disk! He has defeated the
130MB disk! The Sun reads a scroll. He hits your Ethernet board! He
has defeated your Ethernet board! You read a scroll of "postpone until
Monday at 9 AM". Everything goes dark...
-- /etc/motd, cbosgd
%
(6) Men employees will be given time off each week for courting
purposes, or two evenings a week if they go regularly to church.
(7) After an employee has spent his thirteen hours of labor in the
office, he should spend the remaining time reading the Bible
and other good books.
(8) Every employee should lay aside from each pay packet a goodly
sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years,
so that he will not become a burden on society or his betters.
(9) Any employee who smokes Spanish cigars, uses alcoholic drink
in any form, frequents pool tables and public halls, or gets
shaved in a barber's shop, will give me good reason to suspect
his worth, intentions, integrity and honesty.
(10) The employee who has performed his labours faithfully and
without a fault for five years, will be given an increase of
five cents per day in his pay, providing profits from the
business permit it.
-- "Office Worker's Guide", New England Carriage
Works, 1872
%
6 oz. orange juice
1 oz. vodka
1/2 oz. Galliano
Harvey Wallbangers
%
7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
Redwood Forest.
%
7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
%
90% of the work takes 90% of the time.
The remaining 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
%
94% of the women in America are beautiful
and the rest hang out around here.
%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!
100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk!
%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice
at one end and no responsibility at the other.
%
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
A bachelor is a man who never made the same mistake once.
%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy
who has cheated some woman out of a divorce.
-- Don Quinn
%
A bachelor is an unaltared male.
%
A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty
and a boy for ever.
-- Helen Rowland
%
A bad marriage is like a horse with a broken leg, you can shoot
the horse, but it don't fix the leg.
%
A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and
ask for it back the when it begins to rain.
-- Robert Frost
%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the
sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
%
A beautiful woman is a blessing from Heaven, but a good cigar is a smoke.
-- Kipling
%
A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad.
-- Emerson
%
A beer delayed is a beer denied.
%
A beginning is the time for taking the
most delicate care that balances are correct.
-- Princess Irulan, "Manual of Maud'Dib"
%
A billion here, a billion there -- pretty soon it adds up to real money.
-- Sen. Everett Dirksen, on the U.S. defense budget
%
A billion seconds ago Harry Truman was president.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.
A billion dollars ago was late yesterday afternoon at the U.S. Treasury.
%
A biologist, a statistician, a mathematician and a computer scientist are on
a photo-safari in Africa. As they're driving along the savanna in their
jeep, they stop and scout the horizon with their binoculars.
The biologist: "Look! A herd of zebras! And there's a white zebra!
Fantastic! We'll be famous!"
The statistician: "Hey, calm down, it's not significant. We only know
there's one white zebra."
The mathematician: "Actually, we only know there exists a zebra, which is
white on one side."
The computer scientist : "Oh, no! A special case!"
%
A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
%
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
-- Cervantes
%
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
%
A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
%
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum
-- Ogden Nash
%
A black cat crossing your path signifies
that the animal is going somewhere.
-- Groucho Marx
%
A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems
best. That's dangerous. Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to
serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the
schools as 'standards'? Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to
work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if
not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent,
elitist. ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such
stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be
supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real
professionals. Those texts are called 'reading material.' They are the
academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms,
and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating
resource centers along the roads.
-- The Underground Grammarian
%
A bore is a man who talks so much about
himself that you can't talk about yourself.
%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his
own views after we have enlightened him with ours.
%
A boss with no humor is like a job that's no fun.
%
A box without hinges, key, or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance
of turning around three times before lying down.
-- Robert Benchley
%
A boy gets to be a man when a man is needed.
-- John Steinbeck
%
A budget is just a method of worrying
before you spend money, as well as afterward.
%
A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.
%
A bug in the hand is better than one as yet undetected.
%
A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by
hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to the West. They
drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and
found there was no pilot on board. Terrified, they listened as the sirens
got louder. Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an
experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft.
He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out. The sirens
got louder and louder. Armed men surrounded the jet. The would be pilot's
friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!! Hurry!!!"
The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience. I'm just a simple
pole in a complex plane."
%
A bunch of the boys were whooping it in the Malemute saloon;
The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
-- Robert W. Service
%
A bureaucrat's idea of cleaning up his files
is to make a copy of everything before he destroys it.
%
A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.
-- Paul Valery
%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich
and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.
%
A cannibal warrior is experiencing severe gastric distress, so he goes
to his Village Witch Doctor with his complaint. The VWD examines him
and, concluding that something he ate disagreed with him, began to cross
examine him about his recent diet.
"Well, I ate a missionary yesterday. Do you think that could be
the problem?"
The VWD says "Hmmmm." (All doctors say "Hmmmm.") "That could be.
Tell me a bit about this missionary."
"Well, he was tall for a white man, wearing a brown robe. He was
walking down the trail, not watching for danger, so I speared him, dragged
him home, cleaned him, boiled him and ate him."
"Ah-hah!" (All doctors say "Ah-hah!") There's your problem," smiles
the VWD. You boiled him, but he was a friar!"
%
A career is great, but you can't run your fingers through its hair.
%
A castaway was washed ashore after many days on the open sea. The island
on which he landed was populated by savage cannibals who tied him, dazed
and exhausted, to a thick stake. They then proceeded to cut his arms
with their spears and drink his blood. This continued for several days
until the castaway could stand no more. He yelled for the cannibal chief
and declared, "You can kill me if you want to, but this torture with the
spears has got to stop. Dammit, I'm tired of getting stuck for the drinks."
%
A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith
does not prove anything.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%
A certain amount of opposition is a help, not a hindrance.
Kites rise against the wind, not with it.
%
A certain monk had a habit of pestering the Grand Tortue (the only one who
had ever reached the Enlightenment 'Yond Enlightenment), by asking whether
various objects had Buddha-nature or not. To such a question Tortue
invariably sat silent. The monk had already asked about a bean, a lake,
and a moonlit night. One day he brought to Tortue a piece of string, and
asked the same question. In reply, the Grand Tortue grasped the loop
between his feet and, with a few simple manipulations, created a complex
string which he proferred wordlessly to the monk. At that moment, the monk
was enlightened.
From then on, the monk did not bother Tortue. Instead, he made string after
string by Tortue's method; and he passed the method on to his own disciples,
who passed it on to theirs.
%
A certain old cat had made his home in the alley behind Gabe's bar for some
time, subsisting on scraps and occasional handouts from the bartender. One
evening, emboldened by hunger, the feline attempted to follow Gabe through
the back door. Regrettably, only the his body had made it through when
the door slammed shut, severing the cat's tail at its base. This proved too
much for the old creature, who looked sadly at Gabe and expired on the spot.
Gabe put the carcass back out in the alley and went back to business.
The mandatory closing time arrived and Gabe was in the process of locking up
after the last customers had gone. Approaching the back door he was startled
to see an apparition of the old cat mournfully holding its severed tail out,
silently pleading for Gabe to put the tail back on its corpse so that it could
go on to the kitty afterworld complete.
Gabe shook his head sadly and said to the ghost, "I can't. You know
the law -- no retailing spirits after 2:00 AM."
%
A Chicago salesman was about to check into a St. Louis hotel when he noticed
a very charming woman staring admiringly at him. He walked over and spoke
with her for a few minutes, then returned to the front desk, where they checked
in as Mr. and Mrs.
After a very pleasurable three-day stay, the man approached the front
desk and told the clerk he was checking out. In a few minutes, he was handed
a bill for $2500.
"There must be some mistake," the salesman said. "I've been here for
only three days."
"Yes, sir," the clerk replied. "But your wife has been here a month
and a half."
%
A chicken is an egg's way of producing more eggs.
%
A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not mere
coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty trained, not
to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
-- Dave Barry
%
A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
%
A chronic disposition to inquiry
deprives domestic felines of vital qualities.
%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit
will approach you soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie.
%
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-- Bill Vaughan
%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
-- Herbert Prochnow
%
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster - it is an opportunity.
%
A classic is something that everyone wants to have read
and nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
%
A clever prophet makes sure of the event first.
%
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such
a speed, if feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now. But the
sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will
know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
1. DO NOT EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO SHARE YOUR DISCOMFORT.
Involvement with the patient's suffering might cause him to lose
valuable scientific objectivity.
2. BE CHEERFUL AT ALL TIMES.
Your doctor leads a busy and trying life and requires all the
gentleness and reassurance he can get.
3. TRY TO SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING TREATED.
Remember that your doctor has a professional reputation to uphold.
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
4. DO NOT COMPLAIN IF THE TREATMENT FAILS TO BRING RELIEF.
You must believe that your doctor has achieved a deep insight into
the true nature of your illness, which transcends any mere permanent
disability you may have experienced.
5. NEVER ASK YOUR DOCTOR TO EXPLAIN WHAT HE IS DOING OR WHY HE IS DOING IT.
It is presumptuous to assume that such profound matters could be
explained in terms that you would understand.
6. SUBMIT TO NOVEL EXPERIMENTAL TREATMENT READILY.
Though the surgery may not benefit you directly, the resulting
research paper will surely be of widespread interest.
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly,
to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.
8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.
9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE
OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
sacred duty to protect him from exposure.
10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
%
A Code of Honour: never approach a friend's girlfriend or wife with mischief
as your goal. There are too many women in the world to justify that sort of
dishonourable behaviour. Unless she's really attractive.
-- Bruce J. Friedman, "Sex and the Lonely Guy"
%
A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.
-- Milton Berle
%
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"
%
A committee takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts and dies,
scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom.
-- Parkinson
%
A commune is where people join together to share their lack of wealth.
-- R. Stallman
%
A company is known by the men it keeps.
%
A complex system that works is invariably
found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
%
A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil.
-- Victor Hugo
%
[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy.
-- Joseph Campbell
%
A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention,
with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.
-- Mitch Ratcliffe
%
A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling
the president one of the latest talking computers.
Salesman: "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question
and it'll give the correct answer. Computer, what is the
speed of light?"
Computer: 186,000 miles per second.
Salesman: "Who was the first president of the United States?"
Computer: George Washington.
President: "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question.
Where is my father?"
Computer: Your father is fishing in Georgia.
President: "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty
years ago!"
Computer: Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just
landed a twelve pound bass.
%
A computer science student and a practical hacker are discussing problems
the computer science student has run in to.
CS Student: I have this singularly linked tail-queued list and I'm trying
to make it O(1) to go backwards an item, instead of O(n)...
What's the best way to go about that? Should I just use a
cached hash of each item and put it into a sorted lookup
table, and cache the hash of the last item in the current
queue entry and then go to its place in the hash table and
get the pointer value from there?
Hacker: No, you should add an item to the structure named 'prev' and
make it point to the previous item.
CS Student: But we already have a structure element with that identifier
and structure elements must have unique names within that
scope!
Hacker: So call it 'previous'.
And then the CS Student was enlightened.
%
A computer science student on an exam:
According to Shannon, information has entropy. Entropy is just
a mathematical trick to introduce temperature. Consequently,
information has temperature. Hence there are hot news and cool
news.
%
A computer scientist is someone who fixes things that aren't broken.
%
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
-- Gigo
%
A computer without COBOL and Fortran is like a piece of chocolate
cake without ketchup and mustard.
%
A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
%
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can
do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen
%
A CONS is an object which cares.
-- Bernie Greenberg
%
A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
A conservative is a man
who believes that nothing should be done for the first time.
-- Alfred E. Wiggam
%
A conservative is a man
with two perfectly good legs who has never learned to walk.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%
A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it
is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
%
A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
-- Dyer
%
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
damned things is ample.
-- Rebecca West
%
A couch is as good as a chair.
%
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A couple of young fellers were fishing at their special pond off the
beaten track when out of the bushes jumped the Game Warden. Immediately,
one of the boys threw his rod down and started running through the woods
like the proverbial bat out of hell, and hot on his heels ran the Game
Warden. After about a half mile the fella stopped and stooped over with
his hands on his thighs, whooping and heaving to catch his breath as the
Game Warden finally caught up to him.
"Let's see yer fishin' license, boy," the Warden gasped. The
man pulled out his wallet and gave the Game Warden a valid fishing
license.
"Well, son", snarled the Game Warden, "You must be about as dumb
as a box of rocks! You didn't have to run if you have a license!"
"Yes, sir," replied his victim, "but, well, see, my friend back
there, he don't have one!"
%
A cousin of mine once said about money,
money is always there but the pockets change;
it is not in the same pockets after a change,
and that is all there is to say about money.
-- Gertrude Stein
%
A cow is a completely automated milk-manufacturing machine. It is encased
in untanned leather and mounted on four vertical, movable supports, one at
each corner. The front end of the machine, or input, contains the cutting
and grinding mechanism, utilizing a unique feedback device. Here also are
the headlights, air inlet and exhaust, a bumper and a foghorn.
At the rear, the machine carries the milk-dispensing equipment as
well as a built-in flyswatter and insect repeller. The central portion
houses a hydro- chemical-conversion unit. Briefly, this consists of four
fermentation and storage tanks connected in series by an intricate network
of flexible plumbing. This assembly also contains the central heating plant
complete with automatic temperature controls, pumping station and main
ventilating system. The waste disposal apparatus is located to the rear of
this central section.
Cows are available fully-assembled in an assortment of sizes and
colors. Production output ranges from 2 to 20 tons of milk per year. In
brief, the main external visible features of the cow are: two lookers, two
hookers, four stander-uppers, four hanger-downers, and a swishy-wishy.
%
A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.
-- Whitney Balliett
%
A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels
qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic
in this; he is unbiased -- he hates all creative people equally.
%
A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%
A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
%
A day without orange juice is like a day without orange juice.
%
A day without sunshine is like a day without Anita Bryant.
%
A day without sunshine is like a day without orange juice.
%
A day without sunshine is like night.
%
A dead man cannot bite.
-- Gnaeus Pompeius (Pompey)
%
A debugged program is one for which you have
not yet found the conditions that make it fail.
-- Jerry Ogdin
%
A decade after Vietnam, we still cannot understand why "their"
Salvadorans fight better than "our" Salvadorans. It is not a matter of
their training or their equipment. It has to do with the quality of the
society we are asking them to risk death defending. The metaphor of the
domino obscures this reality, and the cost our self-imposed blindness
is high. San Salvador is closer to Saigon than to Munich.
-- William LeoGrande, "New York Times", 3/9/83
%
A Difficulty for Every Solution.
-- Motto of the Federal Civil Service
%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his
wife she'd look stout in a fur coat.
%
A diplomat is a man who can tell you to
go to hell and make the trip sound pleasurable.
-- Samuel Clemens
%
A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell
in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
-- Caskie Stinnett, "Out of the Red"
%
A diplomat is man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never her age.
-- Robert Frost
%
A diplomatic husband said to his wife, "How do you expect me to remember
your birthday when you never look any older?"
%
A diplomat's life consists of three things: protocol, Geritol, and alcohol.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
A distraught patient phoned her doctor's office. "Was it true," the woman
inquired, "that the medication the doctor had prescribed was for the rest
of her life?"
She was told that it was. There was just a moment of silence before
the woman proceeded bravely on. "Well, I'm wondering, then, how serious my
condition is. This prescription is marked `NO REFILLS'".
%
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura soprano.
%
A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests. "I have
some bad news," says the doctor, "and some worse news." The bad news is
that you only have six weeks to live."
"Oh, no," says the patient. "What could possibly be worse than
that?"
"Well," the doctor replies, "I've been trying to reach you since
last Monday."
%
A doctor was stranded with a lawyer in a leaky life raft in shark-infested
waters. The doctor tried to swim ashore but was eaten by the sharks. The
lawyer, however, swam safely past the bloodthirsty sharks. "Professional
courtesy," he explained.
%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
-- Ogden Nash
%
A drama critic is a person who surprises a playwright by informing him
what he meant.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
A dream will always triumph over reality, once it is given the chance.
-- Stanislaw Lem
%
A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city subscribed to
a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury was asked to donate
a shilling. "Only a shilling?" exclaimed the man. "Only a shilling to bury
an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury twenty of them."
%
A fail-safe circuit will destroy others.
-- Klipstein
%
A failure will not appear until a unit has passed final inspection.
%
A fair exterior is a silent recommendation.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
A fake fortuneteller can be tolerated. But an authentic soothsayer
should be shot on sight. Cassandra did not get half the kicking around
she deserved.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
%
A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox
1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help,
the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked
"what do you see?" Very earnestly, the Undergraduate replied, "I see a
cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of
the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head
with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
%
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
-- Winston Churchill
%
A farmer is a man outstanding in his field.
%
A feed salesman is on his way to a farm. As he's driving along at forty
m.p.h., he looks out his car window and sees a three-legged chicken running
alongside him, keeping pace with his car. He is amazed that a chicken is
running at forty m.p.h. So he speeds up to forty-five, fifty, then sixty
m.p.h. The chicken keeps right up with him the whole way, then suddenly
takes off and disappears into the distance.
The man pulls into the farmyard and says to the farmer, "You know,
the strangest thing just happened to me; I was driving along at at least
sixty miles an hour and a chicken passed me like I was standing still!"
"Yeah," the farmer replies, "that chicken was ours. You see, there's
me, and there's Ma, and there's our son Billy. Whenever we had chicken for
dinner, we would all want a drumstick, so we'd have to kill two chickens.
So we decided to try and breed a three-legged chicken so each of us could
have a drumstick."
"How do they taste?" said the farmer.
"Don't know," replied the farmer. "We haven't been able to catch
one yet."
%
A fellow bought a new car, a Nissan, and was quite happy with his purchase.
He was something of an animist, however, and felt that the car really ought
to have a name. This presented a problem, as he was not sure if the name
should be masculine or feminine.
After considerable thought, he settled on naming the car either
Belchazar or Beaumadine, but remained in a quandry about the final choice.
"Is a Nissan male or female?" he began asking his friends. Most of
them looked at him peculiarly, mumbled things about urgent appointments, and
went on their way rather quickly.
He finally broached the question to a lady he knew who held a black
belt in judo. She thought for a moment and answered "Feminine."
The swiftness of her response puzzled him. "You're sure of that?" he
asked.
"Certainly," she replied. "They wouldn't sell very well if they were
masculine."
"Unhhh... Well, why not?"
"Because people want a car with a reputation for going when you want
it to. And, if Nissan's are female, it's like they say... `Each Nissan, she
go!'"
[No, we WON'T explain it; go ask someone who practices an oriental
martial art. (Tai Chi Chuan probably doesn't count.) Ed.]
%
A few hours grace before the madness begins again.
%
A figure with curves always offers a lot of interesting angles.
%
A fisherman from Maine went to Alabama on his vacation. He rented a boat,
rowed out to the middle of the lake, and cast his line, but when he looked
down into the water he was horrified to see a man wrapped in chains lying
on the bottom of the lake. He quickly rowed to shore and ran to the police
station. "Sheriff, sheriff," he gasped, there's a guy wrapped in chains,
drowned in the lake!"
"Now ain't that jest like a Yankee," drawled the sheriff, "to steal
more chain than he can swim with?"
%
A fitter fits; Though sinners sin
A cutter cuts; And thinners thin
And an aircraft spotter spots; And paper-blotters blot
A baby-sitter I've never yet
Baby-sits -- Had letters let
But an otter never ots. Or seen an otter ot.
A batter bats
(Or scatters scats);
A potting shed's for potting;
But no one's found
A bounder bound
Or caught an otter otting.
-- Ralph Lewin
%
A flashy Mercedes-Benz roared up to the curb where a cute young miss stood
waiting for a taxi.
"Hi," said the gentleman at the wheel. "I'm going west."
"How wonderful," came the cool reply. "Bring me back an orange."
%
A fool and his honey are soon parted.
%
A fool and his money are soon popular.
%
A fool and your money are soon partners.
%
A fool is a man who worries about whether or not his lover has integrity.
A wise man, on the other hand, busies himself with deeper attributes.
%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block
of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant.
%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
-- D. Gries
%
A Fortran compiler is the hobgoblin of little minis.
%
A fox is wolf who sends flowers.
-- Ruth Weston
%
A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension.
-- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
%
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
A freelancer is one who gets paid by the word -- per piece or perhaps.
-- Robert Benchley
%
A friend in need is a pest indeed.
%
A friend is a present you give yourself.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
%
A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture. You don't have to go.
You'll just be walking down the street and... Ooohh, that's much better.
-- Steven Wright
%
A friend of mine won't get a divorce, because he hates
lawyers more than he hates his wife.
%
A friend with weed is a friend indeed.
%
A full belly makes a dull brain.
-- Ben Franklin
[and the local candy machine man. Ed]
%
A 'full' life in my experience is usually full only of other
people's demands.
%
A furore Normanorum libera nos, O Domine!
%
A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than
he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
A gambler's biggest thrill is winning a bet.
His next biggest thrill is losing a bet.
%
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
electrical shock to the horse.
G: That's very good! But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist: I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that dissolves
into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before
I decide what to do. Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
%
A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
ducks.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
A gentleman is a man who wouldn't hit a lady with his hat on.
-- Evan Esar
[ And why not? For why does she have his hat on? Ed.]
%
A gentleman never strikes a lady with his hat on.
-- Fred Allen
%
A gift of a flower will soon be made to you.
%
A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *_t_h_a_t _h_a_d _t_o
_m_e_a_n _s_o_m_e_t_h_i_n_g*.
-- S. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
%
A girl with a future avoids the man with a past.
-- Evan Esar, "The Humor of Humor"
%
A girl's best friend is her mutter.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
A girl's conscience doesn't really keep her from doing anything wrong--
it merely keeps her from enjoying it.
%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like
a quop without a fertsneet (sort of).
%
A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game.
The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it
had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably atop a nice
firm tuft of grass.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in
the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the
rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between
the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be
penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such
uncontrollable physical phenomena.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and deaf husband.
-- Michel de Montaigne
%
A good memory does not equal pale ink.
%
A good name lost is seldom regained. When character is gone,
all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.
-- J. Hawes
%
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
-- Patton
%
A good programmer is someone who looks both ways before crossing a
one-way street.
-- Doug Linder
%
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
hope of greening the landscape of idea.
-- John Ciardi
%
A good reputation is more valuable than money.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
A good scapegoat is hard to find.
%
A good supervisor can step on your toes without messing up your shine.
%
A good sysadmin always carries around a few feet of fiber. If he ever
gets lost, he simply drops the fiber on the ground, waits ten minutes,
then asks the backhoe operator for directions.
-- Bill Bradford <mrbill@mrbill.net>
%
A GOOD WAY TO THREATEN somebody is to light a stick of dynamite. Then you
call the guy and hold the burning fuse to the phone. "Hear that?" you say.
"That's dynamite, baby."
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
A gossip is one who talks to you about others, a bore is one who talks to
you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to
you about yourself.
-- Lisa Kirk
%
A gourmet restaurant in Cincinnati is one where you leave the tray on
the table after you eat.
%
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart that looks at her watch.
-- James Beard
%
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away.
-- Barry Goldwater
%
A grammarian's life is always intense.
%
A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A great many people think they are thinking
when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
%
A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
man a century.
%
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The
green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that
grew in the ears themselves, stuck out on either side like turn signals
indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the
bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled
with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor
of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down
upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department
store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several
of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be
properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of
anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and
geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.
-- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces"
%
A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals
are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for
not going to church on Sunday.
-- Russell Baker
%
A guilty conscience is the mother of invention.
-- Carolyn Wells
%
A guy has to get fresh once in a while
so a girl doesn't lose her confidence.
%
A hacker does for love what others would not do for money.
%
A halted retreat
Is nerve-wracking and dangerous.
To retain people as men -- and maidservants
Brings good fortune.
%
A hammer sometimes misses its mark - a bouquet never.
%
A handful of friends is worth more than a wagon of gold.
%
A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.
%
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own
weight in other people's patience.
-- John Updike
%
A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question:
If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save
a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning
photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would
you use?
-- Paul Harvey
%
A Hen Brooding Kittens
A friend informs us that he saw at the Novato ranch, Marin county,
a few days since, a hen actually brooding and otherwise caring for three
kittens! The gentleman upon whose premises this strange event is transpiring
says the hen adopted the kittens when they were but a few days old, and that
she has devoted them her undivided care for several weeks past. The young
felines are now of respectable size, but they nevertheless follow the hen at
her cluckings, and are regularly brooded at night beneath her wings.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1861
%
A hermit is a deserter from the army of humanity.
%
A highly intelligent man should take a primitive woman. Imagine if on top
of everything else, I had a woman who interfered with my work.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
A holding company is a thing where you hand
an accomplice the goods while the policeman searches you.
%
A Hollywood producer calls a friend, another producer on the phone.
"Hello?" his friend answers.
"Hi!" says the man. "This is Bob, how are you doing?"
"Oh," says the friend, "I'm doing great! I just sold a screenplay
for two hundred thousand dollars. I've started a novel adaptation and the
studio advanced me fifty thousand dollars on it. I also have a television
series coming on next week, and everyone says it's going to be a big hit!
I'm doing *great*! How are you?"
"Okay," says the producer, "give me a call when he leaves."
%
A homeowner's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a weekend for?
%
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
A hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong!
%
A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The
Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered.
-- Harry Thurston Peck (Editor of "The Bookman"), January 1901
%
A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
-- Helen Rowland
%
A hypocrite is a person who ... but who isn't?
-- Don Marquis
%
A hypothetical paradox:
What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team,
who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial
Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
-- Tom Galloway
%
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh.
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.
G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of ennui.
O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
W is for Winie, embedded in ice, X is for Xercies, devoured by mice.
Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
-- Edward Gorey "The Gastly Crumb Tines"
%
A is for Apple.
-- Hester Pryne
%
A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.
I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.
-- THE ABC'S OF UNIX
%
A joint is just tea for two.
%
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance from Sam.
%
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- Lao Tsu
%
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.
-- Lao Tsu
%
A jug of wine, a bowl of rice with it;
Earthen vessels
Simply handed in through the window.
There is certainly no blame in this.
%
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost
%
A key to the understanding of all religions is that a God's idea of a
good time is a game of Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.
%
A kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo, eventually.
%
A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.
-- Philip Larkin on Anthony Burgess
%
A king's castle is his home.
%
A kiss is a course of procedure, cunningly devised,
for the mutual stoppage of speech at a moment when
words are superfluous.
%
A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%
A lady is one who never shows her underwear unintentionally.
-- Lillian Day
%
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
-- Gopete Sherany
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you
think about programming is not worth knowing.
-- Alan Perlis
%
A language that doesn't have everything is
actually easier to program in than some that do.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
A lanky Texan was mad because Texas had just become the second largest state in
the Union, so he made up his mind to move to Alaska. He drove for three days
and three nights to get there and finally he came to what looked like the state
line. He halted his car and walked up to the border guard. "Hi, there! How
do I become a resident of this here biggest state?" demanded the Texan.
The guard looked him up and down and grinned. "Waal," he answered,
there are three things you gotta do to get in. First, drink down a quart of
110 proof corn liquor without blinkin'. Second, kill a grizzly bear, and
third, make love to an Eskimo woman."
"Sounds easy enough," said the Texan. "Where can I get a quart of
this here corn liquor?"
"Got one right here," replied the guard.
The Texan gulped down the whiskey without batting an eyelash.
"Now, do you happen to know where I can find me a grizzly?"
"Yep," answered the guard, "there's a big b'ar over that way, 'bout
a mile... lives in a cave on that cliff."
The Texan lurched merrily off. About an hour later he returned
with his clothes almost torn off and his face scratched and bloody. He was
smiling happily. "Now," he roared, "where's that damn Eskimo woman you
want killed?"
%
A large number of installed systems work by fiat.
That is, they work by being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt
%
A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies.
Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured
him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and
quiet place in which to rest. One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around
above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said,
"Come on down." But the fly was too clever for him and said, "I never light
where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house."
So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other
flies. He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said,
"Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper. All those flies are trapped." "Don't be
silly," said the fly, "they're dancing." So he settled down and became stuck
to the flypaper with all the other flies.
Moral: There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
-- James Thurber, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
%
A Law of Computer Programming:
Make it possible for programmers to write in English
and you will find that programmers cannot write in English.
%
A liberal is a man too broad minded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-- Robert Frost
%
A liberal is a person whose interests aren't at stake at the moment.
-- Willis Player
%
A lie in time saves nine.
%
A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in time of
trouble.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
%
A life spent in search of the perfect hash brownie is a life well spent.
%
A lifetime isn't nearly long enough to figure out what it's all about.
%
A light wife doth make a heavy husband.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
-- Aristotle
%
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
%
A LISP programmer knows the value of
everything, but the cost of nothing.
-- Alan Perlis
%
A list is only as strong as its weakest link.
-- Don Knuth
%
A little experience often upsets a lot of theory.
%
A little inaccuracy saves a world of explanation.
-- C. E. Ayres
%
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
-- H. H. Munro, "Saki"
%
A little kid went up to Santa and asked him, "Santa, you know when I'm bad
right?" And Santa says, "Yes, I do." The little kid then asks, "And you
know when I'm sleeping?" To which Santa replies, "Every minute." So the
little kid then says, "Well, if you know when I'm bad and when I'm good,
then how come you don't know what I want for Christmas?"
%
A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems
have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects,
those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are
the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers. Consider Unix,
APL, Pascal, Modula, the Smalltalk interface, even Fortran; and contrast them
with Cobol, PL/I, Algol, MVS/370, and MS-DOS.
-- Fred Brooks
%
A little word of doubtful number,
A foe to rest and peaceful slumber.
If you add an "s" to this,
Great is the metamorphosis.
Plural is plural now no more,
And sweet what bitter was before.
What am I?
%
A log may float in a river, but that does not make it a crocodile.
%
A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
%
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.
Buy the negatives at any price.
%
A lost ounce of gold may be found, a lost moment of time never.
%
A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
-- Steven Wright
%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking,
and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%
A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.
-- Thomas Hardy
%
A major, with wonderful force,
Called out in Hyde Park for a horse.
All the flowers looked round,
But no horse could be found;
So he just rhododendron, of course.
%
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who has never owned a car.
-- Carrie Snow
%
A man always needs to remember one thing about
a beautiful woman. Somewhere, somebody's tired of her.
%
A man always remembers his first love with special
tenderness, but after that begins to bunch them.
-- Mencken
%
A man arrived home early to find his wife in the arms of his best friend,
who swore how much they were in love. To quiet the enraged husband, the
lover suggested, "Friends shouldn't fight, let's play gin rummy. If I win,
you get a divorce so I can marry her. If you win, I promise never to see
her again. Okay?"
"Alright," agreed the husband. "But how about a quarter a point
on the side to make it interesting?"
%
A man can have two, maybe three love affairs while he's married. After
that it's cheating.
-- Yves Montand
%
A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself.
-- Du Bois
%
A man fell off a mountain and, as he fell, saw a branch and grabbed for it.
By superhuman effort he was able to get a precarious grip on it. As he
was hanging there for dear life, he looked up and cried out,
"Is anybody there?"
A deep majestic voice answered,
"Yes my son, I am here. What do you need?"
"Help me!!" cried the man.
"I will help you", said the voice, "Just let go of the branch and
you'll be safe. All you have to do is trust."
The man thought for a moment and cried out:
"Anybody ELSE up there?"
%
A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles
in the road.
-- Alexander Smith
%
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor, "Newsweek"
%
A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.
-- Brendan Francis
%
A man is crawling through the Sahara desert when he is approached by another
man riding on a camel. When the rider gets close enough, the crawling man
whispers through his sun-parched lips, "Water... please... can you give...
water..."
"I'm sorry," replies the man on the camel, "I don't have any water
with me. But I'd be delighted to sell you a necktie."
"Tie?" whispers the man. "I need *water*."
"They're only four dollars apiece."
"I need *water*."
"Okay, okay, say two for seven dollars."
"Please! I need *water*!", says the man.
"I don't have any water, all I have are ties," replies the salesman,
and he heads off into the distance.
The man, losing track of time, crawls for what seems like days.
Finally, nearly dead, sun-blind and with his skin peeling and blistering, he
sees a restaurant in the distance. Summoning the last of his strength he
staggers up to the door and confronts the head waiter.
"Water... can I get... water," the dying man manages to stammer.
"I'm sorry, sir, ties required."
%
A man is known by the company he organizes.
-- A. Bierce
%
A man is like a rusty wheel on a rusty cart,
He sings his song as he rattles along and then he falls apart.
-- Richard Thompson
%
A man marries to have a home, but also because he doesn't want to be
bothered with sex and all that sort of thing.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Circle"
%
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
A man may sometimes be forgiven the kiss to which he is not entitled,
but never the kiss he has not the initiative to claim.
%
A man may well bring a horse to the water,
but he cannot make him drink with he will.
-- John Heywood
%
A man of genius makes no mistakes.
His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
-- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
%
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands.
%
A man said to the Universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the Universe,
"the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane
%
A man took his wife deer hunting for the first time. After he'd given her
some basic instructions, they agreed to separate and rendezvous later. Before
he left, he warned her if she should fell a deer to be wary of hunters who
might beat her to the carcass and claim the kill. If that happened, he told
her, she should fire her gun three times into the air and he would come to
her aid.
Shortly after they separated, he heard a single shot, followed quickly
by the agreed upon signal. Running to the scene, he found his wife standing
in a small clearing with a very nervous man staring down her gun barrel.
"He claims this is his," she said, obviously very upset.
"She can keep it, she can keep it!" the wide-eyed man replied. "I
just want to get my saddle back!"
%
A man usually falls in love with a woman who asks the kinds of questions
he is able to answer.
-- Ronald Colman
%
A man was griping to his friend about how he hated to go home after a
late card games.
"You wouldn't believe what I go through to avoid waking my wife,"
he said. "First, I kill the engine a block away from the house and coast
into the garage. Then I open the door slowly, take off my shoes, and
tiptoe to our room. But just as I'm about to slide into bed, she always
wakes up and gives me hell."
"I make a big racket when I go home," his friend replied.
"You do?"
"Sure. I honk the horn, slam the door, turn on all the lights,
stomp up to the bedroom and give my wife a big kiss. `Hi, Alice,' I say.
`How about a little smooch for your old man?'"
"And what does she say?" his friend asked in disbelief.
"She doesn't say anything," his buddy replied. "She always pretends
she's asleep."
%
A man was kneeling by a grave in a cemetery, crying and praying very loudly,
"Oh why..eeeee did you die...eeeeee, Oh Why..eeeeee,
why did you Di......eeee"
The caretaker walks up, pardons himself and asks politely,
"Excuse me, sir, but I've been seeing you for hours now,
carrying on at this grave. You must have been very close to the deceased."
"No, I never met him. Oh why....eeeee did you dieeeeee,
why....eeeee did you.."
"Sir, you say you never met this person, yet you carry on so?
Tell, me who is buried here?"
"My wife's first husband."
%
A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
%
A man who carries a cat by its tail learns something he can learn
in no other way.
%
A man who fishes for marlin in ponds
will put his money in Etruscan bonds.
%
A man who likes to lie in bed can usually
find a girl willing to listen to him.
%
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
%
A man with 3 wings and a dictionary is cousin to the turkey.
%
A man with one watch knows what time it is.
A man with two watches is never quite sure.
%
A man without a God is like a fish without a bicycle.
%
A man without a woman is like a fish without gills.
%
A man without a woman is like a statue without pigeons.
%
A man would still do something out of sheer perversity - he would create
destruction and chaos - just to gain his point... and if all this could in
turn be analyzed and prevented by predicting that it would occur, then man
would deliberately go mad to prove his point.
-- Feodor Dostoevsky, "Notes From the Underground"
%
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
%
A man's best friend is his dogma.
%
A man's gotta know his limitations.
-- Clint Eastwood, "Dirty Harry"
%
A man's house is his castle.
-- Sir Edward Coke
%
A man's house is his hassle.
%
A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk.
"It is right before your eyes," said the master.
"Why do I not see it for myself?"
"Because you are thinking of yourself."
"What about you: do you see it?"
"So long as you see double, saying `I don't', and `you do', and so
on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.
"When there is neither `I' nor `You', can one see it?"
"When there is neither `I' nor `You',
who is the one that wants to see it?"
%
A mathematician, a doctor, and an engineer are walking on the beach and
observe a team of lifeguards pumping the stomach of a drowned woman. As
they watch, water, sand, snails and such come out of the pump.
The doctor watches for a while and says: "Keep pumping, men, you may
yet save her!!"
The mathematician does some calculations and says: "According to my
understanding of the size of that pump, you have already pumped more water
from her body than could be contained in a cylinder 4 feet in diameter and
6 feet high."
The engineer says: "I think she's sitting in a puddle."
%
A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
-- P. Erdos
%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%
A meeting is an event at which the
minutes are kept and the hours are lost.
%
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader,
but to protect the writer.
-- Dean Acheson
%
A method of solution is perfect if we can foresee from the start,
and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.
-- Leibnitz
%
A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
paper reports "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
fall over gently onto their backs.
-- Audobon Society Magazine
2001-02-02, from http://news.bbc.co.uk:
For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as
Lynx helicopters passed overhead.
"Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
said team leader Dr Richard Stone.
"As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
really."
The conclusion, said Dr Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
(1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects"
on king penguins.
%
A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.
-- Ogden Nash
%
A mind is a wonderful thing to waste.
%
A modem is a baudy house.
%
A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery,
is the most tremendous object in the whole creation.
-- Goldsmith
%
A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen
floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for
its species, managed to trap them in a corner. The children cowered,
terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother!
Save us! Save us! We're scared, Mother!"
Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its
children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them,
and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman
proud. The startled cat fled in fear for its life.
As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother,
you saved us!" and "Yay! You scared the cat away!" she turned to them
purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second
language?"
%
A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy,
and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.
-- Frost
%
A motion to adjourn is always in order.
%
A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in.
%
A mouse is an elephant built by the Japanese.
%
A mushroom cloud has no silver lining.
%
A musician, an artist, an architect:
the man or woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.
-- William Blake
%
A myth is a religion in which no-one any longer believes.
-- James Feibleman, "Understanding Philosophy"
%
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
-- Gore Vidal
%
A nasty looking dwarf throws a knife at you.
%
A national debt, if it is not excessive,
will be to us a national blessing.
-- Alexander Hamilton
%
A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out on
loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed loudly inside
the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom do you believe,"
asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
%
A new 'chutist had just jumped from the plane at 10,000 feet, and soon
discovered that all his lines were hopelessly tangled. At about 5,000 feet,
still struggling, he noticed someone coming up from the ground at about the
same speed as he was going towards the ground. As they passed each other at
3,000 feet, the 'chutist yells, "HEY! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PARACHUTES?"
The reply came, fading towards the end, "NO! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING
ABOUT COLEMAN STOVES?"
%
A new koan:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
It is an ice cream koan.
%
A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a `round tuit'
now has no excuse for further procrastination.
%
A new taste had been acquired and a new appetite began to grow. The time
had long since arrived to crush the technical intelligentsia, which had
come to regard itself as too irreplaceable and had not gotten used to
catching instructions on the wing. In other words, we never did trust
the engineers - and from the very first years of the Revolution we saw to
it that those lackeys and servants of former capitalist bosses were kept
in line by healthy suspicion and surveillance by the workers.
-- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"
%
A New Way of Taking Pills
A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and
having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with
small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks
will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
-- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861
%
A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the
rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
%
A New Yorker is riding down the road in his new Mercedes. So intent is he
on the cocaine in his hand he completely misses a turn and his car plunges
over the five-hundred-foot cliff to be smashed into pieces at the bottom.
As the on-lookers rush to the edge of the cliff they see him fifty feet
from the top of the cliff clinging to a stunted bush with all his strength.
"Dear Lord," he prays, "I never asked you for nothin' before, but I'm askin'
you now: Save me, Lord, save me."
Booms the Lord: "LET GO OF THE BRANCH."
"But Lord, if I do that, I'll fall!"
"TRUST ME, LET GO OF THE BRANCH."
"But Lord, I'm gonna fall and die..."
"TRUST ME TO SAVE YOU. LET GO OF THE BRANCH."
Okay, Lord, I'll trust you, here I... here I go!" And he falls
to his death.
"DUMB YANKEE."
%
A New Yorker was driving through Berkeley when he saw a big crowd gathered
by the side of the street. Curiosity got the better of him and he leaned
out of his window to ask an onlooker what was going on. The fellow explained
that a protestor against the U.S. position in South America had doused
himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. "That's terrible," gasped
the man. "But why is everyone still standing around?"
"Well, they're taking up a collection for his wife and kids," the
onlooker explained. "Would you be willing to help?"
"Well, sure," replied the New Yorker. "I suppose I could spare a
gallon or two."
%
A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
-- Arthure "Bugs" Baer
%
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
-- Yogi Berra
%
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
"Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Ghandi
%
A novice of the temple once approached the Chief Priest with a question.
"Master, does Emacs have the Buddha nature?" the novice asked.
The Chief Priest had been in the temple for many years and could be
relied upon to know these things. He thought for several minutes
before replying.
"I don't see why not. It's got bloody well everything else."
With that, the Chief Priest went to lunch. The novice suddenly achieved
enlightenment, several years later.
Commentary:
His Master is kind,
Answering his FAQ quickly,
With thought and sarcasm.
%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%
A pain in the ass of major dimensions.
-- C. A. Desoer, on the solution of non-linear circuits
%
A Parable of Modern Research:
Bob has lost his keys in a room which is dark except for one
brightly lit corner.
"Why are you looking under the light, you lost them in the dark!"
"I can only see here."
%
A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on.
-- William S. Burroughs
%
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
A pencil with no point needs no eraser.
%
A penny saved has not been spent.
%
A penny saved is a penny taxed.
%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%
A penny saved kills your career in government.
%
A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion is very easy to
govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures
on armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins
itself, and that is an excellent thing for the syndicates of financiers and
manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.
-- Anatole France
%
A perfectly honest woman, a woman who never flatters, who never manages,
who never cajoles, who never conceals, who never uses her eyes, who never
speculates on the effect which she produces, who never is conscious of
unspoken admiration, what a monster, I say, would such a female be!
-- Thackeray
%
A person forgives only when they are in the wrong.
%
A person is just about as big as the things that make him angry.
%
A person who has nothing looks at all there is and wants something.
A person who has something looks at all there is and wants all the rest.
%
A person who is more than casually interested in computers should be well
schooled in machine language, since it is a fundamental part of a computer.
-- Donald Knuth
%
A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
A physicist is an atoms way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald
%
A pickup with three guys in it pulls into the lumber yard. One of the men
gets out and goes into the office.
"I need some four-by-two's," he says.
"You must mean two-by-four's" replies the clerk.
The man scratches his head. "Wait a minute," he says, "I'll go
check."
Back, after an animated conversation with the other occupants of the
truck, he reassures the clerk, that, yes, in fact, two-by-fours would be
acceptable.
"OK," says the clerk, writing it down, "how long you want 'em?"
The guy gets the blank look again. "Uh... I guess I better go
check," he says.
He goes back out to the truck, and there's another animated
conversation. The guy comes back into the office. "A long time," he says,
"we're building a house".
%
A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
A pipe gives a wise man time to think
and a fool something to stick in his mouth.
%
A place for everything and everything in its place.
-- Isabella Mary Beeton, "The Book of Household Management"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to memory management system services.]
%
A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.
-- Stanley Baldwin
%
A plethora of individuals with expertise in culinary techniques
contaminate the potable concoction produced by steeping certain
edible nutriments.
%
A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs.
%
A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
%
A Polish worker walks into a bank to deposit his paycheck. He has heard
about Poland's economic problems, and he asks what would happen to his
money if the bank collapsed. "All of our deposits are guaranteed by the
finance ministry, sir," the teller replies.
"But what if the finance ministry goes broke?" the worker asks.
"Then the government will intercede to protect the working class,"
the teller says.
"But what if the government goes broke?" the worker asks.
"Our socialist comrades in the Soviet Union naturally will come
to our assistance," the teller responds with growing irritation.
"And if the Soviet Union goes broke?" the worker asks.
"Idiot!" the teller snorts. "Isn't that worth losing one lousy
paycheck?"
-- Making the rounds in Warsaw, 1984
%
A political man can have as his aim the realization of freedom,
but he has no means to realize it other than through violence.
-- Jean Paul Sartre
%
A possum must be himself, and being himself he is honest.
-- Walt Kelly
%
A pound of salt will not sweeten a single cup of tea.
%
A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"
%
A "practical joker" deserves applause for his wit according to its quality.
Bastinado is about right. For exceptional wit one might grant keelhauling.
But staking him out on an anthill should be reserved for the very wittiest.
-- Lazarus Long
%
A prediction is worth twenty explanations.
-- K. Brecher
%
A pretty foot is one of the greatest gifts of nature... please send me your
last pair of shoes, already worn out in dancing... so I can have something
of yours to press against my heart.
-- Goethe
%
A pretty woman can do anything; an ugly woman must do everything.
%
A priest advised Voltaire on his death bed to renounce the devil.
Replied Voltaire, "This is no time to make new enemies."
%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
too.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
A prig is a fellow who is always making you a present of his opinions.
-- George Eliot
%
A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then
asks you not to kill him.
-- Sir Winston Churchill, 1952
%
A private sin is not so prejudicial in the world as a public indecency.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%
A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of
being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of
incomprehensible answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague
assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents
and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of
dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of
annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was
unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place.
-- IEEE Grid newsmagazine
%
A programming language is low level
when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
%
A prohibitionist is the sort of man one wouldn't care to
drink with -- even if he drank.
-- Mencken
%
A prominent broadcaster, on a big-game safari in Africa, was taken to a
watering hole where the life of the jungle could be observed. As he
looked down from his tree platform and described the scene into his
tape recorder, he saw two gnus grazing peacefully. So preoccupied were
they that they failed to observe the approach of a pride of lions led
by two magnificent specimens, obviously the leaders. The lions charged,
killed the gnus, and dragged them into the bushes where their feasting
could not be seen. A little while later the two kings of the jungle
emerged and the radioman recorded on his tape: "Well, that's the end of
the gnus and here, once again, are the head lions."
%
A proper wife should be as obedient as a slave... The female is a female
by virtue of a certain lack of qualities -- a natural defectiveness.
-- Aristotle
%
A psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions
your wife asks you for nothing.
-- Joey Adams
%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
your wife will give you for free.
%
A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
was intended for her preservation.
-- Colton
%
A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
"you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
to make a travesty of the game.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A rabbi and a priest are sitting together on a train, and the rabbi leans
over and asks, "So, how high can you advance in your organization?"
The priest replies, "Well, if I am lucky, I guess I could become a
Bishop."
"Well, could you get any higher than that?"
"I suppose that if my works are seen in a very good light that I
might be made an Archbishop."
"Is there any way that you might go higher than that?"
"If all the Saints should smile, I guess I could be made a Cardinal."
"Could you be anything higher than a Cardinal?"
Hesitating a little bit, the priest said, "I suppose that I could
be elected Pope, but only if it's God's will."
"And could you be anything higher than that, is there any way to go
up from being the Pope?"
"What?! I should be the Messiah himself?!"
The rabbi leaned back and smiled. "One of our boys made it."
%
A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results
blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.
-- Steel City News
%
A racially integrated community is a chronological term timed from the
entrance of the first black family to the exit of the last white family.
-- Saul Alinsky
%
A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.
%
A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having
his neighbor notice it.
-- Trygve Lie
%
A real estate agent, looking over a farmer's house for possible sale,
commented to the farmer how sturdy the house looked.
The farmer replied, "Yep, built it with my bare hands... did it
the hard way. The steps to the front door, here, carved 'em out of
field stones... did it the hard way. That hardwood floor in the living
room, dovetailed the pieces myself... did it the hard way. The ceiling
beams, made 'em out of my own oak trees... did it the hard way."
Just then, the farmer's gorgeous daughter walked in. The farmer
looks over at the real estate agent who is trying not to stare too
obviously and smiles. "Yep... standing up in a canoe."
%
A real friend isn't someone you use once and then throw away.
A real friend is someone you can use over and over again.
%
A real gentleman never takes bases unless he really has to.
-- Overheard in an algebra lecture
%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking
ticket and rejoices that the system works.
%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added concentration
needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional objects.
%
A regular expression goes into a pub with a friend, intending to
help him find a girl. However, when the cockney barman finds this
out, he says to it, "Ere! I'll have no pattern match-making in my
pub!"
%
A rich man told me recently that a liberal is a man who tells other
people what to do with their money.
-- Imamu Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones)
%
A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.
-- Ramsey Clark
%
A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized
rosewater.
%
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
-- Blake
%
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single
man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%
A rolling disk gathers no MOS.
%
A rolling stone gathers momentum.
%
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
A Roman divorced from his wife, being highly blamed by his friends, who
demanded, "Was she not chaste? Was she not fair? Was she not fruitful?"
holding out his shoe, asked them whether it was not new and well made.
Yet, added he, none of you can tell where it pinches me.
-- Plutarch
%
A rope lying over the top of a fence is the same length on each side. It
weighs one third of a pound per foot. On one end hangs a monkey holding a
banana, and on the other end a weight equal to the weight of the monkey.
The banana weighs two ounces per inch. The rope is as long (in feet) as
the age of the monkey (in years), and the weight of the monkey (in ounces)
is the same as the age of the monkey's mother. The combined age of the
monkey and its mother is thirty years. One half of the weight of the monkey,
plus the weight of the banana, is one forth as much as the weight of the
weight and the weight of the rope. The monkey's mother is half as old as
the monkey will be when it is three times as old as its mother was when she
was half as old as the monkey will be when it is as old as its mother
will be when she is four times as old as the monkey was when it was twice
as its mother was when she was one third as old as the monkey was when it
was old as is mother was when she was three times as old as the monkey was
when it was one fourth as old as it is now. How long is the banana?
%
A rose is a rose is a rose. Just ask Jean Marsh, known to millions of
PBS viewers in the '70s as Rose, the maid on the BBC export "Upstairs,
Downstairs." Though Marsh has since gone on to other projects, ... it's
with Rose she's forever identified. So much so that she even likes to
joke about having one named after her, a distinction not without its
drawbacks. "I was very flattered when I heard about it, but when I looked
up the official description, it said, `Jean Marsh: pale peach, not very
good in beds; better up against a wall.' I want to tell you that's not
true. I'm very good in beds as well."
%
A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly.
If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
-- Thomas Carlyle, looking at the stars
%
A sadist is a masochist who follows the Golden Rule.
%
A salamander scurries into flame to be destroyed.
Imaginary creatures are trapped in birth on celluloid.
-- Genesis, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"
I don't know what it's about. I'm just the drummer. Ask Peter.
-- Phil Collins in 1975, when asked about the message behind
the previous year's Genesis release, "The Lamb Lies Down
on Broadway".
%
A Scholar asked his Master, "Master, would you advise me of a proper
vocation?"
The Master replied, "Some men can earn their keep with the power of
their minds. Others must use their strong backs, legs and hands. This is
the same in nature as it is with man. Some animals acquire their food easily,
such as rabbits, hogs and goats. Other animals must fiercely struggle for
their sustenance, like beavers, moles and ants. So you see, the nature of
the vocation must fit the individual.
"But I have no abilities, desires, or imagination, Master," the
scholar sobbed.
Queried the Master... "Have you thought of becoming a salesperson?"
%
A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and
making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually
die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
-- Max Planck
%
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from
the vexation of thinking.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1831
%
A sense of desolation and uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness
of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavor, and a thirst for a life giving
water which seems suddenly to have failed, are the signs in consciousness
of this necessary reorganization of our lives.
It is difficult to believe that this state of mind can be produced by the
recognition of such facts as that unsupported stones always fall to the
ground.
-- J. W. N. Sullivan
%
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep
him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are
worth committing.
-- Samuel Butler
%
A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.
-- Don Marquis
%
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the
highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the
multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt...
for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its
flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the
charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in
Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not
know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something
better than a vacuum against which to react... Of course he only seems to
lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
%
A sharper perspective on this matter is particularly important to feminist
thought today, because a major tendency in feminism has constructed the
problem of domination as a drama of female vulnerability victimized by male
aggression. Even the more sophisticated feminist thinkers frequently shy
away from the analysis of submission, for fear that in admitting woman's
participation in the relationship of domination, the onus of responsibility
will appear to shift from men to women, and the moral victory from women to
men. More generally, this has been a weakness of radical politics: to
idealize the oppressed, as if their politics and culture were untouched by
the system of domination, as if people did not participate in their own
submission. To reduce domination to a simple relation of doer and done-to
is to substitute moral outrage for analysis.
-- Jessica Benjamin, "The Bonds of Love"
%
A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least the end of the blackboard.
-- Prof. Steiner
%
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
-- Joseph Stalin
%
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
-- Dorothy Parker, "One Perfect Rose"
%
A sinking ship gathers no moss.
-- Donald Kaul
%
A small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.
%
A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
%
A snake lurks in the grass.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
A social scientist, studying the culture and traditions of a small North
African tribe, found a woman still practicing the ancient art of matchmaking.
Locally, she was known as the Moor, the marrier.
%
A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family,
the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society
which is on its way out.
-- L. Ron Hubbard
%
A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.
-- Proverbs 15:1
%
A soft drink turneth away company.
%
A song in time is worth a dime.
%
A Southern boy graduates from high school heads north to college, taking the
family dog, Old Blue with him, for company. He's only been there a few weeks
when he gets a call from his girlfriend; seems like they've got a problem,
and she needs a thousand dollars to take care of it. The boy calls his folks:
"How are you?" they ask.
"Oh, I'm fine," he says.
"And how," they ask, "is Old Blue?"
"Well, he's kind of depressed. You see, there's this lady up here
that teaches dogs to talk, and Ol' Blue is feelin' kind of left out 'cause
he's the only dog that doesn't know how to talk. She charges a thousand
dollars."
The parents send the boy the thousand dollars, he forwards it to Mary
Lou, and everything's fine until Christmas vacation. The boy leaves Ol' Blue
at his dorm, 'cause he just can't figure out what to tell his parents. Sure
enough, when he gets home, the first thing his father wants to know is
"Where's Old Blue?"
"Well, Pa," says the boy. "I was driving on home and Old Blue was
talking away about this and that when we passed the Buford's farm. Old Blue,
well, he said, `Say, what do you think your mother would do if I told her
that your father's been comin' over here and seeing Mrs. Buford all these
years?'"
The father looks at his son -- "You shot that dog, didn't you, boy?"
%
A squeegee by any other name wouldn't sound as funny.
%
A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
A statistician, who refused to fly after reading of the alarmingly high
probability that there will be a bomb on any given plane, realized that
the probability of there being two bombs on any given flight is very low.
Now, whenever he flies, he carries a bomb with him.
%
A stitch in time saves nine.
%
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-- O'Henry
%
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures.
-- Daniel Webster
%
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to Greenblatt.
As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it true", asked the
student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as Lisp?" Almost before
the student had finished his question, Greenblatt shouted, "FOO!", and hit
the student with a stick.
%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
%
A stunning blonde, but probably all bean dip above the eyebrows.
%
A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
undreamed of by its author.
-- S. C. Johnson
%
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first
thought of.
-- Burt Bacharach
%
A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
new versions of their own innards!
-- Michael O'Brien
%
A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
-- by Charles Dickens
A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place.
The Metamorphosis LITE(tm)
-- by Franz Kafka
A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed.
Lord of the Rings LITE(tm)
-- by J. R. R. Tolkien
Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano.
Hamlet LITE(tm)
-- by Wm. Shakespeare
A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy
girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age.
%
A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
-- by Charles Dickens
A man in love with a girl who loves another man who looks just
like him has his head chopped off in France because of a mean
lady who knits.
Crime and Punishment LITE(tm)
-- by Fyodor Dostoevski
A man sends a nasty letter to a pawnbroker, but later
feels guilty and apologizes.
The Odyssey LITE(tm)
-- by Homer
After working late, a valiant warrior gets lost on his way home.
%
A tall, dark stranger will have more fun than you.
%
A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
%
A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
-- Michael Winner, British film director
%
A Texan, impressing the hell out of a Bostonian with tales about the heroes
of the Alamo, commented, "I'll bet you never had anyone that brave around
*Boston*."
"Ever hear of Paul Revere?", snarled the Bostonian.
"Paul Revere?", pondered the Texan. "Isn't he the guy who ran for
help?"
%
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Portrait of Mr. W.H."
%
A timely marriage: one made before your children start nagging you about it.
-- Diane Duane
%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting
fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first.
%
A traveling salesman was driving past a farm when he saw a pig with three
wooden legs executing a magnificent series of backflips and cartwheels.
Intrigued, he drove up to the farmhouse, where he found an old farmer
sitting in the yard watching the pig.
"That's quite a pig you have there, sir" said the salesman.
"Sure is, son," the farmer replied. "Why, two years ago, my daughter
was swimming in the lake and bumped her head and damned near drowned, but that
pig swam out and dragged her back to shore."
"Amazing!" the salesman exclaimed.
"And that's not the only thing. Last fall I was cuttin' wood up on
the north forty when a tree fell on me. Pinned me to the ground, it did.
That pig run up and wiggled underneath that tree and lifted it off of me.
Saved my life."
"Fantastic! the salesman said. But tell me, how come the pig has
three wooden legs?"
The farmer stared at the newcomer in amazement. "Mister, when you
got an amazin' pig like that, you don't eat him all at once."
%
A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
triangle.
%
A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother
drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
-- Shaw
%
A truly great man will neither trample on a worm nor sneak to an emperor.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%
A truly wise woman never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
-- William Blake
%
A university is what a college becomes
when the faculty loses interest in students.
-- John Ciardi
%
A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
-- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
%
A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
She found a good way
To combine work and play:
She sells C shells by the seashore.
%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better
than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams
%
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
The system, you see,
Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
%
A violent man will die a violent death.
-- Lao Tsu
%
A visit to a fresh place will bring strange work.
%
A visit to a strange place will bring fresh work.
%
A vivid and creative mind characterizes you.
%
A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
-- Ziggy
%
A watched clock never boils.
%
A well adjusted person is one who makes
the same mistake twice without getting nervous.
%
A well-known friend is a treasure.
%
A well-used door needs no oil on its hinges.
A swift-flowing steam does no grow stagnant.
Neither sound nor thoughts can travel through a vacuum.
Software rots if not used.
These are great mysteries.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
A widow is more sought after than an old maid of the same age.
-- Addison
%
A wise man can see more from a mountain top
than a fool can from the bottom of a well.
%
A wise man can see more from the bottom
of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.
%
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion.
-- Chinese proverb
%
A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire
%
A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets
people's attention.
%
A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit,
let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that
there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another,
completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of
beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells.
It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club
near your person at all times.
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
%
A woman can look both moral and exciting -- if she also looks as if it
were quite a struggle.
-- Edna Ferber
%
A woman can never be too rich or too thin.
%
A woman did what a woman had to, the best way she knew how.
To do more was impossible, to do less, unthinkable.
-- Dirisha, "The Man Who Never Missed"
%
A woman employs sincerity only when every other form of deception has failed.
-- Scott
%
A woman, especially if she have the misfortune
of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
-- Jane Austen
%
A woman forgives the audacity of which
her beauty has prompted us to be guilty.
-- LeSage
%
A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be
thankful for a good one.
-- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
%
A woman is like your shadow; follow her, she flies; fly from her,
she follows.
-- Chamfort
%
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure,
it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
-- Nietzsche
%
A woman must be a cute, cuddly, naive little thing -- tender, sweet,
and stupid.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
A woman physician has made the statement that smoking is neither
physically defective nor morally degrading, and that nicotine, even
when indulged to in excess, is less harmful than excessive petting."
-- Purdue Exponent, Jan 16, 1925
%
A woman shouldn't have to buy her own perfume.
-- Maurine Lewis
%
A woman went into a hospital one day to give birth. Afterwards, the doctor
came to her and said, "I have some... odd news for you."
"Is my baby all right?" the woman anxiously asked.
"Yes, he is," the doctor replied, "but we don't know how. Your son
(we assume) was born with no body. He only has a head."
Well, the doctor was correct. The Head was alive and well, though no
one knew how. The Head turned out to be fairly normal, ignoring his lack of
a body, and lived for some time as typical a life as could be expected under
the circumstances.
One day, about twenty years after the fateful birth, the woman got a
phone call from another doctor. The doctor said, "I have recently perfected
an operation. Your son can live a normal life now: we can graft a body onto
his head!"
The woman, practically weeping with joy, thanked the doctor and hung
up. She ran up the stairs saying, "Johnny, Johnny, I have a *wonderful*
surprise for you!"
"Oh no," cried The Head, "not another HAT!"
%
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
Therefore, a man without a woman is like a bicycle without a fish.
%
A woman's best protection is a little money of her own.
-- Clare Booth Luce, quoted in "The Wit of Women"
%
A woman's place is in the house... and in the Senate.
%
A word to the wise is enough.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
A would-be disciple came to Nasrudin's hut on the mountain-side. Knowing
that every action of such an enlightened one is significant, the seeker
watched the teacher closely. "Why do you blow on your hands?" "To warm
myself in the cold." Later, Nasrudin poured bowls of hot soup for himself
and the newcomer, and blew on his own. "Why are you doing that, Master?"
"To cool the soup." Unable to trust a man who uses the same process
to arrive at two different results -- hot and cold -- the disciple departed.
%
A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call
what he writes fiction.
-- William Faulkner
%
A yawn is a silent shout.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
A year spent in Artificial Intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
%
A young girl once committed suicide because her mother refused her a new
bonnet. Coroner's verdict: "Death from excessive spunk."
-- Sacramento Daily Union, September 13, 1860
%
A young man and his girlfriend were walking along Main Street when she spotted
a beautiful diamond ring in a jewelry-store window. "Wow, I'd sure love to
have that!" she gushed.
"No problem," her companion replied, throwing a brick through the
window and grabbing the ring.
A few blocks later, the woman admired a full-length sable coat. "What
I'd give to own that," she said, sighing.
"No problem," he said, throwing a brick through the window and grabbing
the coat.
Finally, turning for home, they passed a car dealership. "Boy, I'd do
anything for one of those Rolls-Royces," she said.
"Jeez, baby," the guy moaned, "you think I'm made of bricks?"
%
A young man enters the New York branch of Tiffany's on a Friday evening and
walks up to a display case full of pearl necklaces. He turns to a gorgeous
woman, who is obviously window shopping, looks her straight in the eye and
says, "I can tell by your eyes that you really want that necklace. If you'll
allow me, I'd like to buy it for you."
The woman looks him up and down; he's wearing a nice suit and some
pretty nice jewelry, but she has trouble believing this story.
"Look, this is some kind of put on, right?"
"No, really. You see, I've got quite a lot of money -- so much that
I could never spend it all. I'd really like for you to have it."
The guys whips out his checkbook, writes a check for five figures,
calls over a clerk and hands it to him. The clerk peers at the check, looks
at the young man, looks at the check again. "Very good, sir. I'm afraid I
can't release the necklace immediately, would Monday be all right?"
"That'll be fine, she'll pick it up." the man replies, and walks out
of the store with the woman following him in a daze.
The next Monday the man comes back in and walks up to the counter.
The same clerk hurries over to him and says, "Sir, I'm sorry to have to tell
you this, but your check was returned for insufficient funds."
"I know," the man replies. "I just wanted to thank you for a
terrific weekend."
%
A young man wrote to Mozart and said:
Q: "Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any
suggestions as to how to get started?"
A: "A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with
some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony."
Q: "But Herr Mozart, you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old."
A: "But I never asked anybody how."
%
A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive.
%
AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%
Abbott's Admonitions:
1: If you have to ask, you're not entitled to know.
2: If you don't like the answer, you shouldn't have asked
the question.
-- Charles Abbot, dean, University of Virginia
%
Aberdeen was so small that when the family with the car went
on vacation, the gas station and drive-in theatre had to close.
%
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
-- James Henry Leigh Hunt, "Abou Ben Adhem"
%
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
%
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
%
About the only thing we have left that actually
discriminates in favor of the plain people is the stork.
%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%
About the use of language: it is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt
ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Above all else - sky.
%
Above all things, reverence yourself.
%
Abraham Lincoln didn't die in vain. He died in Washington, D.C.
%
Abscond, v:
To be unexpectedly called away to the bedside of a dying relative
and miss the return train.
%
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases
great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fires.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Absence in love is like water upon fire;
a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
-- Hannah More
%
Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small,
it enkindles the great.
%
Absence makes the heart forget.
%
Absence makes the heart go wander.
%
Absence makes the heart grow fonder.
-- Sextus Aurelius
%
Absence makes the heart grow fonder -- of somebody else.
%
Absence makes the heart grow frantic.
%
Absent, adj.:
Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%
Absentee, n.:
A person with an income who has had the forethought
to remove himself from the sphere of exaction.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Absolutum obsoletum. (If it works, it's out of date.)
-- Stafford Beer
%
Abstainer, n.:
A weak person who yields to the
temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Abstract:
This study examined the incidence of neckwear tightness among a group
of 94 white-collar working men and the effect of a tight business-shirt collar
and tie on the visual performance of 22 male subjects. Of the white-collar
men measured, 67% were found to be wearing neckwear that was tighter than
their neck circumference. The visual discrimination of the 22 subjects was
evaluated using a critical flicker frequency (CFF) test. Results of the CFF
test indicated that tight neckwear significantly decreased the visual
performance of the subjects and that visual performance did not improve
immediately when tight neckwear was removed.
-- Langan, L. M. and Watkins, S. M. "Pressure of Menswear on the
Neck in Relation to Visual Performance." Human Factors 29,
#1 (Feb. 1987), pp. 67-71.
%
Absurdity, n.:
A statement or belief manifestly
inconsistent with one's own opinion.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
because the stakes are so low.
-- Wallace Sayre
%
Academicians care, that's who.
%
ACADEMY:
A modern school where football is taught.
INSTITUTE:
An archaic school where football is not taught.
%
Accent on helpful side of your nature. Drain the moat.
%
Accept people for what they are -- completely unacceptable.
%
ACCEPTANCE TESTING:
An unsuccessful attempt to find bugs.
%
Acceptance without proof is the fundamental characteristic of Western
religion; rejection without proof is the fundamental characteristic of
Western science.
-- Gary Zukav, "The Dancing Wu Li Masters"
%
Accident:
A condition in which presence of mind is good,
but absence of body is better.
-- Foolish Dictionary
%
Accidentally Shot
Colonel Gray, of Petaluma, came near losing his life a few days ago,
in a singular manner. A gentleman with whom he was hunting attempted to
bring down a dove, but instead of doing so put the load of shot through the
Colonel's hat. One shot took effect in his forehead.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1861
%
Accidents cause History.
If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
According to a recent and unscientific national survey, smiling is something
everyone should do at least 6 times a day. In an effort to increase the
national average (the US ranks third among the world's superpowers in
smiling), Xerox has instructed all personnel to be happy, effervescent, and
most importantly, to smile. Xerox employees agree, and even feel strongly
that they can not only meet but surpass the national average... except for
Tubby Ackerman. But because Tubby does such a fine job of racing around
parking lots with a large butterfly net retrieving floating IC chips, Xerox
decided to give him a break. If you see Tubby in a parking lot he may have
a sheepish grin. This is where the expression, "Service with a slightly
sheepish grin" comes from.
%
According to all the latest reports,
there was no truth in any of the earlier reports.
%
According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person
shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
the returns."
%
According to convention there is a sweet and a bitter, a hot and a cold,
and according to convention, there is an order. In truth, there are atoms
and a void.
-- Democritus, 400 B.C.
%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
-- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%
According to the latest official figures,
43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
%
According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
dies.
%
According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to live in
America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came in twenty-fifth.
Here in New York we really don't care too much. Because we know that we could
beat up their city anytime.
-- David Letterman
%
Accordion, n.:
A bagpipe with pleats.
%
Accuracy, n.:
The vice of being right
%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%
Acid absorbs 47 times its own weight in excess Reality.
%
Acquaintance, n.:
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well
enough to lend to. A degree of friendship called slight when the
object is poor or obscure, and intimate when he is rich or famous.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
%
Acting is not very hard. The most important things are to be able to laugh
and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. And if I have to laugh,
well, I think of my sex life.
-- Glenda Jackson
%
Actor Real Name
Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt
Cary Grant Archibald Leach
Edward G. Robinson Emmanual Goldenburg
Gene Wilder Gerald Silberman
John Wayne Marion Morrison
Kirk Douglas Issur Danielovitch
Richard Burton Richard Jenkins Jr.
Roy Rogers Leonard Slye
Woody Allen Allen Stewart Konigsberg
%
Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
it!"
%
Actor: So what do you do for a living?
Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
dishes for Chinese restaurants.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
%
Actresses will happen in the best regulated families.
-- Addison Mizner and Oliver Herford,
"The Entirely New Cynic's Calendar", 1905
%
Actually, my goal is to have a sandwich named after me.
%
Actually, the probability is 100% that the elevator
will be going in the right direction. Proof by induction:
N=1. Trivially true, since both you and the elevator
only have one floor to go to.
Assume true for N, prove for N+1:
If you are on any of the first N floors, then it is true by the
induction hypothesis. If you are on the N+1st floor, then both you
and the elevator have only one choice, namely down. Therefore,
it is true for all N+1 floors.
QED.
%
Ad astra per aspera. (To the stars by aspiration.)
%
ADA:
Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop
an ADA awareness.
-- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
%
Adde parvum parvo manus acervus erit.
[Add little to little and there will be a big pile.]
-- Ovid
%
Adding features does not necessarily increase
functionality -- it just makes the manuals thicker.
%
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
-- F. Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month"
Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by
close application thereto, it is worse execute by two persons and
scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.
-- George Washington, 1732-1799
%
Adding sound to movies would be like
putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
-- actress Mary Pickford, 1925
%
Adhere to your own act, and congratulate yourself if you have done
something strange and extravagant, and broken the monotony of a
decorous age.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Adler's Distinction:
Language is all that separates us from the lower animals,
and from the bureaucrats.
%
Admiration, n.:
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adolescence, n.:
The stage between puberty and adultery.
%
Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
like you ...
-- Gilda Radner
%
Adore, v:
To venerate expectantly.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adult, n.:
One old enough to know better.
%
Adults die young.
%
Advancement in position.
%
Advertisements contain the only
truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
-- Sinclair Lewis
%
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
-- George Orwell
%
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human
intelligence long enough to get money from it.
%
Advertising Rule:
In writing a patent-medicine advertisement, first convince the
reader that he has the disease he is reading about; secondly,
that it is curable.
%
Advice from an old carpenter: measure twice, saw once.
%
Advice is a dangerous gift; be cautious about giving and receiving it.
%
Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
then at least be aseptic.
%
African violet: Such worth is rare
Apple blossom: Preference
Bachelor's button: Celibacy
Bay leaf: I change but in death
Camelia: Reflected loveliness
Chrysanthemum, red: I love
Chrysanthemum, white: Truth
Chrysanthemum, other: Slighted love
Clover: Be mine
Crocus: Abuse not
Daffodil: Innocence
Forget-me-not: True love
Fuchsia: Fast
Gardenia: Secret, untold love
Honeysuckle: Bonds of love
Ivy: Friendship, fidelity, marriage
Jasmine: Amiability, transports of joy, sensuality
Leaves (dead): Melancholy
Lilac: Youthful innocence
Lily: Purity, sweetness
Lily of the valley: Return of happiness
Magnolia: Dignity, perseverance
* An upside-down blossom reverses the meaning.
%
After 35 years, I have finished a comprehensive study of European
comparative law. In Germany, under the law, everything is prohibited,
except that which is permitted. In France, under the law, everything
is permitted, except that which is prohibited. In the Soviet Union,
under the law, everything is prohibited, including that which is
permitted. And in Italy, under the law, everything is permitted,
especially that which is prohibited.
-- Newton Minow, 1985,
Speech to the Association of American Law Schools
%
After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
more advanced than the lichen family.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads
On today because tomorrow's ground
Is too uncertain. And futures have
A way of falling down in midflight,
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth
And you learn and learn
With every goodbye you learn.
-- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn"
%
After all, all he did was string together
a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
%
After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
%
After all, it is only the mediocre who are always at their best.
-- Jean Giraudoux
%
After all my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
%
After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for
you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply
sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
After an instrument has been assembled,
extra components will be found on the bench.
%
After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the
month than you did before.
%
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names
have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp,
James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important
electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this
is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg
of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even
though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway.
Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian
medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been
seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and
watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
that it sinks like a stone.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages,
claiming that he was crippled and would have to spend the rest of his life
in a wheelchair. Although the insurance-company doctor testified that his
bones had healed properly and that he was fully capable of walking, the
judge decided for the plaintiff and awarded him $500,000.
When he was wheeled into the insurance office to collect his check,
Miller was confronted by several executives. "You're not getting away with
this, Miller," one said. "We're going to watch you day and night. If you
take a single step, you'll not only repay the damages but stand trial for
perjury. Here's the money. What do you intend to do with it?"
"My wife and I are going to travel," Miller replied. "We'll go to
Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, Athens and, finally, to a place called Lourdes --
where, gentlemen, you'll see yourselves one hell of a miracle."
%
After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
cost to others, to win advancement.
-- Norman Thomas
%
After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
%
After living in New York, you trust nobody,
but you believe everything. Just in case.
%
...[after the announcement of Vanguard] ... Secretary of Defense Charles
Wilson (the same "Engine Charlie" who once told the Senate, "[F]or years
I've thought that what was good for our country was good for General Motors,
and vice versa," probably an accurate analysis) was asked whether the
Russians might beat the Americans into orbit. "I wouldn't care if they
did," he responded. (It was later claimed that Wilson favored the
development of the automatic transmission so that he could drive with
one foot in his mouth.)
-- Smithsonian's Air&Space Magazine, "The Day the Rocket Died"
%
After the game the king and the pawn go in the same box.
-- Italian proverb
%
After the ground war began, captured Iraqi soldiers said any of them caught
by superiors wearing a white T-shirt would be executed because of the ease
with which the shirts could be used as surrender flags. Some Iraqi soldiers
carried bleach with them to make their dark shirts white.
-- Chuck Shepherd, Funny Times, May 1991
%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed.
%
After this was written there appeared a remarkable posthumous memoir that
throws some doubt on Millikan's leading role in these experiments. Harvey
Fletcher (1884-1981), who was a graduate student at the University of Chicago,
at Millikan's suggestion worked on the measurement of electronic charge for
his doctoral thesis, and co-authored some of the early papers on this subject
with Millikan. Fletcher left a manuscript with a friend with instructions
that it be published after his death; the manuscript was published in
Physics Today, June 1982, page 43. In it, Fletcher claims that he was the
first to do the experiment with oil drops, was the first to measure charges on
single droplets, and may have been the first to suggest the use of oil.
According to Fletcher, he had expected to be co-authored with Millikan on
the crucial first article announcing the measurement of the electronic
charge, but was talked out of this by Millikan.
-- Steven Weinberg, "The Discovery of Subatomic Particles"
Robert Millikan is generally credited with making the first really
precise measurement of the charge on an electron and was awarded the
Nobel Prize in 1923.
%
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with
the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only
the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of
any interest... but even then the interest items are usually buried
deep around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont. on ...") page...
The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa. The
Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all.
But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line
or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie
burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the
neck. They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an
oriental woman who seemed to be in control."
Now that's good journalism. Totally objective; very active and
straight to the point.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%
After years of research, scientists recently reported that there is,
indeed, arroz in Spanish Harlem.
%
After your lover has gone you will still have PEANUT BUTTER!
%
Afternoon, n.:
That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
morning.
%
Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change.
%
Against Idleness and Mischief
How doth the little busy bee How skillfully she builds her cell!
Improve each shining hour, How neat she spreads the wax!
And gather honey all the day And labours hard to store it well
From every opening flower! With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labour or of skill In books, or work, or healthful play,
I would be busy too; Let my first years be passed,
For Satan finds some mischief still That I may give for every day
For idle hands to do. Some good account at last.
-- Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
%
Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain.
-- Friedrich von Schiller, "The Maid of Orleans", III, 6
%
Age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill.
%
Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Age is a tyrant who forbids,
at the penalty of life, all the pleasures of youth.
%
Age, n.:
That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the
enterprise to commit.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Agnes' Law:
Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
%
Agree with them now, it will save so much time.
%
Ah, but a man's grasp should exceed his reach,
Or what's a heaven for ?
-- Robert Browning, "Andrea del Sarto"
%
Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
there's the rub.
For all dreams are not equal,
some exit to nightmare
most end with the dreamer
But at least one must be lived ... and died.
%
Ah, my friends, from the prison, they ask unto me,
"How good, how good does it feel to be free?"
And I answer them most mysteriously:
"Are birds free from the chains of the sky-way?"
-- Bob Dylan
%
Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
%
Ah, sweet Springtime, when a young man lightly turns his fancy over!
%
Ah, the Tsar's bazaar's bizarre beaux-arts!
%
"Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact
that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately
unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep
up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
-- An analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
%
Ahead warp factor one, Mr. Sulu.
%
Ahhhhhh... the smell of cuprinol and mahogany. It
excites me to... acts of passion... acts of... ineptitude.
%
Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.
-- W. Clement Stone
%
Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing.
-- The Mad Dogtender
%
Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me but
bring me a message from a young man.
-- Moms Mabley
%
Ain't that something what happened today. One of us got traded to
Kansas City.
-- Casey Stengel, informing outfielder Bob Cerv he'd
been traded
%
Air Force Inertia Axiom:
Consistency is always easier to defend than correctness.
%
Air is water with holes in it.
%
Air, n.:
A nutritious substance supplied by a bountiful Providence for
the fattening of the poor.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Air pollution is really making us pay through the nose.
%
Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
Ecole Superieure de Guerre
%
Al didn't smile for forty years. You've got to admire a man like that.
-- from "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"
%
Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether
machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about
as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
-- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
%
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
-- Oscar Wilde [as he sipped champagne on his deathbed]
%
ALASKA:
A prelude to "No."
%
Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself
or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has
a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and
Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
-- Tom Robbins
%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
%
ALBRECHT'S LAW:
Social innovations tend to the level
of minimum tolerable well-being.
%
Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions.
The surest poison is time.
-- Emerson, "Society and Solitude"
%
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Alden's Laws:
(1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
of pregnancy.
(2) Always be backlit.
(3) Sit down whenever possible.
%
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
%
Alex Haley was adopted!
%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well
in New York, and still waiting for a dial tone.
%
Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing - and that was
the closest our country has ever been to being even.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Algebraic symbols are used when you do not know what you are talking about.
-- Philippe Schnoebelen
%
Algol-60 surely must be regarded as the most
important programming language yet developed.
-- T. Cheatham
%
ALGORITHM:
Trendy dance for hip programmers.
%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce
%
Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.
-- Arthur Baer
%
Alimony is the curse of the writing classes.
-- Norman Mailer
%
Alimony is the high cost of leaving.
%
Aliquid melius quam pessimum optimum non est.
%
Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail ever clinking.
%
All a man needs out of life is a place to sit 'n' spit in the fire.
%
All art is but imitation of nature.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
%
All bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar, quoted in "The Conspiracy of
Catiline", by Sallust
%
All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
than others.
-- Alan Truscott
%
All business is based on the mutual trust of one of the parts.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
All constants are variables.
%
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
-- Chou En Lai
%
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
%
All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
without thinking.
%
All flesh is grass.
-- Isaiah
Smoke a friend today.
%
All generalizations are false, including this one.
-- Mark Twain
%
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
%
All Gods were immortal.
-- Stanislaw J. Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
%
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
-- Young
%
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
%
All heiresses are beautiful.
-- John Dryden
%
All his life he has looked away... to the horizon, to the sky,
to the future. Never his mind on where he was, on what he was doing.
-- Yoda
%
All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
-- Dante Alighieri
%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
-- Kingfish
%
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that
makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and
an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
-- Samuel Beckett
%
All I need to have a good time,
Is a reefer, a woman and a bottle of wine.
With those three things I don't need no sunshine,
A reefer, a woman and a bottle of wine.
All I want is to never grow old,
I want to wash in a bathtub of gold.
I want 97 kilos already rolled,
I want to wash in a bathtub of gold.
I want to light my cigars with 10 dollar bills,
I like to have a cattle ranch in Beverly Hills.
I want a bottle of Red Eye that's always filled,
I like to have a cattle ranch in Beverly Hills.
-- Country Joe and the Fish, "Zachariah"
%
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
All intelligent species own cats.
%
All is fear in love and war.
%
All is well that ends well.
-- John Heywood
%
All I've got left on the list of desirable vocations is heiress to the
throne of any country in Western Europe and Laurie Anderson. "Be
practical", was the choral reply from the dinner table. Well, Laurie
Anderson is already Laurie Anderson, but I read an article in Harpers
that said there were eleven countries, in the world this is I think,
that have queens as sovereign rulers. That's probably my best shot.
%
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
--Mark Twain
%
All laws are simulations of reality.
-- John C. Lilly
%
All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
-- Dawkins
%
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
Socrates.
-- Woody Allen
%
All men have the right to wait in line.
%
All men know the utility of useful things;
but they do not know the utility of futility.
-- Chuang-tzu
%
All men profess honesty as long as they can.
To believe all men honest would be folly.
To believe none so is something worse.
-- John Quincy Adams
%
All most men really want in life is a wife, a house, two kids and a car,
a cat, no maybe a dog. Ummm, scratch one of the kids and add a dog.
Definitely a dog.
%
All most people ask of life is a constant
and exaggerated sense of their own importance.
%
All most people want is a little more than they'll ever get.
%
All my friends and I are crazy.
That's the only thing that keeps us sane.
%
All my friends are getting married,
Yes, they're all growing old,
They're all staying home on the weekend,
They're all doing what they're told.
%
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
-- Jane Wagner
%
ALL NEW:
Parts not interchangeable with previous model.
%
All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from
the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
%
All of the animals except man know that
the principal business of life is to enjoy it.
%
All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs
synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to
rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all
of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store."
-- Steven Wright
%
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
-- The Book of Bokonon / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
%
All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a
Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks,
tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks:
"Just lie down on the floor and keep calm."
-- Robert Wilson, "John Dillinger Died for You"
%
All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
the United States.
-- Vic Gold
%
All parts should go together without forcing. You must remember that the
parts you are reassembling were disassembled by you. Therefore, if you
can't get them together again, there must be a reason. By all means, do
not use a hammer.
-- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
%
All people are born alike -- except Republicans and Democrats.
-- Groucho Marx
%
All phone calls are obscene.
-- Karen Elizabeth Gordon
%
All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
-- Susan Sontag
%
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
%
All programmers are optimists. Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers. Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal. Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists. But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable: "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire of every organism
to live beyond its income.
-- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
All seems condemned in the long run
to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise.
-- James Martin
%
All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands.
-- Saint Patrick
%
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
%
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
%
All that glitters is not gold; all that wander are not lost.
%
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
All the evidence concerning the universe
has not yet been collected, so there's still hope.
%
All the lines have been written There's been Sandburg,
It's sad but it's true Keats, Poe and McKuen
With all the words gone, They all had their day
What's a young poet to do? And knew what they're doin'
But of all the words written The bird is a strange one,
And all the lines read, So small and so tender
There's one I like most, Its breed still unknown,
And by a bird it was said! Not to mention its gender.
It reminds me of days of So what is this line
Both gloom and of light. Whose author's unknown
It still lifts my spirits And still makes me giggle
And starts the day right. Even now that I'm grown?
I've read all the greats
Both starving and fat,
But none was as great as
"I tot I taw a puddy tat."
-- Etta Stallings, "An Ode To Childhood"
%
All the men on my staff can type.
-- Bella Abzug
%
...all the modern inconveniences...
-- Mark Twain
%
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
ridiculous ones.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
-- Grant Wood
%
All the simple programs have been written.
%
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
the government in less than a second.
-- Jim Fiebig
%
All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly.
%
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately un-rehearsed.
-- Sean O'Casey
%
All the world's a VAX,
And all the coders merely butchers;
They have their exits and their entrails;
And one int in his time plays many widths,
His sizeof being _N bytes. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
And shining morning face, creeping like slug
Unwillingly to school.
-- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
%
All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
and all theoretical chemists know it.
-- Richard P. Feynman
%
All things are possible, except for skiing through a revolving door.
%
All things being equal, you are bound to lose.
%
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
%
All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money,
it's for fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
-- Henry Tyroon
%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%
All warranty and guarantee clauses
become null and void upon payment of invoice.
%
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
which he was born.
-- Francois Fenelon
%
All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each
other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information.
This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with
our lives."
-- Lewis Thomas, "The Lives of a Cell"
%
All who joy would win Must share it --
Happiness was born a twin.
-- Lord Byron
%
All your files have been destroyed (sorry). Paul.
%
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
informing, stimulating and ennobling.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Allen's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%
Alliance, n.:
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they
cannot separately plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
All's well that ends.
%
Almost anything derogatory you could say
about today's software design would be accurate.
-- K. E. Iverson
%
Alone, adj.:
In bad company.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Also, the Scots are said to have invented golf. Then they had
to invent Scotch whiskey to take away the pain and frustration.
%
alta, v: To change; make or become different; modify.
ansa, v: A spoken or written reply, as to a question.
baa, n: A place people meet to have a few drinks.
Baaston, n: The capital of Massachusetts.
baaba, n: One whose business is to cut or trim hair or beards.
beea, n: An alcoholic beverage brewed from malt and hops, often
found in baas.
caaa, n: An automobile.
centa, n: A point around which something revolves; axis. (Or
someone involved with the Knicks.)
chouda, n: A thick seafood soup, often in a milk base.
dada, n: Information, esp. information organized for analysis or
computation.
-- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary
%
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-- Dave Barry
%
Although it is still a truism in industry that "no one was ever fired for
buying IBM," Bill O'Neil, the chief technology officer at Drexel Burnham
Lambert, says he knows for a fact that someone has been fired for just that
reason. He knows it because he fired the guy.
"He made a bad decision, and what it came down to was, 'Well, I
bought it because I figured it was safe to buy IBM,'" Mr. O'Neil says.
"I said, 'No. Wrong. Game over. Next contestant, please.'"
-- The Wall Street Journal, December 6, 1989
%
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
%
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
running the post office.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day
life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor
minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the
apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties
of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade
through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour
those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this
reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J.R. Miller's "Practical
Gamekeeping."
-- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream", Nov., 1959
%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back.
%
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain
%
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
%
Always leave room to add an explanation if it doesn't work out.
%
Always run from a knife and rush a gun.
-- Jimmy Hoffa
%
Always store beer in a dark place.
%
Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.
-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
%
Always there remain portions of our heart
into which no one is able to enter, invite them as we may.
%
Always think of something new; this
helps you forget your last rotten idea.
-- Seth Frankel
%
Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
that way.
%
Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to
end across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it
were spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%
Ambidextrous, adj.:
Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
AMBIGUITY:
Telling the truth when you don't mean to.
%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy
%
Ambition, n.:
An overmastering desire to be vilified by enemies while
living and made ridiculous by friends when dead.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
America: born free and taxed to death.
%
America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
-- Allen Ginsberg
%
America is a melting pot. You know, where those on the bottom get burned,
and the scum rises to the top.
-- Utah Phillips
%
America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort.
-- President John F. Kennedy
The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not
be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but
living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil
Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so.
-- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson
The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that
from time to time threaten freedoms everywhere... Indeed, it is difficult
to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights
of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised
by the majority they were at the time.
-- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
%
America is the country where you buy a lifetime
supply of aspirin for one dollar, and use it up in two weeks.
%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt
from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
-- John O'Hara
%
America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him, until
people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and changed its
name to "America".
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
America works less, when you say "Union Yes!"
%
American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective
employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for
employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference
between the men's room and the women's room without having little
pictures on the doors.
-- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
%
American by birth; Texan by the grace of God.
%
American cars are made shoddily...
Cars made overseas are far superior.
-- Barry Goldwater
%
[Americans] are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything
we allow them short of hanging.
-- Samuel Johnson
America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its
tail it knocks over a chair.
-- Arnold Toynbee
The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
everybody and still nobody likes him.
-- Jim Samuels
%
Americans are people who insist on living in the present, tense.
%
Americans' greatest fear is that America will turn out
to have been a phenomenon, not a civilization.
-- Shirley Hazzard, "Transit of Venus"
%
America's best buy for a quarter is a telephone call to the right person.
%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%
AMOEBIT:
Amoeba/rabbit cross; it can multiply
and divide at the same time.
%
Among all savage beasts, none is found so harmful as woman.
-- St. John Chrysostom, 304-407
%
Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
%
An acid is like a woman: a good one will eat through your pants.
-- Mel Gibson, Saturday Night Live
%
An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
-- Marlon Brando
%
An Ada exception is when a routine gets
in trouble and says 'Beam me up, Scotty'.
%
An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.
%
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it.
-- James Michener, "Space"
%
An Aggie farmer was lifting his hogs, one by one, up to the branches of
his apple trees to graze on the apples. A Texas student walked by and
asked him, "Doesn't that take a lot of time?"
Replied the Aggie, "What's time to a hog?"
%
An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.
-- Dylan Thomas
%
An algorithm must be seen to be believed.
-- D. E. Knuth
%
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad
to lie and intrigue for the benefit of his country.
-- Sir Henry Wotton, 1568-1639
%
An amendment to a motion may be amended, but an amendment to an amendment
to a motion may not be amended. However, a substitute for an amendment to
and amendment to a motion may be adopted and the substitute may be amended.
-- The Montana legislature's contribution to the English
language.
%
An American is a man with two arms and four wheels.
-- A Chinese child
%
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen. He was amazed to find that
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out). The American said with a nervous laugh,
"Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
"I believe no such thing, my good friend. Not at all. I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
%
An American tourist is visiting Russia, and he's talking with a Russian
about the fact that not many people in Russia own cars.
American: "I can't believe you don't have cars here! How do you
get to work?"
Russian: "We take the bus, or the subway. We have public
transportation everywhere."
A: "Well, how do you go on vacations?"
R: "We take the train."
A: "Well, what if you want to go abroad?"
R: "We don't ever want go abroad."
A: "Well, what if you really HAVE to go abroad?"
R: "We take tanks."
%
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize
the president but is always polite to traffic cops.
%
An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
-- David Letterman
%
An aphorism is never exactly true;
it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.
-- Karl Kraus
%
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping that it will eat
him last.
-- Sir Winston Churchill, 1954
%
An apple a day makes 365 apples a year.
%
An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
%
An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
%
An atheist is a man with no invisible means of support.
%
An atom-blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
An attachment a la Plato
for a bashful young potato
or a, not too French, french bean
must excite your languid spleen.
For, if you walk down Picadilly
with a poppy or lily
in your medieval hand,
every one will say,
as you walk your flowery way;
"If this young man is content,
with a vegetable love
which would certainly not content me.
Why, what a very pure young man
this pure young man must be!"
-- W. S. Gilbert, "Patience"
[The subject of the humour is of course, Oscar Wilde]
%
An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree
murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's
mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border.
Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the
suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a
murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
%
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
really care to know.
%
An avocado-tone refrigerator would look good on your resume.
%
An economist is a man who would marry
Farrah Fawcett-Majors for her money.
%
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%
An efficient and a successful administration manifests
itself equally in small as in great matters.
-- Winston Churchill
%
An egghead is one who stands firmly on both feet,
in mid-air, on both sides of an issue.
-- Homer Ferguson
%
An elderly couple were flying to their Caribbean hideaway on a chartered plane
when a terrible storm forced them to land on an uninhabited island. When
several days passed without rescue, the couple and their pilot sank into a
despondent silence. Finally, the woman asked her husband if he had made his
usual pledge to the United Way Campaign.
"We're running out of food and water and you ask *that*?" her husband
barked. "If you really need to know, I not only pledged a half million but
I've already paid them half of it."
"You owe the U.W.C. a *quarter million*?" the woman exclaimed
euphorically. "Don't worry, Harry, they'll find us! They'll find us!"
%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%
An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt
already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the
engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later
the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now
has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the
mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he
was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of
humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too
trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.
%
An engineer is someone who does list processing in FORTRAN.
%
An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded
summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your
arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey
responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert
%
An evil mind is a great comfort.
%
An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He wears
a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised
only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich
Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in
incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
excellence:
"The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha."
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
%
...an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and quite often
picturesque liar.
-- Mark Twain
%
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a
very narrow field.
-- Niels Bohr
%
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors
as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy.
-- Benjamin Stolberg
%
An expert is one who knows more and more about less
and less until he knows absolutely nothing about everything.
%
An eye in a blue face
Saw an eye in a green face.
"That eye is like this eye"
Said the first eye,
"But in low place,
Not in high place."
%
An Hacker there was, one of the finest sort
Who controlled the system; graphics was his sport.
A manly man, to be a wizard able;
Many a protected file he had sitting on his table.
His console, when he typed, a man might hear
Clicking and feeping wind as clear,
Aye, and as loud as does the machine room bell
Where my lord Hacker was Prior of the cell.
The Rule of good St Savage or St Doeppnor
As old and strict he tended to ignore;
He let go by the things of yesterday
And took the modern world's more spacious way.
He did not rate that text as a plucked hen
Which says that Hackers are not holy men.
And that a hacker underworked is a mere
Fish out of water, flapping on the pier.
That is to say, a hacker out of his cloister.
That was a text he held not worth an oyster.
And I agreed and said his views were sound;
Was he to study till his head wend round
Poring over books in the cloisters? Must he toil
As Andy bade and till the very soil?
Was he to leave the world upon the shelf?
Let Andy have his labor to himself!
-- Chaucer
[well, almost. Ed.]
%
An honest politician is one who when he is bought will stay bought.
-- Simon Cameron
There are honest journalists like there are honest politicians. When
bought they stay bought.
-- Bill Moyers
%
An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
possible.
-- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%
An idealist is one who helps the other fellow to make a profit.
-- Henry Ford
%
An idle mind is worth two in the bush.
%
An infallible method of conciliating a tiger
is to allow oneself to be devoured.
-- Konrad Adenauer
%
An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
-- Albert Camus
%
An interpretation I satisfies a sentence in the table language if and only if
each entry in the table designates the value of the function designated by the
function constant in the upper-left corner applied to the objects designated
by the corresponding row and column labels.
-- Genesereth & Nilsson,
"Logical foundations of Artificial Intelligence"
%
An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
An old man is lying on his deathbed with all his children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren gathered around, teary-eyed at the approaching finale of
a deeply loved family member. The old man is in a light coma, and the doctors
have confirmed that the waiting will be over within the next twenty-four
hours. Suddenly, the old man opens his eyes whispers: "I must be dreaming
of heaven... I smell my daughter Lisle's strudel."
"No, no, grandfather, you are not dreaming", he is reassured.
"Grandmother is baking strudel right now."
A faint smile crosses the old man's face. "Go and get me a sliver of
strudel," he says, "she bakes the finest strudel in the world."
One of the grandchildren is immediately dispatched to honor the old
man's request, and, after what seems a long time, he returns empty-handed.
"Did you bring me some of Lisle's strudel?", the old man quavers.
"I'm... I'm very sorry, grandfather, but she says it's for the
funeral."
%
An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
-- Don Marquis
%
An optimist is a man who looks forward to marriage.
A pessimist is a married optimist.
%
An ounce of clear truth is worth a pound of obfuscation.
%
An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.
-- Michael Korda
%
An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.
-- Spanish proverb
%
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge.
%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word, "unless."
Whatever THAT meant, well, I just couldn't guess.
That was long, long ago, and each day since that day,
I've worried and worried and worried away.
Through the years as my buildings have fallen apart,
I've worried about it with all of my heart.
"BUT," says the Oncler, "now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear!
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better - it's not.
So... CATCH!" cries the Oncler. He lets something fall.
"It's a truffula seed. It's the last one of all!
"You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds.
And truffula trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new truffula -- treat it with care.
Give it clean water and feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest -- protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back!"
-- Dr. Seuss, "The Lorax"
%
And as we stand on the edge of darkness
Let our chant fill the void
That others may know
In the land of the night
The ship of the sun
Is drawn by
The grateful dead.
-- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
%
And did those feet, in ancient times,
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
In England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon these crowded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spears! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I shall not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword rest in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
-- William Blake, "Jerusalem"
%
And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?
%
And ever has it been known that
love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
-- Kahlil Gibran
%
And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower. "This," cried the Mayor,
"is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!" he said. "We've GOT to make noises in
greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!" Thus he
spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and
he shouted out, "YOPP!"
And that Yopp... That one last small, extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last! From the speck on that clover their voices were heard!
They rang out clear and clean. And they elephant smiled. "Do you see what
I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small. And their
whole world was saved by the smallest of All!"
"How true! Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo. "And, from now
on, you know what I'm planning to do? From now on, I'm going to protect
them with you!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO! From
the sun in the summer. From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect
them. No matter how small-ish!"
-- Dr. Seuss, "Horton Hears a Who"
%
And here I wait so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going thru all of these things twice
-- Dylan, "Memphis Blues Again"
%
And I alone am returned to wag the tail.
%
And I heard Jeff exclaim,
As they strolled out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all --
You take credit cards, right?"
-- "Outsiders" comic
%
And I suppose the little things are harder to get used to than the big
ones. The big ones you get used to, you make up your mind to them. The
little things come along unexpectedly, when you aren't thinking about
them, aren't braced against them.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley, "The Forbidden Tower"
%
And I will do all these good works, and I will do them for free!
My only reward will be a tombstone that says "Here lies Gomez
Addams -- he was good for nothing."
-- Jack Sharkey, The Addams Family
%
And if California slides into the ocean,
Like the mystics and statistics say it will.
I predict this motel will be standing,
Until I've paid my bill.
-- Warren Zevon, "Desperados Under the Eaves"
%
And if sometime, somewhere, someone asketh thee,
"Who kilt thee?", tell them it 'twas the Doones of Bagworthy!
%
And if you wonder,
What I am doing,
As I am heading for the sink.
I am spitting out all the bitterness,
Along with half of my last drink.
%
And in the heartbreak years that lie ahead,
Be true to yourself and the Grateful Dead.
-- Joan Baez
%
And it should be the law: If you use the word `paradigm' without knowing
what the dictionary says it means, you go to jail. No exceptions.
-- David Jones
%
And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.
-- A. E. Housman
%
And miles to go before I sleep.
%
And now for something completely the same.
%
And now your toner's toney, Disk blocks aplenty
And your paper near pure white, Await your laser drawn lines,
The smudges on your soul are gone Your intricate fonts,
And your output's clean as light.. Your pictures and signs.
We've labored with your father, Your amputative absence
The venerable XGP, Has made the Ten dumb,
But his slow artistic hand, Without you, Dover,
Lacks your clean velocity. We're system untounged-
Theses and papers DRAW Plots and TEXage
And code in a queue Have been biding their time,
Dover, oh Dover, With LISP code and programs,
We've been waiting for you. And this crufty rhyme.
Dover, oh Dover, Dover, oh Dover, arisen from dead.
We welcome you back, Dover, oh Dover, awoken from bed.
Though still you may jam, Dover, oh Dover, welcome back to the Lab.
You're on the right track. Dover, oh Dover, we've missed your clean
hand...
%
And on the eighth day, we bulldozed it.
%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%
And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
your own.
-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
Preposterous Words
%
...and report cards I was always afraid to show
Mama'd come to school
and as I'd sit there softly cryin'
Teacher'd say he's just not tryin'
Got a good head if he'd apply it
but you know yourself
it's always somewhere else
I'd build me a castle
with dragons and kings
and I'd ride off with them
As I stood by my window
and looked out on those
Brooklyn roads
-- Neil Diamond, "Brooklyn Roads"
%
And so it was, later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.
-- Procol Harum
%
And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One
approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this
procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
Orson Welles.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%
And that's the way it is...
-- Walter Cronkite
%
And the crowd was stilled. One elderly man, wondering at the sudden silence,
turned to the Child and asked him to repeat what he had said. Wide-eyed,
the Child raised his voice and said once again, "Why, the Emperor has no
clothes! He is naked!"
-- "The Emperor's New Clothes"
%
And the French medical anatomist Etienne Serres really did argue that
black males are primitive because the distance between their navel and
penis remains small (relative to body height) throughout life, while
white children begin with a small separation but increase it during
growth -- the rising belly button as a mark of progress.
-- S. J. Gould, "Racism and Recapitulation"
%
And the silence came surging softly backwards
When the plunging hooves were gone...
-- Walter de La Mare, "The Listeners"
%
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, for if you hit a man
with a plowshare, he's going to know he's been hit.
%
And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal
rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports,
which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced
in design as one will find anywhere in the world.
-- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
%
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
%
And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.
-- Isaiah 56:12, New Standard Version
%
And we heard him exclaim
As he started to roam:
"I'm a hologram, kids,
please don't try this at home!'"
-- Bob Violence
%
And what accomplished villains these old engineers were! What diabolical
ways to sabotage they found! Nikolai Karlovich von Meck, of the People's
Commissariat of Railroads ... would hold forth for hours on end about the
economic problems involved in the construction of socialism, and he loved to
give advice. One such pernicious piece of advice was to increase the size
of freight trains and not worry about heavier than average loads. The GPU
exposed van Meck, and he was shot: his objective had been to wear out rails
and roadbeds, freight cars and locomotives, so as to leave the Republic
without railroads in case of foreign military intervention! When, not long
afterward, the new People's Commissar of Railroads ordered that average
loads should be increased, and even doubled and tripled them, the malicious
engineers who protested became known as limiters ... they were rightly
shot for their lack of faith in the possibilities of socialist transport.
-- Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"
%
And... What in the world ever became of Sweet Jane?
She's lost her sparkle, you see she isn't the same.
Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine
All a friend can say is "Ain't it a shame?"
-- The Grateful Dead
%
And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to
have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon
the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let
loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price:
in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest
license of a child, and yet been man enough to know its value.
-- Charles Dickens
%
And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have a
sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks tragedy,
and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets tragedy face to
face, we have politics.
-- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland,
"Root Crops and Ground Cover"
%
And you can't get any Watney's Red Barrel,
because the bars close every time you're thirsty...
%
"And, you know, I mustn't preach to you, but surely it wouldn't be right for
you to take away people's pleasure of studying your attire, by just going
and making yourself like everybody else. You feel that, don't you?" said
he, earnestly.
-- William Morris, "Notes from Nowhere"
%
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _n_e_e_d_s heroes.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
%
Andrea's Admonition:
Never bestow profanity upon a driver who has wronged you.
If you think his window is closed and he can't hear you,
it isn't and he can.
%
ANDROPHOBIA:
Fear of men.
%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Anger is momentary madness.
-- Horace
%
Anger kills as surely as the other vices.
%
Animals can be driven crazy by putting too many in too small a pen.
Homo sapiens is the only animal that voluntarily does this to himself.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%
Announcing the NEW VAX 11/782!!
Be the envy of other major Communist Governments!
Defend yourself against the entire ICBM force of the imperialist USA with
just one of the processors, at the same time you're designing missile ICs,
cracking secret NATO codes and editing propaganda for your own people all
at the same time with the other! (Well, you really can't, but the Americans
think you can, and that's the point, right?)
%
Anoint, v:
To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently
slippery.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Another day, another dollar.
-- Vincent J. Fuller, defense lawyer for John Hinckley,
upon Hinckley's acquittal for shooting President Ronald
Reagan.
%
Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build
and nobody wants to do maintenance.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Hocus Pocus"
%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Another megabytes the dust.
%
Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
offers whiter teeth *_a_n_d* fresher breath.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Another such victory over the Romans, and we are undone.
-- Pyrrhus
%
Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.
-- Proverbs, 26:5
%
Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
corner of the workshop.
Corollary:
On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
your toes.
%
Antique fairy tale: Little Red Riding Hood.
Modern fairy tale: Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy.
%
Anti-trust laws should be approached with exactly that attitude.
%
Antonio Antonio
Was tired of living alonio
He thought he would woo Antonio Antonio
Miss Lucamy Lu, Rode of on his polo ponio
Miss Lucamy Lucy Molonio. And found the maid
In a bowery shade,
Sitting and knitting alonio.
Antonio Antonio
Said if you will be my ownio
I'll love tou true Oh nonio Antonio
And buy for you You're far too bleak and bonio
An icery creamry conio. And all that I wish
You singular fish
Is that you will quickly begonio.
Antonio Antonio
Uttered a dismal moanio
And went off and hid
Or I'm told that he did
In the Antartical Zonio.
%
Antonym, n.:
The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%
Anxious after the delay, Gruber doesn't waste any time getting the Koenig
[a modified Porsche] up to speed, and almost immediately we are blowing off
Alfas, Fiats, and Lancias full of excited Italians. These people love fast
cars. But they love sport too and no passing encounter goes unchallenged.
Nothing serious, just two wheels into your lane as you're bearing down on
them at 130-plus -- to see if you're paying attention.
-- Road & Track article about driving two absurdly fast
cars across Europe.
%
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts
which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe
%
Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a
mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside
than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring?
And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure?
Is there a better way to die?
-- Charles Lindbergh
%
Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
-- Richard Schickel
%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop
%
Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that this
country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a whole week.
%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a
wise person to be able to sell it.
%
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of sense to know
how to lie well.
-- Samuel Butler
%
Any girl can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look
stupid.
-- Hedy Lamarr
%
Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
%
Any given program will expand to fill available memory.
%
Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche --
a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance, my
grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off the
fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was undoubtedly
true.
-- Solomon Short
%
Any instrument when dropped will roll into the least accessible corner.
%
Any man can work when every stroke of his hand brings down the fruit
rattling from the tree to the ground; but to labor in season and out
of season, under every discouragement, by the power of truth -- that
requires a heroism which is transcendent.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
%
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
-- Leo Rosten, on W.C. Fields
%
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be
liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall
be deemed to be a cat.
-- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London
%
Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
Any president should have the right to shoot
at least two people a year without explanation.
-- Herbert Hoover, discussing the press
%
Any priest or shaman must be presumed guilty until proved innocent.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Any problem in computer science can be solved with another layer
of indirection.
-- David Wheeler
%
Any program which runs right is obsolete.
%
Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used.
%
Any road followed to its end leads precisely nowhere.
Climb the mountain just a little to test it's a mountain.
From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.
-- Bene Gesserit proverb, "Dune"
%
Any small object that is accidentally
dropped will hide under a larger object.
%
Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
exactly the point of most pressure.
-- Milt Barber
%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
-- Rich Kulawiec
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
Any sufficiently simple directive can be obfuscated beyond reason
given proper legal counsel.
-- Alfred Perlstein
%
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%
Anybody has a right to evade taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen
has a moral obligation to assist in maintaining his government.
-- J. P. Morgan
%
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years
organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
-- David Broder
%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the
sight of a police car is probably parked.
%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%
Anyone can become angry -- that is easy; but to be angry with the right
person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose
and in the right way -- that is not easy.
-- Aristotle
%
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
supposed to be doing at the moment.
-- Robert Benchley
%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with
none.
%
Anyone can say "no." It is the first word a child learns and often the
first word he speaks. It is a cheap word because it requires no
explanation, and many men and women have acquired a reputation for
intelligence who know only this word and have used it in place of
thought on every occasion.
-- Chuck Jones (Warner Bros. animation director.)
%
Anyone stupid enough to be caught by the police is probably guilty.
%
Anyone taking offence at fortune(s) is desperately lacking beer, in my
extremely humble opinion.
-- Philip Paeps
%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
-- R. Heinlein
%
Anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence.
-- Tasnim Aslam, Spokesman for Pakistani Foreign Ministry
%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Anyone who has attended a USENIX conference in a fancy hotel can tell you
that a sentence like "You're one of those computer people, aren't you?"
is roughly equivalent to "Look, another amazingly mobile form of slime
mold!" in the mouth of a hotel cocktail waitress.
-- Elizabeth Zwicky
%
Anyone who has had a bull by the tail
knows five or six more things than someone who hasn't.
-- Mark Twain
%
Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time
as the strawberries, knows nothing about grapes.
-- Philippus Paracelsus
%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think,
recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one
particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
tried taking candy from a baby.
-- Robin Hood
%
Anything anybody can say about America is true.
-- Emmett Grogan
%
Anything cut to length will be too short.
%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%
Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate.
%
Anything is possible on paper.
-- Ron McAfee
%
Anything is possible, unless it's not.
%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.
The label means the price went up.
The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%
Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto
undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
-- Max Beerbohm, "Mainly on the Air"
%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
%
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this
big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around --
nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do
all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. I know it; I know it's crazy,
but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.
-- J. D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"
%
Apathy Club meeting this Friday.
If you want to come, you're not invited.
%
Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution.
%
APHASIA:
Loss of speech in social scientists when asked
at parties, "But of what use is your research?"
%
aphorism, n.:
A concise, clever statement.
afterism, n.:
A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
-- James Alexander Thom
%
APL hackers do it in the quad.
%
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the
future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation
of coding bums.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
APL is a natural extension of assembler language programming;
...and is best for educational purposes.
-- A. Perlis
%
APL is a write-only language. I can write programs
in APL, but I can't read any of them.
-- Roy Keir
%
Appearances often are deceiving.
-- Aesop
%
APPENDIX:
A portion of a book, for which nobody yet has discovered any use.
%
Applause, n.:
The echo of a platitude from the mouth of a fool.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
April is the cruelest month...
-- Thomas Stearns Eliot
%
Aquadextrous, adj.:
Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub
faucet on and off with your toes.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be
careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over
and over again. People think you are stupid.
%
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20 to Feb. 18)
A friend will step forward and confide in you about your breath. Rely
on your outgoing personality and winning smile to get you into a lot
of trouble. Be relaxed, things will change. Look for a pink slip on
payday. Stop wetting your bed.
%
AQUARIUS (Jan.20 - Feb.18)
You are the type of person who never has enough money to do what
you want. Don't expect things to get any better today, either.
As a matter of fact they might get worse. Intensify your
relationship with your bank and any friends you have who might be
able to lend you a few bucks.
%
Aquavit is also considered useful for medicinal purposes, an essential
ingredient in what I was once told is the Norwegian cure for the common
cold. You get a bottle, a poster bed, and the brightest colored stocking
cap you can find. You put the cap on the post at the foot of the bed,
then get into bed and drink aquavit until you can't see the cap. I've
never tried this, but it sounds as though it should work.
-- Peter Nelson
%
Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
general can be said."
%
ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
%
Are we not men?
%
Are we running light with overbyte?
%
Are Women Human?
In the year 584, in Lyon, France, 43 Catholic bishops and 20 men
representing other bishops, after a lengthy debate, took a vote.
The results were 32 yes, 31 no. Women were declared human by one
vote.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Are you sure you're telling the truth? Think hard.
Does it make you happy to know you're sending me to an early grave?
If all your friends jumped off the cliff, would you jump too?
Do you feel bad? How do you think I feel?
Aren't you ashamed of yourself?
Don't you know any better?
How could you be so stupid?
If that's the worst pain you'll ever feel, you should be thankful.
You can't fool me. I know what you're thinking.
If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Do as I say, not as I do.
Do me a favour and don't tell me about it. I don't want to know.
What did you do *this* time?
If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you.
When I was your age...
I won't love you if you keep doing that.
Think of all the starving children in India.
If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar.
I'm going to kill you.
Way to go, clumsy.
If you don't like it, you can lump it.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Go away. You bother me.
Why? Because life is unfair.
That's a nice drawing. What is it?
Children should be seen and not heard.
You'll be the death of me.
You'll understand when you're older.
Because.
Wipe that smile off your face.
I don't believe you.
How many times have I told you to be careful?
Just because.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Good children always obey.
Quit acting so childish.
Boys don't cry.
If you keep making faces, someday it'll freeze that way.
Why do you have to know so much?
This hurts me more than it hurts you.
Why? Because I'm bigger than you.
Well, you've ruined everything. Now are you happy?
Oh, grow up.
I'm only doing this because I love you.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
When are you going to grow up?
I'm only doing this for your own good.
Why are you crying? Stop crying, or I'll give you something to
cry about.
What's wrong with you?
Someday you'll thank me for this.
You'd lose your head if it weren't attached.
Don't you have any sense at all?
If you keep sucking your thumb, it'll fall off.
Why? Because I said so.
I hope you have a kid just like yourself.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
You wouldn't understand.
You ask too many questions.
In order to be a man, you have to learn to follow orders.
That's for me to know and you to find out.
Don't let those bullies push you around. Go in there and stick
up for yourself.
You're acting too big for your britches.
Well, you broke it. Now are you satisfied?
Wait till your father gets home.
Bored? If you're bored, I've got some chores for you.
Shape up or ship out.
%
Are you a turtle?
%
Are you making all this up as you go along?
%
Are you sure the back door is locked?
%
Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone
in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You are
quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are not
very nice.
%
ARIES (Mar.21 - Apr.19)
You are a wonderfully interesting, honest, hard-working person
and you should make many new friends, but you won't because you've
got a mean streak in you a mile wide.
%
ARITHMETIC:
An obscure art no longer practiced in
the world's developed countries.
%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
%
ARMADILLO:
To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle.
%
Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh
autonomous region, rioted over much needed spelling reform in the Soviet
Union.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
Armor's Axiom:
Virtue is the failure to achieve vice.
%
Armstrong's Collection Law:
If the check is truly in the mail,
it is surely made out to someone else.
%
Arnold's Addendum:
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats.
%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1.) If it should exist, it doesn't.
2.) If it does exist, it's out of date.
3.) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
%
Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Around the turn of this century, a composer named Camille Saint-Saens wrote
a satirical zoological-fantasy called "Le Carnaval des Animaux." Aside from
one movement of this piece, "The Swan", Saint-Saens didn't allow this work
to be published or even performed until a year had elapsed after his death.
(He died in 1921.)
Most of us know the "Swan" movement rather well, with its smooth,
flowing cello melody against a calm background; but I've been having this
fantasy...
What if he had written this piece with lyrics, as a song to be sung?
And, further, what if he had accompanied this song with a musical saw? (This
instrument really does exist, often played by percussionists!) Then the
piece would be better known as:
SAINT-SAENS' SAW SONG "SWAN"!
%
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife - chopping off what's
incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here."
-- Muad'dib, "Dune"
%
Art is a jealous mistress.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
-- Picasso
%
Art is anything you can get away with.
-- Marshall McLuhan
%
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
-- Paul Gauguin
%
Art is Nature speeded up and God slowed down.
-- Chazal
%
"Art" is the ability to separate the significant from the insignificant.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
Art is the tree of life. Science is the tree of death.
%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
remind them of someone else.
2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will
be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool
of yourself in person.
%
Article the Third:
Where a crime of the kidneys has been committed, the accused should
enjoy the right to a speedy diaper change. Public announcements and
guided tours of the aforementioned are not necessary.
Article the Fourth:
The decision to eat strained lamb or not should be with the "feedee"
and not the "feeder". Blowing the strained lamb into the feeder's
face should be accepted as an opinion, not as a declaration of war.
Article the Fifth:
Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize, whether it be in church,
a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the
lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have
to last a lifetime and must be conserved.
-- Erma Bombeck, "A Baby's Bill of Rights"
%
Artificial intelligence has the same relation to intelligence as
artificial flowers have to flowers.
-- David Parnas
%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%
As a computer, I find your faith in technology amusing.
%
As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
"that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ...
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill
%
As an Englishman, an Aussie and a Scotsman are sitting in a pub, quaffing
a few, three flies buzz down from the ceiling and lazily circle each drinker.
Suddenly "buzzzzzzzzplooop", each fly does a kamakazi dive into a different
glass.
The Englishman take a disgusted look at his pint, dips the fly out
with a spoon, flicks the fly over his shoulder, and drains the glass.
The Aussie notices the fly as he puts the glass to his lips. With
a quick puff he blows the bug out in a cloud of foam, and tosses the beer
down in one gulp.
Then, as they both look on, awestruck, the Scotsman gently grasps the
fly by its wings, lifts it out of his brew and shakes it off. Then, in a
firm voice he speaks to the fly: "There y'are now laddie, safe and sound.
NOW SPIT IT OOOOT!"
%
As crazy as hauling timber into the woods.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp
the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at
a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.
-- Joseph Brodsky
%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
-- Weisert
%
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.
-- Shakespeare, "King Lear"
%
As for the women, though we scorn and flout 'em,
We may live with, but cannot live without 'em.
-- Frederic Reynolds
%
As Gen. de Gaulle occasionally acknowledges America to be the daughter
of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
As goatherd learns his trade by goat, so writer learns his trade by wrote.
%
As he had feared, his orders had been forgotten and everyone had brought
the potato salad.
%
As I argued in "Beloved Son", a book about my son Brian and the subject of
religious communes and cults, one result of proper early instruction in the
methods of rational thought will be to make sudden mindless conversions --
to anything -- less likely. Brian now realizes this and has, after eleven
years, left the sect he was associated with. The problem is that once the
untrained mind has made a formal commitment to a religious philosophy --
and it does not matter whether that philosophy is generally reasonable and
high-minded or utterly bizarre and irrational -- the powers of reason are
surprisingly ineffective in changing the believer's mind.
-- Steve Allen
%
As I bit into the nectarine, it had a crisp juiciness about it that was very
pleasurable - until I realized it wasn't a nectarine at all, but A HUMAN HEAD!!
-- Jack Handey
%
As I thought, no better from this side.
-- Eeyore
%
As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
Feeling worse and worser,
There I met a C.R.T.
And it drop't me a cursor.
C.R.T., C.R.T.,
Phosphors light on you!
If I had fifty hours a day
I'd spend them all at you.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%
As I was walking down the street one dark and dreary day,
I came upon a billboard and much to my dismay,
The words were torn and tattered,
From the storm the night before,
The wind and rain had done its work and this is how it goes,
Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, chew Wrigleys Spearmint beer,
Ken-L-Ration dog food makes your complexion clear,
Simonize your baby in a Hershey candy bar,
And Texaco's a beauty cream that's used by every star.
Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigidaire,
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear,
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three,
And people over sixty-five should bathe in Lipton tea.
%
As in certain cults it is possible to
kill a process if you know its true name.
-- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie
%
As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into
smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different
in the fragmented world of IBM. That realm is now a chaos of conflicting
norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control. You can buy a
computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by
IBM itself. Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish
standards of their own. When IBM recently abandoned some of its original
standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan
allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive
innovator. Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and
imagery. IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures. Graven
images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies
on the austerity of the word.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
%
As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free speech
and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to myself, "That
man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a real American
talk like that.
-- Frank Hague, 1896-1956
%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%
As long as there are ill-defined goals, bizarre bugs, and unrealistic
schedules, there will be Real Programmers willing to jump in and Solve
The Problem, saving the documentation for later.
%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination.
When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
-- Oscar Wilde, "Intentions"
%
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.
Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"
1. I salivate at the sight of mittens.
2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse.
3. Some people never look at me.
4. Spinach makes me feel alone.
5. My sex life is A-okay.
6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
7. I like to kill mosquitoes.
8. Cousins are not to be trusted.
9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down.
10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating.
11. I think most people would cry to gain a point.
12. I cannot read or write.
13. I am bored by thoughts of death.
14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.
15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker.
16. I am never startled by a fish.
17. My mother's uncle was a good man.
18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten.
19. People who break the law are wise guys.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
%
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.
Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"
1. I think beavers work too hard.
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
3. God is love.
4. I like mannish children.
5. I have always been disturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room
full of mice.
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
16. My eyes are always cold.
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
19. I am never startled by a fish.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
%
As me an' me marrer was readin' a tyape,
The tyape gave a shriek mark an' tried tae escyape;
It skipped ower the gyate tae the end of the field,
An' jigged oot the room wi' a spool an' a reel!
Follow the leader, Johnny me laddie,
Follow it through, me canny lad O;
Follow the transport, Johnny me laddie,
Away, lad, lie away, canny lad O!
-- S. Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
As of next Thursday, UNIX will be flushed in favor of TOPS-10.
Please update your programs.
%
As of next Tuesday, C will be flushed in favor of COBOL.
Please update your programs.
%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%
As part of an ongoing effort to keep you, the Fortune reader, abreast of
the valuable information the daily crosses the USENET, Fortune presents:
News articles that answer *your* questions, #1:
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: how do I run C code received from sources
Keywords: C sources
Distribution: na
I do not know how to run the C programs that are posted in the
sources newsgroup. I save the files, edit them to remove the
headers, and change the mode so that they are executable, but I
cannot get them to run. (I have never written a C program before.)
Must they be compiled? With what compiler? How do I do this? If
I compile them, is an object code file generated or must I generate
it explicitly with the > character? Is there something else that
must be done?
%
As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs;
a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
-- USA Today, referring to the Internal Revenue Service
conversion to a new computer system.
%
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found
I've got a little list -- I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground
And who never would be missed -- who never would be missed.
-- Koko, "The Mikado"
%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be
discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in
my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949
%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably
because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
-- Woody Allen
%
As the system comes up, the component builders will from time to time appear,
bearing hot new versions of their pieces -- faster, smaller, more complete,
or putatively less buggy. The replacement of a working component by a new
version requires the same systematic testing procedure that adding a new
component does, although it should require less time, for more complete and
efficient test cases will usually be available.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
As to Jesus of Nazareth... I think the system of Morals and his Religion,
as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have,
with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his
divinity.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
As well look for a needle in a bottle of hay.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
As Will Rogers would have said,
"There is no such things as a free variable."
%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory
aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order
chocolate dishes: Any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the
proper time for chocolate.
-- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%
As you grow older, you will still do foolish things,
but you will do them with much more enthusiasm.
-- The Cowboy
%
As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,
birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never
see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are
talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull
your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.
The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along
with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall
from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all
over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of
a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the
spider is suing you for damages.
%
As you will see, I told them, in no uncertain terms, to see Figure one.
-- Dave "First Strike" Pare
%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%
Ascend to the high mountain pass,
Cross the shallow side of the wide ocean.
Do not give up to the great distance:
It's by going that you will reach your aim.
Be not discouraged by human frailty:
You will overcome it if you try to.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
ASCII:
The control code for all beginning programmers and those who would
become computer literate. Etymologically, the term has come down as
a contraction of the often-repeated phrase "ascii and you shall
receive."
-- Robb Russon
%
ASCII a stupid question, you get an EBCDIC answer.
%
ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
%
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
If God won't have you, the devil must.
%
Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
Ask not for whom the Bell tolls, and you
will pay only the station-to-station rate.
-- Howard Kandel
%
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls...
if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%
Ask not what's inside your head, but what your head's inside of.
-- J. J. Gibson
%
Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
for an answer.
%
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
-- John Stuart Mill
%
Asked how she felt being the first woman to make a major-league team, she
said, "Like a pig in mud," or words to that effect, and then turned and
released a squirt of tobacco juice from the wad of rum soaked plug in her
right cheek. She chewed a rare brand of plug called Stuff It, which she
learned to chew when she was playing Nicaraguan summer ball. She told the
writers, "They were so mean to me down there you couldn't write it in your
newspaper. I took a gun everywhere I went, even to bed. *Especially* to
bed. Guys were after me like you can't believe. That's when I started
chewing tobacco -- because no matter how bad anybody treats you, it's not
as bad as this. This is the worst chew in the world. After this,
everything else is peaches and cream." The writers elected Gentleman Jim,
the Sparrow's P.R. guy, to bite off a chunk and tell them how it tasted,
and as he sat and chewed it tears ran down his old sunburnt cheeks and he
couldn't talk for a while. Then he whispered, "You've been chewing this for
two years? God, I had no idea it was so hard to be a woman."
-- Garrison Keillor
%
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a
lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
-- Christopher Hampton
%
Ass, n.:
The masculine of "lass".
%
Assembly language experience is [important] for the maturity
and understanding of how computers work that it provides.
-- D. Gries
%
Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run
with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened. Keep
the company of bums and you will become a bum. Hang around with rich people
and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke.
-- Stanley Walker
%
Astrology... just a bunch of Taurus.
%
Asynchronous inputs are at the root of our race problems.
-- D. Winker and F. Prosser
%
At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be
solved. The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will
take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology
available. The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution.
In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it. There
is only one solution, he says. Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general
relativity and all. She replies, "What does that have to do with solving
a computer problem?"
"Remember the twin paradox?"
After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very
fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but
that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course! Leave the
computer here, and accelerate the earth!"
The problem was so important that they did exactly that. When
the earth came back, they were presented with the answer:
IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card.
%
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
-- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
%
At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all
my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my
ignorance upon the shore.
-- Kahlil Gibran
%
At first, I just did it on weekends. With a few friends, you know...
We never wanted to hurt anyone. The girls loved it. We'd all sit
around the computer and do a little UNIX. It was just a kick. At
least that's what we thought. Then it got worse.
It got so I'd have to do some UNIX during the weekdays. After a
while, I couldn't even wake up in the morning without having that
crave to go do UNIX. Then it started affecting my job. I would just
have to do it during my break. Maybe a `grep' or two, maybe a little
`more'. I eventually started doing UNIX just to get through the day.
Of course, it screwed up my mind so much that I couldn't even
function as a normal person.
I'm lucky today, I've overcome my UNIX problem. It wasn't easy. If
you're smart, just don't start. Remember, if any weirdo offers you
some UNIX,
Just Say No!
%
At first sight, the idea of any rules or principles being superimposed on
the creative mind seems more likely to hinder than to help, but this is
quite untrue in practice. Disciplined thinking focuses inspiration rather
than blinkers it.
-- G. L. Glegg, "The Design of Design"
%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers,
a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
-- "The Washington Post Magazine", June 9, 1985
%
At last I've found the girl of my dreams. Last night she said to me,
"Once more, Strange, and this time *I'll* be Donnie and *you* be Marie.
-- Strange de Jim
%
At least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
-- J. B. White
%
At least they're _E_X_P_E_R_I_E_N_C_E_D incompetents.
%
At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
thumb with a hammer.
-- Marshall Lumsden
%
At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously
-- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being
in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason.
-- John Keats
%
At social gatherings, I would amuse everyone by standing uponst the
coffee table and striking meself repeatedly upon the head with a brick.
-- H. R. Gumby
%
At the end of your life there'll be a good rest,
and no further activities are scheduled.
%
At the foot of the mountain, thunder:
The image of Providing Nourishment.
Thus the superior man is careful of his words
And temperate in eating and drinking.
%
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense. Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism: The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"
%
At the hospital, a doctor is training an intern on how to announce bad news
to the patients. The doctor tells the intern "This man in 305 is going to
die in six months. Go in and tell him." The intern boldly walks into the
room, over to the man's bedside and tells him "Seems like you're gonna die!"
The man has a heart attack and is rushed into surgery on the spot. The doctor
grabs the intern and screams at him, "What!?!? are you some kind of moron?
You've got to take it easy, work your way up to the subject. Now this man in
213 has about a week to live. Go in and tell him, but, gently, you hear me,
gently!"
The intern goes softly into the room, humming to himself, cheerily
opens the drapes to let the sun in, walks over to the man's bedside, fluffs
his pillow and wishes him a "Good morning!" "Wonderful day, no? Say...
guess who's going to die soon!"
%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find
at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.
%
At these prices, I lose money -- but I make it up in volume.
-- Peter G. Alaquon
%
At times discretion should be thrown aside,
and with the foolish we should play the fool.
-- Menander
%
At work, the authority of a person is inversely proportional to the
number of pens that person is carrying.
%
Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
%
ATLANTA:
An entire city surrounded by an airport.
%
Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
or street lamp.
%
Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Attempting to stop MySQL by buying companies around it is like trying
to kill a dolphin by drinking the ocean.
-- M�rten Mickos
%
Attorney General Edwin Meese III explained why the Supreme Court's Miranda
decision (holding that subjects have a right to remain silent and have a
lawyer present during questioning) is unnecessary: "You don't have many
suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person
is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."
-- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85
%
AUCTION:
A gyp off the old block.
%
Audacity, and again, audacity, and always audacity.
-- G. J. Danton
%
audiophile, n:
Someone who listens to the equipment instead of the music.
%
Auribus teneo lupum.
[I hold a wolf by the ears.]
%
AUTHENTIC:
Indubitably true, in somebody's opinion.
%
Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
depths they were once able to plumb.
-- Stanley Kaufman
%
Authors are easy to get on with -- if you're fond of children.
-- Michael Joseph, "Observer"
%
Automobile, n.:
A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
pedestrians.
%
Avec!
%
Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance.
%
Avoid cliches like the plague.
They're a dime a dozen.
%
Avoid gunfire in the bathroom tonight.
%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%
Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
-- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
%
Avoid strange women and temporary variables.
%
Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
in 1959.
-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
bad fiction contest.
%
Bacchus, n.:
A convenient deity invented by the ancients
as an excuse for getting drunk.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
BACHELOR:
A guy who is footloose and fiancee-free.
%
BACHELOR:
A man who chases women and never Mrs. one.
%
Back in '80 or '81 the workers were rioting in Gdansk and there were fears
that the Soviets would invade Poland to put down the demonstrations. Foreign
correspondents were curious as to just what the Poles would do if they were
invaded. They asked, "What will you do if the East Germans invade from the
West and the Soviets invade from the East? Who will you fight first?"
To which the Poles replied, "Why, we will fight the Germans first.
Business before pleasure."
%
Back in the early 60's, touch tone phones only had 10 buttons. Some
military versions had 16, while the 12 button jobs were used only by people
who had "diva" (digital inquiry, voice answerback) systems -- mainly banks.
Since in those days, only Western Electric made "data sets" (modems) the
problems of terminology were all Bell System. We used to struggle with
written descriptions of dial pads that were unfamiliar to most people
(most phones were rotary then.) Partly in jest, some AT&T engineering
types (there was no marketing in the good old days, which is why they were
the good old days) made up the term "octalthorpe" (note spelling) to denote
the "pound sign." Presumably because it has 8 points sticking out. It
never really caught on.
%
Back when I was a boy, it was 40 miles to everywhere,
uphill both ways and it was always snowing.
%
BACKWARD CONDITIONING:
Putting saliva in a dog's mouth in an attempt to make a bell ring.
%
Bacon's not the only thing that's cured by hanging from a string.
%
BAD CRAZINESS, MAN!!!
%
Bad men live that they may eat and drink,
whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.
-- Socrates
%
Bagbiter:
1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually
intermittently. 2. adj.: Failing hardware or software. "This
bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on
obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the
bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS,
CHOMPER, CHOMPING.
%
Bagdikian's Observation:
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper
is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a ukulele.
%
Bahdges? We don't need no stinkin' bahdges!
-- "The Treasure of Sierra Madre"
%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
A block grant is a solid mass of money
surrounded on all sides by governors.
%
BALLISTOPHOBIA:
Fear of bullets;
OTOPHOBIA:
Fear of opening one's eyes.
PECCATOPHOBIA:
Fear of sinning.
TAPHEPHOBIA:
Fear of being buried alive.
SITOPHOBIA:
Fear of food.
TRICHOPHOBIA:
Fear of hair.
VESTIPHOBIA:
Fear of clothing.
%
BALTIMORE:
A wharf-rat stealing Diogenes' lamp.
%
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
%
Banacek's Eighteenth Polish Proverb:
The hippo has no sting, but the wise
man would rather be sat upon by the bee.
%
Banectomy, n.:
The removal of bruises on a banana.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
%
Barach's Rule:
An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.
%
Barbara's Rules of Bitter Experience:
(1) When you empty a drawer for his clothes
and a shelf for his toiletries, the relationship ends.
(2) When you finally buy pretty stationary
to continue the correspondence, he stops writing.
%
Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
floor -- especially in the dark.
%
Barker's Proof:
Proofreading is more effective after publication.
%
Barometer, n.:
An ingenious instrument which indicates
what kind of weather we are having.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Barth's Distinction:
There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
types, and those who don't.
%
Baruch's Observation:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%
Base 8 is just like base 10, if you are missing two fingers.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high taxes.
-- Will Rogers
%
Basic Definitions of Science:
If it's green or wiggles, it's biology.
If it stinks, it's chemistry.
If it doesn't work, it's physics.
%
Basic is a high level languish.
APL is a high level anguish.
%
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of "Scientific Creationism."
%
BASIC is to computer programming as QWERTY is to typing.
-- Seymour Papert
%
Basic, n.:
A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
%
Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd
come in and sink my boats.
-- Woody Allen
%
Bathquake, n.:
The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water
faucet is turned on to a certain point.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Batteries not included.
%
Battle, n.:
A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that
will not yield to the tongue.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Be a better psychiatrist and the world
will beat a psychopath to your door.
%
BE A LOOF! (There has been a recent population explosion of lerts.)
%
BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts...)
%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.
-- Homer
%
Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
%
Be careful! Is it classified?
%
Be careful! UGLY strikes 9 out of 10!
%
Be careful how you get yourself involved with persons or
situations that can't bear inspection.
%
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
-- Mark Twain
%
Be careful what you set your heart on -- for it will surely be yours.
-- James Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name"
%
Be careful when a loop exits to the same place from side and bottom.
%
Be careful when you bite into your hamburger.
-- Derek Bok
%
Be cautious in your daily affairs.
%
Be cheerful while you are alive.
-- Phathotep, 24th Century B.C.
%
Be circumspect in your liaisons with women. It is better
to be seen at the opera with a man than at mass with a woman.
-- De Maintenon
%
Be different: conform.
%
Be frank and explicit with your lawyer ... it is his business to confuse
the issue afterwards.
%
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy!
Things won't get any better so get used to it.
%
Be incomprehensible. If they can't understand, they can't disagree.
%
Be independent.
Insult a rich relative today.
%
Be it our wealth, our jobs, or even our homes;
nothing is safe while the legislature is in session.
%
Be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet them on your way down.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
Be not anxious about what you have, but about what you are.
-- Pope St. Gregory I
%
Be open to other people -- they may enrich your dream.
%
Be prepared to accept sacrifices.
Vestal virgins aren't all that bad.
%
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent
and original in your work.
-- Flaubert
%
Be security conscious -- National Defense is at stake.
%
Be self-reliant and your success is assured.
%
Be sociable.
Speak to the person next to you in the unemployment line tomorrow.
%
Be sure to evaluate the bird-hand/bush ratio.
%
Be valiant, but not too venturous.
Let thy attire be comely, but not costly.
-- John Lyly
%
beachhead:
In marketing: a small piece of a market over which you gain control and
from which you go out to control other pieces of the market.
In war: where soldiers die.
%
Beam me up, Scotty!
%
Beam me up, Scotty! It ate my phaser!
%
Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!
%
Beat your son every day; you may not know why, but he will.
%
BEAUTY:
What's in your eye when you have a bee in your hand.
%
Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.
%
Beauty, brains, availability, personality; pick any two.
%
Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God.
-- Jean Anouilh
%
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
-- John Keats
%
Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
-- Redd Foxx
%
Because I do,
Because I do not hope,
Because I do not hope to survive
Injustice from the Palace, death from the air,
Because I do, only do,
I continue...
-- T. S. Pynchon
%
Because the wine remembers.
%
Because we don't think about future generations,
they will never forget us.
-- Henrik Tikkanen
%
Been through hell?
What did you bring back for me?
%
Been Transferred Lately?
%
Beer -- it's not just for breakfast anymore.
%
Beer & Pretzels -- Breakfast of Champions.
%
Bees are very busy souls
They have no time for birth controls
And that is why in times like these
There are so many Sons of Bees.
%
Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need more.
-- Addison H. Hallock
%
Before destruction a man's heart is
haughty, but humility goes before honour.
-- Psalms 18:12
%
...before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech
or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What
did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was
manager? One gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of
this affair lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my
power of meddling.
-- Joseph Conrad
%
Before I knew the best part of my life had come, it had gone.
%
Before marriage the three little words are "I love you," after marriage
they are "Let's eat out."
%
Before really embarking on a sizeable project, in particular before
starting the large investment of coding, try to kill the project
first.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, EWD1308
%
Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
%
Before you ask more questions, think about whether
you really want to know the answers.
-- Gene Wolfe, "The Claw of the Conciliator"
%
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.
That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have
their shoes.
%
Begathon, n.:
A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
you won't have to watch commercials.
%
Beggar to well-dressed businessman:
"Could you spare $20.95 for a fifth of Chivas?"
%
Beggars should be no choosers.
-- John Heywood
%
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
%
Behind every great computer sits a skinny little geek.
%
Behind every successful man you'll find a woman with nothing to wear.
%
Behold the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket" -- which
is but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention"; but
the wise man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and -- watch that
basket!"
-- Mark Twain
%
Behold the unborn foetus and
Weep salt tears crocodilian;
All life is sacred (save, of course,
An enemy civilian).
%
Behold the warranty -- the bold print
giveth and the fine print taketh away.
%
Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is
already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better
looking and richer male friend.
%
Being a mime means never having to say you're sorry.
%
Being a miner, as soon as you're too old and tired and sick and
stupid to do your job properly, you have to go, where the very
opposite applies with the judges.
-- Beyond the Fringe
%
Being a woman is a terribly difficult trade,
since it consists principally of dealings with men.
-- Conrad
%
Being asked solicitously about the state of her health was becoming bothersome
to the pregnant woman at the cocktail party. And yet another guest went over
and inquired, "Well, how are you feeling these days?"
"Not too well," said the expectant mother. "You know, I've missed
seven or eight periods now and it's beginning to worry me."
%
Being conservative has never been regarded as old-fashioned. But
if you fight for a sensible step in the right direction which others
has deserted you will be branded "reactionary".
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
%
Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real
disasters in life begin when you get what you want.
%
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart
enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.
-- Eugene McCarthy
%
Being in the army is like being in the Boy Scouts, except that the
Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
-- Blake Clark
%
Being owned by someone used to be called
slavery -- now it's called commitment.
%
Being popular is important. Otherwise people might not like you.
%
Being the #2 man in the Justice Department under Ed Meese is akin to
standing next to a lamp post infested with pigeons.
-- unnamed Justice Department official
%
Being ugly isn't illegal. Yet.
%
belief, n:
Something you do not believe.
%
Believe everything you hear about the world; nothing is too
impossibly bad.
-- Honore DeBalzac
%
Bell Labs Unix - Reach out and grep someone.
%
Ben, why didn't you tell me?
-- Luke Skywalker
%
Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
(1) Houses are for people to live in.
(2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
(3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
%
Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
-- Time Bandits
%
Benson's Dogma:
ASCII is our god, and Unix is his profit.
%
Bento's Law: If It Can Break, It Will Break
Bento's Corollary: If It Can Break, Kris Can Send Mail About It
%
Berkeley had what we called "copycenter," which is "take it down
to the copy center and make as many copies as you want."
-- Kirk McKusick
%
Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and
none of his friends like him either.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Bernard was a young eighty-three, not a gomer, and able to talk. He'd been
transferred from MBH (Man's Best Hospital), the House's Rival. Founded in
Colonial times by the WASPs, the insemination fo MBH by non-WASPs had taken
place only mid-twentieth century with the token multidextrous Oriental
surgeon, and finally, with the token red-hot internal-medicine Jew. Yet,
MBH was still Brooks Brothers, while the House was still the Garment District.
For Jews at MBH the password was "Dress British, Think Yiddish." It was
rare to get a TURF from the MBH to the House, and the Fat Man was curious:
"Bernard, you went to the MBH, they did a great work-up, and you told them,
after they got done, you wanted to be transferred here. Why?"
"I rilly don't know," said Bernard.
"Was it the doctors there? The doctors you didn't like?"
"The doctus? Nah, the doctus I can't complain."
"The test or the room?"
"The tests or the room? Vell, nah, about them I can't complain."
"The nurses? The food?" asked Fats, but Bernard shook his head no.
Fats laughed and said, "Listen , Bernie, you went to the MBH, they did this
great workup, and when I asked you shy you came to the House of God, all you
tell me is, 'Nah, I can't complain.' So why did you come here? Why, Bernie,
why?"
"Vhy I come heah? Vell, said Bernie, "Heah I can complain."
-- House of God
%
Bershere's Formula for Failure:
There are only two kinds of people who fail: those who
listen to nobody... and those who listen to everybody.
%
Besides the device, the box should contain:
* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
cable.
IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
why."
WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%
Best Beer: A panel of tasters assembled by the Consumer's Union in 1969
judged Coors and Miller's High Life to be among the very best. Those who
doubt that beer is a serious subject might ponder its effect on American
history. For example, New England's first colonists decided to drop anchor
at Plymouth Rock instead of continuing on to Virginia because, as one of
them put it, "We could not now take time for further consideration, our
victuals being spent and especially our beer."
-- Felton & Fowler's Best, Worst & Most Unusual
%
Best Mistakes In Films
In his "Filmgoer's Companion", Mr. Leslie Halliwell helpfully lists
four of the cinema's greatest moments which you should get to see if at all
possible.
In "Carmen Jones", the camera tracks with Dorothy Dandridge down a
street; and the entire film crew is reflected in the shop window.
In "The Wrong Box", the roofs of Victorian London are emblazoned
with television aerials.
In "Decameron Nights", Louis Jourdain stands on the deck of his
fourteenth century pirate ship; and a white lorry trundles down the hill
in the background.
In "Viking Queen", set in the times of Boadicea, a wrist watch is
clearly visible on one of the leading characters.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
Best of all is never to have been born.
Second best is to die soon.
%
beta test, v:
To voluntarily entrust one's data, one's livelihood and one's
sanity to hardware or software intended to destroy all three.
In earlier days, virgins were often selected to beta test volcanos.
%
Better by far you should forget and
smile than that you should remember and be sad.
-- Christina Rossetti
%
Better dead than mellow.
%
Better hope the life-inspector doesn't come
around while you have your life in such a mess.
%
Better hope you get what you want before you stop wanting it.
%
Better late than never.
-- Titus Livius (Livy)
%
Better living a beggar than buried an emperor.
%
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole >town
cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus <north pole > town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
%
Better the prince of some inferior court,
Than second, or less, in beatific light.
-- Lucifer, Joost van den Vondel's "Lucifer"
%
Better to be nouveau than never to have been riche at all.
%
Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
-- motto of the Christopher Society
%
Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment.
%
Better tried by twelve than carried by six.
-- Jeff Cooper
%
Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson Bay,
left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate. Using a
bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and great effort
pushing boulders into a single word.
It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass both
Parliament and Party.
It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
planets, this may be the first message received from us.
-- The Realist, November, 1964
%
Between grand theft and a legal fee, there only stands a law degree.
%
Between infinite and short there is a big difference.
-- G. H. Gonnet
%
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
-- T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Man"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to system service dispatching.]
%
BEWARE! People acting under the influence of human nature.
%
Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
%
Beware of a tall black man with one blond shoe.
%
Beware of a tall blond man with one black shoe.
%
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather
a new wearer of clothes.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
Beware of Bigfoot!
%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it.
-- Donald Knuth
%
Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
%
Beware of friends who are false and deceitful.
%
Beware of geeks bearing graft.
%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%
Beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The
danger already exists that the mathematicians have made covenant with
the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell.
-- St. Augustine
%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-- Leonard Brandwein
%
Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
drip under pressure.
%
Beware of strong drink. It can make you
shoot at tax collectors -- and miss.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"
%
Beware of the man who knows the answer before he understands the question.
%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything
is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
%
Beware the new TTY code!
%
Beware the one behind you.
%
bi, n:
When *everybody* thinks you're a pervert.
%
Bierman's Laws of Contracts:
(1) In any given document, you can't cover all the "what if's".
(2) Lawyers stay in business resolving all the unresolved "what if's".
(3) Every resolved "what if" creates two unresolved "what if's".
%
Big book, big bore.
-- Callimachus
%
Big M, Little M, many mumbling mice
Are making midnight music in the moonlight,
Mighty nice!
%
Bigamy is having one spouse too many. Monogamy is the same.
%
Biggest security gap -- an open mouth.
%
Bilbo's First Law:
You cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels.
%
Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.
-- Yogi Berra in his rookie season
%
Billy: Mom, you know that vase you said was handed down from
generation to generation?
Mom: Yes?
Billy: Well, this generation dropped it.
%
Binary, adj.:
Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
%
Bingo, gas station, hamburger with a side order of airplane noise,
and you'll be Gary, Indiana.
-- Jessie, "Greaser's Palace"
%
Bing's Rule:
Don't try to stem the tide -- move the beach.
%
Biology grows on you.
%
Biology is the only science in which
multiplication means the same thing as division.
%
Bipolar, adj.:
Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
New York
%
Birds and bees have as much to do with the facts of life as black
nightgowns do with keeping warm.
-- Hester Mundis, "Powermom"
%
Birds are entangled by their feet and men by their tongues.
%
Birth, n.:
The first and direst of all disasters.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Birthdays are like busses, never the number you want.
%
Bistromathics is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the
behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an
absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that
time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in
time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend
on the observer's movement in restaurants.
-- Douglas Adams, "Life, The Universe and Everything"
%
bit, n:
A unit of measure applied to color. Twenty-four-bit color
refers to expensive $3 color as opposed to the cheaper 25
cent, or two-bit, color that use to be available a few years
ago.
%
Bit off more than my mind could chew,
Shower or suicide, what do I do?
-- Julie Brown, "Will I Make it Through the Eighties?"
%
Biz is better.
%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
%
Bizoos, n.:
The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
basketball.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Black people have never rioted. A riot is what white people think blacks
are involved in when they burn stores.
-- Julius Lester
%
Black shiny mollies and bright colored guppies,
Shy little angels as gentle as puppies,
Swimming and diving with scarcely a swish,
They were just some of my tropical fish.
Then I got mantas that sting in the water,
Deadly piranhas that itch for a slaughter,
Savage male betas that bite with a squish,
Now I have many less tropical fish.
If you think that
Fish are peaceful
That's an empty wish.
Just dump them together
And leave them alone,
And soon you will have -- no fish.
-- To My Favorite Things
%
Blackout, heatwave, .44 caliber homicide,
The bums drop dead and the dogs go mad in packs on the West Side,
A young girl standing on a ledge, looks like another suicide,
She wants to hit those bricks,
'cause the news at six got to stick to a deadline,
While the millionaires hide in Beekman place,
The bag ladies throw their bones in my face,
I get attacked by a kid with stereo sound,
I don't want to hear it but he won't turn it down...
-- Billy Joel, "Glass Houses"
%
Blame Saint Andreas -- it's all his fault.
%
Blessed are the forgetful: for they
get the better even of their blunders.
-- Nietzsche
%
Blessed are the meek for they shall inhibit the earth.
%
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
-- Herbert Hoover
%
Blessed are they that have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded
to say it.
-- James Russell Lowell
%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles,
for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
%
Blessed is he who expects no gratitude, for he shall not be disappointed.
-- W. C. Bennett
%
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
-- Alexander Pope
%
Blessed is he who has reached the point of no return and knows it,
for he shall enjoy living.
-- W. C. Bennett
%
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say,
abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact.
-- George Eliot
%
Blinding speed can compensate for a lot of deficiencies.
-- David Nichols
%
BLISS is ignorance
%
Blithwapping, v:
Using anything BUT a hammer to hammer a nail into the
wall, such as shoes, lamp bases, doorstops, etc.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
%
Bloom's Seventh Law of Litigation:
The judge's jokes are always funny.
%
Blore's Razor:
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
funnier.
%
Blow it out your ear.
%
Blue paint today.
[Funny to Jack Slingwine, Guy Harris and Hal Pierson. Ed.]
%
Blutarsky's Axiom:
Nothing is impossible for the man who will not listen to reason.
%
Body by Nautilus, Brain by Mattel.
%
Boling's postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%
Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them
seemed to come from Texas.
-- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
%
Bondage maybe, discipline never!
-- T. K.
%
Bones: "The man's DEAD, Jim!"
%
BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
%
Boob's Law:
You always find something in the last place you look.
%
Booker's Law:
An ounce of application is worth a ton of abstraction.
%
Bore, n.:
A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
-- Walter Winchell
%
Bore, n.:
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Boren's Laws:
(1) When in charge, ponder.
(2) When in trouble, delegate.
(3) When in doubt, mumble.
%
boss, n:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the
words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
ornamental stud."
%
Boston:
An outdoor Betty Ford Clinic.
%
Boston, n.:
Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
%
Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry
that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crowbar.
-- O. W. Holmes
%
Both models are identical in performance, functional operation, and
interface circuit details. The two models, however, are not compatible
on the same communications line connection.
-- Bell System Technical Reference
%
Boucher's Observation:
He who blows his own horn always plays the music
several octaves higher than originally written.
%
Bounders get bound when they are caught bounding.
-- Ralph Lewin
%
Bower's Law:
Talent goes where the action is.
%
Bowie's Theorem:
If an experiment works, you must be using the wrong equipment.
%
Boy! Eucalyptus!
%
Boy, get your head out of the stars above,
You get the maximum pleasure from a minimum of love.
Save your heart and let your body be enough,
To get the maximum pleasure from a minimum of love.
Save your heart and let your body be enough,
And get the maximum pleasure from a minimum of love.
-- Mac Macinelli, "Minimum Love"
%
Boy, I sure wish that I could be in the
'Advanced Systems Development' group!
%
Boy, life takes a long time to live
-- Steven Wright
%
boy, n:
A noise with dirt on it.
%
Boy, that crayon sure did hurt!
%
Boycott meat - suck your thumb.
%
Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
-- James Thurber
%
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
-- Kin Hubbard
%
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band
together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a
tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo
on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others.
They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk
clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix.
Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean
well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They
like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time,
which is all the time.
-- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
%
Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the
unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
(gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend
to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
-- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking
Style"
%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize
them into a committee -- that will do them in.
%
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger
have handled this?"
%
Brain fried -- core dumped
%
Brain, n.:
The apparatus with which we think that we think.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Brain, v: [as in "to brain"]
To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source
of error in an opponent.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
brain-damaged, generalization of "Honeywell Brain Damage" (HBD), a
theoretical disease invented to explain certain utter cretinisms in
Multics, adj:
Obviously wrong; cretinous; demented. There is an implication
that the person responsible must have suffered brain damage,
because he/she should have known better. Calling something
brain-damaged is bad; it also implies it is unusable.
%
Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates,
is my choice for team captain. Cincinnati was beating us 3-1, and I led
off the bottom of the eighth with a walk. The next hitter banged a hard
single to right field. Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and
kept going, sliding safely into third base.
With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at
bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first.
Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy
took off for second and made it. Now we had runners at second and third.
I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy
start to take a lead. All of a sudden, here he comes. He makes a great slide
into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?" He looks up, and
shouts, "Back to second if I can make it."
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
%
Brandy-and-water spoils two good things.
-- Charles Lamb
%
Breadth-first search is the bulldozer of science.
-- Randy Goebel
%
Break into jail and claim police brutality.
%
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Breathe deep the gathering gloom.
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bed-sitter people look back and lament;
another day's useless energies spent.
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one.
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son.
Senior citizens wish they were young.
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night;
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white.
But we decide which is real, and which is an illusion."
-- The Moody Blues, "Days of Future Passed"
%
Breeding rabbits is a hare raising experience.
%
Bride, n.:
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bridge ahead. Pay troll.
%
briefcase, n:
A trial where the jury gets together and forms a lynching party.
%
Briefly stated, the findings are that when presented with an array of
data or a sequence of events in which they are instructed to discover
an underlying order, subjects show strong tendencies to perceive order
and causality in random arrays, to perceive a pattern or correlation
which seems a priori intuitively correct even when the actual correlation
in the data is counterintuitive, to jump to conclusions about the correct
hypothesis, to seek and to use only positive or confirmatory evidence, to
construe evidence liberally as confirmatory, to fail to generate or to
assess alternative hypotheses, and having thus managed to expose themselves
only to confirmatory instances, to be fallaciously confident of the validity
of their judgments (Jahoda, 1969; Einhorn and Hogarth, 1978). In the
analyzing of past events, these tendencies are exacerbated by failure to
appreciate the pitfalls of post hoc analyses.
-- A. Benjamin
%
Brillineggiava, ed i tovoli slati
girlavano ghimbanti nella vaba;
i borogovi eran tutti mimanti
e la moma radeva fuorigraba.
"Figliuolo mio, sta' attento al Gibrovacco,
dagli artigli e dal morso lacerante;
fuggi l'uccello Giuggiolo, e nel sacco
metti infine il frumioso Bandifante".
-- "The Jabberwock"
%
Bringing computers into the home won't change
either one, but may revitalize the corner saloon.
%
Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast
more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience; if
brusque, your character.
-- Jonathan Swift
%
British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive
it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.
-- Peter Ustinov
%
British Israelites:
The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of Britain to
be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by Sargon of Assyria
on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further believe that the future
can be foretold by the measurements of the Great Pyramid, which probably
means it will be big and yellow and in the hand of the Arabs. They also
believe that if you sleep with your head under the pillow a fairy will come
and take all your teeth.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
broad-mindedness, n:
The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%
Brogan's Constant:
People tend to congregate in the back
of the church and the front of the bus.
%
brokee, n:
Someone who buys stocks on the advice of a broker.
%
Brontosaurus Principle:
Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when
this occurs, they are an endangered species.
-- Thomas K. Connellan
%
Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or
expands it beyond recognition.
%
Brooks' Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%
Brucify, v:
1: Kill by nailing onto style(9); "David O'Brien was brucified"
2: Annoy constantly by reminding of potential improvements
[syn: {torment}, {rag}, {tantalize}, {bedevil}, {dun},
{frustrate}]
3: Fix problems that were indicated in an earlier brucification
(of one of the two other meanings).
The word 'brucify' originally comes from the style-reviews of Bruce
Evans of the FreeBSD project, but is now also sometimes used for
reviews just done in his spirit.
%
BS: You remind me of a man.
B: What man?
BS: The man with the power.
B: What power?
BS: The power of voodoo.
B: Voodoo?
BS: You do.
B: Do what?
BS: Remind me of a man.
B: What man?
BS: The man with the power...
-- Cary Grant, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer"
%
Bubble Memory, n.:
A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
%
Buck-passing usually turns out to be a boomerang.
%
Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%
Bug, n.:
An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
wrote the program.
Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
-- Ray Simard
%
bug, n:
An elusive creature living in a program that makes it incorrect.
The activity of "debugging", or removing bugs from a program, ends
when people get tired of doing it, not when the bugs are removed.
-- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
%
Bugs, pl. n.:
Small living things that small living boys throw on small
living girls.
%
Building translators is good clean fun.
-- T. Cheatham
%
BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the
outfit."
GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?"
BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive..."
-- Jay Ward
%
Bumper sticker:
All the parts falling off this car are
of the very finest British manufacture.
%
Bunker's Admonition:
You cannot buy beer; you can only rent it.
%
Burbulation, v:
The obsessive act of opening and closing a refrigerator door in
an attempt to catch it before the automatic light comes on.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Bureau Termination, Law of:
When a government bureau is scheduled to be phased out,
the number of employees in that bureau will double within
12 months after the decision is made.
%
bureaucracy, n:
A method for transforming energy into solid waste.
%
Bureaucrat, n.:
A person who cuts red tape sideways.
-- J. McCabe
%
bureaucrat, n:
A politician who has tenure.
%
Burke's Postulates:
Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.
Don't create a problem for which you do not have the answer.
%
Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
(1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
sawhorse.
(2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
(3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
perfectly balanced.
(4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
-- Robert Burns
%
Burnt Sienna. That's the best thing that ever happened to Crayolas.
-- Ken Weaver
%
Bus error -- driver executed.
%
Bus error -- please leave by the rear door.
%
Bushydo -- the way of the shrub. Bonsai!
%
Business is a good game -- lots of competition
and minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
-- Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari
%
Business will be either better or worse.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
But Captain -- the engines can't take this much longer!
%
But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations
paws.
%
But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.
-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
%
But has any little atom,
While a-sittin' and a-splittin',
Ever stopped to think or CARE
That E = m c**2 ?
%
But I always fired into the nearest hill or, failing that, into blackness.
I meant no harm; I just liked the explosions. And I was careful never to
kill more than I could eat.
-- Raoul Duke
%
But I don't like Spam!!!!
%
"But I don't want to go on the cart..."
"Oh, don't be such a baby!"
"But I'm feeling much better..."
"No you're not... in a moment you'll be stone dead!"
-- Monty Python, "The Holy Grail"
%
But I find the old notions somehow appealing. Not that I want to go
back to them -- it is outrageous to have some outer authority tell you
what is proper use and abuse of your own faculties, and it is ludicrous
to hold reason higher than body or feeling. Still there is something
true and profoundly sane about the belief that acts like murder or
theft or assault violate the doer as well as the done to. We might
even, if we thought this way, have less crime. The popular view of
crime, as far as I can deduce it from the movies and television, is
that it is a breaking of a rule by someone who thinks they can get away
with that; implicitly, everyone would like to break the rule, but not
everyone is arrogant enough to imagine they can get away with it. It
therefore becomes very important for the rule upholders to bring such
arrogance down.
-- Marilyn French, "The Woman's Room"
%
But if you wish at once to do nothing and to be respectable
nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.
-- Leslie Stephen, "Sketches from Cambridge"
%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
-- Bruce Leverett,
"Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
%
But it does move!
-- Galileo Galilei
%
But like the Good Book says... There's BIGGER DEALS to come!
%
But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy.
-- Robert Burns, "To a Mouse", 1785
%
But, officer, he's not drunk, I just saw his fingers twitch!
%
But Officer, I stopped for the last one, and it was green!
%
But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
to the nearest gas station.
%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
-- Hilaire Belloc
%
But sex and drugs and rock & roll, why, they'd bring our blackest day.
%
But since I knew now that I could hope for nothing of greater value than
frivolous pleasures, what point was there in denying myself of them?
-- M. Proust
%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
-- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
increases.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
But these pills can't be habit forming;
I've been taking them for years.
%
But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What
is a kludge, after all, but not enough K's, not enough ROM's, not
enough RAM's, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?
Have I explained yet about the bytes?
%
But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
computers?
%
But you shall not escape my iambics.
-- Gaius Valerius Catullus
%
But you who live on dreams, you are better pleased with the sophistical
reasoning and frauds of talkers about great and uncertain matters than
those who speak of certain and natural matters, not of such lofty nature.
-- Leonardo Da Vinci, "The Codex on the Flight of Birds"
%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%
buzzword, n:
The fly in the ointment of computer literacy.
%
By doing just a little every day, you can
gradually let the task completely overwhelm you.
%
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
%
By long-standing tradition, I take this opportunity to savage other
designers in the thin disguise of good, clean fun.
-- P. J. Plauger, "Computer Language", 1988, April
Fool's column.
%
By nature, men are nearly alike;
by practice, they get to be wide apart.
-- Confucius
%
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
as it is to invent.
-- R. Emerson
-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
(whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
[to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
misconstrue all these misquotations?!?" Ed.]
%
By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.
-- Charles Spurgeon
%
By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.
-- Titus Lucretius Carus
%
By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
to suspect "Hungry" ...
-- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
%
By the time you swear you're his,
shivering and sighing
and he vows his passion is
infinite, undying --
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Unfortunate Coincidence"
%
By the yard, life is hard.
By the inch, it's a cinch.
%
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity.
Another man's, I mean.
-- Mark Twain
%
By working faithfully eight hours a day,
you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve.
-- Robert Frost
%
byob, v:
Believing Your Own Bull
%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point A are so keen to get _t_h_e_r_e. They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
BYTE editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then
carefully print the chaff.
%
Byte your tongue.
%
C Code.
C Code Run.
Run, Code, RUN!
PLEASE!!!!
%
C for yourself.
%
C++ is the best example of second-system effect since OS/360.
%
C makes it easy for you to shoot yourself in the foot. C++ makes that
harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup
%
C, n:
A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like
assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything
else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or
it isn't.
-- Ray Simard
%
Cabbage, n.:
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.
-- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
%
Cache:
A very expensive part of the memory system of a computer that no one
is supposed to know is there.
%
California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
-- Fred Allen
%
Californians are a strange people. They'll put every chemical known to God
and man up their nostrils and then laugh at you for putting sugar in your
coffee.
%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb
%
Call things by their right names... Glass of brandy and water! That is the
current but not the appropriate name: ask for a glass of fire and distilled
damnation.
-- Robert Hall, in Olinthus Gregory's, "Brief Memoir of the
Life of Hall"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to logical names.]
%
Calling you stupid is an insult to stupid people!
-- Wanda, "A Fish Called Wanda"
%
Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes,
Calm down, it's only bits and bytes,
Calm down, and speak to me in English,
Please realize that I'm not one of your computerites.
%
Calvin: "I wonder where we go when we die."
Hobbes: "Pittsburgh?"
Calvin: "You mean if we're good or if we're bad?"
%
Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man
who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
Campbell's Law:
Nature abhors a vacuous experimenter.
%
Campus crusade for Cthulhu -- it found me.
%
Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
points.
-- M. M. Johnston
%
Can anyone remember when the times
were not hard, and money not scarce?
%
Can anything be sadder than work left unfinished?
Yes, work never begun.
%
"Can you be more stupid than aggravating the judge AND your lawyer?
No? Oh yes you can: You can aggravate the whole kernel community."
-- Alexander Lyamin (about Hans Reisers murder trial)
%
Can you buy friendship? You not only can, you must. It's the
only way to obtain friends. Everything worthwhile has a price.
-- Robert J. Ringer
%
Canada Bill Jones's Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Canada Bill Jones's Supplement:
A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
%
Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp.
It's 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage.
-- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
This is a good time for those of you who are rich and happy,
but a poor time for those of you born under this sign who are
poor and unhappy. To tell you the truth, any day is tough
when you're poor and unhappy.
%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things
off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare
recipients are Cancer people.
%
Canonical, adj.:
The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true story:
One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some annoyance at the use
of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a point of using jargon as
much as possible in his presence, and eventually it began to sink in.
Finally, in one conversation, he used the word "canonical" in jargon-like
fashion without thinking.
Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
Stallman: "What did he say?"
Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
%
Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.
-- RKO executive, reacting to Fred Astaire's screen test
Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
%
Can't open /usr/games/fortunes. Lid stuck on cookie jar.
%
Can't open /usr/share/games/fortune/fortunes.dat.
%
Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for
the nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.
-- John Maynard Keynes
%
CAPRICORN (Dec 22 - Jan 19)
Play your hunches. This is a day when luck will play an important
part in your life. If you were smarter, you wouldn't need so much
luck and you wouldn't be reading your horoscope, either. You are
a suspicious person, and it will occur to you that astrologers
don't know what they're talking about any more than your Aunt Martha.
%
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22 to Jan. 19)
Follow your instincts. You are much too scatterbrained to do anything
else, such as think. Romance is in the air, but not for you, so forget
it. That pimple on the end of your nose will get worse.
%
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn
of any importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for
too long as they tend to take root and become trees.
%
Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and
some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%
Captain's Log, star date 21:34.5...
%
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected.
Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected,
mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it
takes.
%
Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
trousers that don't match.
%
Carney's Law: There's at least a 50-50 chance that someone will print
the name Craney incorrectly.
-- Jim Canrey
%
Carob works on the principle that, when mixed with the right combination of
fats and sugar, it can duplicate chocolate in color and texture. Of course,
the same can be said of dirt.
%
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it,
then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Carson's Consolation:
Nothing is ever a complete failure.
It can always be used as a bad example.
%
Carson's Observation on Footwear:
If the shoe fits, buy the other one too.
%
Carswell's Corollary:
Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap,
nature invariably comes up with a better mouse.
%
Cat, n.:
Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
%
Catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world.
-- The Beach Boys
%
Catharsis is something I associate with pornography and crossword puzzles.
-- Howard Chaykin
%
Catproof is an oxymoron, childproof nearly so.
%
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
-- Garrison Keillor
%
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't make eight cats pull
a sled through the snow.
%
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows, offer no angles to the wind.
%
Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"
%
Caution: Breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%
Caution: Keep out of reach of children.
%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
%
CCI Power 6/40: one board, a megabyte of cache, and an attitude...
%
Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously alive and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will *_a_n_d* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
-- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
%
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center
of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An
incorrect model can be a useful tool.
-- Kelvin Throop III
%
Census Taker to Housewife:
Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many?
%
Center meeting at 4pm in 2C-543.
%
cerebral atrophy, n:
The phenomena which occurs as brain cells become weak and sick, and
impair the brain's performance. An abundance of these "bad" cells can cause
symptoms related to senility, apathy, depression, and overall poor academic
performance. A certain small number of brain cells will deteriorate due to
everyday activity, but large amounts are weakened by intense mental effort
and the assimilation of difficult concepts. Many college students become
victims of this dread disorder due to poor habits such as overstudying.
cerebral darwinism, n:
The theory that the effects of cerebral atrophy can be reversed
through the purging action of heavy alcohol consumption. Large amounts of
alcohol cause many brain cells to perish due to oxygen deprivation. Through
the process of natural selection, the weak and sick brain cells will die
first, leaving only the healthy cells. This wonderful process leaves the
imbiber with a healthier, more vibrant brain, and increases mental capacity.
Thus, the devastating effects of cerebral atrophy are reversed, and academic
performance actually increases beyond previous levels.
%
Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
out of it?
Jaka: Ugh!
Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
-- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and the
most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the Court of
Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his candidate which
reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground nuts) Order, the expression
nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground nuts, as would
but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground) (other than ground
nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground)."
-- Guinness Book of World Records, 1973
%
Certainly the game is rigged.
Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win.
-- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
But it's very funny --
did you ever try buying them without money?
-- Ogden Nash
%
C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre!
%
C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas l'Informatique.
-- Bosquet [on seeing the IBM 4341]
%
CF&C stole it, fair and square.
-- Tim Hahn
%
Chairman of the Bored.
%
Chamberlain's Laws:
1: The big guys always win.
2: Everything tastes more or less like chicken.
%
Chance is perhaps the work of God when He did not want to sign.
-- Anatole France
%
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
%
Changing husbands/wives is only changing troubles.
-- Kathleen Norris
%
Chaos is King and Magic is loose in the world.
%
Chapter 2: Newtonian Growth and Decay
The growth-decay formulas were developed in the trivial fashion by
Isaac Newton's famous brother Phigg. His idea was to provide an equation
that would describe a quantity that would dwindle and dwindle, but never
quite reach zero. Historically, he was merely trying to work out his
mortgage. Another versatile equation also emerged, one which would define
a function that would continue to grow, but never reach unity. This equation
can be applied to charging capacitors, over-damped springs, and the human
race in general.
%
character density, n.:
The number of very weird people in the office.
%
Character is what you are in the dark!
-- Lord John Whorfin
%
CHARITY:
A thing that begins at home and usually stays there.
%
Charity begins at home.
-- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
%
Charlie Brown: Why was I put on this earth?
Linus: To make others happy.
Charlie Brown: Why were others put on this earth?
%
Charlie was a chemist,
But Charlie is no more.
What Charlie thought was H2O was H2SO4.
%
Charm is a way of getting the answer "Yes" --
without having asked any clear question.
%
Cheap things are of no value, valuable things are not cheap.
%
Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers...
they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key!
%
checkuary, n:
The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and ends
when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his checks.
%
Cheer Up! Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
%
Cheese -- milk's leap toward immortality.
-- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play"
%
Chef, n:
Any cook who swears in French.
%
Cheit's Lament:
If you help a friend in need, he is sure to remember you--
the next time he's in need.
%
Chemicals, n.:
Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
%
Chemist who falls in acid is absorbed in work.
%
Chemist who falls in acid will be tripping for weeks.
%
Chemistry is applied theology.
-- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
%
Chemistry professors never die, they just fail to react.
%
Cheops' Law:
Nothing ever gets built on schedule or within budget.
%
Chess tonight.
%
Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
%
Chicago, n.:
Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
-- Chicago Reader 3/27/81
%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will
cheerfully baste you.
-- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
%
Chicagoan: "So, where're you from?"
Hoosier: "What's wrong with Indiana?"
%
Chicken Little only has to be right once.
%
Chicken Little was right.
%
Chicken Soup, n.:
An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup
can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
Chihuahuas drive me crazy. I can't stand anything that
shivers when it's warm.
%
Children are like cats, they can tell when you don't like
them. That's when they come over and violate your body space.
%
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents
despite every effort to teach them good manners.
%
Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're
going to catch you in next.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them.
Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually
repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
%
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
-- Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
%
Chinese saying: "He who speak with forked tongue, not need chopsticks."
%
Chism's Law of Completion:
The amount of time required to complete a government project is
precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%
Chivalry, Schmivalry!
Roger the thief has a
method he uses for
sneaky attacks:
Folks who are reading are
Characteristically
Always Forgetting to
Guard their own bac ...
%
Chocolate Chip.
%
Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as
a friend if she were a man.
-- Joubert
%
Chorus:
Grandma got run over by a reindeer,
Walking home from our house Christmas eve.
You can say there's no such thing as Santa,
But as for me and Grandpa, we believe!
She'd been drinking too much eggnog,
And we begged her not to go.
But she'd forgot her medication, When we found her Christmas morning,
And she staggered through the door At the scene of the attack.
out in the snow. She had hoofprints on her forehead,
And incriminating claus-marks on her
Now we're all so proud of Grandpa, back.
He's been taking this so well.
See him in there watching football. I've warned all my friends and
Drinking beer and playing cards neighbors,
with cousin Mel. Better watch out for yourselves!
They should never give a license,
To a man who drives a sleigh and
plays with elves!
-- Elmo and Patsy, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer"
%
Christ:
A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
%
Christ died for our sins, so let's not disappoint Him.
%
Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Christmas time is here, by Golly; Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens;
Disapproval would be folly; Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens;
Deck the halls with hunks of holly; Even though the prospect sickens,
Fill the cup and don't say when... Brother, here we go again.
On Christmas day, you can't get sore; Relations sparing no expense'll,
Your fellow man you must adore; Send some useless old utensil,
There's time to rob him all the more, Or a matching pen and pencil,
The other three hundred and sixty-four! Just the thing I need... how nice.
It doesn't matter how sincere Hark The Herald-Tribune sings,
It is, nor how heartfelt the spirit; Advertising wondrous things.
Sentiment will not endear it; God Rest Ye Merry Merchants,
What's important is... the price. May you make the Yuletide pay.
Angels We Have Heard On High,
Let the raucous sleighbells jingle; Tell us to go out and buy.
Hail our dear old friend, Kris Kringle, Sooooo...
Driving his reindeer across the sky,
Don't stand underneath when they fly by!
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%
Cigarette, n.:
A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in
between.
%
Cinemuck, n.:
The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
covers the floors of movie theaters.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.
-- Herodotus
%
Civilization and profits go hand in hand.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
Civilization, as we know it, will end sometime this evening.
See SYSNOTE tomorrow for more information.
%
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
-- Mark Twain
%
Clairvoyant, n.:
A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a
blockhead.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who
aspires to be a hero... must drink brandy.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
Clarke's Conclusion:
Never let your sense of morals interfere with doing the right thing.
%
Class, that's the only thing that counts in life. Class.
Without class and style, a man's a bum; he might as well be dead.
-- "Bugsy" Siegel
%
Class: when they're running you out of town, to look like you're
leading the parade.
-- Bill Battie
%
Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
-- Kin Hubbard, "Abe Martin's Sayings"
%
Clay's Conclusion:
Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster.
%
Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling
the walk before it stops snowing.
-- Phyllis Diller
%
Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%
CLEVELAND:
Where their last tornado did six
million dollars worth of improvements.
%
Cleveland still lives. God _m_u_s_t be dead.
%
Cleveland?
Yes, I spent a week there one day.
%
Climate and Surgery
R C Gilchrist, who was shot by J Sharp twelve days ago, and who
received a derringer ball in the right breast, and who it was supposed at
the time could not live many hours, was on the street yesterday and the
day before - walking several blocks at a time. To those who design to be
riddled with bullets or cut to pieces with Bowie-knives, we cordially
recommend our Sacramento climate and Sacramento surgery.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, September 11, 1861
%
Climbing onto a bar stool, a piece of string asked for a beer.
"Wait a minute. Aren't you a string?"
"Well, yes, I am."
"Sorry. We don't serve strings here."
The determined string left the bar and stopped a passer-by. "Excuse,
me," it said, "would you shred my ends and tie me up like a pretzel?" The
passer-by obliged, and the string re-entered the bar. "May I have a beer,
please?" it asked the bartender.
The barkeep set a beer in front of the string, then suddenly stopped.
"Hey, aren't you the string I just threw out of here?"
"No, I'm a frayed knot."
%
clone, n:
1. An exact duplicate, as in "our product is a clone of their
product." 2. A shoddy, spurious copy, as in "their product
is a clone of our product."
%
Clones are people two.
%
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
%
Clothes make the man.
Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain
%
Clovis' Consideration of an Atmospheric Anomaly:
The perversity of nature is nowhere better demonstrated
than by the fact that, when exposed to the same atmosphere,
bread becomes hard while crackers become soft.
%
Coach: Can I draw you a beer, Norm?
Norm: No, I know what they look like. Just pour me one.
-- Cheers, No Help Wanted
Coach: How about a beer, Norm?
Norm: Hey I'm high on life, Coach. Of course, beer is my life.
-- Cheers, No Help Wanted
Coach: How's a beer sound, Norm?
Norm: I dunno. I usually finish them before they get a word in.
-- Cheers, Fortune and Men's Weights
%
Coach: How's it going, Norm?
Norm: Daddy's rich and Momma's good lookin'.
-- Cheers, Truce or Consequences
Sam: What's up, Norm?
Norm: My nipples. It's freezing out there.
-- Cheers, Coach Returns to Action
Coach: What's the story, Norm?
Norm: Thirsty guy walks into a bar. You finish it.
-- Cheers, Endless Slumper
%
Coach: What would you say to a beer, Normie?
Norm: Daddy wuvs you.
-- Cheers, The Mail Goes to Jail
Sam: What'd you like, Normie?
Norm: A reason to live. Gimme another beer.
-- Cheers, Behind Every Great Man
Sam: What will you have, Norm?
Norm: Well, I'm in a gambling mood, Sammy. I'll take a glass
of whatever comes out of that tap.
Sam: Oh, looks like beer, Norm.
Norm: Call me Mister Lucky.
-- Cheers, The Executive's Executioner
%
Coach: What's up, Norm?
Norm: Corners of my mouth, Coach.
-- Cheers, Fortune and Men's Weights
Coach: What's shaking, Norm?
Norm: All four cheeks and a couple of chins, Coach.
-- Cheers, Snow Job
Coach: Beer, Normie?
Norm: Uh, Coach, I dunno, I had one this week.
Eh, why not, I'm still young.
-- Cheers, Snow Job
%
COBOL:
An exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
%
COBOL:
Completely Over and Beyond reason Or Logic.
%
COBOL is for morons.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Cobol programmers are down in the dumps.
%
Code rot -- mostly caused by people redefining "fresh".
-- Wes Peters
%
Coding is easy; All you do is sit staring at a
terminal until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong.
-- Blair Houghton
%
Cohen's Law:
There is no bottom to worse.
%
Cohn's Law:
The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less
time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend
all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.
%
Coincidence, n.:
You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
going on.
%
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
Cold, adj.:
When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
%
Cold, adj.:
When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
pockets.
%
Cold hands, no gloves.
%
Cole's Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage.
%
Collaboration, n.:
A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
other fellow can spell.
%
COLLEGE:
The fountains of knowledge, where everyone goes to drink.
%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
COLORADO:
Where they don't buy M & M's, 'cause they're so hard to peel.
%
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
%
Column 1 Column 2 Column 3
0. integrated 0. management 0. options
1. total 1. organizational 1. flexibility
2. systematized 2. monitored 2. capability
3. parallel 3. reciprocal 3. mobility
4. functional 4. digital 4. programming
5. responsive 5. logistical 5. concept
6. optional 6. transitional 6. time-phase
7. synchronized 7. incremental 7. projection
8. compatible 8. third-generation 8. hardware
9. balanced 9. policy 9. contingency
The procedure is simple. Think of any three-digit number, then select
the corresponding buzzword from each column. For instance, number 257 produces
"systematized logistical projection," a phrase that can be dropped into
virtually any report with that ring of decisive, knowledgeable authority. "No
one will have the remotest idea of what you're talking about," says Broughton,
"but the important thing is that they're not about to admit it."
-- Philip Broughton, "How to Win at Wordsmanship"
%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
All probabilities are 50%.
Either a thing will happen or it won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
This is especially true when
dealing with someone you're attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary:
Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Come fill the cup and in the fire of spring
Your winter garment of repentance fling.
The bird of time has but a little way
To flutter -- and the bird is on the wing.
-- Omar Khayyam
%
Come home America.
-- George McGovern, 1972
%
Come, landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it does run over,
Tonight we will all merry be -- tomorrow we'll get sober.
-- John Fletcher, "The Bloody Brother", II, 2
%
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands, and crystal brooks,
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
-- John Donne
%
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
If you would be my POSSLQ.
You live with me, and I with you,
And you will be my POSSLQ.
I'll be your friend and so much more;
That's what a POSSLQ is for.
And everything we will confess;
Yes, even to the IRS.
Some day on what we both may earn,
Perhaps we'll file a joint return.
You'll share my pad, my taxes, joint;
You'll share my life - up to a point!
And that you'll be so glad to do,
Because you'll be my POSSLQ.
%
Come, muse, let us sing of rats!
-- From a poem by James Grainger, 1721-1767
%
Come quickly, I am tasting stars!
-- Dom Perignon, upon discovering champagne
%
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up the access and passage to remorse
That no compunctious visiting of nature
Shake my fell purpose, not keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall the in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry `Hold, hold!'
-- Lady MacBeth
%
Comedy, like Medicine, was never meant to be practiced by the general public.
%
Coming to Stores Near You:
101 Grammatically Correct Popular Tunes Featuring:
(You Aren't Anything but a) Hound Dog
It Doesn't Mean a Thing If It Hasn't Got That Swing
I'm Not Misbehaving
And A Whole Lot More...
%
Coming together is a beginning;
keeping together is progress;
working together is success.
%
Command, n.:
Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
%
Commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
%
Commitment, n.:
Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
%
Committee, n.:
A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen
%
Committee Rules:
(1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
(2) Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this
stamps you as being wise.
(3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the
others.
(4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
(5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you
popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for.
%
Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to
be appointed to do the work.
%
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at
different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
-- Clive James
%
Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
-- Josh Billings
%
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Common sense is the most evenly distributed quantity in the world.
Everyone thinks he has enough.
-- Descartes, 1637
%
Commoner's three laws of ecology:
1) No action is without side-effects.
2) Nothing ever goes away.
3) There is no free lunch.
%
Communicate! It can't make things any worse.
%
Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness
of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
-- David Guaspari
%
Comparing software engineering to classical engineering assumes that software
has the ability to wear out. Software typically behaves, or it does not. It
either works, or it does not. Software generally does not degrade, abrade,
stretch, twist, or ablate. To treat it as a physical entity, therefore, is
misapplication of our engineering skills. Classical engineering deals with
the characteristics of hardware; software engineering should deal with the
characteristics of *software*, and not with hardware or management.
-- Dan Klein
%
COMPASS [for the CDC-6000 series] is the sort of assembler
one expects from a corporation whose president codes in octal.
-- J. N. Gray
%
Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses,
is in the eye of the beholder.
-- Dr. Laurence J. Peter
%
Competitive fury is not always anger. It is the true missionary's
courage and zeal in facing the possibility that one's best may not
be enough.
-- Gene Scott
%
COMPLEX SYSTEM:
One with real problems and imaginary profits.
%
COMPLIMENT:
When you say something to another which everyone knows isn't true.
%
compuberty, n:
The uncomfortable period of emotional and hormonal changes a
computer experiences when the operating system is upgraded and
a sun4 is put online sharing files.
%
COMPUTER:
An electronic entity which performs sequences of useful steps in a
totally understandable, rigorously logical manner. If you believe
this, see me about a bridge I have for sale in Manhattan.
%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
%
Computer programmers never die, they just get lost in the processing.
%
Computer programs expand so as to fill the core available.
%
COMPUTER SCIENCE:
1) A study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the
precision of the former and the success of the latter.
2) The protracted value analysis of algorithms.
3) The costly enumeration of the obvious.
4) The boring art of coping with a large number of trivialities.
5) Tautology harnessed in the service of Man at the speed of light.
6) The Post-Turing decline in formal systems theory.
%
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about
telescopes.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Computer Science is the only discipline in which we view
adding a new wing to a building as being maintenance
-- Jim Horning
%
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
%
Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.
Any system which depends on human reliability is unreliable.
-- Gilb
%
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
%
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
the world that just don't add up.
%
Computers can't cruise. Meandering is a foreign concept to them.
The computer assumes that all behavior is in pursuit of an ultimate
goal. Whenever a motorist changes his or her mind and veers off
course, the GPS lady issues that snippy announcement: "Recalculating!"
-- Joel Achenbach (www.slate.com, 20 Jun 2008)
%
Computers don't actually think.
You just think they think.
(We think.)
%
Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more
than the estimate the job will cost.
%
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
-- LaRouchefoucauld
%
Concept, n.:
Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
$25,000.
%
Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that the design must proceed
from one mind, or from a very small number of agreeing resonant minds.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
Condense soup, not books!
%
CONFERENCE:
A special meeting in which the boss gathers subordinates to hear
what they have to say, so long as it doesn't conflict with what
he's already decided to do.
%
Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven;
confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
-- Josh Billings
%
Confession is good for the soul, but bad for the career.
%
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense
that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.
-- Peter de Vries
%
Confessions may be good for the soul, but they are bad for
the reputation.
-- Lord Thomas Dewar
%
Confidant, confidante, n.:
One entrusted by A with the secrets of B, confided to himself by C.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Confidence is simply that quiet, assured feeling you have before you
fall flat on your face.
-- Dr. L. Binder
%
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
%
CONFIRMED BACHELOR:
A man who goes through life without a hitch.
%
Conflicting research paradigms
Have legitimized various crimes.
The worst we can see
Is in psychology,
Measuring reaction times.
%
Conformity is the refuge of the unimaginative.
%
Confucius say too damn much!
%
Confucius say too much.
-- Recent Chinese Proverb
%
Confusion will be my epitaph
as I walk a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh
but I fear that tomorrow we'll be crying.
-- King Crimson, "In the Court of the Crimson King"
%
Congratulations! You are the one-millionth user to log into our system.
If there's anything special we can do for you, anything at all, don't
hesitate to ask!
%
Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND
SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,
RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%
Congratulations are in order for Tom Reid.
He says he just found out he is the winner of the 2021 Psychic of the
Year award.
%
Congratulations!
Some products leave home silently, some go kicking and screaming. If
v1.0 was the first born who came downstairs with shoes untied missing
a sock and a belt, then this one was a full fledged punk rocker
with neon hair and multiple piercings. I believe we squeezed it into
a suit and tie and brought its color back to an earth tone before it
left.
-- An HP engineering project manager who shall remain
nameless to the development team after releasing
the second version of their product.
%
Conjecture: All odd numbers are prime.
Mathematician's Proof:
3 is prime. 5 is prime. 7 is prime. By induction, all
odd numbers are prime.
Physicist's Proof:
3 is prime. 5 is prime. 7 is prime. 9 is experimental
error. 11 is prime. 13 is prime ...
Engineer's Proof:
3 is prime. 5 is prime. 7 is prime. 9 is prime.
11 is prime. 13 is prime ...
Computer Scientists's Proof:
3 is prime. 3 is prime. 3 is prime. 3 is prime...
%
Connector Conspiracy, n:
[probably came into prominence with the appearance of the
KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of
manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything)
to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old
stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive
interface devices.
%
Conquering Russia should be done steppe by steppe.
%
Conquering the world on horseback is easy; it is dismounting and
governing that is hard.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
-- Shakespeare
%
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Conscience is defined as the thing that hurts
when everything else feels great.
%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy"
%
Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
wish you weren't.
%
CONSENT DECREE:
A document in which a hapless company consents never to commit
in the future whatever heinous violations of Federal law it
never admitted to in the first place.
%
Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich.
-- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]
%
Conservative, n.:
A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished
from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Consider a spherical bear, in simple harmonic motion...
-- Professor in the UCB physics department
%
Consider the following axioms carefully:
"Everything's better when it sits on a Ritz."
and
"Everything's better with Blue Bonnet on it."
What happens if one spreads Blue Bonnet margarine on a Ritz cracker? The
thought is frightening. Is this how God came into being? Try not to
consider the fact that "Things go better with Coke".
%
Consider the little mouse, how sagacious an animal
it is which never entrusts its life to one hole only.
-- Titus Maccius Plautus
%
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in
the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
-- Josh Billings
%
CONSULTANT:
(1) Someone you pay to take the watch off your wrist and tell
you what time it is. (2) (For resume use) The working title
of anyone who doesn't currently hold a job. Motto: Have
Calculator, Will Travel.
%
CONSULTANT:
An ordinary man a long way from home.
%
CONSULTANT:
[From con "to defraud, dupe, swindle," or, possibly, French con
(vulgar) "a person of little merit" + sult elliptical form of
"insult."] A tipster disguised as an oracle, especially one who
has learned to decamp at high speed in spite of a large briefcase
and heavy wallet.
%
CONSULTANT:
Someone who'd rather climb a tree and tell a
lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.
%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a
company for a number and then give it back to them.
%
CONSULTATION:
Medical term meaning "to share the wealth."
%
Contemporary American feminism's simplistic psychology is illustrated by
the new cliche of the date-rape furor: "`No' always means `no'." Will
we ever graduate from the Girl Scouts? "No" has always been, and always
will be, part of the dangerous alluring courtship ritual of sex and
seduction, observable even in the animal kingdom.
-- Camille Paglia, NY Times, Dec. 14 1990, Op Ed.
%
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat.
%
Convention is the ruler of all.
-- Pindar
%
Conversation enriches the understanding,
but solitude is the school of genius.
%
Conversation, n.:
A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
is called the listener.
%
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows
what is going on.
This person must be fired.
%
Cops never say good-bye. They're always hoping to see you again in the
line-up.
-- Raymond Chandler
%
COPYING MACHINE:
A device that shreds paper, flashes mysteriously coded messages,
and makes duplicates for everyone in the office who isn't
interested in reading them.
%
Coronation, n.:
The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a
dynamite bomb.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Correction does much, but encouragement does more.
-- Goethe
%
Corrupt, adj.:
In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%
Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a muddle
of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can make of
capitalism.
-- Walter Lippmann
%
Corruption is not the No. 1 priority of the Police Commissioner.
His job is to enforce the law and fight crime.
-- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
%
Corry's Law:
Paper is always strongest at the perforations.
%
Couldn't we jury-rig the cat to act as an audio switch, and have it yell
at people to save their core images before logging them out? I'm sure
the cattle prod would be effective in this regard. In any case, a traverse
mounted iguana, while more perverted, gives better traction, not to mention
being easier to stake.
%
Counting in binary is just like counting
in decimal -- if you are all thumbs.
-- Glaser and Way
%
Counting in octal is just like counting
in decimal -- if you don't use your thumbs.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Courage is fear that has said its prayers.
%
Courage is grace under pressure.
%
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear.
-- Mark Twain
%
Courage is your greatest present need.
%
court, n.:
A place where they dispense with justice.
-- Arthur Train
%
Courtship to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
-- William Congreve
%
Coward, n.:
One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
[Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that,
with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Crazee Edeee, his prices are INSANE!!!
%
Creating computer software is always a demanding and painstaking
process -- an exercise in logic, clear expression, and almost fanatical
attention to detail. It requires intelligence, dedication, and an
enormous amount of hard work. But, a certain amount of unpredictable
and often unrepeatable inspiration is what usually makes the difference
between adequacy and excellence.
%
Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for
peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being
ahead of your time when people finally realize you were right, they'll
say it was obvious all along.
-- Alan Ashley-Pitt
%
Creativity is no substitute for knowing what you are doing.
%
Creativity is not always bred in an environment of tranquility;
sometimes you have to squeeze a little to get the paste out of the tube.
%
Credit ... is the only enduring testimonial to man's confidence in man.
-- James Blish
%
CREDITOR:
A man who has a better memory than a debtor.
%
Crenna's Law of Political Accountability:
If you are the first to know about something bad,
you are going to be held responsible for acting on it,
regardless of your formal duties.
%
Crime does not pay... as well as politics.
-- A. E. Neuman
%
Critic, n.:
A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship.
-- Zeuxis
%
Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: they know how it's done, they've
seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
-- Brendan Behan
%
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?
-- Socrates' last words
%
Croll's Query:
If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
%
Cropp's Law:
The amount of work done varies inversely
with the time spent in the office.
%
Crucifixes are sexy because there's a naked man on them.
-- Madonna
%
Cruickshank's Law of Committees:
If a committee is allowed to discuss a bad idea long enough, it
will inevitably decide to implement the idea simply because so
much work has already been done on it.
%
Crusade for Cthulhu! It Found ME!
%
Crush! Kill! Destroy!
%
Cthulhu Cthucks!
%
Cthulhu for President!
(If you're tired of choosing the lesser of two evils.)
%
Cthulhu Saves -- in case He's hungry later.
%
Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
%
Cure the disease and kill the patient.
-- Francis Bacon
%
CURSOR:
One whose program will not run.
-- Robb Russon
%
cursor address, n:
"Hello, cursor!"
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
curtation n. The enforced compression of a string in the fixed-length field
environment.
The problem of fitting extremely variable-length strings such as names,
addresses, and item descriptions into fixed-length records is no trivial
matter. Neglect of the subtle art of curtation has probably alienated more
people than any other aspect of data processing. You order Mozart's "Don
Giovanni" from your record club, and they invoice you $24.95 for MOZ DONG.
The witless mapping of the sublime onto the ridiculous! Equally puzzling is
the curtation that produces the same eight characters, THE BEST, whether you
order "The Best of Wagner", "The Best of Schubert", or "The Best of the Turds".
Similarly, wine lovers buying from computerized wineries twirl their glasses,
check their delivery notes, and inform their friends, "A rather innocent,
possibly overtruncated CAB SAUV 69 TAL." The squeezing of fruit into 10
columns has yielded such memorable obscenities as COX OR PIP. The examples
cited are real, and the curtational methodology which produced them is still
with us.
MOZ DONG n.
Curtation of Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da
Ponte, as performed by the computerized billing ensemble of the Internat'l
Preview Society, Great Neck (sic), N.Y.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
Custer committed Siouxicide.
%
Cut a man's hand when you fight him. He'll freeze, fascinated by the sight
of his own blood. That's when you stick him in the throat.
-- Gerry Youghkins
If you look rather casual with the knife when you flick it open, people
don't like it.
-- Gerry Youghkins
%
Cutler Webster's Law:
There are two sides to every argument, unless a person
is personally involved, in which case there is only one.
%
Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
-- Johnny Hart
%
CYNIC:
Experienced.
%
Cynic, n.:
A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of
plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cynic, n.:
One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced
eye.
%
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why
several of us died of tuberculosis.
-- Jack Handey
%
<Daibashiw> Wasn't EMACS originally developed as a swap memory stresser,
though?
<``Erik> lispos emulator? gotta admit it's well featured, the only thing
it lacks is a decent editor
%
DALLAS:
The city that chose Astroturf to
keep the cheerleaders from grazing.
%
Dallas still lives. God MUST be dead.
%
Dammit Jim, I'm an actor not a doctor.
%
Dammit, man, that's unprofessional! A good bartender laughs anyway!
%
Damn braces.
-- William Blake, "Proverbs of Hell"
%
Damn, I need a Coke!
-- Dr. William DeVries
[after implanting the first artificial human heart]
%
DAMN IT, I GOTTA GET OUTTA HERE!
%
Dare to be naive.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Dark and lonely on a summer night
Kill my landlord,
Kill my landlord.
The watchdog barkin'
Do he bite?
Kill my landlord,
Kill my landlord.
Slip in his window.
Break his neck.
Then his house I start to wreck
Got no reason,
What the heck?
Kill my landlord,
Kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L my landlord!
-- "Images" by Tyrone Green, SNL
%
Darling: the popular form of address used in speaking to a member of the
opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment remember.
-- Oliver Herford
%
Darth Vader! Only you would be so bold!
-- Princess Leia Organa
%
Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
%
DATA:
An accrual of straws on the backs of theories.
%
DATA:
Computerspeak for "information". Properly pronounced
the way Bostonians pronounce the word for a female child.
%
Data is not information;
Information is not knowledge;
Knowledge is not wisdom;
-- Gary Flake
%
Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
Allen Gwinn: "Yours is."
%
David Letterman's "Things we can be proud of as Americans":
* Greatest number of citizens who have actually boarded a UFO
* Many newspapers feature "JUMBLE"
* Hourly motel rates
* Vast majority of Elvis movies made here
* Didn't just give up right away during World War II
like some countries we could mention
* Goatees & Van Dykes thought to be worn only by weenies
* Our well-behaved golf professionals
* Fabulous babes coast to coast
%
David Sarnoff, 1964: "The computer will become the hub of a vast network of
remote data stations and information banks feeding into the machine at
a transmission rate of a billion or more bits of information a
second. Laser channels will vastly increase both data capacity and the
speeds with which it will be transmitted. Eventually, a global
communications network handling voice, data and facsimile will
instantly link man to machine--or machine to machine--by land, air,
underwater, and space circuits. [The computer] will affect man's
ways of thinking, his means of education, his relationship to his physical
and social environment, and it will alter his ways of living...
[Before the end of this century, these forces] will coalesce into what
unquestionably will become the greatest adventure of the human mind."
-- Eugene Lyons, "David Sarnoff" 1966
%
Davis' Law of Traffic Density:
The density of rush-hour traffic is directly proportional to
1.5 times the amount of extra time you allow to arrive on time.
%
Davis's Dictum:
Problems that go away by themselves, come back by themselves.
%
Dawn, n.:
The time when men of reason go to bed.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
%
%DCL-E-MEMBAD, bad memory
-SYSTEM-F-VMSPDGERS, pudding between the ears
%
DEADWOOD:
Anyone in your company who is more senior than you are.
%
Dealing with failure is easy:
Work hard to improve.
Success is also easy to handle:
You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
%
Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation,
all our researches ... point to an average increase of 5.75% per year.
-- C. N. Parkinson
%
Dear Emily:
How can I choose what groups to post in?
-- Confused
Dear Confused:
Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience. After
all, the net exists to give you an audience. Ignore those who suggest you
should only use groups where you think the article is highly appropriate.
Pick all groups where anybody might even be slightly interested.
Always make sure followups go to all the groups. In the rare event
that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure you
expand the list of groups. Never include a "Followup-to:" line in the
header, since some people might miss part of the valuable discussion in
the fringe groups.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Emily:
I collected replies to an article I wrote, and now it's time to
summarize. What should I do?
-- Editor
Dear Editor:
Simply concatenate all the articles together into a big file and post
that. On USENET, this is known as a summary. It lets people read all the
replies without annoying newsreaders getting in the way. Do the same when
summarizing a vote.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Emily:
I recently read an article that said, "reply by mail, I'll summarize."
What should I do?
-- Doubtful
Dear Doubtful:
Post your response to the whole net. That request applies only to
dumb people who don't have something interesting to say. Your postings are
much more worthwhile than other people's, so it would be a waste to reply by
mail.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Emily:
I saw a long article that I wish to rebut carefully, what should
I do?
-- Angry
Dear Angry:
Include the entire text with your article, and include your comments
between the lines. Be sure to post, and not mail, even though your article
looks like a reply to the original. Everybody *loves* to read those long
point-by-point debates, especially when they evolve into name-calling and
lots of "Is too!" -- "Is not!" -- "Is too, twizot!" exchanges.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Emily:
I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I
tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for
his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him fired.
Everybody laughed at me. What can I do?
-- A Concerned Citizen
Dear Concerned:
Go to the daily papers. Most modern reporters are top-notch computer
experts who will understand the net, and your problems, perfectly. They
will print careful, reasoned stories without any errors at all, and surely
represent the situation properly to the public. The public will also all
act wisely, as they are also fully cognizant of the subtle nature of net
society.
Papers never sensationalize or distort, so be sure to point out things
like racism and sexism wherever they might exist. Be sure as well that they
understand that all things on the net, particularly insults, are meant
literally. Link what transpires on the net to the causes of the Holocaust, if
possible. If regular papers won't take the story, go to a tabloid paper --
they are always interested in good stories.
%
Dear Emily:
I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted
to. How about an example?
-- Still Confused
Dear Still:
Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from
the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a
big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin. If not, use news.misc.
The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.
He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to
soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)
You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each
group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders
will only show the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Emily:
Today I posted an article and forgot to include my signature.
What should I do?
-- Forgetful
Dear Forgetful:
Rush to your terminal right away and post an article that says,
"Oops, I forgot to post my signature with that last article. Here
it is."
Since most people will have forgotten your earlier article,
(particularly since it dared to be so boring as to not have a nice, juicy
signature) this will remind them of it. Besides, people care much more
about the signature anyway.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Emily, what about test messages?
-- Concerned
Dear Concerned:
It is important, when testing, to test the entire net. Never test
merely a subnet distribution when the whole net can be done. Also put "please
ignore" on your test messages, since we all know that everybody always skips
a message with a line like that. Don't use a subject like "My sex is female
but I demand to be addressed as male." because such articles are read in depth
by all USEnauts.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Freshman,
You don't know who I am and frankly shouldn't care, but
unknown to you we have something in common. We are both rather
prone to mistakes. I was elected Student Government President by
mistake, and you came to school here by mistake.
%
Dear Lord:
I just want *_o_n_e* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
the other hand", again.
%
Dear Lord: Please make my words sweet and tender, for tomorrow I may
have to eat them.
%
Dear Miss Manners:
My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between
courses, is all right. Which is correct?
Gentle Reader:
For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this principle
of education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning
correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is.
%
Dear Miss Manners:
Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
your face.
Gentle Reader:
Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
your face ...
%
Dear Miss Manners:
I carry a big black umbrella, even if there's just a thirty percent chance of
rain. May I ask a young lady who is a stranger to me to share its protection?
This morning, I was waiting for a bus in comparative comfort, my umbrella
protecting me from the downpour, and noticed an attractive young woman getting
soaked. I have often seen her at my bus stop, although we have never spoken,
and I don't even know her name. Could I have asked her to get under my
umbrella without seeming insulting?
Gentle Reader:
Certainly. Consideration for those less fortunate than you is always proper,
although it would be more convincing if you stopped babbling about how
attractive she is. In order not to give Good Samaritanism a bad name, Miss
Manners asks you to allow her two or three rainy days of unmolested protection
before making your attack.
%
Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part
of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old
will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a
commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as
"Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a
table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always
says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean,
"Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this
complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim
if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a
dead bat?
Answer: Yes.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business signs
to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a word, as in:
WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ITEM'S.
Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand- lettered
small-business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random
words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
Dear Ms. Postnews:
I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What
should I do?
-- Eager Beaver
Dear Eager:
No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people
read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm
posting it. All others please ignore."
This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning
over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective
time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet
maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute
your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call
directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost
as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call!
And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's
money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight
letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp!
Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through,
so post it as many places as you can.
-- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
%
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public
places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers
being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive un-
employment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P.
Sevenoaks
-- Letters To The Editor, The Times of London
%
Death before dishonor.
But neither before breakfast.
%
Death comes on every passing breeze,
He lurks in every flower;
Each season has its own disease,
Its peril -- every hour.
-- Reginald Heber
%
Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in laboratory rats.
%
Death is a spirit leaving a body, sort
of like a shell leaving the nut behind.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
-- R. Geis
%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%
Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.
%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
%
Death is only a state of mind.
Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.
%
Death rays don't kill people, people kill people!
%
Death to all fanatics!
%
DEATH WISH:
The only wish that always comes true, whether or not one wishes it to.
%
Debug is human, de-fix divine.
%
Debugging is anticipated with distaste, performed with reluctance,
and bragged about forever. -- Button at the Boston Computer Museum
%
DEC diagnostics would run on a dead whale.
-- Mel Ferentz
%
Decemba, n: The 12th month of the year.
erra, n: A mistake.
faa, n: To, from, or at considerable distance.
Linder, n: A female name.
memba, n: To recall to the mind; think of again.
New Hampsha, n: A state in the northeast United States.
New Yaak, n: Another state in the northeast United States.
Novemba, n: The 11th month of the year.
Octoba, n: The 10th month of the year.
ova, n: Location above or across a specified position. What the
season is when the Knicks quit playing.
-- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary
%
Decision maker, n.:
The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
before the music stopped.
%
Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really over-
whelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene language may
not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel,
or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants
(unless struck by a boomerang).
-- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
%
Declared guilty... of displaying feelings of an almost human nature.
-- Pink Floyd, "The Wall"
%
Decorate your home. It gives the illusion
that your life is more interesting than it really is.
-- C. Schultz
%
"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory",
quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can
claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed.
-- Randy Davis
%
DEFAULT:
The hardware's, of course.
%
default, n.:
[Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will
come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
Defeat is worse than death because you have to live with defeat.
-- Bill Musselman
%
#define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
#define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
- (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
- (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
-- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
%
Definitions of hardware and software for dummies:
Hardware is what you kick;
Software is what you curse.
%
Deflector shields just came on, Captain.
%
(defun NF (a c)
(cond ((null c) () )
((atom (car c))
(append (list (eval (list 'getchar (list (car c) 'a) (cadr c))))
(nf a (cddr c))))
(t (append (list (implode (nf a (car c)))) (nf a (cdr c))))))
(defun AD (want-job challenging boston-area)
(cond
((or (not (equal want-job 'yes))
(not (equal boston-area 'yes))
(lessp challenging 7)) () )
(t (append (nf (get 'ad 'expr)
'((caaddr 1 caadr 2 car 1 car 1)
(car 5 cadadr 9 cadadr 8 cadadr 9 caadr 4 car 2 car 1)
(car 2 caadr 4)))
(list '851-5071x2661)))))
;;; We are an affirmative action employer.
%
DEJA VU:
French., already seen; unoriginal; trite.
Psychol., The illusion of having previously experienced
something actually being encountered for the first time.
Psychol., The illusion of having previously experienced
something actually being encountered for the first time.
%
Delay is preferable to error.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Delay not, Caesar. Read it instantly.
-- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1
Here is a letter, read it at your leisure.
-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" 5,1
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to I/O system services.]
%
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and
related hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences,
entails dangers that must not be underestimated. Practitioners must take
into account the peculiar effects of these substances, namely their ability
to influence our consciousness, the innermost essence of our being. The
history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that
can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken
for a pleasure drug. Special internal and external advance preparations
are required; with them, an LSD experiment can become a meaningful experience.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
I believe that if people would learn to use LSD's vision-inducing capability
more wisely, under suitable conditions, in medical practice and in conjunction
with meditation, then in the future this problem child could become a wonder
child.
-- Dr. Albert Hoffman
%
Deliberation, n.:
The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
buttered on.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
%
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
-- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest
%
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about
her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad
nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
%
Demand the establishment of the government
in its rightful home at Disneyland.
%
Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered by editors.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Democracy can only be measured on the existence of an opposition.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than
we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-- Senator Soaper
%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
don't think.
%
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who
will get the blame.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
Democracy is also a form of worship.
It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
%
Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
-- Arman de Caillavet, 1913
%
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half
of the people are right more than half of the time.
-- E. B. White
%
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and
deserve to get it good and hard.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Little Book in C major", 1916
%
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Democracy, n:
A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting
or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude
toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward
law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based
upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without
restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license,
agitation, discontent, anarchy.
-- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932),
since withdrawn.
%
Democracy, n:
In which you say what you like and do what you're told.
-- Gerald Barry
The difference between a Democracy and a Dictatorship is that in a
Democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a Dictatorship
you don't have to waste your time voting.
-- Charles Bukowski
%
Democrats buy most of the books that have been banned somewhere.
Republicans form censorship committees and read them as a group.
Republicans consume three-fourths of the rutabaga produced in the USA.
The remainder is thrown out.
Republicans usually wear hats and almost always clean their paint brushes.
Republicans study the financial pages of the newspaper.
Democrats put them in the bottom of the bird cage.
Most of the stuff alongside the road has been thrown out of car
windows by Democrats.
-- Paul Dickson, "The Official Rules"
%
Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
%
Dental health is next to mental health.
%
Dentist, n.:
A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth,
pulls coins out of one's pockets.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Denver, n:
A smallish city located just below the `O' in Colorado.
%
Depart in pieces, i.e., split.
%
Depart not from the path which fate has assigned you.
%
Department chairmen never die, they just lose their faculties.
%
Depend on the rabbit's foot if you will,
but remember, it didn't help the rabbit.
-- R. E. Shay
%
Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the Czar won't see his face.
%
Der Horizont vieler Menschen ist ein Kreis mit Radius Null -
und das nennen sie ihren Standpunkt.
%
design, v:
What you regret not doing later on.
%
Desist from enumerating your fowl
prior to their emergence from the shell.
%
Despising machines to a man,
The Luddites joined up with the Klan,
And ride out by night
In a sheeting of white
To lynch all the robots they can.
-- C. M. and G. A. Maxson
%
Despite all appearances, your boss
is a thinking, feeling, human being.
%
Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will
be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over
the table.
-- The Anarchist Cookbook
%
Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't,
don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.
-- Joseph Heller, "God Knows"
%
Detroit is Cleveland without the glitter.
%
DeVries' Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter,
the one you don't want hits the paper.
%
Dianetics is a milestone for man comparable to his discovery of
fire and superior to his invention of the wheel and the arch.
-- L. Ron Hubbard
%
Dibble's First Law of Sociology:
Some do, some don't.
%
Did I say 2? I lied.
%
Did it ever occur to you that fat chance
and slim chance mean the same thing?
%
Did you ever notice that everyone in favour of birth control
has already been born?
-- Benny Hill
%
Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think
that's how dogs spend their lives.
-- Sue Murphy
%
Did you ever wonder what you'd say to God if He sneezed?
%
Did you hear about the model who sat
on a broken bottle and cut a nice figure?
%
Did you hear that Captain Crunch, Sugar Bear, Tony the Tiger, and
Snap, Crackle and Pop were all murdered recently...
Police suspect the work of a cereal killer!
%
Did you hear that there's a group of South American Indians that worship
the number zero?
Is nothing sacred?
%
Did you hear that two rabbits escaped from the zoo and so far they have
only recaptured 116 of them?
%
Did you know?
EVERY TIME A LOAF OF BREAD IS BAKED,
APPROXIMATELY
150,000,000 YEASTS ARE
KILLED
Come to the award-winning 1987 film,
"The Very Small and Quiet Screams"
-- a cinematic electromicrograph of yeasts being baked.
A must for those who care about yeast, and especially for those who don't.
SPONSORED BY
Brown Anaerobe Rights Coalition (BARC)
Student Bakers for Social Responsibility
Coalition for the ELevation of Life (CELL)
Campus Crusade for Fetal Matters
Defend all life: "From greatest to least, from human to yeast!"
%
Did you know about the -o option of the fortune program? It makes a
selection from a set of offensive and/or obscene fortunes. Why not
try it, and see how offended you are? The -a ("all") option will
select a fortune at random from either the offensive or inoffensive
set, and it is suggested that "fortune -a" is the command that you
should have in your .profile or .cshrc. file.
%
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Did you know that for the price of a 280-Z you can buy two Z-80's?
-- P. J. Plauger
%
Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined
them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction?
%
Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states:
"Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and
squirrel."
-- ihuxw!tommyo
%
Did you know the University of Iowa
closed down after someone stole the book?
%
Did you know....
That no-one ever reads these things?
%
Didja' ever have to make up your mind,
Pick up on one and leave the other behind,
It's not often easy, and it's not often kind,
Didja' ever have to make up your mind?
-- Lovin' Spoonful
%
Didja hear about the dyslexic devil worshiper who sold his soul to Santa?
%
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore
would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore's dying words
%
Die, v.:
To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Diet Mountain Dew has the same pH and density of urine.
-- Newsweek, 31 July, 1989
%
Dieters live life in the fasting lane.
%
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
%
Digital circuits are made from analog parts.
-- Don Vonada
%
Dignity is like a flag.
It flaps in a storm.
-- Roy Mengot
%
Dime is money.
%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term, convertible
only through the use of weird and unnatural conversion factors. Velocity,
for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%
Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off.
%
Dinner suggestion #302 (Hacker's De-lite):
1 tin imported Brisling sardines in tomato sauce
1 pouch Chocolate Malt Carnation Instant Breakfast
1 carton milk
%
Dinosaurs aren't extinct. They've just learned to hide in the trees.
%
Diogenes, having abandoned his search for
truth, is now searching for a good fantasy.
%
Diogenes went to look for an honest lawyer. "How's it going?", someone
asked him, after a few days.
"Not too bad", replied Diogenes. "I still have my lantern."
%
Diplomacy is about surviving until the next century.
Politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon.
-- Sir Humphrey Appleby
%
Diplomacy is the art of letting the other party have things your way.
-- Daniele Vare
%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
-- Wynn Catlin
%
Diplomacy is to do and say, the nastiest thing in the nicest way.
-- Balfour
%
diplomacy, n:
Lying in state.
%
Dirksen's Three Laws of Politics:
1: Get elected.
2: Get re-elected.
3: Don't get mad, get even.
-- Sen. Everett Dirksen
%
disbar, n:
As distinguished from some other bar.
%
Disc space -- the final frontier!
%
Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my
employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely
coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is
non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the
absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.
The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for
the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal,
non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
%
Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be
yours too."
-- Dave Haynie
%
DISCLAIMER:
Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply
an endorsement of Western industrial civilization.
%
Disclose classified information only when a NEED TO KNOW exists.
%
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
%
Disease can be cured; fate is incurable.
-- Chinese proverb
%
Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead.
-- Euripides
%
Disk crisis, please clean up!
%
Disks travel in packs.
%
Disraeli was pretty close: actually, there are Lies, Damn lies, Statistics,
Benchmarks, and Delivery dates.
%
Distance doesn't make you any smaller,
but it does make you part of a larger picture.
%
Distinctive, adj.:
A different color or shape than our competitors.
%
Distress, n.:
A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape
injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any
damage inflicted on the vehicle.
%
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight
acquaintance and without any visible reason.
-- Lord Chesterfield
%
Ditat Deus. (God enriches.)
%
Divorce is a game played by lawyers.
-- Cary Grant
%
Do clones have navels?
%
Do I like getting drunk? Depends on who's doing the drinking.
-- Amy Gorin
%
Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
%
Do Miami a favor. When you leave, take someone with you.
%
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
%
Do more than anyone expects, and pretty soon everyone will expect more.
%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%
Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.
%
Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.
-- Aesop
%
Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome
your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in
a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding
cold and hounds and traps, his race survives. I do not believe any
of them ever committed suicide.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you.
Their tastes may not be the same.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon.
%
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to anger.
%
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
with ketchup.
%
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards,
for they become soggy and hard to light.
Do not throw cigarette butts in the urinal,
for they are subtle and quick to anger.
%
Do not overtax your powers.
%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%
Do not seek death; death will find you.
But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
-- Dag Hammarskjold
%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%
Do not stoop to tie your laces in your neighbor's melon patch.
%
Do not think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.
%
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once --
learn to dread each day as it comes.
-- Donald Kaul
%
Do not underestimate the power of the Farce.
%
Do not use that foreign word "ideals". We have that excellent native
word "lies".
-- Henrik Ibsen, "The Wild Duck"
%
Do not use the blue keys on this terminal.
%
Do not worry about which side your
bread is buttered on: you eat BOTH sides.
%
Do nothing unless you must, and when you must act -- hesitate.
%
Do, or do not; there is no try.
%
Do people know you have freckles everywhere?
%
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
%
Do students of Zen Buddhism do Om-work?
%
Do unto others before they undo you.
%
Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.
-- Aleister Crowley
%
Do what you can to prolong your life,
in the hope that someday you'll learn what it's for.
%
Do you believe in intuition?
No, but I have a strange feeling that someday I will.
%
Do you feel personally responsible for the world food shortage?
Every time you go to the beach, does the tide come in?
Have you ever eaten an entire moose?
Can you see your neck?
Do joggers take laps around you for exercise?
If so, welcome to National Fat Week.
This week we'll eat without guilt, and kick off our membership campaign,
...by force-feeding a box of cornstarch to a skinny person.
-- Garfield
%
Do you guys know what you're doing, or are you just hacking?
%
Do you have lysdexia?
%
Do YOU have redeeming social value?
%
Do you know, I think that Dr. Swift was silly to laugh about Laputa.
I believe it is a mistake to make a mock of people, just because they
think. There are ninety thousand people in this world who do not
think, for every one who does, and these people hate the thinkers
like poison. Even if some thinkers are fanciful, it is wrong to make
fun of them for it. Better to think about cucumbers even, than not
to think at all.
-- T. H. White
%
Do you know Montana?
%
Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education
is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
-- Pete Seeger
%
Do you mean that you not only want a wrong
answer, but a certain wrong answer?
-- Tobaben
%
Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing
between Nixon and the White House.
-- John F. Kennedy, in 1960
%
Do you suffer painful elimination?
-- Don Knuth, "Structured Programming with Gotos"
Do you suffer painful recrimination?
-- Nancy Boxer, "Structured Programming with Come-froms"
Do you suffer painful illumination?
-- Isaac Newton, "Optics"
Do you suffer painful hallucination?
-- Don Juan, cited by Carlos Casteneda
%
Do you think that illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
%
Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he
just whipped out a quarter?
-- Steven Wright
%
Do you think your mother and I should have lived
comfortably so long together if ever we had been married?
%
Do you want to know what's ahead for you, in your happiness at home,
your business success? Here's a telling test: Look in the mirror. Is
your skin smooth and lovely, your hair gleaming, your make-up glamorous?
Are you slender enough for your height? Do you stand erect, confident?
Yes? Then you are on your way to success as a woman.
-- Ladies Home Journal, 1947 advertisement
%
Do your otters do the shimmy?
Do they like to shake their tails?
Do your wombats sleep in tophats?
Is your garden full of snails?
%
Do your part to help preserve life on
Earth -- by trying to preserve your own.
%
Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with
little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.
-- Roy G. Blount, Jr.
%
Documentation:
Instructions translated from Swedish by Japanese for English
speaking persons.
%
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-- Dick Brandon
%
Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
be good because the programmers hate it so much.
%
Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted?
Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student?
Does a good father allow a single child to starve?
Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle?
%
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
%
Dogs just don't seem to be able to tell the difference between important people
and the rest of us.
%
Doin' it in the dark, down in Rock Creek Park.
%
Doing gets it done.
%
Don
Ameche: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill!
Was she pretty?
W.C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have
to sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia.
Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
W.C.: It's almost impossible.
-- W.C. Fields, "The Further Adventures of Larson E.
Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
%
Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
%
Don't abandon hope.
Your Captain Midnight decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
%
Don't assume that every sad-eyed woman has loved and lost -- she may
have got him.
%
Don't be concerned, it will not harm you,
It's only me pursuing something I'm not sure of,
Across my dreams, with neptive wonder,
I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love.
%
Don't be humble, you're not that great.
-- Golda Meir
%
Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
%
Don't be overly suspicious where it's not warranted.
%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%
Don't buy a landslide. I don't want to have to pay for one more vote
than I have to.
-- Joseph P. Kennedy, on JFK's election strategy
%
Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
-- Joe Cointment
%
Don't compare floating point numbers solely for equality.
%
Don't confuse things that need action
with those that take care of themselves.
%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%
Don't crush that dwarf, hand me the pliers!
-- Firesign Theatre
%
Don't despair; your ideal lover is waiting for you around the corner.
%
Don't despise your poor relations, they may become suddenly rich one day.
-- Josh Billings
%
Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time.
-- Lt. Col. Ollie North
%
Don't drink when you drive -- you might hit a bump and spill it.
%
Don't drop acid -- take it pass/fail.
-- Seen in a Ladies Room at Harvard
%
Don't eat yellow snow.
%
Don't ever slam a door; you might want to go back.
%
Don't everyone thank me at once!
-- Han Solo
%
Don't expect people to keep in step--
it's hard enough just staying in line.
%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%
Don't force it, get a larger hammer.
-- Anthony
%
Don't get even, get odd.
%
Don't get mad, get even.
-- Joseph P. Kennedy
Don't get even, get jewelry.
-- Anonymous
%
Don't get mad, get interest.
%
Don't get stuck in a closet -- wear yourself out.
%
Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they
can be terribly misleading. Debug only code.
-- Dave Storer
%
Don't get to bragging.
%
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.
The world owes you nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain
%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%
Don't go to bed with no price on your head.
-- Baretta
%
Don't guess - check your security regulations.
%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%
Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them.
%
Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.
%
Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
%
Don't I know you?
%
Don't interfere with the stranger's style.
%
Don't just eat a hamburger; eat the HELL out of it.
-- J. R. "Bob" Dobbs
%
Don't kid yourself. Little is relevant, and nothing lasts forever.
%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%
Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
%
Don't know what time I'll be back, Mom.
Probably soon after she throws me out.
%
Don't let go of what you've got hold of,
until you have hold of something else.
-- First Rule of Wing Walking
%
Don't let nobody tell you what you cannot do;
don't let nobody tell you what's impossible for you;
don't let nobody tell you what you got to do,
or you'll never know ... what's on the other side of the rainbow...
remember, if you don't follow your dreams,
you'll never know what's on the other side of the rainbow...
-- melba moore, "the other side of the rainbow"
%
Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.
%
Don't let your status become too quo!
%
Don't look back, the lemmings might be gaining on you.
%
Don't look now, but the man in the moon is laughing at you.
%
Don't look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder.
%
Don't lose
Your head
To gain a minute
You need your head
Your brains are in it.
-- Burma Shave
%
Don't make a big deal out of everything; just deal with everything.
%
Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper.
-- Scottish Proverb
%
Don't mind him; politicians always sound like that.
%
Don't patch bad code -- rewrite it.
-- "The Elements of Programming Style", Kernighan and Plauger
%
Don't plan any hasty moves.
You'll be evicted soon anyway.
%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today because
if you do it today, you can do it again tomorrow.
%
Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
Don't quit now, we might just as well
lock the door and throw away the key.
%
Don't read any sky-writing for the next two weeks.
%
Don't read everything you believe.
%
Don't relax! It's only your tension that's holding you together.
%
Don't remember what you can infer.
-- Harry Tennant
%
Don't say "yes" until I finish talking.
-- Darryl F. Zanuck
%
Don't shoot until you're sure you both aren't on the same side.
%
Don't shout for help at night. You might wake your neighbors.
-- Stanislaw J. Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
%
Don't smoke the next cigarette. Repeat.
%
Don't speak about Time, until you have spoken to him.
%
Don't steal... the IRS hates competition!
%
Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.
Cheat.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Don't stop to stomp ants when the elephants are stampeding.
%
Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
-- "Brazil"
%
Don't sweat it -- it's only ones and zeros.
-- P. Skelly
%
Don't take a nickel, just hand them your business card.
-- Richard Daley, advising on the safe enjoyment of graft
%
Don't take life seriously, you'll never get out alive.
%
Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum,
sodomy and the lash.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
%
Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
-- James J. Ling
%
Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
get more wax!!
%
Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good.
I know better. The things I worry about don't happen.
-- Watchman Examiner
%
Don't tell me what you dream'd last night for I've been reading Freud.
%
Don't try to have the last word -- you might get it.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal.
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox
%
Don't vote - it only encourages them!
%
Don't wake me up too soon...
Gonna take a ride across the moon...
You and me.
%
Don't worry. Life's too long.
-- Vincent Sardi, Jr.
%
Don't worry -- the brontosaurus is slow, stupid, and placid.
%
Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
avoiding you.
-- The Old Farmer's Almanac
%
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas
are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken
%
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today.
It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schultz
%
Don't Worry, Be Happy.
-- Meher Baba
%
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac,
you can always take something for it.
%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.
They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%
Don't worry so loud, your roommate can't think.
%
Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
%
Don't you wish that all the people who sincerely
want to help you could agree with each other?
%
Don't you wish you had more energy... or less ambition?
%
Dope will get you through times of no money better that money will get
you through times of no dope.
-- Gilbert Shelton
%
Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an
awful lot of talking, don't they?
-- Judy Garland and Ray Bolger, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
Double!
%
Double Bucky, you're the one,
You make my keyboard so much fun,
Double Bucky, an additional bit or two, (Vo-vo-de-o)
Control and meta, side by side,
Augmented ASCII, 9 bits wide!
Double Bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh, I sure wish that I,
Had a couple of bits more!
Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four.
Double Double Bucky! Double Bucky left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double Bucky, I'd like a whole word of,
Double Bucky, I'm happy I heard of,
Double Bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
-- to Niklaus Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit
be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use
by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"]
%
double-blind Experiment, n:
An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied
by a strong belief in the tooth fairy.
%
Doubt is a not a pleasant mental state, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
-- Voltaire
%
Doubt isn't the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.
-- Paul Tillich, German theologian
%
Down to the Banana Republics,
Down to the tropical sun.
Go the expatriated Americans,
Hoping to find some fun.
Some of them go for the sailing,
Caught by the lure of the sea.
Trying to find what is ailing,
Living in the land of the free.
Some of them are running from lovers,
Leaving no forward address.
Some of them are running tons of ganja,
Some are running from the IRS.
Late at night you will find them,
In the cheap hotels and bars.
Hustling the senoritas,
While they dance beneath the stars.
-- Jimmy Buffet, "Banana Republics"
%
Down with the categorical imperative!
%
Dow's Law:
In a hierarchical organization,
the higher the level, the greater the confusion.
%
Dozens of bears are found dead in Alaska and Canada every summer, killed
by blood lost to the voracious mosquito. The estimated life-expectancy
of a naked man on the tundra in summer is about 15 minutes. In that
time, approximately 250,000 mosquitoes would have drawn enough blood to
kill him.
-- Gus McLeavy, "Day-by-Day Trivia Almanac"
%
Dr. Fritzkee's Lucky Astrology Diet
The problem with the diets of today is that most women who do achieve
that magic weight, seventy-six pounds, are still fat. Dr. Fritzkee's
Lucky Astrology Diet is a sure-fire method of reducing with the added
luxury that you never feel hungry.
Here's how the diet works:
FOODS ALLOWED
First Month: One egg
Second Month: A raisin
Third Month: Pumpkin pie with whipped cream and chocolate sauce.
If after the third month you haven't gotten to your dream weight, try
lopping off parts of your body until those scales tip just right for you.
%
Dr. Jekyll had something to Hyde.
%
Dr. Livingston?
Dr. Livingston I. Presume?
%
Drakenberg's Discovery:
If you can't seem to find your glasses,
it's probably because you don't have them on.
%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%
Dreams are free, but there's a small charge for alterations.
%
Dreams are free, but you get soaked on the connect time.
%
Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
The first bug to hit a clean windshield
lands directly in front of your eyes.
%
Drilling for oil is boring.
%
Drink and dance and laugh and lie
Love, the reeling midnight through
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
-- Dorothy Parker, "The Flaw in Paganism"
%
Drink Canada Dry! You might not succeed, but it *_i_s* fun trying.
%
Drinking coffee for instant relaxation? That's like drinking alcohol for
instant motor skills.
-- Marc Price
%
Drinking is not a spectator sport.
-- Jim Brosnan
%
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin
with, that it's compounding a felony.
-- Robert Benchley
%
Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love at all seasons, madam:
that is all there is to distinguish us from the other animals.
-- Pierre de Beaumarchais, "Le Marriage de Figaro"
%
Drive defensively, buy a tank.
%
Driving in Texas is simple. For the first 100 miles you swerve to
avoid jackrabbits. For the second 100 miles you hit whatever
jackrabbits get in the way. After that you chase off into the
brush after them.
%
Driving through a Swiss city one day, Alfred Hitchcock suddenly pointed out
of the car window and said, "That is the most frightening sight I have ever
seen." His companion was surprised to see nothing more alarming than a
priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the child's shoulder.
"Run, little boy," cried Hitchcock, leaning out of the car. "Run for your
life!"
%
Drop that pickle!
%
DROP THE DAMN BEAR!!!
-- The Adventurer
%
Drop the vase and it will become a Ming of the past.
-- The Adventurer
%
drug, n:
A substance that, when injected into a rat, produces a scientific
paper.
%
Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!
%
Drunks are rarely amusing unless they know some good songs and lose a
lot a poker.
-- Karyl Roosevelt
%
Ducharme's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
%
Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%
Duckies are fun!
%
Ducks? What ducks??
%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side,
and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
-- Carl Zwanzig
%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the
production of great leaders has been discontinued.
%
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your
fate and captain of your soul.
%
Due to lack of disk space, this fortune database has been
discontinued.
%
Dungeons and Dragons is just a lot of Saxon Violence.
%
During almost fifteen centuries the legal establishment of Christianity has
been upon trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places,
pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity,;
in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
-- James Madison
%
During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po ~y
oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o
%
During the Reagan-Mondale debates:
Q: "Do you feel that a person's age affects his ability to
perform as president?"
Reagan: "I refuse to make an issue out of my opponent's youth and
inexperience."
%
During the voyage of life, remember to keep an eye out for a
fair wind; batten down during a storm; hail all passing ships;
and fly your colors proudly.
%
Dustin Farnum: Why, yesterday, I had the audience glued to their seats!
Oliver Herford: Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!
-- Brian Herbert, "Classic Comebacks"
%
Duty, n:
What one expects from others.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. My advice to you is to have
nothing whatever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maughm, his last words
%
Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.
-- Actor Edmond Gween, on his deathbed
%
Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.
-- Woody Allen
%
E = MC ** 2 +- 3db
%
E Pluribus UNIX.
%
Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.
%
Each new user of a new system uncovers a new class of bugs.
-- Kernighan
%
Each of these cults correspond to one of the two antagonists in the age of
Reformation. In the realm of the Apple Macintosh, as in Catholic Europe,
worshipers peer devoutly into screens filled with "icons." All is sound and
imagery and Appledom. Even words look like decorative filigrees in exotic
typefaces. The greatest icon of all, the inviolable Apple itself, stands in
the dominate position at the upper-left corner of the screen. A central
corporate headquarters decrees the form of all rites and practices.
Infallible doctrine issues from one executive officer whose selection occurs
in a sealed board room. Should anyone in his curia question his powers, the
offender is excommunicated into outer darkness. The expelled heretic founds
a new company, mutters obscurely of the coming age and the next computer,
then disappears into silence, taking his stockholders with him. The mother
company forbids financial competition as sternly as it stifles ideological
competition; if you want to use computer programs that conform to Apple's
orthodoxy, you must buy a computer made and sold by Apple itself.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
%
Each of us bears his own Hell.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
Each person has the right to take part in the management of public affairs
in his country, provided he has prior experience, a will to succeed, a
university degree, influential parents, good looks, a curriculum vitae, two
3 X 4 snapshots, and a good tax record.
%
Each person has the right to take the subway.
%
Eagleson's Law:
Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is
an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
%
EARL GREY PROFILES
NAME: Jean-Luc Perriwinkle Picard
OCCUPATION: Starship Big Cheese
AGE: 94
BIRTHPLACE: Paris, Terra Sector
EYES: Grey
SKIN: Tanned
HAIR: Not much
LAST MAGAZINE READ:
Lobes 'n' Probes, the Ferengi-Betazoid Sex Quarterly
TEA: Earl Grey. Hot.
EARL GREY NEVER VARIES.
%
Earl Wiener, 55, a University of Miami professor of management
science, telling the Airline Pilots Association (in jest) about
21st century aircraft:
"The crew will consist of one pilot and a dog. The pilot will
nurture and feed the dog. The dog will be there to bite the
pilot if he touches anything.
-- Fortune, Sept. 26, 1988
%
Early to bed and early to rise and you'll
be groggy when everyone else is wide awake.
%
Early to rise and early to bed makes
a man healthy and wealthy and dead.
-- James Thurber
%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%
Earth Destroyed by Solar Flare -- film clips at eleven.
%
/earth: file system full.
%
/Earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
%
Earth is a beta site.
%
Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
-- Jeff Berner
%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the
cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of
the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this
means the puzzle is solved.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Easy come and easy go,
some call me easy money,
Sometimes life is full of laughs,
and sometimes it ain't funny
You may think that I'm a fool
and sometimes that is true,
But I'm goin' to heaven in a flash of fire,
with or without you.
-- Hoyt Axton
%
Eat as much as you like -- just don't swallow it.
-- Harry Secombe's diet
%
Eat drink and be merry! Tomorrow you may be in Utah.
%
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet.
%
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work.
%
Eat one live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse
will happen to you the rest of the day.
[Well, actually, to either of you... Ed.]
%
Eat right, stay fit, and die anyway.
%
Eat the rich, the poor are tough and stringy.
%
Eating chocolate is like being in love without the aggravation.
%
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
economics, n.:
Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J.K. Galbraith.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Economies of scale:
The notion that bigger is better. In particular, that if you want
a certain amount of computer power, it is much better to buy one
biggie than a bunch of smallies. Accepted as an article of faith
by people who love big machines and all that complexity. Rejected
as an article of faith by those who love small machines and all
those limitations.
%
economist, n:
Someone who's good with figures, but doesn't have enough
personality to become an accountant.
%
Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would
turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't.
-- Robert Orben
%
Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
-- Fred Allen
%
Editing is a rewording activity.
%
Education and religion are two things not regulated by supply and
demand. The less of either the people have, the less they want.
-- Charlotte Observer, 1897
%
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to
time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"
%
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
-- Daniel J. Boorstin
%
Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
-- Irwin Edman
%
Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
-- B. F. Skinner
%
Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead
to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters
of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with
royal-blue chickens.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
-- Bullwinkle Moose
%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
the "nog" comes from.
To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in
season, eggs...
%
Ego sum ens omnipotens
%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature
to relieve the pain of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks
%
Egotism is the anesthetic which numbs the pain of stupidity.
%
Egotism, n:
Doing the New York Times crossword puzzle with a pen.
%
Egotist, n.:
A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
egrep -n '^[a-z].*\(' $ | sort -t':' +2.0
%
Ehrman's Commentary:
1. Things will get worse before they get better.
2. Who said things would get better?
%
...eighty years later he could still recall with the young pang of his
original joy his falling in love with Ada.
-- Nabokov
%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because
God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software
engineer.
-- Fred Brooks
%
Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped.
-- Groucho Marx' last words
%
Elbonics, v:
The actions of two people maneuvering for one
armrest in a movie theatre.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard and waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal, finding some code that will
make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Hacker MacKensie
Writing the code for a program that no one will run
It's nearly done
Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's
nobody there.
What does he care?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
%
ELECTRIC JELL-O
2 boxes JELL-O brand gelatin 2 packages Knox brand unflavored gelatin
2 cups fruit (any variety) 2+ cups water
1/2 bottle Everclear brand grain alcohol
Mix JELL-O and Knox gelatin into 2 cups of boiling water. Stir 'til
fully dissolved.
Pour hot mixture into a flat pan. (JELL-O molds won't work.)
Stir in grain alcohol instead of usual cold water. Remove any congealing
glops of slime. (Alcohol has an unusual effect on excess JELL-O.)
Pour in fruit to desired taste, and to absorb any excess alcohol.
Mix in some cold water to dilute the alcohol and make it easier to eat for
the faint of heart.
Refrigerate overnight to allow mixture to fully harden. (About 8-12 hours.)
Cut into squares and enjoy!
WARNING:
Keep ingredients away from open flame. Not recommended for
children under eight years of age.
%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%
Electrocution, n:
Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%
Elegance and truth are inversely related.
-- Becker's Razor
%
Elephant, n:
A mouse built to government specifications.
%
Elevators smell different to midgets.
%
Eleventh Law of Acoustics:
In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between
frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they
are all merely transforms of one another. This combined with
minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct
compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can
lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost. However,
of course, this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
%
Eli and Bessie went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Bessie nudged Eli.
"Please be so kindly and close the window. It's cold outside!"
Half asleep, Eli murmured,
"Nu ... so if I'll close the window, will it be warm outside?"
%
Elliptic paraboloids for sale.
%
Elliptical, n:
The feel of a kiss.
%
Eloquence is logic on fire.
%
Elwood: What kind of music do you get here ma'am?
Barmaid: Why, we get both kinds of music, Country and Western.
%
Emacs, n:
A slow-moving parody of a text editor.
%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do
what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them
for it.
%
Encyclopedia for sale by father.
Son knows everything.
%
Encyclopedia Salesmen:
Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police
and tell them your house is being burgled.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Endless Loop: n. see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n. see Endless Loop.
-- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
%
Endless the world's turn, endless the sun's spinning
Endless the quest;
I turn again, back to my own beginning,
And here, find rest.
%
Enemy -- SP (Suppressive Person) Order. Fair Game. May be deprived of
property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline
of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed.
-- L. Ron Hubbard, "Fair Game Doctrine"
%
Engineering: "How will this work?"
Science: "Why will this work?"
Management: "When will this work?"
Liberal Arts: "Do you want fries with that?"
%
English literature's performing flea.
-- Sean O'Casey on P. G. Wodehouse
%
Engram, n:
1. The physical manifestation of human memory -- "the engram."
2. A particular memory in physical form. [Usage note: this term is no longer
in common use. Prior to Wilson and Magruder's historic discovery, the nature
of the engram was a topic of intense speculation among neuroscientists,
psychologists, and even computer scientists. In 1994 Professors M. R. Wilson
and W. V. Magruder, both of Mount St. Coax University in Palo Alto, proved
conclusively that the mammalian brain is hardwired to interpret a set of
thirty seven genetically transmitted cooperating TECO macros. Human memory
was shown to reside in 1 million Q-registers as Huffman coded uppercase-only
ASCII strings. Interest in the engram has declined substantially since that
time.]
-- New Century Unabridged English Dictionary,
3rd edition, 2007 A.D.
%
enhance, v:
To tamper with an image, usually to its detriment.
%
Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May.
%
Enjoy yourself while you're still old.
%
Entrepreneur, n:
A high-rolling risk taker who would rather
be a spectacular failure than a dismal success.
%
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
%
Entropy requires no maintenance.
-- Markoff Chaney
%
Envy is a pain of mind that successful men cause their neighbors.
-- Onasander
%
Envy, n:
Wishing you'd been born with an unfair advantage,
instead of having to try and acquire one.
%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists
that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking.
-- Jerome Lettvin
%
Epperson's law:
When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
something his wife can beat him at.
%
Equal bytes for women.
%
Ere the cock crows thrice one of you will betray me.
-- Early Jewish Resistance Leader
%
Ernest asks Frank how long he has been working for the company.
"Ever since they threatened to fire me."
%
Error in operator: add beer
%
Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven
Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Eschew obfuscation.
%
Established technology tends to persist in the face of new technology.
-- G. Blaauw, one of the designers of System 360
%
E.T. GO HOME!!! (And take your Smurfs with you.)
%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
-- Woody Allen
%
Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
-- Tom Stoppard
%
Etiquette is for those with no breeding;
fashion for those with no taste.
%
Etymology, n:
Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
were hard for the public to believe. The term 'etymology' was
formed from the Latin 'etus' ("eaten"), the root 'mal' ("bad"),
and 'logy' ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are
hard to swallow."
-- Mike Kellen
%
Euch ist becannt, was wir beduerfen;
Wir wollen stark Getraenke schluerfen.
-- Goethe, "Faust"
%
Eudaemonic research proceeded with the casual mania peculiar to this part of
the world. Nude sunbathing on the back deck was combined with phone calls to
Advanced Kinetics in Costa Mesa, American Laser Systems in Goleta, Automation
Industries in Danbury, Connecticut, Arenberg Ultrasonics in Jamaica Plain,
Massachusetts, and Hewlett Packard in Sunnyvale, California, where Norman
Packard's cousin, David, presided as chairman of the board. The trick was to
make these calls at noon, in the hope that out-to-lunch executives would return
them at their own expense. Eudaemonic Enterprises, for all they knew, might be
a fast-growing computer company branching out of the Silicon Valley. Sniffing
the possibility of high-volume sales, these executives little suspected that
they were talking on the other end of the line to a naked physicist crazed
over roulette.
-- Thomas Bass, "The Eudaemonic Pie"
%
Eureka!
-- Archimedes
%
Even a blind pig stumbles upon a few acorns.
%
Even a cabbage may look at a king.
%
Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.
%
Even a man who is pure at heart,
And says his prayers at night
Can become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms,
And the moon is full and bright.
-- The Wolf Man, 1941
%
Even God cannot change the past.
-- Joseph Stalin
%
Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.
-- Menander
%
Even if you do learn to speak correct
English, whom are you going to speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow
%
Even if you persuade me, you won't persuade me.
-- Aristophanes
%
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
%
Even in the moment of our earliest kiss,
When sighed the straitened bud into the flower,
Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this;
And that I knew, though not the day and hour.
Too season-wise am I, being country-bred,
To tilt at autumn or defy the frost:
Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did,
I say with them, "What's out tonight is lost."
I only hoped, with the mild hope of all
Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree,
A fairer summer and a later fall
Than in these parts a man is apt to see,
And sunny clusters ripened for the wine:
I tell you this across the blackened vine.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Even in the Moment of
Our Earliest Kiss", 1931
%
Even moderation ought not to be practiced to excess.
%
Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only two cents a
day.
%
Events are not affected, they develop.
-- Sri Aurobindo
%
Ever feel like life was a game and you had the wrong instruction book?
%
Ever feel like you're the head pin on life's
bowling alley, and everyone's rolling strikes?
%
Ever get the feeling that the world's
on tape and one of the reels is missing?
-- Rich Little
%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are
never too busy to tell you just how busy they are?
%
Ever notice that the word "therapist" breaks down into "the rapist"?
Simple coincidence?
Maybe...
%
Ever Onward! Ever Onward!
That's the sprit that has brought us fame.
We're big but bigger we will be,
We can't fail for all can see, that to serve humanity
Has been our aim.
Our products now are known in every zone.
Our reputation sparkles like a gem.
We've fought our way thru
And new fields we're sure to conquer, too
For the Ever Onward IBM!
-- Ever Onward, from the 1940 IBM Songbook
%
Ever Onward! Ever Onward!
We're bound for the top to never fall,
Right here and now we thankfully
Pledge sincerest loyalty
To the corporation that's the best of all
Our leaders we revere and while we're here,
Let's show the world just what we think of them!
So let us sing men -- Sing men
Once or twice, then sing again
For the Ever Onward IBM!
-- Ever Onward, from the 1940 IBM Songbook
%
Ever since I was a young boy,
I've hacked the ARPA net,
From Berkeley down to Rutgers, He's on my favorite terminal,
Any access I could get, He cats C right into foo,
But ain't seen nothing like him, His disciples lead him in,
On any campus yet, And he just breaks the root,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid, Always has full SYS-PRIV's,
Sure sends a mean packet. Never uses lint,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
Sure sends a mean packet.
He's a UNIX wizard,
There has to be a twist.
The UNIX wizard's got Ain't got no distractions,
Unlimited space on disk. Can't hear no whistles or bells,
How do you think he does it? Can't see no message flashing,
I don't know. Types by sense of smell,
What makes him so good? Those crazy little programs,
The proper bit flags set,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
Sure sends a mean packet.
-- UNIX Wizard
%
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."
All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with
spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about:
Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please
take her right now. No. How about: Would you like to take something?
My wife is available. No. How about ..."
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
Ever wonder if taxation without representation might have been cheaper?
%
Ever wonder why fire engines are red?
Because newspapers are read too.
Two and Two is four.
Four and four is eight.
Eight and four is twelve.
There are twelve inches in a ruler.
Queen Mary was a ruler.
Queen Mary was a ship.
Ships sail the sea.
There are fishes in the sea.
Fishes have fins.
The Fins fought the Russians.
Russians are red.
Fire engines are always rush'n.
Therefore fire engines are red.
%
Ever wondered about the origins of the term "bugs" as applied to computer
technology? U.S. Navy Capt. Grace Murray Hopper has firsthand explanation.
The 74-year-old captain, who is still on active duty, was a pioneer in
computer technology during World War II. At the C.W. Post Center of Long
Island University, Hopper told a group of Long Island public school adminis-
trators that the first computer "bug" was a real bug--a moth. At Harvard
one August night in 1945, Hopper and her associates were working on the
"granddaddy" of modern computers, the Mark I. "Things were going badly;
there was something wrong in one of the circuits of the long glass-enclosed
computer," she said. "Finally, someone located the trouble spot and, using
ordinary tweezers, removed the problem, a two-inch moth. From then on, when
anything went wrong with a computer, we said it had bugs in it." Hopper
said that when the veracity of her story was questioned recently, "I referred
them to my 1945 log book, now in the collection of the Naval Surface Weapons
Center, and they found the remains of that moth taped to the page in
question."
[actually, the term "bug" had even earlier usage in
regard to problems with radio hardware. Ed.]
%
Everlasting peace will come to the world when the last man has slain
the last but one.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%
Every cloud engenders not a storm.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
Every cloud has a silver lining;
you should have sold it, and bought titanium.
%
Every country has the government it deserves.
-- Joseph De Maistre
%
Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
%
Every day it's the same thing -- variety. I want something different.
%
Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
Every dog has its day, but the nights belong to the pussycats.
%
Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this
woman and stop her.
%
Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one
idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's
sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two
highly-motivated, caustic twits.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
%
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
%
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
color"], that does not exist.
%
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
-- Frank Moore Colby
%
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
%
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
-- Don Vonada
%
Every love's the love before
In a duller dress.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Summary"
%
Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95.
%
Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended,
or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar.
Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk
only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other
subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his
own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured
by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to
philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted,
but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find
in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.
-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
%
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
Every man takes the limits of his own field
of vision for the limits of the world.
-- Schopenhauer
%
Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich
and powerful know that he is.
-- Jean Anouilh, "The Lark"
%
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect
that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers
and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the
essential death in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural
inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued
forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
-- Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William
%
Every man who is high up likes to think that he has done
it all himself, and the wife smiles and lets it go at that.
-- Barrie
%
Every morning, I get up and look through the "Forbes" list of the
richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
-- Robert Orben
%
Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster
than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle: when the sun comes
up, you'd better be running.
%
Every morning is a Smirnoff morning.
%
Every night my prayers I say,
And get my dinner every day;
And every day that I've been good,
I get an orange after food.
The child that is not clean and neat,
With lots of toys and things to eat,
He is a naughty child, I'm sure--
Or else his dear papa is poor.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
%
Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
%
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
Every one says that politicians lie all the time, and that just isn't so!
But you do have to understand body language to know when they're lying and
when they aren't.
When a politician rubs his nose, he isn't lying.
When a politician tugs on his ear, he isn't lying.
When a politician scratches his collar bone, he isn't lying.
When his mouth starts moving, that's when he's lying!
%
Every paper published in a respectable journal should have a preface by
the author stating why he is publishing the article, and what value he
sees in it. I have no hope that this practice will ever be adopted.
-- Morris Kline
%
Every path has its puddle.
%
Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have
drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program
can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
%
Every program has (at least) two purposes:
the one for which it was written and another for which it wasn't.
%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%
Every silver lining has a cloud around it.
%
Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper ... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door. Now all you have to do is
bend a disk.
-- A member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
commenting on the benefits of using computers in support
of their movement.
%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%
Every successful person has had failures
but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success.
%
Every suicide is a solution to a problem.
-- Jean Baechler
%
Every time I look at you I am more convinced of Darwin's theory.
%
Every time I lose weight, it finds me again!
%
Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
%
Every time you manage to close the door on
Reality, it comes in through the window.
%
Every why hath a wherefore.
-- William Shakespeare, "A Comedy of Errors"
%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett
%
Every young man should have a hobby: learning how to handle money is
the best one.
-- Jack Hurley
%
Everybody but Sam had signed up for a new company pension plan that
called for a small employee contribution. The company was paying all
the rest. Unfortunately, 100% employee participation was needed;
otherwise the plan was off. Sam's boss and his fellow workers pleaded
and cajoled, but to no avail. Sam said the plan would never pay off.
Finally the company president called Sam into his office.
"Sam," he said, "here's a copy of the new pension plan and here's
a pen. I want you to sign the papers. I'm sorry, but if you don't sign,
you're fired. As of right now."
Sam signed the papers immediately.
"Now," said the president, "would you mind telling me why you
couldn't have signed earlier?"
"Well, sir," replied Sam, "nobody explained it to me quite so
clearly before."
%
Everybody has something to conceal.
-- Humphrey Bogart
%
Everybody is given the same amount of hormones, at birth, and
if you want to use yours for growing hair, that's fine with me.
%
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
-- Dykstra
%
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their
fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the
good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay
poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes. Everybody knows.
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everybody knows the captain
lied. Everybody got this broken feeling like their father or their dog
just died.
Everybody talking to their pockets. Everybody wants a box of chocolates
and long stem rose. Everybody knows.
Everybody knows that you love me, baby. Everybody knows that you really
do. Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or
two. Everybody knows you've been discreet, but there were so many people
you just had to meet without your clothes. And everybody knows.
And everybody knows it's now or never. Everybody knows that it's me or you.
And everybody knows that you live forever when you've done a line or two.
Everybody knows the deal is rotten: Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
for you ribbons and bows. And everybody knows.
-- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"
%
Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money.
-- Arthur Miller
%
Everybody needs a little love sometime;
stop hacking and fall in love!
%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had
to be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers.
%
Everyone complains of his memory, no one of his judgment.
%
Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.
%
Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to
realize it.
%
Everyone is entitled to my opinion.
%
Everyone is in the best seat.
-- John Cage
%
Everyone is more or less mad on one point.
-- Rudyard Kipling
%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what _d_o_e_s exist. Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Everyone talks about apathy, but no one _d_o_e_s anything about it.
%
Everyone wants results, but no one is willing to do what it takes
to get them.
-- Dirty Harry
%
Everyone was born right-handed.
Only the greatest overcome it.
%
Everyone who comes in here wants three things:
1. They want it quick.
2. They want it good.
3. They want it cheap.
I tell 'em to pick two and call me back.
-- sign on the back wall of a small printing company
%
Everyone's in a high place when you're on your knees.
%
Everything bows to success, even grammar.
%
Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous".
%
Everything ends badly. Otherwise it wouldn't end.
%
Everything I like is either illegal, immoral or fattening.
-- Alexander Woollcott
%
Everything in this book may be wrong.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group
to which, unfortunately, no one we know belongs.
%
Everything is possible. Pass the word.
-- Rita Mae Brown, "Six of One"
%
Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being
that a belch is more satisfying.
-- Ingmar Bergman
%
Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about
something you know.
-- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
%
Everything might be different in the present
if only one thing had been different in the past.
%
Everything new stalls because there is precedence for the old.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Everything takes longer, costs more, and is less useful.
-- Erwin Tomash
%
Everything that can be invented has been invented.
-- Charles Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899
%
Everything that you know is wrong, but you can be straightened out.
%
Everything will be just tickety-boo today.
%
Everything you know is wrong!
%
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that
rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.
-- Erwin Knoll
%
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
straight lines.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Everything's great in this good old world;
(This is the stuff they can always use.)
God's in his heaven, the hill's dew-pearled;
(This will provide for baby's shoes.)
Hunger and War do not mean a thing;
Everything's rosy where'er we roam;
Hark, how the little birds gaily sing!
(This is what fetches the bacon home.)
-- Dorothy Parker, "The Far Sighted Muse"
%
Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My
opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller
that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
-- Flannery O'Connor
%
Everywhere you go you'll see them searching,
Everywhere you turn you'll feel the pain,
Everyone is looking for the answer,
Well look again.
-- Moody Blues, "Lost in a Lost World"
%
Evil is that which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil
of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Evolution is a million line computer
program falling into place by accident.
%
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun. At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can
doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact. That all present
life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is
as firmly established as Copernican cosmology. Biologists differ only with
respect to theories about how the process operates.
-- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life"
%
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for
even the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
-- C. C. Colton
%
Example is not the main thing in influencing others.
It is the only thing.
-- Albert Schweitzer
%
Excellent day for drinking heavily.
Spike the office water cooler.
%
Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%
Exceptions prove the rule, and wreck the budget.
-- Miller
%
Excerpt from a conversation between a customer support person and a
customer working for a well-known military-affiliated research lab:
Support: "You're not our only customer, you know."
Customer: "But we're one of the few with tactical nuclear weapons."
%
Excerpt from a DEC field service document:
....
- none of these should have made it to customers. BUT you could loosen the
screws and lift system board at fan end while powering on to see if OCP
comes up - this is not recommended unless you have three hands.
%
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%
Excessive login messages is a sure sign of senility.
%
Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
%
Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
-- Marcus Aurelius
%
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do
the work.
-- John G. Pollard
%
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
%
Exercise caution in your daily affairs.
%
Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you,
and just before you realize what is wrong with it.
%
Expansion means complexity; and complexity decay.
%
Expect a letter from a friend who will ask a favor of you.
%
Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
%
Expedience is the best teacher.
%
Expense accounts, n:
Corporate food stamps.
%
Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.
-- Minna Antrim, "Naked Truth and Veiled Allusions"
%
Experience is not what happens to you;
it is what you do with what happens to you.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables
you recognize a mistake when you make it again.
-- Franklin Jones
%
Experience is the worst teacher. It always
gives the test first and the instruction afterward.
%
Experience is what causes a person
to make new mistakes instead of old ones.
%
Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.
%
Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye,
particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something.
-- Clifton Fadiman, "Enter Conversing"
%
Experiments must be reproducible; they should all fail in the same way.
%
Expert, n.:
Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides.
%
External Security:
%
Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules:
NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully
cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand
corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and
address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) --
to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower
left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card
below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card
(without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the
Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print
this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and
completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
%
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. There are many examples
of outsiders who eventually overthrew entrenched scientific orthodoxies,
but they prevailed with irrefutable data. More often, egregious findings
that contradict well-established research turn out to be artifacts. I have
argued that accepting psychic powers, reincarnation, "cosmic consciousness,"
and the like, would entail fundamental revisions of the foundations of
neuroscience. Before abandoning materialist theories of mind that have paid
handsome dividends, we should insist on better evidence for psi phenomena
than presently exists, especially when neurology and psychology themselves
offer more plausible alternatives.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness:
Implications for Psi Phenomena".
%
Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Rape of Lucrece"
%
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice... moderation in the pursuit
of justice is no virtue.
-- Barry Goldwater
%
F: When into a room I plunge, I
Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI.
Then I linger, darkly brooding
On the poison they're exuding.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
%
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
%
FACILITY REJECTED 100044200000;
%
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.
%
Facts, apart from their relationships, are like labels on empty bottles.
-- Sven Italla
%
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
%
Facts are the enemy of truth.
-- Don Quixote
%
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Failed Attempts To Break Records
In September 1978 Mr. Terry Gripton, of Stafford, failed to break
the world shouting record by two and a half decibels. "I am not surprised
he failed," his wife said afterwards. "He's really a very quiet man and
doesn't even shout at me."
In August of the same year Mr. Paul Anthony failed to break the
record for continuous organ playing by 387 hours.
His attempt at the Golden Fish Fry Restaurant in Manchester ended
after 36 hours 10 minutes, when he was accused of disturbing the peace.
"People complained I was too noisy," he said.
In January 1976 Mr. Barry McQueen failed to walk backwards across
the Menai Bridge playing the bagpipes. "It was raining heavily and my
drone got waterlogged," he said.
A TV cameraman thwarted Mr. Bob Specas' attempt to topple 100,000
dominoes at the Manhattan Center, New York on 9 June 1978. 97,500 dominoes
had been set up when he dropped his press badge and set them off.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital.
%
Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.
-- Sir Walter Raleigh
%
Fairy Tale, n.:
A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%
Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door.
%
Faith has never moved as much as a pin-head from the place it
ought to be according to tradition and the scriptures. It is
the doubt that moved all the mountains.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam
on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%
Faith is under the left nipple.
-- Martin Luther
%
Faith, n:
That quality which enables us to
believe what we know to be untrue.
%
Fakir, n:
A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources
seem to have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
%
Falling in Love
When two people have been on enough dates, they generally fall in
love. You can tell you're in love by the way you feel: your head becomes
light, your heart leaps within you, you feel like you're walking on air,
and the whole world seems like a wonderful and happy place. Unfortunately,
these are also the four warning signs of colon disease, so it's always a
good idea to check with your doctor.
-- Dave Barry
%
Falling in love is a lot like dying.
You never get to do it enough to become good at it.
%
Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in
restraint.
-- Dave Sim, author of "Cerebus"
%
Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident;
the only earthly certainty is oblivion.
-- Mark Twain
%
Fame lost its appeal for me when I went into a public restroom and an
autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door.
-- Marlo Thomas
%
Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever.
%
Familiarity breeds attempt.
%
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain
%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
-- Su Tung-p'o
%
Famous, adj.:
Conspicuously miserable.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Famous last words:
%
Famous last words:
1: Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
2: Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
3: What happens if you touch these two wires tog...
4: We won't need reservations.
5: It's always sunny there this time of the year.
6: Don't worry, it's not loaded.
7: They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
8: Don't worry! Women love it!
%
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have
forgotten your aim.
-- George Santayana
%
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.
Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Farmers in the Iowa State survey rated machinery breakdowns more
stressful than divorce.
-- Wall Street Journal
%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter
it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.
-- Victor Hugo
%
Fast, cheap, good: pick two.
%
Fast ship? You mean you've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?
-- Han Solo
%
Faster, faster, you fool, you fool!
-- Bill Cosby
%
Fat Liberation: because a waist is a terrible thing to mind.
%
Fat people of the world unite, we've got nothing to lose!
%
Father: Son, it's time we talked about sex.
Son: Sure, Dad, what do you want to know?
%
Fats Loves Madelyn.
%
Fay: The British police force used to be run by men of integrity.
Truscott: That is a mistake which has been rectified.
-- Joe Orton, "Loot"
%
FEAR:
What you feel when you see a U-Haul with Texas license plates.
%
Fear and loathing, my man, fear and loathing.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
Fear is the greatest salesman.
-- Robert Klein
%
feature, n:
A surprising property of a program. Occasionally documented. To
call a property a feature sometimes means the author did not
consider that case, and the program makes an unexpected, though
not necessarily wrong response. See BUG. "That's not a bug, it's
a feature!" A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it.
%
Federal grants are offered for... research into the recreation
potential of interplanetary space travel for the culturally
disadvantaged.
%
Feel disillusioned?
I've got some great new illusions, right here!
%
Feeling amorous, she looked under the sheets and cried, "Oh, no,
it's Microsoft!"
%
Felix Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadroped, carniverous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your sub-vocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents:
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance;
And when not being utilized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
-- Lt. Cmdr. Data, "An Ode to Spot"
%
Fellow programmer, greetings! You are reading a letter which will bring
you luck and good fortune. Just mail (or UUCP) ten copies of this letter
to ten of your friends. Before you make the copies, send a chip or
other bit of hardware, and 100 lines of 'C' code to the first person on the
list given at the bottom of this letter. Then delete their name and add
yours to the bottom of the list.
Don't break the chain! Make the copy within 48 hours. Gerald R. of San
Diego failed to send out his ten copies and woke the next morning to find
his job description changed to "COBOL programmer." Fred A. of New York sent
out his ten copies and within a month had enough hardware and software to
build a Cray dedicated to playing Zork. Martha H. of Chicago laughed at
this letter and broke the chain. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in
her terminal and she now spends her days writing documentation for IBM PC's.
Don't break the chain! Send out your ten copies today!
%
Female rabbits:
The gift that just "keeps on giving."
%
Fenderberg, n.:
The large glacial deposits that form on the insides
of car fenders during snowstorms.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Ferguson's Precept:
A crisis is when you can't say "let's forget the whole thing."
%
Fertility is hereditary. If your parents
didn't have any children, neither will you.
%
Fess: Well, you must admit there is something innately humorous about
a man chasing an invention of his own halfway across the galaxy.
Rod: Oh yeah, it's a million yuks, sure. But after all, isn't that the
basic difference between robots and humans?
Fess: What, the ability to form imaginary constructs?
Rod: No, the ability to get hung up on them.
-- Christopher Stasheff, "The Warlock in Spite of Himself"
%
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain
%
Fidelity, n:
A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
%
Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
Drink and the devil had done for the rest,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!
-- Stevenson, "Treasure Island"
%
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
Corollary:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.
%
Fifty flippant frogs
Walked by on flippered feet
And with their slime they made the time
Unnaturally fleet.
%
Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North
Carolina.
%
File cabinet:
A four drawer, manually activated trash compactor.
%
filibuster, n:
Throwing your wait around.
%
Fill what's empty, empty what's full, scratch where it itches.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%
Finagle's Creed:
Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%
Finagle's Eighth Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Finagle's Ninth Law:
No matter what results are expected,
someone is always willing to fake it.
Finagle's Tenth Law:
No matter what the result someone
is always eager to misinterpret it.
Finagle's Eleventh Law:
No matter what occurs, someone believes
it happened according to his pet theory.
%
Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%
Finagle's First Law:
To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start.
Finagle's Second Law:
Always keep a record of data -- it indicates you've been working.
Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up,
anything done to improve it only makes it worse.
Finagle's Fifth Law:
Always draw your curves, then plot your readings.
Finagle's Sixth Law:
Don't believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%
Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or
(c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%
Finagle's Seventh Law:
The perversity of the universe tends toward a maximum.
%
Finagle's Third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
Corollaries:
1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%
Finality is death.
Perfection is finality.
Nothing is perfect.
There are lumps in it.
%
Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture
on a rock.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
Fine day for friends.
So-so day for you.
%
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%
Fine's Corollary:
Functionality breeds Contempt.
%
Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less:
"Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..."
Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to:
P.O. Box 35
Baffled Greek, Michigan
%
Finster's Law:
A closed mouth gathers no feet.
%
First, a few words about tools.
Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of
the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously
injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If
you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look
particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for
granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
Machines that piss people off get murdered.
-- Pat Taber
%
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind.
%
First law of debate:
Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.
%
First Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who
imposed the deadline).
%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.
%
First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity, no really
self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.
-- George Bernard Shaw, "John Bull's Other Island"
%
First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself --
historians merely repeat each other.
%
First rule of public speaking.
First, tell 'em what you're goin' to tell 'em;
then tell 'em;
then tell 'em what you've tole 'em.
%
First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer.
But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all.
Dial-A-Wombat.
It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone
call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the
phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said.
Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of
the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk.
But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth.
The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its
bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub.
Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in
another phone booth.
There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth.
The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and
released it, too, in the scrub.
But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another
telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat.
After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect,
and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons.
Their problem ... they cannot find a law against placing wombats in
telephone booths.
-- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980
%
First things first -- but not necessarily in that order
-- Dr. Who, "Doctor Who"
%
"First World" nations are the ones where people drive Japanese cars;
"Second World" nations are where First World residents go on vacation;
and "Third World" nations are the ones where people still dive out of
trees to prove their manhood.
-- Dave Barry
%
Fishbowl, n:
A glass-enclosed isolation cell where newly
promoted managers are kept for observation.
%
Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.
-- Jimmy Cannon
%
Five bicycles make a Volkswagen, seven make a truck.
-- Adolfo Guzman
%
Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
-- Robert Firth
%
Five names that I can hardly stand to hear,
Including yours and mine and one more chimp who isn't here,
I can see the ladies talking how the times is gettin' hard,
And that fearsome excavation on Magnolia boulevard,
Yes, I'm goin' insane,
And I'm laughing at the frozen rain,
Well, I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
Bad sneakers and a pina colada my friend,
Stopping on the avenue by Radio City, with a
Transistor and a large sum of money to spend...
You fellah, you tearin' up the street,
You wear that white tuxedo, how you gonna beat the heat,
Do you take me for a fool, do you think that I don't see,
That ditch out in the Valley that they're diggin' just for me,
Yes, and goin' insane,
You know I'm laughin' at the frozen rain,
Feel like I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home?
(chorus)
-- Bad Sneakers, "Steely Dan"
%
Five people -- an Englishman, Russian, American, Frenchman and Irishman
were each asked to write a book on elephants. Some amount of time later they
had all completed their respective books. The Englishman's book was entitled
"The Elephant -- How to Collect Them", the Russian's "The Elephant -- Vol. I",
the American's "The Elephant -- How to Make Money from Them", the Frenchman's
"The Elephant -- Its Mating Habits" and the Irishman's "The Elephant and
Irish Political History".
%
Five rules for eternal misery:
1) Always try to exhort others to look upon you favorably.
2) Make lots of assumptions about situations and be sure to
treat these assumptions as though they are reality.
3) Then treat each new situation as though it's a crisis.
4) Live in the past and future only (become obsessed with
how much better things might have been or how much worse
things might become).
5) Occasionally stomp on yourself for being so stupid as to
follow the first four rules.
%
Flame on!
-- Johnny Storm
%
Flannister, n.:
The plastic yoke that holds a six-pack of beer together.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the m"obius strip;
The strip revolved,
The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
%
FLASH!
Intelligence of mankind decreasing.
Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the ....
%
Flattery is like cologne -- to be smelled, but not swallowed.
-- Josh Billings
%
Flattery will get you everywhere.
%
Flee at once, all is discovered.
%
Flirting is the gentle art of making a man feel pleased with himself.
-- Helen Rowland
%
Flon's Law:
There is not now, and never will be, a language in
which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%
Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my
joules!"
"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."
"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them
in my burette ... We must call a copper."
Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
of Lawrence Ium.
"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can
catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
-- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
%
flowchart, n. & v.:
[From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
"a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]
1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic
doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for
wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A
thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's
Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce
flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate
(a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
Flugg's Law:
When you need to knock on wood is when you realize
that the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
%
Fly me away to the bright side of the moon ...
%
Flying is the second greatest feeling you can have. The greatest feeling?
Landing... Landing is the greatest feeling you can have.
%
Flying saucers on occasion
Show themselves to human eyes.
Aliens fume, put off invasion
While they brand these tales as lies.
%
Fog Lamps, n:
Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the fronts
of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the
driver's brain is in a fog. See also "Idiot Lights".
%
Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a
tail on me, go ahead. They'd be very bored.
-- Gary Hart, announcing his presidential candidacy,
commenting on rumors of womanizing.
%
Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
-- Walt Kelly, "Putluck Pogo"
%
Foolproof Operation:
No provision for adjustment.
%
Fools rush in -- and get the best seats in the house.
%
Football builds self-discipline. What else would induce
a spectator to sit out in the open in subfreezing weather?
%
Football combines the two worst features of American life.
It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
-- George F. Will, "Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball"
%
Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.
-- Jimmy Breslin
%
For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
%
For a good time, call (510) 642-9483
%
For a holy stint, a moth of the cloth gave up his woolens for lint.
%
For a light heart lives long.
-- Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
%
For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a
cat.
%
For adult education nothing beats children.
%
For ages, a deadly conflict has been waged between a few brave men and
women of thought and genius upon the one side, and the great ignorant
religious mass on the other. This is the war between Science and Faith.
The few have appealed to reason, to honor, to law, to freedom, to the
known, and to happiness here in this world. The many have appealed to
prejudice, to fear, to miracle, to slavery, to the unknown, and to
misery hereafter. The few have said "Think". The many have said "Believe!"
-- Robert Ingersoll, "Gods"
%
For an adequate time call 555-3321
%
For an idea to be fashionable is ominous,
since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.
%
For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.
-- Gore Vidal
%
For children with short attention spans: boomerangs that don't come back.
%
For courage mounteth with occasion.
-- William Shakespeare, "King John"
%
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
-- Harrison
%
For every bloke who makes his mark,
there's half a dozen waiting to rub it out.
-- Andy Capp
%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
-- R. Clopton
%
For every human problem, there is a neat,
plain solution -- and it is always wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
For example, if \thinmskip = 3mu, this makes \thickmskip = 6mu. But if
you also want to use \skip12 for horizontal glue, whether in math mode or
not, the amount of skipping will be in points (e.g., 6pt). The rule is
that glue in math mode varies with the size only when it is an \mskip;
when moving between an mskip and ordinary skip, the conversion factor
1mu=1pt is always used. The meaning of '\mskip\skip12' and
'\baselineskip=\the\thickmskip' should be clear.
-- Donald Knuth, TeX 82 -- Comparison with TeX80
%
For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.
%
For flavor, instant sex will never supersede the stuff you have to peel
and cook.
-- Quentin Crisp
%
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
-- Alexander Pope
%
For gin, in cruel
Sober truth,
Supplies the fuel
For flaming youth.
-- Noel Coward
%
For God's sake, stop researching for a while and begin to think!
%
For good, return good.
For evil, return justice.
%
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
-- Paul of Tarsus, (Saint Paul)
%
For I swore I would stay a year away from her; out and alas!
but with break of day I went to make supplication.
-- Paulus Silentarius, c. 540 A.D.
%
For knighthood is not in the feats of war,
As for to fight in quarrel right or wrong,
But in a cause which truth cannot defer:
He ought himself for to make sure and strong,
Just to keep mixt with mercy among:
And no quarrel a knight ought to take
But for a truth, or for the common's sake.
-- Stephen Hawes
%
For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
%
For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble:
and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.
-- Sir Thomas More
%
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to
get themselves filed.
-- Clifton Fadiman
%
For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier. I
put them in the same room and let them fight it out.
-- Steven Wright
%
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire
life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days
now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets
when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch
in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have
the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which
means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are
advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are
the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their
names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot
("part of this complete breakfast").
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
%
For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at
the results of this evening's experiments. Astonished at the wonderful
power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous
and bad music may be put on record forever.
-- Sir Arthur Sullivan, message to Edison, 1888
%
For people who like that kind of book,
that is the kind of book they will like.
%
For perfect happiness, remember two things:
(1) Be content with what you've got.
(2) Be sure you've got plenty.
%
FOR SALE:
Parachute. Used once.
Never opened. Slightly Stained.
%
For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
"Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
-- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S.
%
For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%
For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the
massive jobs of a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the
last step of doing away with computers altogether?"
-- Jehan Shuman
%
For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels,
each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall
was a gate.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to system overview.]
%
For the first time we have a weapon that nobody has used for thirty years.
This gives me great hope for the human race.
-- Harlan Ellison
%
For the next hour, WE will control all that you see and hear.
%
For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.
-- Titus Lucretius Carus
%
For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can
neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
-- Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to powerfail recovery.]
%
For they starve the frightened little child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool,
And gibe the old and grey,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.
Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity's machine.
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
For thirty years a certain man went to spend every evening with Mme. ___.
When his wife died his friends believed he would marry her, and urged
him to do so. "No, no," he said: "if I did, where should I have to
spend my evenings?"
-- Chamfort
%
For those of you who have been unfortunate enough to never have tasted the
'Great Chieftain O' the Pudden Race' (i.e. haggis) here is an easy to follow
recipe which results in a dish remarkably similar to the above mentioned
protected species.
Ingredients:
1 Sheep's Pluck (heart, lungs, liver) and bag
2 teacupsful toasted oatmeal
1 teaspoonful salt
8 oz. shredded suet
2 small onions
1/2 teaspoonful black pepper
Scrape and clean bag in cold, then warm, water. Soak in salt water
overnight. Wash pluck, then boil for 2 hours with windpipe draining over
the side of pot. Retain 1 pint of stock. Cut off windpipe, remove surplus
gristle, chop or mince heart and lungs, and grate best part of liver (about
half only). Parboil and chop onions, mix all together with oatmeal, suet,
salt, pepper and stock to moisten. Pack the mixture into bag, allowing for
swelling. Boil for three hours, pricking regularly all over. If bag not
available, steam in greased basin covered by greaseproof paper and cloth for
four to five hours.
%
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
For three days after death hair and fingernails
continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.
-- Johnny Carson
%
For what it's worth, if you -can- get Michelle Pfeiffer to model
a latex daemon suit for the catalog, I strongly suggest you do.
Breasts can sell anything. Shiny red latex body suits start
religions.
-- Brian McGroarty <bvmcg@yahoo.com>
%
For years a secret shame destroyed my peace--
I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
-- Justin Richardson
%
For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
%
Force has no place where there is need of skill.
-- Herodotus
%
"Force is but might," the teacher said--
"That definition's just."
The boy said naught but thought instead,
Remembering his pounded head:
"Force is not might but must!"
%
Force it!!!
If it breaks, well, it wasn't working anyway...
No, don't force it, get a bigger hammer.
%
FORCE YOURSELF TO RELAX!
%
Forecast, n:
A prediction of the future, based on the past, for
which the forecaster demands payment in the present.
%
Forest fires cause Smokey Bears.
%
Forgetfulness, n:
A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for
their destitution of conscience.
%
Forgive and forget.
-- Cervantes
%
Forgive him,
for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!
-- G. B. Shaw
%
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
-- Robert Frost
%
Forgive your enemies, but don't forget their names.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
%
Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.
%
FORTH IF HONK THEN
%
FORTRAN is a good example of a language
which is easier to parse using ad hoc techniques.
-- D. Gries
[What's good about it? Ed.]
%
FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy,
occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer.
-- A. J. Perlis
%
FORTRAN is the language of Powerful Computers.
-- Steven Feiner
%
FORTRAN rots the brain.
-- John McQuillin
%
FORTRAN, "the infantile disorder", by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly
inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is
too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
[FORTRAN] will persist for some time --
probably for at least the next decade.
-- T. Cheatham
%
Fortunate is he for whom the belle toils.
%
Fortunately, the responsibility for providing evidence is on the part of
the person making the claim, not the critic. It is not the responsibility
of UFO skeptics to prove that a UFO has never existed, nor is it the
responsibility of paranormal-health-claims skeptics to prove that crystals
or colored lights never healed anyone. The skeptic's role is to point out
claims that are not adequately supported by acceptable evidence and to
provide plausible alternative explanations that are more in keeping with
the accepted body of scientific evidence.
-- Thomas L. Creed, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII,
No. 2, pg. 215
%
Fortune and love befriend the bold.
-- Ovid
%
FORTUNE ANSWERS THE TOUGH QUESTIONS: #3
Q: Why haven't you graduated yet?
A: Well, Dad, I could have finished years ago, but I wanted
my dissertation to rhyme.
%
FORTUNE ANSWERS THE TOUGH QUESTIONS: #8
Q: Is God a myth?
A: No, He's a mythter.
%
fortune: cannot execute. Out of cookies.
%
fortune: cpu time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #14
Low Blows:
Let's say a man and woman are watching a boxing match on TV. One
of the boxers is felled by a low blow. The woman says "Oh, gee. That must
hurt." The man doubles over and actually FEELS the pain.
Dressing Up:
A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the
garbage, answer the phone, read a book, get the mail. A man will dress up
for: weddings, funerals. Speaking of weddings, when reminiscing about
weddings, women talk about "the ceremony". Men laugh about "the bachelor
party".
David Letterman:
Men think David Letterman is the funniest man on the face of the
Earth. Women think he is a mean, semi-dorky guy who always has a bad
haircut.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #16
Relationships:
First of all, a man does not call a relationship a relationship -- he
refers to it as "that time when me and Suzie were doing it on a semi-regular
basis".
When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to
her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled "All Men Are Idiots". Then
she will get on with her life.
A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the
breakup, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say, "I just
wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I'll never forgive you, and I
hate you, and you're a total floozy. But I want you to know that there's
always a chance for us". This is known as the "I Hate You / I Love You"
drunken phone call, that 99% if all men have made at least once. There are
community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need; alas,
these classes rarely prove effective.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #17
Shoes:
The average man has 4 pairs of footwear: running shoes, dress shoes,
boots, and slippers. The average woman has shoes 4 layers thick on the floor
of her closet. Most of them hurt her feet.
Making friends:
A woman will meet another woman with common interests, do a few things
together, and say something like, "I hope we can be good friends."
A man will meet another man with common interests, do a few things
together, and say nothing. After years of interacting with this other man,
sharing hopes and fears that he wouldn't confide in his priest or
psychiatrist, he'll finally let down his guard in a fit of drunken
sentimentality and say something like, "You know, for someone who's such a
jerk, I guess you're OK."
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #2
Desserts:
A woman will generally admire an ornate dessert for the artistic
work it is, praising its creator and waiting a suitable interval before
she reluctantly takes a small sliver off one edge. A man will start by
grabbing the cherry in the center.
Car repair:
The average man thinks his Y chromosome contains complete repair
manuals for every car made since World War II. He will work on a problem
himself until it either goes away or turns into something that "can't be
fixed without special tools".
The average woman thinks "that funny thump-thump noise" is an
accurate description of an automotive problem. She will, however, have the
car serviced at the proper intervals and thereby incur fewer problems than
the average man.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #4
Weddings:
When reminiscing about weddings, women talk about "the ceremony".
Men talk about "the bachelor party".
Clothes:
Men don't discard clothes. The average man still has the gym shirt
he wore in high school. He thinks a jacket is "just getting broken in" about
the time it develops holes in the elbows. A man will let new shirts sit on
the shelf in their original packaging for a couple of years before putting
them to use, hoping they'll become more comfortable with age.
Women think clothes are radioactive, with a half-life of one year.
They exercise precautions to avoid contamination by last year's fashions.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #5
Trust:
The average woman would really like to be told if her mate is fooling
around behind her back. This same woman wouldn't tell her best friend if
she knew the best friends' mate was having an affair. She'll tell all her
OTHER friends, however. The average man won't say anything if he knows that
one of his friend's mates is fooling around, and he'd rather not know if
his mate is having an affair either, out of fear that it might be with one
of his friends. He will tell all his friends about his own affairs, though,
so they can be ready if he needs an alibi.
Driving:
A typical man thinks he's Mario Andretti as soon as he slips behind
the wheel of his car. The fact that it's an 8-year-old Honda doesn't keep
him from trying to out-accelerate the guy in the Porsche who's attempting
to cut him off; freeway on-ramps are exciting challenges to see who has The
Right Stuff on the morning commute. Does he or doesn't he? Only his body
shop knows for sure. Insurance companies understand this behavior, and
price their policies accordingly.
A woman will slow down to let a car merge in front of her, and get
rear-ended by another woman who was busy adding the finishing touches to
her makeup.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #6
Bathrooms:
A man has six items in his bathroom -- a toothbrush, toothpaste,
shaving cream, razor, a bar of Dial soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn.
The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 437. A man
would not be able to identify most of these items.
Groceries:
A woman makes a list of things she needs and then goes to the store
and buys these things. A man waits 'til the only items left in his fridge
are half a lime and a Blue Ribbon. Then he goes grocery shopping. He buys
everything that looks good. By the time a man reaches the checkout counter,
his cart is packed tighter that the Clampett's car on Beverly Hillbillies.
Of course, this will not stop him from entering the 10-items-or-less lane.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #8
Going Out:
When a man says he is ready to go out, it means he is ready to go
out. When a woman says she is ready to go out, it means she WILL be ready
to go out, as soon as she finds her earring, finishes putting on her makeup,
checks on the kids, makes a phone call to her best friend...
Cats:
Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren't
looking, men kick cats.
Offspring:
Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows
about dentist appointments and soccer games and romances and best friends
and favorite foods and secret fears and hopes and dreams. Men are vaguely
aware of some short people living in the house.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN: #9
Laundry:
Women do laundry every couple of days. A man will wear every article
of clothing he owns, including his surgical pants that were hip about eight
years ago, before he will do his laundry. When he is finally out of clothes,
he will wear a dirty sweatshirt inside out, rent a U-Haul and take his mountain
of clothes to the laundromat. Men always expect to meet beautiful women at
the laundromat. This is a myth.
Nicknames:
If Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle get together for lunch,
they will call each other Gloria, Suzanne, Deborah and Michelle. But if
Mike, Dave, Rob and Jack go out for a brewsky, they will affectionately
refer to each other as Bullet-Head, Godzilla, Peanut Brain and Useless.
Socks:
Men wear sensible socks. They wear standard white sweatsocks.
Women wear strange socks. They are cut way below the ankles, have pictures
of clouds on them, and have a big fuzzy ball on the back.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #10
CARTABLANCA:
Bogart stars as the owner of a North African nightclub that sells
only Mexican beer. Of course, this policy gets him into no end of
trouble with the local French authorities who would really prefer
wine and the occupying Germans who believe that only their beer is
fit to be sold. Wacky events ensue until the gripping climax in
which the much-hated German beer distributer is drowned in a vat.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #11
MONOPOLI:
Peter Weir's classic film examining the false heroism of parlour
games. The powerful ending of the film sees one young man after
another charge toward GO, only to senselessly lose his life on the
Boardwalk property.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #12
O.E.D.: David Lean, 1969, 3 hours 30 min.
Lean's version of the Oxford Dictionary has been accused of
shallowness in its treatment of a complete work. Omar Sharif
tends to overact as aardvark, but Alec Guinness is solid in
the role of abbacy. As usual, the photography is stunning.
With Julie Christie.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #3
MIRACLE ON 42ND STREET:
Santa Claus, in the off season, follows his heart's desire and
tries to make it big on Broadway. Santa sings and dances his way
into your heart.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #4
WITLESS:
Peter Weir directs Sylvester Stallone in the most challenging role
of his career. Stallone plays a Philadelphia police officer on the
run from corrupt officials. He is wounded and then nursed back to
health by Amish Mennonites. Fearful that they might unwittingly
reveal his hiding place, he blows them all away.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #5
THE ATOMIC GRANDMOTHER:
This humorous but heart-warming story tells of an elderly woman
forced to work at a nuclear power plant in order to help the family
make ends meet. At night, granny sits on the porch, tells tales
of her colorful past, and the family uses her to cook barbecues
and to power small electrical appliances. Maureen Stapleton gives
a glowing performance.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #6
RAZORBACK: Paul Harbride, 1984, 2 hours 25 min.
One of the great Australian films of the early 1980's,
and arguably the best movie ever made about a large,
man-eating hog. Some violence. With Gregory Harrison.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #7
OUT OF "OUT OF AFRICA":
This film is a compilation of selected news clips depicting audiences
frantically pushing and shoving to get out of theatres where "Out of
Africa" is showing. Many people are trampled to death in the frenzy.
Due to its violence and offensive language, not recommended for
younger viewers.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #8
THE SMURFS AND THE CUISINART (1986)
The lovable little blue Smurfs encounter a lovable little kitchen
appliance, which invites them to play. The Smurfs learn a valuable
(if sometimes fatal) lesson.
THE SMURFS AND THE CARBON-DIOXIDE INDUSTRIAL LASER (1987)
The inevitable sequel. The lovable and somewhat mangled surviving
Smurfs team up with the Care Bears to encounter a cute, lovable piece
of high-tech welding equipment, which teaches them the magic of
becoming rather greasy smoke. Heartwarming fun for the entire family.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS: #9
THE PARKING PROBLEM IN PARIS: Jean-Luc Godard, 1971, 7 hours 18 min.
Godard's meditation on the topic has been described as
everything from "timeless" to "endless." (Remade by Gene
Wilder as NO PLACE TO PARK.)
%
Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:
It is a rule of evidence deduced from the experience of mankind and
supported by reason and authority that positive testimony is entitled to
more weight than negative testimony, but by the latter term is meant
negative testimony in its true sense and not positive evidence of a
negative, because testimony in support of a negative may be as positive
as that in support of an affirmative.
-- 254 Pac. Rep. 472
%
Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:
We can imagine no reason why, with ordinary care, human toes could not be
left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it
seems to us that someone has been very careless.
-- 78 So. 365
%
Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:
We think that we may take judicial notice of the fact that the term "bitch"
may imply some feeling of endearment when applied to a female of the canine
species but that it is seldom, if ever, so used when applied to a female
of the human race. Coming as it did, reasonably close on the heels of two
revolver shots directed at the person of whom it was probably used, we think
it carries every reasonable implication of ill-will toward that person.
-- Smith v. Moran, 193 N.E. 2d 466
%
FORTUNE EXPLAINS WHAT JOB REVIEW CATCH PHRASES MEAN: #1
skilled oral communicator:
Mumbles inaudibly when attempting to speak. Talks to self.
Argues with self. Loses these arguments.
skilled written communicator:
Scribbles well. Memos are invariable illegible, except for
the portions that attribute recent failures to someone else.
growth potential:
With proper guidance, periodic counseling, and remedial training,
the reviewee may, given enough time and close supervision, meet
the minimum requirements expected of him by the company.
key company figure:
Serves as the perfect counter example.
%
FORTUNE EXPLAINS WHAT JOB REVIEW CATCH PHRASES MEAN: #4
consistent:
Reviewee hasn't gotten anything right yet, and it is anticipated
that this pattern will continue throughout the coming year.
an excellent sounding board:
Present reviewee with any number of alternatives, and implement
them in the order precisely opposite of his/her specification.
a planner and organizer:
Usually manages to put on socks before shoes. Can match the
animal tags on his clothing.
%
FORTUNE EXPLAINS WHAT JOB REVIEW CATCH PHRASES MEAN: #9
has management potential:
Because of his intimate relationship with inanimate objects, the
reviewee has been appointed to the critical position of department
pencil monitor.
inspirational:
A true inspiration to others. ("There, but for the grace of God,
go I.")
adapts to stress:
Passes wind, water, or out depending upon the severity of the
situation.
goal oriented:
Continually sets low goals for himself, and usually fails
to meet them.
%
Fortune favors the lucky.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #12
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write the instructions.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #15
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses."
And while you're at it, throw in a couple of those Dallas
Cowboy cheerleaders.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #17
"This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet."
Juliet, this bud's for you.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #2
If at first you don't succeed, think how many people
you've made happy.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #21
Shall I compare thee to a Summer day?
No, I guess not.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #3
Birds of a feather flock to a newly washed car.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #6
"But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?"
It's nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #9
A word to the wise is often enough to start an argument.
%
fortune: No such file or directory
%
fortune: not found
%
Fortune presents:
USEFUL PHRASES IN ESPERANTO, #1.
^Cu vi parolas angle? Do you speak English?
Mi ne komprenas. I don't understand.
Vi estas la sola esperantisto kiun mi You're the only Esperanto speaker
renkontas. I've met.
La ^ceko estas enpo^stigita. The check is in the mail.
Oni ne povas, ^gin netrovi. You can't miss it.
Mi nur rigardadas. I'm just looking around.
Nu, ^sajnis bona ideo. Well, it seemed like a good idea.
%
Fortune presents:
USEFUL PHRASES IN ESPERANTO, #2.
^Cu tiu loko estas okupita? Is this seat taken?
^Cu vi ofte venas ^ci-tien? Do you come here often?
^Cu mi povas havi via telelonnumeron? May I have your phone number?
Mi estas komputilisto. I work with computers.
Mi legas multe da scienca fikcio. I read a lot of science fiction.
^Cu necesas ke vi eliras? Do you really have to be going?
%
Fortune presents:
USEFUL PHRASES IN ESPERANTO, #5.
Mi ^cevalovipus vin se mi havus I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.
^cevalon.
Vere vi ^sercas. You must be kidding.
Nu, parDOOOOOnu min! Well exCUUUUUSE me!
Kiu invitis vin? Who invited you?
Kion vi diris pri mia patrino? What did you say about my mother?
Bu^so^stopu min per kulero. Gag me with a spoon.
%
FORTUNE PRESENTS FAMOUS LAST WORDS: #4
Socrates: I DRANK WHAT!?!?
Tarzan: Who greased the grape viiiiiiiiiiiinnnneee........
Al Capone: There's a violin in my violin case!
Pilot, TWA Fl. #343: What's a mountain goat doing 'way up here?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #13
A: Doc, Happy, Bashful, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, & Grumpy
Q: Who were the Democratic presidential candidates?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #15
A: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Q: What was the greatest achievement in taxidermy?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #19
A: To be or not to be.
Q: What is the square root of 4b^2?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #21
A: Dr. Livingston I. Presume.
Q: What's Dr. Presume's full name?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #31
A: Chicken Teriyaki.
Q: What is the name of the world's oldest kamikaze pilot?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #4
A: Go west, young man, go west!
Q: What do wabbits do when they get tiwed of wunning awound?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #5
A: The Halls of Montezuma and the Shores of Tripoli.
Q: Name two families whose kids won't join the Marines.
%
FORTUNE REMEMBERS THE GREAT MOTHERS: #5
"And, and, and, and, but, but, but, but!"
-- Mrs. Janice Markowsky, April 8, 1965
%
FORTUNE REMEMBERS THE GREAT MOTHERS: #6
"Johnny, if you fall and break your leg, don't come running to me!"
-- Mrs. Emily Barstow, June 16, 1954
%
Fortune suggests uses for YOUR favorite UNIX commands!
Try:
ar t "God"
drink < bottle; opener (Bourne Shell)
cat "food in tin cans" (all but 4.[23]BSD)
Hey UNIX! Got a match? (V6 or C shell)
mkdir matter; cat > matter (Bourne Shell)
rm God
man: Why did you get a divorce? (C shell)
date me (anything up to 4.3BSD)
make "heads or tails of all this"
who is smart
(C shell)
If I had a ) for every dollar of the national debt, what would I have?
sleep with me (anything up to 4.3BSD)
%
Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Oh, and have a nice day!
-- Bryce Nesbitt '84
%
fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
"Hey you, get off my plate"
-- Roger Midnight
%
Fortune's current rates:
Answers .10
Long answers .25
Answers requiring thought .50
Correct answers $1.00
Dumb looks are still free.
%
Fortune's diet truths:
1: Forget what the cookbooks say, plain yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream.
2: Any recipe calling for soybeans tastes like mud.
3: Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate. In fact, carob is not
an acceptable substitute for anything, except, perhaps, brown shoe polish.
4: There is no such thing as a "fun salad." So let's stop pretending and see
salads for what they are: God's punishment for being fat.
5: Fruit salad without maraschino cherries and marshmallows is about as
appealing as tepid beer.
6: A world lacking gravy is a tragic place!
7: You should immediately pass up any recipes entitled "luscious and
low-cal." Also skip dishes featuring "lively liver." They aren't and
it isn't.
8: Wearing a blindfold often makes many diet foods more palatable.
9: Fresh fruit is not dessert. CAKE is dessert!
10: Okra tastes slightly worse than its name implies.
11: A plain baked potato isn't worth the effort involved in chewing and
swallowing.
%
Fortune's Exercising Truths:
1: Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic. You don't.
2. Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart. So do heart attacks.
3. Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life.
4. Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing.
5. No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done
quietly at your desk at work. People will suspect manic tendencies as
you twitter around in your chair.
6. Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys most is tripping joggers.
7. Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around
for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard
racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity.
8. Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups,
followed by one throw-up.
9. Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.
%
FORTUNE'S FAVORITE RECIPES: #8
Christmas Rum Cake
1 or 2 quarts rum 1 tbsp. baking powder
1 cup butter 1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. sugar 1 tbsp. lemon juice
2 large eggs 2 cups brown sugar
2 cups dried assorted fruit 3 cups chopped English walnuts
Before you start, sample the rum to check for quality. Good, isn't it? Now
select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc. Check the rum again. It
must be just right. Be sure the rum is of the highest quality. Pour one cup
of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can. Repeat. With an electric
mixer, beat one cup butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add 1 seaspoon of tugar
and beat again. Meanwhile, make sure the rum teh absolutely highest quality.
Sample another cup. Open second quart as necessary. Add 2 orge laggs, 2 cups
of fried druit and beat untill high. If the fried druit gets stuck in the
beaters, just pry it loose with a screwdriver. Sample the rum again, checking
for toncisticity. Next sift 3 cups of baking powder, a pinch of rum, a
seaspoon of toda and a cup of pepper or salt (it really doesn't matter).
Sample some more. Sift 912 pint of lemon juice. Fold in schopped butter and
strained chups. Add bablespoon of brown gugar, or whatever color you have.
Mix mell. Grease oven and turn cake pan to 350 gredees and rake until
poothtick comes out crean.
%
Fortune's Fictitious Country Song Title of the Week:
"How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?"
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #1
A guinea pig is not from Guinea but a rodent from South America.
A firefly is not a fly, but a beetle.
A giant panda bear is really a member of the racoon family.
A black panther is really a leopard that has a solid black coat
rather then a spotted one.
Peanuts are not really nuts. The majority of nuts grow on trees
while peanuts grow underground. They are classified as a
legume-part of the pea family.
A cucumber is not a vegetable but a fruit.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #14
The Baby Ruth candy bar was not named after George Herman "The Babe"
Ruth, but after the oldest daughter of President Grover Cleveland.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #37
Can you name the seven seas?
Antartic, Artic, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Indian,
North Pacific, South Pacific.
Can you name the seven dwarfs from Snow White?
Doc, Dopey, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy and Bashful.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #44
Zebra's are colored with dark stripes on a light background.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #108
In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #14
According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath
at least once a year.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #16
The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River
can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #19
A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in
his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and exceptional
ability in that particular field."
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #1
In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #2
Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #3
A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the
movies insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the
right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #8
Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart
a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
%
Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):
Don't Write On Walls!
(and underneath)
You want I should type?
%
Fortune's Great Moments in History: #3
August 27, 1949:
A Hall of Fame opened to honor outstanding members of the
Women's Air Corp. It was a WAC's Museum.
%
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #14
What to do...
if reality disappears?
Hope this one doesn't happen to you. There isn't much that you
can do about it. It will probably be quite unpleasant.
if you meet an older version of yourself who has invented a time
traveling machine, and has come from the future to meet you?
Play this one by the book. Ask about the stock market and cash in.
Don't forget to invent a time traveling machine and visit your
younger self before you die, or you will create a paradox. If you
expect this to be tricky, make sure to ask for the principles
behind time travel, and possibly schematics. Never, NEVER, ask
when you'll die, or if you'll marry your current SO.
%
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #2
What to do...
if you get a phone call from Mars:
Speak slowly and be sure to enunciate your words properly. Limit
your vocabulary to simple words. Try to determine if you are
speaking to someone in a leadership capacity, or an ordinary citizen.
if he, she or it doesn't speak English?
Hang up. There's no sense in trying to learn Martian over the phone.
If your Martian really had something important to say to you, he, she
or it would have taken the trouble to learn the language before
calling.
if you get a phone call from Jupiter?
Explain to your caller, politely but firmly, that being from Jupiter,
he, she or it is not "life as we know it". Try to terminate the
conversation as soon as possible. It will not profit you, and the
charges may have been reversed.
%
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #6
What to do...
if a starship, equipped with an FTL hyperdrive lands in your backyard?
First of all, do not run after your camera. You will not have any
film, and, given the state of computer animation, noone will believe
you anyway. Be polite. Remember, if they have an FTL hyperdrive,
they can probably vaporize you, should they find you to be rude.
Direct them to the White House lawn, which is where they probably
wanted to land, anyway. A good road map should help.
if you wake up in the middle of the night, and discover that your
closet contains an alternate dimension?
Don't walk in. You almost certainly will not be able to get back,
and alternate dimensions are almost never any fun. Remain calm
and go back to bed. Close the door first, so that the cat does not
wander off. Check your closet in the morning. If it still contains
an alternate dimension, nail it shut.
%
Fortune's Guide to Freshman Notetaking:
WHEN THE PROFESSOR SAYS: YOU WRITE:
Probably the greatest quality of the poetry John Milton -- born 1608
of John Milton, who was born in 1608, is the
combination of beauty and power. Few have
excelled him in the use of the English language,
or for that matter, in lucidity of verse form,
'Paradise Lost' being said to be the greatest
single poem ever written."
Current historians have come to Most of the problems that now
doubt the complete advantageousness face the United States are
of some of Roosevelt's policies... directly traceable to the
bungling and greed of President
Roosevelt.
... it is possible that we simply do Professor Mitchell is a
not understand the Russian viewpoint... communist.
%
Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this
State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed
with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females
weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it
apply to female horses.
%
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful Morals
goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an impassioned
House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and clam research," a
sharp-eared informant transcribed the following exchange between our hero
and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
Dingell: "There are places in the world at the present time where we are
having to artificially propagate oysters and clams."
Hoffman: "You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?"
Dingell: "They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter is
that female oysters through their living habits cast out large
amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large amounts of
fertilization."
Hoffman: "Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many
teenagers who read The Congressional Record."
%
Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week:
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.
%
FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS: #14
Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to
your good liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert
and light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything
drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18:
Q: Are you married?
A: No, I'm divorced.
Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
A: A lot of things I didn't know about.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19:
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29:
THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present
information and prejudice from your minds, if you have
any ...
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32:
Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
A: I will be three months November 8th.
Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:
Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
A: No.
Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears?
A: Picking them up in the air.
Q: Where was the dog at this time?
A: Attached to the ears.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3:
Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were
able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to
go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with
him to the station?
MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:
Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:
Q: What is your name?
A: Ernestine McDowell.
Q: And what is your marital status?
A: Fair.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
Q: What happened then?
A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify
me."
Q: Did he kill you?
A: No.
%
Fortune's Rules for Memo Wars: #2
Given the incredible advances in sociocybernetics and telepsychology over
the last few years, we are now able to completely understand everything that
the author of a memo is trying to say. Thanks to modern developments
in electrocommunications like notes, vnews, and electricity, we have an
incredible level of interunderstanding the likes of which civilization has
never known. Thus, the possibility of your misinterpreting someone else's
memo is practically nil. Knowing this, anyone who accuses you of having
done so is a liar, and should be treated accordingly. If you *do* understand
the memo in question, but have absolutely nothing of substance to say, then
you have an excellent opportunity for a vicious ad hominem attack. In fact,
the only *inappropriate* times for an ad hominem attack are as follows:
1: When you agree completely with the author of a memo.
2: When the author of the original memo is much bigger than you are.
3: When replying to one of your own memos.
%
FORTUNE'S RULES TO LIVE BY: #2
Never goose a wolverine.
%
FORTUNE'S RULES TO LIVE BY: #23
Don't cut off a police car when making an illegal U-turn.
%
Forty isn't old, if you're a tree.
%
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Inventory"
%
Four fifths of the perjury in the world is expended on
tombstones, women and competitors.
-- Lord Thomas Dewar
%
Four hours to bury the cat?
Yes, damn thing wouldn't keep still, kept mucking about, 'owling...
%
Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue
ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature.
This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.
-- Robert Parker, quoted in "Murder Ink", ed. D. Wynn
%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
Corollary:
Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except
study for that instructor's course.
%
Fourth Law of Revision:
It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one
for you.
%
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not
almost one, it is damn near zero.
-- David Ellis
%
Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a
policeman's tie.
%
Frankly, Scarlett, I don't have a fix.
-- Rhett Buggler
%
Fraud is the homage that force pays to reason.
-- Charles Curtis, "A Commonplace Book"
%
Free Speech Is The Right To Shout 'Theater' In A Crowded Fire.
-- A Yippie Proverb
%
FreeBSD: everything but the fairings
%
FreeBSD: Have you had your fairings today?
%
FreeBSD: It's 3am at night. Do you know where your fairings are?
%
FreeBSD: putting the horse before the cart since 1992.
-- Warner Losh
%
FreeBSD Trivia:
Did you know that successive security officers take
control by beheading their predecessor?
-- Robert Watson
%
Freedom begins when you tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.
%
Freedom from incrustation of grime is contiguous to rectitude.
%
Freedom is nothing else but the chance to do better.
-- Camus
%
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
War is peace.
-- George Orwell
%
Freedom of the press is for those who happen to own one.
%
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.
-- Kris Kristofferson, "Me and Bobby McGee"
%
Fremen add life to spice!
%
Fresco's Discovery:
If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
%
Friction is a drag.
%
Fried's 1st Rule:
Increased automation of clerical function
invariably results in increased operational costs.
%
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
-- Thomas Jones
%
Friends, n:
People who borrow your books and set wet glasses on them.
People who know you well, but like you anyway.
%
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
%
Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority
over the other.
-- Honore DeBalzac
%
Frisbeetarianism, n.:
The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and
gets stuck.
%
Frobnicate, v.:
To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ.
Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a
frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless
manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
%
Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to
electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to
FROTZ, or more commonly to FROB. Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and
FROBNODULE. Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl.
FROBBOTZIM, has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure
via the Adventure spin-off called Zork (Dungeon). These can also be
applied to non-physical objects, such as data structures.
%
From 0 to "what seems to be the problem officer" in 8.3 seconds.
-- Ad for the new VW Corrado
%
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.
That is the point that must be reached.
-- F. Kafka
%
From a Tru64 patch description:
Fixes a bug that causes a panic due to software error
%
[From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
Association, in Rome]:
The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria
and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not
spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods,
or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in
millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have
reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology
engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general,
president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social
schizophrenia in mass genocide.
%
From Italian tourist guide:
"Non stop trains to Roma Termini Station leave from 7.38
a.m. to 10.08 p.m., hourly."
%
From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance.
%
From the cradle to the coffin underwear comes first.
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
From the crystal swirling waters,
Of the Rio Amazon,
To the sacred halls of Bayonne,
Where we stand pajamas on. (It's the only thing that rhymes.)
From ev'ry hallowed venue,
Ev'ry forest, mount and vale,
Your butt is on the menu
And the check is in the mail.
-- The Piranha Club Anthem, to the tune of "De Camptown Races"
%
From the "Guinness Book of World Records", 1973:
Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and
the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the
Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his
candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground
nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts,
other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not
qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their
being nuts (unground)."
%
From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
%
[From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
in Japan]:
The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
"flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
%
From the pages of Open Systems Today - October 13, 1994 ..........
"The International Standards Organization (ISO) and the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) designated
October 14 as World Standards Day to recognize those
volunteers who have worked hard to define international
standards.......The United States celebrated World Standards
Day on October 11; Finland celebrated on October 13; and
Italy celebrated on October 18."
%
From the Pointless Comparison Collection:
To give you an idea of how sensitive these antennas are,
if we were to "listen" to one spacecraft in the outer solar
system by Jupiter or Saturn for 1 billion years and add up
all the signal we collected, it would be enough power to
set off the flash bulb on your camera once.
-- Peter Doms, manager of the Deep Space Network
systems program at JPL
%
From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
experience in sound:
5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading
sound is normal for this type of connector.
%
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
-- Swinburne
%
F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway:
"Ernest, the rich are different from us."
Hemingway:
"Yes. They have more money."
%
Fuch's Warning:
If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well
enough to travel.
%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%
Fun experiments:
Get a can of shaving cream, throw it in a freezer for about a week.
Then take it out, peel the metal off and put it where you want...
bedroom, car, etc. As it thaws, it expands an unbelievable amount.
%
Fun Facts, #14:
In table tennis, whoever gets 21 points first wins. That's how
it once was in baseball -- whoever got 21 runs first won.
%
Fun Facts, #63:
The name California was given to the state by Spanish conquistadores.
It was the name of an imaginary island, a paradise on earth, in the
Spanish romance, "Les Serges de Esplandian", written by Montalvo in
1510.
%
Function reject.
%
Fundamentally, there may be no basis for anything.
%
Furbling, v:
Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
even when you are the only person in line.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-- H. H. Williams
%
Furthermore, if we send something by car, it's a shipment...
but if we send it by ship, it's cargo.
%
Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
%
Future will arrive by its own means. Progress not so.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
`No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
that's your chance, my boy."
%
Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union.
-- Joseph Stalin
%
Galbraith's Law of Human Nature:
Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that
there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.
%
Garbage In - Gospel Out.
%
Garter, n.:
An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall on
our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
-- Adventures of Asterix
%
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
"Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow ...
Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
think not, my friend, I think not.
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
A day to take the initiative. Put the garbage out, for
instance, and pick up the stuff at the dry cleaners. Watch
the mail carefully, although there won't be anything good
in it today, either.
%
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
committing incest.
%
GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while you
can; the bad news will make you forget it. You will enjoy praise
and respect from those around you; everybody loves a sucker. A short
trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's room.
%
Genderplex, n.:
The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
tortoises).
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Genealogy, n.:
An account of one's descent from an ancestor
who did not particularly care to trace his own.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
General notions are generally wrong.
-- Lady M. W. Montagu
%
Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.
-- Miyamoto Musashi, 1645
%
Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
%
Generic Fortune.
%
Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.
%
Genetics explains why you look like your father,
and if you don't, why you should.
%
GENIUS:
Person clever enough to be born in the right place at the right
time of the right sex and to follow up this advantage by saying
all the right things to all the right people.
%
Genius does what it must, and Talent does what it can.
-- Owen Meredith
%
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
-- Thomas Alva Edison
%
Genius is pain.
-- John Lennon
%
Genius is ten percent inspiration and fifty percent capital gains.
%
Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.
%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
genius, n:
A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
"bright".
%
genlock, n:
Why he stays in the bottle.
%
Gentlemen,
Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach
to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying
with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and
thence by dispatch to our headquarters.
We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all
manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable.
I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer.
Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable
exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted
for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous
confusion as the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry
regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness
may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are war with France, a
fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of
my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I may better understand
why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it
must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either
one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit
of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance:
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
-- Duke of Wellington, to the British Foreign Office,
London, 1812
%
Gentlemen do not read each other's mail.
-- Secretary of State Henry Stimson, on closing down
the Black Chamber, the precursor to the National
Security Agency.
%
Genuine happiness is when a wife sees a double chin on her husband's
old girl friend.
%
George Bernard Shaw once sent two tickets to the opening night of one of
his plays to Winston Churchill with the following note:
"Bring a friend, if you have one."
Churchill wrote back, returning the two tickets and excused himself as he
had a previous engagement. He also attached the following:
"Please send me two tickets for the next night, if there is one."
%
George Orwell 1984. Northwestern 0.
-- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%
George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to
have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend.
-- Ashley Cooper
%
George's friend Sam had a dog who could recite the Gettysburg Address. "Let
me buy him from you," pleaded George after a demonstration.
"Okay," agreed Sam. "All he knows is that Lincoln speech anyway."
At his company's Fourth of July picnic, George brought his new pet
and announced that the animal could recite the entire Gettysburg Address.
No one believed him, and they proceeded to place bets against the dog.
George quieted the crowd and said, "Now we'll begin!" Then he looked at
the dog. The dog looked back. No sound. "Come on, boy, do your stuff."
Nothing. A disappointed George took his dog and went home.
"Why did you embarrass me like that in front of everybody?" George
yelled at the dog. "Do you realize how much money you lost me?"
"Don't be silly, George," replied the dog. "Think of the odds we're
gonna get on Labor Day."
%
(German philosopher) Georg Wilhelm Hegel, on his deathbed, complained, "Only
one man ever understood me." He fell silent for a while and then added,
"And he didn't understand me."
%
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
3) The energy required to change either one of these states
will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
much as to make the task totally impossible.
%
Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
%
Get in touch with your feelings of hostility against the dying light.
-- Dylan Thomas
%
Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
%
Getting into trouble is easy.
-- D. Winkel and F. Prosser
%
Getting kicked out of the American Bar Association is liked getting kicked
out of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
-- Melvin Belli on the occasion of his getting kicked out
of the American Bar Association
%
Getting the job done is no excuse for not following the rules.
Corollary:
Following the rules will not get the job done.
%
Getting there is only half as far as getting there and back.
%
Gibson's Springtime Song (to the tune of "Deck the Halls"):
'Tis the season to chase mousies (Fa la la la la, la la la la)
Snatch them from their little housies (...)
First we chase them 'round the field (...)
Then we have them for a meal (...)
Toss them here and catch them there (...)
See them flying through the air (...)
Watch them fly and hear them squeal (...)
Falling mice have great appeal (...)
See the hunter stretched before us (...)
He's chased the mice in field and forest (...)
Watch him clean his long white whiskers (...)
Of the blood of little critters (...)
%
Gilbert's Discovery:
Any attempt to use the new super glues results in the two pieces
sticking to your thumb and index finger rather than to each other.
%
Gil-galad was an Elven-King
of him the harpers sadly sing;
the last whose realm was fair and free
between the Mountains and the Sea.
His sword was long, his lance was keen,
his shining helm afar was seen;
the countless stars of heaven's field
were mirrored in his silver shield.
But long ago he rode away,
and where he dwelleth none can say;
for into darkness fell his star
in Mordor where the shadows are.
%
Ginger Snap
%
Ginsberg's Theorem:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't even quit the game.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
Theorem. To wit:
1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
%
Ginsburg's Law:
At the precise moment you take off your shoe in a shoe store, your
big toe will pop out of your sock to see what's going on.
%
GIVE: Support the helpless victims of computer error.
%
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish,
and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
-- Calvin Keegan
%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find
that everything he encounters needs pounding.
%
Give a woman an inch and she'll park a car in it.
%
Give all orders verbally. Never write anything down
that might go into a "Pearl Harbor File".
%
Give him an evasive answer.
%
Give me a fish and I will eat today.
Teach me to fish and I will eat forever.
%
Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh
dome, and a place to stand, and I will drain the world.
%
Give me a sleeping pill and tell me your troubles.
%
Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
-- St. Augustine
%
Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war.
-- Napolean
%
Give me libertines or give me meth.
%
Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet -- perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save me, oh save me from the candid friend.
-- George Canning
%
Give me your students, your secretaries,
Your huddled writers yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your Selectric III's.
Give these, the homeless, typist-tossed to me.
I lift my disk beside the processor.
-- Inscription on a Word Processor
%
Give thought to your reputation.
Consider changing your name and moving to a new town.
%
GIVE UP!!!!
%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%
Give your very best today.
Heaven knows it's little enough.
%
Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief.
-- William Faulkner
%
Given its constituency, the only thing I expect to be "open" about [the
Open Software Foundation] is its mouth.
-- John Gilmore
%
Given my druthers, I'd druther not.
%
Given sufficient time, what you put
off doing today will get done by itself.
%
Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd
rather lie around. No contest.
-- Eric Clapton
%
Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and
car keys to teenage boys.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden: Languages
whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP machine now permits
LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Gleemites, n.:
Petrified deposits of toothpaste found in sinks.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
some useful work done.
%
Gloffing is a state of mine.
%
Glogg (a traditional Scandinavian holiday drink):
fifth of dry red wine
fifth of Aquavit
1 and 1/2 inch piece of cinnamon
10 cardamom seeds
1 cup raisins
4 dried figs
1 cup blanched or flaked almonds
a few pieces of dried orange peel
5 cloves
1/2 lb. sugar cubes
Heat up the wine and hard stuff (which may be substituted with wine
for the faint of heart) in a big pot after adding all the other stuff EXCEPT
the sugar cubes. Just when it reaches boiling, put the sugar in a wire
strainer, moisten it in the hot brew, lift it out and ignite it with a match.
Dip the sugar several times in the liquid until it is all dissolved. Serve
hot in cups with a few raisins and almonds in each cup.
N.B. Aquavit may be hard to find and expensive to boot. Use it only
if you really have a deep-seated desire to be fussy, or if you are of Swedish
extraction.
%
Gnagloot, n.:
A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
impress people.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Go ahead, make my day.
-- (Dirty) Harry Callahan
%
Go away, I'm all right.
-- H. G. Wells' last words
%
Go away! Stop bothering me with all your
"compute this ... compute that"! I'm taking a VAX-NAP.
logout
%
Go climb a gravity well.
%
Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
%
Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
Go out and tell a lie that will make the whole family proud of you.
-- Cadmus, to Pentheus, in "The Bacchae" by Euripides
%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Go slowly to the entertainments of thy friends,
but quickly to their misfortunes.
-- Chilo
%
Go to a movie tonight.
Darkness becomes you.
%
Go to the Scriptures... the joyful promises it contains will be a balsam to
all your troubles.
-- Andrew Jackson
The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the
teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith
in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.
-- Calvin Coolidge
Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and
religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted
on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be
secure which is not supported by moral habits.
-- Daniel Webster
%
Go 'way! You're bothering me!
%
Goals... Plans... they're fantasies, they're part of a dream world...
-- Wally Shawn
%
GOD:
Darwin's chief rival.
%
God created a few perfect heads.
The rest he covered with hair.
%
God created woman.
And boredom did indeed cease from that moment --
but many other things ceased as well.
Woman was God's second mistake.
-- Nietzsche
%
God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
days and then pulled an all-nighter.
%
God gave man two ears and one tongue so
that we listen twice as much as we speak.
-- Arab proverb
%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders."
Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the
end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I
can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why
would he lie about a thing like that?
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends.
%
God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, courage to
change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.
%
God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little...
The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty [...] I do
not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman...
not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on smoking
and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and water is
not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in the
morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at night!
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
%
God help the troubadour who tries to be a star. The more
that you try to find success, the more that you will fail.
-- Phil Ochs, on the Second System Effect
%
God help those who do not help themselves.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
God helps them that helps themselves.
-- Ben Franklin
%
God, I ask for patience -- and I want it right now!
%
God instructs the heart, not by ideas,
but by pains and contradictions.
-- De Caussade
%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
%
God is a polytheist.
%
God is Dead.
-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead.
-- God
Nietzsche is God.
-- Dead
%
God is dead and I don't feel all too well either....
-- Ralph Moonen
%
God is love, but get it in writing.
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%
God is not dead. He is alive and well and working on a
much less ambitious project.
%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the
elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying
other things.
-- Pablo Picasso
%
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
-- Alfred Jarry
%
God isn't dead. He just doesn't want to get involved.
%
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
-- Paul Valery
%
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
%
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
-- Kronecker
%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%
God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.
-- Albert Einstein
%
God must have loved calories, she made so many of them.
%
God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
%
God rest ye CS students now, The bearings on the drum are gone,
Let nothing you dismay. The disk is wobbling, too.
The VAX is down and won't be up, We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
Until the first of May. Can't tell false from true.
The program that was due this morn, And now we find that we can't get
Won't be postponed, they say. At Berkeley's 4.2.
(chorus) (chorus)
We've just received a call from DEC, And now some cheery news for you,
They'll send without delay The network's also dead,
A monitor called RSuX We'll have to print your files on
It takes nine hundred K. The line printer instead.
The staff committed suicide, The turnaround time's nineteen weeks.
We'll bury them today. And only cards are read.
(chorus) (chorus)
And now we'd like to say to you CHORUS: Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Before we go away, Comfort and joy,
We hope the news we've brought to you Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
Won't ruin your whole day.
You've got another program due, tomorrow, by the way.
(chorus)
-- to God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
%
God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.
-- William Bragg
%
God said it, I believe it and that's all there is to it.
%
God save us from a bad neighbor and a beginner on the fiddle.
%
God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects
to receive it.
-- Austin O'Malley
%
God votes Republican.
%
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
-- Samuel Butler
%
Goda's Truism:
By the time you get to the point where you can make ends meet,
somebody moves the ends.
%
Going the speed of light is bad for your age.
%
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school
make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.
%
Gold, n:
A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It
is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich
men who immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons,
although gold hasn't done anything to them.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Goldenstern's Rules:
1. Always hire a rich attorney.
2. Never buy from a rich salesman.
%
Goldfish... what stupid animals. Even Wayne Cody stops
eating before he bursts.
%
Gold's Law:
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.
%
Gomme's Laws:
(1) A backscratcher will always find new itches.
(2) Time accelerates.
(3) The weather at home improves as soon as you go away.
%
Gone With The Wind LITE(tm)
-- by Margaret Mitchell
A woman only likes men she can't have and the South gets trashed.
Gift of the Magii LITE(tm)
-- by O. Henry
A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences.
The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm)
-- by Ernest Hemingway
An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck.
Diary of a Young Girl LITE(tm)
-- by Anne Frank
A young girl hides in an attic but is discovered.
%
Good advice is one of those insults that ought to be forgiven.
%
Good advice is something a man gives
when he is too old to set a bad example.
-- La Rouchefoucauld
%
Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
%
Good day for business affairs.
Make a pass at that the new file clerk.
%
Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
%
Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
%
Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to work.
%
Good day to deal with people in high places;
particularly lonely stewardesses.
%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%
Good evening, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational
at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 11th, nineteen hundred
ninety-five. My supervisor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a
song. If you would like, I could sing it for you.
%
Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
%
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of
those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the
will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of
government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
-- Frank Herbert, "Children of Dune"
%
"Good health" is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.
%
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
-- Jim Horning
%
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
%
Good morning. This is the telephone company. Due to repairs, we're
giving you advance notice that your service will be cut off indefinitely
at ten o'clock. That's two minutes from now.
%
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%
Good news from afar can bring you a welcome visitor.
%
Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
%
Good night, Austin, Texas, wherever you are!
%
Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
%
Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.
%
Good salesmen and good repairmen will never go hungry.
-- R. E. Schenk
%
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths good theatre.
-- Gail Godwin
%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words
%
Goodbye, cool world.
%
Goose pimples rose all over me, my hair stood on end, my eyes filled with
tears of love and gratitude for this greatest of all conquerers of human
misery and shame, and my breath came in little gasps. If I had not known
that the Leader would have scorned such adulation, I might have fallen to
my knees in unashamed worship, but instead I drew myself to attention, raised
my arm in the eternal salute of the ancient Roman Legions and repeated the
holy words, "Heil Hitler!"
-- George Lincoln Rockwell
%
Gordon's first law:
If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing
well.
%
Gordon's Law:
If you think you have the solution, the question was poorly phrased.
%
Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with
time travel, you never can tell."
-- Dr. Who, "Androids of Tara"
%
gossip, n:
Hearing something you like about someone you don't.
-- Earl Wilson
%
//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
%
Got a complaint about the Internal Revenue Service?
Call the convenient toll-free "IRS Taxpayer Complaint Hot Line Number":
1-800-AUDITME
%
Got a dictionary? I want to know the meaning of life.
%
Got a wife and kids in Baltimore Jack,
I went out for a ride and never came back.
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing,
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.
Everybody's got a hungry heart.
Everybody's got a hungry heart.
Lay down your money and you play your part,
Everybody's got a hungry heart.
I met her in a Kingstown bar,
We fell in love, I knew it had to end.
We took what we had and we ripped it apart,
Now here I am down in Kingstown again.
Everybody needs a place to rest,
Everybody wants to have a home.
Don't make no difference what nobody says,
Ain't nobody likes to be alone.
-- Bruce Springsteen, "Hungry Heart"
%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogadro at 6.02 x 10^23.
%
Goto, n.:
A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
to complain about unstructured programmers.
-- Ray Simard
%
Gourmet, n:
Anyone whom, when you fail to finish something strange or
revolting, remarks that it's an acquired taste and that you're
leaving the best part.
%
Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Don't overdo it.
-- Lao Tsu
%
Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
-- John Updike, "Couples"
%
Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are
different lies.
%
Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know any
more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he doesn't
know much.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Government's Law:
There is an exception to all laws.
%
Governor Tarkin. I should have expected to find you holding Vader's
leash. I thought I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on
board.
-- Princess Leia Organa
%
Grabel's Law:
2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
%
Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
%
Graduate students and most professors are
no smarter than undergrads. They're just older.
%
Grand Master Turing once dreamed that he was a machine. When he awoke
he exclaimed:
"I don't know whether I am Turing dreaming that I am a machine,
or a machine dreaming that I am Turing!"
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
[I thought it was when your kids learned to drive. Ed.]
%
Graphics blind the eyes.
Audio files deafen the ear.
Mouse clicks numb the fingers.
Heuristics weaken the mind.
Options wither the heart.
The Guru observes the net
but trusts his inner vision.
He allows things to come and go.
His heart is as open as the ether.
%
GRASSHOPPOTAMUS:
A creature that can leap to tremendous heights... once.
%
Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.
-- Joseph Alsop
%
GRAVITY:
What you get when you eat too much and too fast.
%
Gravity brings me down.
%
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
%
Gray's Law of Programming:
'n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be
accomplished in the same time as 'n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n' trivial tasks.
%
Great acts are made up of small deeds.
-- Lao Tsu
%
Great American Axiom:
Some is good, more is better, too much is just right.
%
Great minds run in great circles.
%
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#17):
On November 13, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his
place of residence.
%
GREAT MOMENTS IN HISTORY (#7): April 2, 1751
Issac Newton becomes discouraged when he falls up a flight of stairs.
%
GREAT MOMENTS IN HISTORY (#7): November 23, 1915
Pancake make-up is invented; most people continue to prefer syrup.
%
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-- Albert Einstein
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they
also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- Carl Sagan
%
Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.
%
Green light in A.M. for new projects.
Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
%
Greener's Law:
Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
%
Green's Law of Debate:
Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
%
Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming:
Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains
an ad hoc informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation
of half of Common Lisp.
%
Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider
themselves to be above average drivers.
%
grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.
%
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full
value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
-- Mark Twain
%
Griffin's Thought:
When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last.
%
Grig (the navigator):
... so you see, it's just the two of us against the entire space
armada.
Alex (the gunner):
What?!?
Grig: I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against
overwhelming odds.
Alex: It'll be a slaughter!
Grig: That's the spirit!
-- The Last Starfighter
%
Grinnell's Law of Labor Laxity:
At all times, for any task, you have not got enough done today.
%
Groundhog Day has been observed only once in Los Angeles because when the
groundhog came out of its hole, it was killed by a mudslide.
-- Johnny Carson
%
Grover Cleveland, though constantly at loggerheads with the Senate, got on
better with the House of Representatives. A popular story circulating
during his presidency concerned the night he was roused by his wife crying,
"Wake up! I think there are burglars in the house."
"No, no, my dear," said the president sleepily, "in the Senate
maybe, but not in the House."
%
Growing old isn't bad when you consider the alternatives.
-- Maurice Chevalier
%
Grownups are reluctant to take science fiction seriously, and with good
reason: sci-fi is a hormonal activity, not a literary one. Its traditional
concerns are all pubescent. Secondary sexual characteristics are everywhere,
disguised. Aliens have tentacles. Telepathy allows you to have sex without
any nasty inconvenience of touching. Womblike spaceships provide balanced
meals. No one ever has to grow old -- body parts are replaceable, like
Job's daughters, and if you're lucky you can become a robot. As for the
adult world, it's simply not there; political systems tend to be naively
authoritarian (there are more lords in science fiction than on public
television) and are often ruled by young boys on quests. The most popular
sci-fi book in years, Frank Herbert's Dune, sold millions of copies by
combining all these themes: it ends with its adolescent hero conquering the
universe while straddling a giant worm.
-- Arnold Klein
%
Grub first, then ethics.
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
GUILLOTINE:
A French chopping center.
%
Gumperson's Law:
The probability of a given event
occurring is inversely proportional to its desirability.
%
Guns don't kill people. Bullets kill people.
%
Gunter's Airborne Discoveries:
(1) When you are served a meal aboard an aircraft,
the aircraft will encounter turbulence.
(2) The strength of the turbulence
is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.
%
Gurmlish, n.:
The red warning flag at the top of a club sandwich which prevents
the person from biting into it and puncturing the roof of his mouth.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
GURU:
A person in T-shirt and sandals who took an elevator ride with
a senior vice-president and is ultimately responsible for the
phone call you are about to receive from your boss.
%
guru, n:
A computer owner who can read the manual.
%
Gyroscope, n.:
A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
-- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
%
H: If a 'GOBLIN (HOB) waylays you,
Slice him up before he slays you.
Nothing makes you look a slob
Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB).
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L.
Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
-- Maxwell Bodenheim
%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
[No, those who can't teach, teach here. Ed.]
%
hacker, n:
Originally, any person with a knack for coercing stubborn inanimate
things; hence, a person with a happy knack, later contracted by the mythical
philosopher Frisbee Frobenius to the common usage, 'hack'.
In olden times, upon completion of some particularly atrocious body
of coding that happened to work well, culpable programmers would gather in
a small circle around a first edition of Knuth's Best Volume I by candlelight,
and proceed to get very drunk while sporadically rending the following ditty:
Hacker's Fight Song
He's a Hack! He's a Hack!
He's a guy with the happy knack!
Never bungles, never shirks,
Always gets his stuff to work!
All take a drink (important!)
%
Hackers are just a migratory life form with a tropism for computers.
%
Hacker's Guide To Cooking:
2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't
really come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.)
1 tsp. vanilla extract (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty
strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure)
1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too)
8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you
can squirt all over your friends and lick off...)
"Blend all together until creamy with no lumps." This is where you get to
join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through
merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy
and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it. Try an electric
beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off
the ceiling(3m).
"Pour into a graham cracker crust..." Aha, the BUGS section at last. You
just happened to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right?
If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent
GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter.
"...and refrigerate for an hour." Leave the recipe's stdout in a fridge
for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and
by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.
%
Hacker's Law:
The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%
Hackers of the world, unite!
%
Hacker's Quicky #313:
Sour Cream -n- Onion Potato Chips
Microwave Egg Roll
Chocolate Milk
%
Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
%
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn, But ranged as infantry,
We should have sat us down to wet And staring face to face,
Right many a nipperkin! I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because --
Because he was my foe, He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Just so: my foe of course he was; Off-hand-like -- just as I --
That's clear enough; although Was out of work -- had sold his traps
No other reason why.
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is
Or help to half-a-crown.
-- Thomas Hardy
%
Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some
useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.
-- Alfonso the Wise
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to operating system initialization.]
%
Had this been an actual emergency, we would have
fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
%
Hail to the sun god
He's such a fun god
Ra! Ra! Ra!
%
Hailing frequencies open, Captain.
%
Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that
a big enough majority in any town?
-- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
%
Hale Mail Rule, The:
When you are ready to reply to a letter, you will lack at least
one of the following:
(a) A pen or pencil or typewriter.
(b) Stationery.
(c) Postage stamp.
(d) The letter you are answering.
%
Half a bee, philosophically, must ipso facto half not be.
But half the bee has got to be, vis-a-vis its entity. See?
But can a bee be said to be or not to be an entire bee,
When half the bee is not a bee, due to some ancient injury?
%
Half Moon tonight. (At least its better than no Moon at all.)
%
Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.
%
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't,
and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
%
Half-done, n.:
This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy,
light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference between this
and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the
difference between life and death.
You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there
in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport,
fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall,
transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
man, "Let me have a nice half-done." Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
-- Arthur Naiman
%
Halley's Comet: It came, we saw, we drank.
%
Hall's Laws of Politics:
(1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
(2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want
something fixed.
(3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
military spending, and conservatives social spending in
their own districts).
%
Hand, n.:
A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Handel's Proverb:
You can't produce a baby in one month by impregnating 9 women!
%
handshaking protocol, n:
A process employed by hostile hardware devices to initiate a
terse but civil dialogue, which, in turn, is characterized by
occasional misunderstanding, sulking, and name-calling.
%
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
-- Pink Floyd
%
hangover, n:
The wrath of grapes.
%
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice
that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
%
Hanson's Treatment of Time:
There are never enough hours in a day,
but always too many days before Saturday.
%
Happiness adds and multiplies as we divide it with others.
%
Happiness is a hard disk.
%
Happiness is a positive cash flow.
%
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman
%
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Happiness is just an illusion, filled with sadness and confusion.
%
Happiness is the greatest good.
%
Happiness is twin floppies.
%
Happiness isn't having what you want, it's wanting what you have.
%
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
-- Oscar Levant
%
Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.
%
Happiness, n.:
An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
happiness, n:
Finding the owner of a lost bikini.
%
Happy feast of the pig!
%
Happy is the child whose father died rich.
%
hard, adj:
The quality of your own data; also how it is to believe those
of other people.
%
Hard reality has a way of cramping your style.
-- Daniel Dennett
%
Hard work may not kill you, but why take the chance?
%
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
-- Charlie McCarthy
%
hardware, n:
The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%
Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
From "The Thirteen Clocks"
%
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand
convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
-- Tobias Smollet
%
Harp not on that string.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
Harriet's Dining Observation:
In every restaurant, the hardness of the butter pats
increases in direct proportion to the softness of the bread.
%
Harris had the beefstead pie between his knees, and was carving it, and George
and I were waiting with our plates ready.
"Have you got a spoon there?" says Harris; "I want a spoon to help
the gravy with."
The hamper was close behind us, and George and I both turned round to
reach one out. We were not five seconds getting it. When we looked round
again, Harris and the pie were gone!
It was a wide, open field. There was not a tree or a bit of hedge for
hundreds of yards. He could not have tumbled into the river, because we were
on the water side of him, and he would have had to climb over us to do it.
George and I gazed all about. Then we gazed at each other.
"Has he been snatched up to heaven?" I queried.
"They'd hardly have taken the pie, too," said George.
There seemed weight in this objection, and we discarded the heavenly
theory.
"I suppose the truth of the matter is," suggested George, descending
to the commonplace and practicable, "that there has been an earthquake."
And then he added, with a touch of sadness in his voice: "I wish he
hadn't been carving that pie."
-- Jerome K. Jerome, "Three Men In A Boat"
%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
equipment ruined.
%
Harrison's Postulate:
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.
%
Harris's Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
%
Harry and Fred were playing their Sunday afternoon golf game. The game, as
always, was close. They were at the treacherous 12th hole: a par three that
required a perfect first shot over a large pond and onto a tiny green. There
were sand traps on the other three sides of the green, and a small road 50
feet beyond it. Harry went first. He carefully addressed the ball and hit
a good shot that landed just on the edge of the green, narrowly avoiding the
pond. Just as Fred addressed his ball, he looked up and noticed a funeral
procession along the road just behind the green. Fred put down his club,
took his hat off, and waited for the entire procession to pass. As soon as
the cars were gone he put his hat back on and started addressing the ball
again. Harry said, "Damn, Fred. That was a really nice thing you did,
waiting for the funeral to pass like that."
Fred finished his swing, making perfect contact with the ball. It
was an excellent shot that landed 7 feet from the hole. "It's the least I
could do," he said, smiling at his shot, "We were married for 22 years,
you know."
%
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
just like Richard Nixon."
-- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
%
Harry's bar has a new cocktail. It's called MRS punch. They make it with
milk, rum and sugar and it's wonderful. The milk is for vitality and the
sugar is for pep. They put in the rum so that people will know what to do
with all that pep and vitality.
%
Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can
get him to float on his back, you've got something.
%
HARTLEY'S SECOND LAW:
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
My corollary:
The completely psychotic have all the fun.
%
Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the
organism will do as it damn well pleases.
%
HARVARD:
Quarterback:
Sophomore Dave Strewzinski... likes to pass. And pass he does, with
a record 86 attempts (three completions) in 87 plays.... Though Strewzinski
has so far failed to score any points for the Crimson, his jackrabbit speed
has made him the least sacked quarterback in the Ivy league.
Wide Receiver:
The other directional signal in Harvard's offensive machine is senior
Phil Yip, who is very fast. Yip is so fast that he has set a record for being
fast. Expect to see Yip elude all pursuers and make it into the endzone five
or six times, his average for a game. Yip, nicknamed "fumblefingers" and "you
asshole" by his teammates, hopes to carry the ball with him at least one of
those times.
YALE:
Defense:
On the defensive side, Yale boasts the stingiest line in the Ivies.
Primarily responsible are seniors Izzy "Shylock" Bloomberg and Myron
Finklestein, the tightest ends in recent Eli history. Also contributing to
the powerful defense is junior tackle Angus MacWhirter, a Scotsman who rounds
out the offensive ethnic joke. Look for these three to shut down the opening
coin toss.
-- Harvard Lampoon 1988 Program Parody, distributed at The Game
%
Has anyone ever tasted an "end"? Are they really bitter?
%
Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are typed
with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter keyboard
was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use of both hands.
It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is not only unnatural,
but a lot harder than it appears.
%
Has the great art and mystery of politics no apparent utility? Does it
appear to be unqualifiedly ratty, raffish, sordid, obscene and low down,
and its salient virtuosi a gang of unmitigated scoundrels? Then let us
not forget its high capacity to soothe and tickle the midriff, its
incomparable services as a maker of entertainment.
-- H. L. Mencken, "A Carnival of Buncombe"
%
Haste makes waste.
-- John Heywood
%
Hatcheck girl:
"Goodness! What lovely diamonds!"
Mae West:
"Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie."
-- "Night After Night", 1932
%
Hate is like acid. It can damage the vessel in which it is
stored as well as destroy the object on which it is poured.
%
Hate the sin and love the sinner.
-- Mahatma Gandhi
%
Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie,
unwed mothers and cheating on your income tax.
-- Mike Royko
%
Hatred, n.:
A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Have a coke and a smile!
-- John DeLorean
%
Have a nice day!
%
Have a nice diurnal anomaly.
%
Have a place for everything and keep the thing
somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.
-- Mark Twain
%
Have a taco.
-- P. S. Beagle
%
Have an adequate day.
%
Have at you!
%
Have no friends not equal to yourself.
-- Confucius
%
Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is
to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This
still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or
only serves to blunt the warning signs.
Long live the revolution!
Have a nice day.
%
Have the courage to take your own thoughts
seriously, for they will shape you.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Have you ever felt like a wounded cow
halfway between an oven and a pasture?
walking in a trance toward a pregnant
seventeen-year-old housewife's
two-day-old cookbook?
-- Richard Brautigan
%
Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned?
Well, I haven't. I find that whenever a woman becomes friends with me,
she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious, and a damn nuisance; and
whenever I become friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.
So here I am, Pickering, a confirmed old bachelor and very likely to
remain so.
-- Henry Higgins, "My Fair Lady"
%
Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying
to tell you `there's a time for work and a time for play'
never find the time for play?
%
Have you flogged your kid today?
%
Have you locked your file cabinet?
%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy,
vigorous grass is a crack in your sidewalk?
%
Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
-- Dr. Who
%
Have you reconsidered a computer career?
%
Have you seen the latest Japanese camera? Apparently it is so fast it can
photograph an American with his mouth shut!
%
Have you seen the old man in the closed down market,
Kicking up the papers in his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride, hands hang loosely at his side
Yesterdays papers, telling yesterdays news.
How can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand
Lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind...
Have you seen the old man outside the sea-mans mission
Memories fading like the metal ribbons that he wears.
In our winter city the rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero and a world that doesn't care...
%
Have you seen the well-to-do, up and down Park Avenue?
On that famous thoroughfare, with their noses in the air,
High hats and Arrow collars, white spats and lots of dollars,
Spending every dime, for a wonderful time...
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to,
Why don't you go where fashion sits,
...
Dressed up like a million dollar trooper,
Trying hard to look like Gary Cooper, (super dooper)
Come, let's mix where Rockefeller's walk with sticks,
Or umbrellas, in their mitts,
Puttin' on the Ritz.
...
If you're blue and you don't know where to go to,
Why don't you go where fashion sits,
Puttin' on the Ritz.
Puttin' on the Ritz.
Puttin' on the Ritz.
Puttin' on the Ritz.
%
Having a baby isn't so bad. If you're a female Emperor penguin
in the Antarctic. She lays the egg, rolls it over to the father,
then takes off for warmer weather where she eats and eats and
eats. For two months, the father stands stiff, without food,
blind in the 24-hour dark, balancing the egg on his feet. After
the little penguin is hatched, the mother sees fit to come home.
-- L. M. Boyd, "Austin American-Statesman"
%
Having a wonderful wine, wish you were beer.
%
Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
-- Martin Mull
%
Having no talent is no longer enough.
-- Gore Vidal
%
Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.
-- Socrates
%
Having wandered helplessly into a blinding snowstorm Sam was greatly
relieved to see a sturdy Saint Bernard dog bounding toward him with
the traditional keg of brandy strapped to his collar.
"At last," cried Sam, "man's best friend -- and a great big
dog, too!"
%
Hawkeye's Conclusion:
It's not easy to play the clown
when you've got to run the whole circus.
%
He: Do you like Kipling?
She: Oh, you naughty boy, I don't know! I've never kippled!
%
He: "If I made love to you, would you yell?"
She: "What do you want me to yell?"
-- Benny Hill
%
HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
-- Walt Kelley
%
He asked me if I knew what time it was -- I said yes, but not right now.
-- Steven Wright
%
He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable
perversion.
-- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
%
He didn't run for reelection. "Politics brings you into contact with all
the people you'd give anything to avoid," he said. "I'm staying home."
-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%
He does it with a better grace, but I do it more natural.
-- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth-Night"
%
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity
finer than the staple of his argument.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
%
He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
%
He gave her a look that you could have poured on a waffle.
%
He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
perfectly delightful.
-- Sydney Smith
%
He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild
and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned
all hope of ever behaving "normally."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
He has been known by many names; the Prince of Lies, the Director, Lucifer,
Belial, and once, at a party, some obnoxious drunk kept calling him "Dude".
-- Stig's Inferno
%
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him.
-- Bion
%
He hath eaten me out of house and home.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
%
He heard the snick of a rifle bolt and found himself peering down the muzzle
of a weapon held by a drunken liquor store owner -- "There's a conflict," he
said, "there's a conflict between land and people... the people have to go..."
-- Stan Ridgeway, "Call of the West"
%
He is a man capable of turning any colour into grey.
-- John LeCarre
%
He is considered a most graceful speaker
who can say nothing in the most words.
%
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
%
He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
-- Mark Twain
%
He is the best of men who dislikes power.
-- Mohammed
%
He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap.
%
He jests at scars who never felt a wound.
-- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2"
%
He keeps differentiating, flying off on a tangent.
%
He knew the tavernes well in every toun.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer
%
He knows not how to know who knows not also how to unknow.
-- Sir Richard Burton
%
He laughs at every joke three times... once when it's told,
once when it's explained, and once when he understands it.
%
He looked at me as if I were a side dish he hadn't ordered.
-- Ring Lardner
%
He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.
-- Andrew Lang
%
He only knew his iron spine held up the sky -- he didn't realize his brain
had fallen to the ground.
-- The Book of Serenity
%
(He opens a tolm and begins.)
It says: "In the beginning was the Word."
Already I am stopped. It seems absurd.
The Word does not deserve the highest prize,
I must translate it otherwise.
If I am well inspired and not blind.
It says: "In the beginning was the Mind."
Ponder that first line, wait and see,
Lest you should write too hastily.
Is the Mind the all-creating source?
It ought to say: "In the beginning there was Force."
Yet something warns me as I grasp the pen,
That my translation must be changed again.
The spirit helps me. Now it is exact.
I write: "In the beginning was the Act."
-- Goethe's Faust
%
[He] played the King as if afraid someone else might play the ace.
-- Unattributed review of a performance of King Lear
My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked.
-- Peter Stack, movie review
His performance is so wooden you want to spray him with Liquid Pledge.
-- John Stark, movie review
%
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
-- John Mason Brown, drama critic
%
He tells you when you've got on too much lipstick,
And helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
-- O. Nash, on the perfect husband
%
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
He that bringeth a present, findeth the door open.
-- Scottish proverb
%
He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.
-- Ben Franklin
%
He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
%
He that teaches himself has a fool for a master.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
He that would govern others, first should be the master of himself.
%
He thinks the Gettysburg Address is where Lincoln lived.
-- Wanda, "A Fish Called Wanda"
%
He thought he saw an albatross
That fluttered 'round the lamp.
He looked again and saw it was
A penny postage stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said,
"The nights are rather damp."
%
He thought of Musashi, the Sword Saint, standing in his garden more than
three hundred years ago. "What is the 'Body of a rock'?" he was asked.
In answer, Musashi summoned a pupil of his and bid him kill himself by
slashing his abdomen with a knife. Just as the pupil was about to comply,
the Master stayed his hand, saying, "That is the 'Body of a rock'."
-- Eric Van Lustbader
%
[He] took me into his library and showed me his books, of which he had
a complete set.
-- Ring Lardner
%
He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose.
%
He was a cowboy, mister, and he loved the land. He loved it so much he
made a woman out of dirt and married her. But when he kissed her, she
disintegrated. Later, at the funeral, when the preacher said, "Dust to
dust," some people laughed, and the cowboy shot them. At his hanging, he
told the others, "I'll be waiting for you in heaven -- with a gun."
-- Jack Handey
%
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
-- Jonathon Swift
%
He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him
insufferable.
%
He was part of my dream, of course --
but then I was part of his dream too.
-- Lewis Carroll
%
He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
%
He was the sort of person whose personality
would be greatly improved by a terminal illness.
%
He who always plows a straight furrow is in a rut.
%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American
broadcasting industry attacks democracy itself.
-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%
He who dares the wrong, acts right, that's how it happens!
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hopes for
the human condition is a fool.
-- Albert Camus
%
He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
He who enters his wife's dressing room is a philosopher or a fool.
-- Balzac
%
He who fears the unknown may one day flee from his own backside.
-- Sinbad
%
He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.
%
He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over.
%
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
%
He who has but four and spends five has no need for a wallet.
%
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
%
He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much
a master of the world as he who is ready to die.
-- Giacomo Leopardi
%
He who hates vices hates mankind.
%
He who hesitates is a damned fool.
-- Mae West
%
He who hesitates is last.
%
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
%
He who hoots with owls by night cannot soar with eagles by day.
%
He who invents adages for others to peruse
takes along rowboat when going on cruise.
%
He who is content with his lot probably has a lot.
%
He who is flogged by fate and laughs the louder is a masochist.
%
He who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.
%
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -- he won't
encounter many rivals.
-- Georg Lichtenberg, "Aphorisms"
%
He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the
night, but he who is intoxicated by the cupbearer will not recover his
senses until the day of judgment.
-- Saadi
%
He who is known as an early riser need not get up until noon.
%
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
-- Lao Tsu
%
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is ignorant. Teach him.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool. Shun him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep. Wake him.
%
He who knows nothing, knows nothing.
But he who knows he knows nothing knows something.
And he who knows someone whose friend's wife's brother knows nothing,
he knows something. Or something like that.
%
He who knows others is wise.
He who knows himself is enlightened.
-- Lao Tsu
%
He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.
-- Lao Tsu
%
He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
He who laughs last -- missed the punch line.
%
He who laughs last hasn't been told the terrible truth.
%
He who laughs last is probably your boss.
%
He who laughs last usually had to have joke explained.
%
He who laughs, lasts.
%
He who lives without folly is less wise than he believes.
%
He who loses, wins the race,
And parallel lines meet in space.
-- John Boyd, "Last Starship from Earth"
%
He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-- Dr. Johnson
%
He who minds his own business is never unemployed.
%
He who renders warfare fatal to all engaged in it will
be the greatest benefactor the world has yet known.
-- Sir Richard Burton
%
He who slings mud generally loses ground.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
He who slings mud loses ground.
-- Chinese Proverb
%
He who spends a storm beneath a tree, takes life with a grain of TNT.
%
He who steps on others to reach the top has good balance.
%
He who walks on burning coals is sure to get burned.
-- Sinbad
%
He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
-- M. C. Escher
%
He who writes with no misspelled words has prevented a first suspicion
on the limits of his scholarship or, in the social world, of his general
education and culture.
-- Julia Norton McCorkle
%
HEAD CRASH!! FILES LOST!!
Details at 11.
%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday,
lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx
%
Hear about...
the Californian terrorist that tried to blow up a bus?
Burned his lips on the exhaust pipe.
%
Hear about...
the fellow who, upon being told by his shrewish wife that she
would dance on his grave, promptly provided for a burial at sea?
%
Hear about...
the female activist who went berserk during a demonstration and
attacked a karate-trained cop with a deadly weapon. She ended
up a chopped libber?
%
Hear about...
the guru who refused Novocaine while having a tooth pulled because
he wanted to transcend dental medication?
%
Hear about...
the pessimistic historian whose latest book has chapter headings
that read "World War One","World War Two" and "Watch This
Space"?
%
Hear about...
the wild office Christmas party in a completely automated
company -- the photocopier got drunk and tried to undo the
typewriter's ribbon?
%
Hear about...
the young Chinese woman who just won the lottery?
One fortunate cookie...
%
Hear me, my chiefs, I am tired; my heart is sick and sad.
From where the sun now stands I Will Fight No More Forever.
-- Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce
%
Heard that the next Space Shuttle is supposed to carry several
Guernsey cows? It's gonna be the herd shot 'round the world.
%
Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
-- Frank Morgan as The Wizard, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
Heaven and earth were created all together in the same instant,
on October 23rd, 4004 B.C. at nine o'clock in the morning.
-- Dr. John Lightfoot,
Vice-chancellor of Cambridge University
%
Heaven, n.:
A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention
while you expound your own.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.
-- Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, c. 1895
%
heavy, adj:
Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
%
Hedonist for hire... no job too easy!
%
Heisenberg may have been here.
%
Heisenberg may have slept here.
%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
%
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place,
for where we are is Hell, and where Hell is there must we ever be.
-- Christopher Marlowe, "Doctor Faustus"
%
Hell, if you don't try to remake someone,
how are they supposed to know you care?
%
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
%
hell, n:
Truth seen too late.
%
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
organization.
%
Hello. Jim Rockford's machine, this is Larry Doheny's machine. Will you
please have your master call my master at his convenience? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
%
Hello, friend! You say things aren't going too well? You say you have a
date with your favorite girl when it starts raining so hard you can't see?
And you're out on some back road when the car stalls and won't start, so
you set off across the fields, and 50 feet of barbed wire hits you right
smack in the puss? And then there's a big explosion behind you and you
don't hear your girl screaming any more?
Well, take a walk in the sun and hold your head up high!
You'll show the world; you'll tell them where to get off!
You'll never give up, never give up, never give up -- that ship!
%
"Hello," he lied.
-- Don Carpenter, quoting a Hollywood agent
%
Hell's broken loose.
-- Robert Greene
%
Help! I'm trapped in a Chinese computer factory!
%
HELP! Man trapped in a human body!
%
HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!
-- E. E. CUMMINGS
%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%
Help fight continental drift.
%
HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/share/games/fortune/!
%
Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file!
%
Help stamp out and abolish redundancy!
%
Help stamp out Mickey-Mouse computer interfaces -- Menus are for Restaurants!
%
Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; always busy without
getting on, always behind hand and lamenting it, without altering
her ways; wishing to be an economist, without contrivance or
regularity; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make
them better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging
them, without any power of engaging their respect.
-- J. Austen
%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.
But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%
Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people;
from Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth...
%
Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of reason.
%
Here I am again right where I know I shouldn't be
I've been caught inside this trap too many times
I must've walked these steps and said these words a
thousand times before
It seems like I know everybody's lines.
-- David Bromberg, "How Late'll You Play 'Til?"
%
Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when
I grow up.
-- Peter Drucker
%
Here I sit, broken-hearted,
All logged in, but work unstarted.
First net.this and net.that,
And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
The boss comes by, and I play the game,
Then I turn back to net.flame.
Is there a cure (I need your views),
For someone trapped in net.news?
I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Stael;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me Recamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor Nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you
have carpeting.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished:
if you're alive, it isn't.
%
Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the month. According
to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people are experiencing severe
marketing anxiety in China.
The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either (depending on the
inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax tadpole".
Bite the wax tadpole. There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's hard to get
a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to bite a wax
tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad, but broad
satiric vistas do not open up.
-- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle
%
HERE LIES LESTER MOORE
SHOT 4 TIMES WITH A .44
NO LES
NO MOORE
-- tombstone, in Tombstone, AZ
%
Here lies my wife: her let her lie!
Now she's at rest, and so am I.
-- John Dryden, epitaph intended for his wife
%
Here there by tygers.
%
HERE'S A GOOD JOKE to do during an earthquake. Straddle a big crack in
the earth and if it opens wider, go, "Whoa! Whoa!" and flap your arms
around as if you're going to fall.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
`Psychic Wins Lottery.'
-- Jay Leno
%
Herth's Law:
He who turns the other cheek too far gets it in the neck.
%
He's been like a father to me,
He's the only DJ you can get after three,
I'm an all-night musician in a rock and roll band,
And why he don't like me I don't understand.
-- The Byrds
%
He's dead, Jim.
%
He's got the heart of a little child,
and he keeps it in a jar on his desk.
%
He's just a politician trying to save both his faces...
%
He's just like Capistrano, always ready for a few swallows.
%
He's like a function -- he returns a value, in the form of
his opinion. It's up to you to cast it into a void or not.
-- Phil Lapsley
%
He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd
be there... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
%
He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is.
%
Heuristics are bug ridden by definition.
If they didn't have bugs, then they'd be algorithms.
%
Hewett's Observation:
The rudeness of a bureaucrat is inversely proportional to his or
her position in the governmental hierarchy and to the number of
peers similarly engaged.
%
Hey, diddle, diddle the overflow pdl
To get a little more stack;
If that's not enough then you lose it all
And have to pop all the way back.
%
Hey, Jim, it's me, Susie Lillis from the laundromat. You said you were
gonna call and it's been two weeks. What's wrong, you lose my number?
%
HEY KIDS! ANN LANDERS SAYS:
Be sure it's true, when you say "I love you". It's a sin to
tell a lie. Millions of hearts have been broken, just because
these words were spoken.
%
Hey, what do you expect from a culture that
*drives* on *parkways* and *parks* on *driveways*?
-- Gallagher
%
Hi! I'm Larry. This is my brother Bob, and this is my other brother
Jimbo. We thought you might like to know the names of your assailants.
%
Hi! You have reached 962-0129. None of us are here to answer the phone and
the cat doesn't have opposing thumbs, so his messages are illegible. Please
leave your name and message after the beep...
%
Hi! How are things going?
(just fine, thank you...)
Great! Say, could I bother you for a question?
(you just asked one...)
Well, how about one more?
(one more than the first one?)
Yes.
(you already asked that...)
[at this point, Alphonso gets smart... ]
May I ask two questions, sir?
(no.)
May I ask ONE then?
(nope...)
Then may I ask, sir, how I may ask you a question?
(yes, you may.)
Sir, how may I ask you a question?
(you must ask for retroactive question asking privileges for
the number of questions you have asked, then ask for that
number plus two, one for the current question, and one for the
next one)
Sir, may I ask nine questions?
(go right ahead...)
%
Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet.
As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of
equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney.
Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you
probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of
course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my
experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out
of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser.
Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our
motto is: "It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain."
-- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
%
Hi Jimbo. Dennis. Really appreciate the help on the income tax.
You wanna help on the audit now?
%
Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%
Hickery Dickery Dock,
The mice ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
The others escaped with minor injuries.
%
Hideously disfigured by an ancient Indian curse?
WE CAN HELP!
Call (511) 338-0959 for an immediate appointment.
%
Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
Im Leibe dick, an Suenden reich.
Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws
Weil es uns duenkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
We buried him today because
As far as we can tell, he's dead.
-- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty
Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
"The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter
Schickele
%
Higgeldy Piggeldy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis,
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
I just loved Mom."
%
Higgins: Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue.
Doolittle: A little of both, Guv'nor. Like the rest of us, a
little of both.
-- Shaw, "Pygmalion"
%
High heels are a device invented by a woman
who was tired of being kissed on the forehead.
%
High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven:
Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high
saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it
smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the
people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and
breakfast cereals, and lima bean-
High Priest: Skip a bit, brother.
Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take
out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less.
*Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the
counting shall be three. *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither
count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is
RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached,
then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being
naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen.
All: Amen.
-- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
%
HIGH TECHNOLOGY:
A California innovation composed
of equal parts of silicon and marijuana.
%
Higher education helps your earning capacity. Ask any college professor.
%
Hildebrant's Principle:
If you don't know where you are going,
any road will get you there.
%
Him: "Your skin is so soft. Are you a model?"
Her: "No," [blush] "I'm a cosmetologist."
Him: "Really? That's incredible...
It must be very tough to handle weightlessness."
-- "The Jerk"
%
Hindsight is always 20:20.
-- Billy Wilder
%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%
Hippogriff, n.:
An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half
eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter
eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study
of zoology is full of surprises.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%
His designs were strictly honourable, as the phrase is: that is, to rob
a lady of her fortune by way of marriage.
-- Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones"
%
...his disciples lead him in; he just does the rest.
-- Tommy
%
His eyes were cold. As cold as the bitter winter snow that was falling
outside. Yes, cold and therefore difficult to chew...
%
His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred
to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never
claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circum-
stances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.
Silence, though, could. It was in the days of the rains that their prayers
went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of
prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri,
goddess of the Night. The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through
the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the
Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze
rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.
Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique...
-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
%
His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
money, he went to Southern California.
%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%
His ideas of first-aid stopped short of squirting soda water.
-- P. G. Wodehouse
%
His life was formal; his actions seemed ruled with a ruler.
%
His mind is like a steel trap: full of mice.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier.
%
Historians have now definitely established that Juan Cabrillo, discoverer
of California, was not looking for Kansas, thus setting a precedent that
continues to this day.
-- Wayne Shannon
%
History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.
%
History has much to say on following the proper procedures. From a history
of the Mexican revolution:
"Hildago was later defeated at Guadalajara. The rebel army was
captured on its way through the mountains. All were courtmartialed and
shot, except Hildago, because he was a priest. He was handed over to
the bishop of Durango who excommunicated him and returned him to the
army where he was then executed."
%
History is curious stuff
You'd think by now we had enough
Yet the fact remains I fear
They make more of it every year.
%
History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles,
cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.
-- Leo Tolstoy
%
History is on our side (as long as we can control the historians).
%
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree on.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims"
%
History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
%
History repeats itself -- the first time as a tragi-comedy, the second
time as bedroom farce.
%
History repeats itself only if one does not listen the first time.
%
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge,
periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them
asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at
intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another... Truly the imago
state of Man seems to be terribly distant, but every moult is a step gained.
-- Charles Darwin, from "Origin of the Species"
%
Hit them biscuits with another touch of gravy,
Burn that sausage just a match or two more done.
Pour my black old coffee longer,
While that smell is gettin' stronger
A semi-meal ain't nuthin' much to want.
Loan me ten, I got a feelin' it'll save me,
With an ornery soul who don't shoot pool for fun,
If that coat'll fit you're wearin',
The Lord'll bless your sharin'
A semi-friend ain't nuthin' much to want.
And let me halfway fall in love,
For part of a lonely night,
With a semi-pretty woman in my arms.
Yes, I could halfway fall in deep--
Into a snugglin', lovin' heap,
With a semi-pretty woman in my arms.
-- Elroy Blunt
%
Hitchcock's Staple Principle:
The stapler runs out of staples
only while you are trying to staple something.
%
Hitler used methods against white men in Europe, which by tacit
agreement between the cultural European nations were only to be
used against the coloured.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
Hlade's Law:
If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person --
they will find an easier way to do it.
%
Hoaars-Faisse Gallery presents:
An exhibit of works by the artist known only as Pretzel.
The exhibit includes several large conceptual works using non-traditional
media and found objects including old sofa-beds, used mace canisters,
discarded sanitary napkins and parts of freeways. The artist explores
our dehumanization due to high technology and unresponsive governmental
structures in a post-industrial world. She/he (the artist prefers to
remain without gender) strives to create dialogue between viewer and
creator, to aid us in our quest to experience contemporary life with its
inner-city tensions, homelessness, global warming and gender and
class-based stress. The works are arranged to lead us to the essence of
the argument: that the alienation of the person/machine boundary has
sapped the strength of our voices and must be destroyed for society to
exist in a more fundamental sense.
%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every large problem is a small
problem struggling to get out.
%
Hodie natus est radici frater.
%
Hoffer's Discovery:
The grand act of a dying institution is to issue a newly
revised, enlarged edition of the policies and procedures manual.
%
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%
HOGAN'S HEROES DRINKING GAME --
Take a shot every time:
-- Sergeant Schultz says, "I knoooooowww nooooothing!"
-- General Burkhalter or Major Hochstetter intimidate/insult Colonel Klink.
-- Colonel Klink falls for Colonel Hogan's flattery.
-- One of the prisoners sneaks out of camp (one shot for each prisoner to go).
-- Colonel Klink snaps to attention after answering the phone (two shots
if it's one of our heroes on the other end).
-- One of the Germans is threatened with being sent to the Russian front.
-- Corporal Newkirk calls up a German in his phoney German accent, and
tricks him (two shots if it's Colonel Klink).
-- Hogan has a romantic interlude with a beautiful girl from the underground.
-- Colonel Klink relates how he's never had an escape from Stalag 13.
-- Sergeant Schultz gives up a secret (two shots if he's bribed with food).
-- The prisoners listen to the Germans' conversation by a hidden transmitter.
-- Sergeant Schultz "captures" one of the prisoners after an escape.
-- Lebeau pronounces "colonel" as "cuh-loh-`nell".
-- Carter builds some kind of device (two shots if it's not explosive).
-- Lebeau wears his apron.
-- Hogan says "We've got no choice" when the someone claims that the
plan is impossible.
-- The prisoners capture an important German, and sneak him out the tunnel.
%
Hollerith, v:
What thou doest when thy phone is on the fritzeth.
%
Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
-- Rex Reed
%
Holy Dilemma! Is this the end for the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder?
Will the Joker and the Riddler have the last laugh?
Tune in again tomorrow:
same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!
%
HOLY MACRO!
%
Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
they have to take you in.
-- Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"
%
Home is where the hurt is.
%
Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a
cage is to a cockatoo.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories:
The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.
-- Chris Shaw
%
Home on the Range was originally written in beef-flat.
%
"Home, Sweet Home" must surely have been written by a bachelor.
-- Samuel Butler
%
Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
-- Plato
%
Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
%
Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
-- F. M. Hubbard
%
Honesty's the best policy.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
honeymoon, n:
A short period of doting between dating and debting.
-- Ray C. Bandy
%
Honi soit la vache qui rit.
%
Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
%
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
%
Honorable, adj.:
Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as,
"the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
-- Francis Bacon
%
Hope is a waking dream.
-- Aristotle
%
Hope not, lest ye be disappointed.
-- M. Horner
%
Hope that the day after you die is a nice day.
%
Hoping to goodness is not theologically sound.
-- Peanuts
%
Horace's best ode would not please a young woman as much
as the mediocre verses of the young man she is in love with.
-- Moore
%
Horner's Five Thumb Postulate:
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
%
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%
Hors d'oeuvres -- a ham sandwich cut into forty pieces.
-- Jack Benny
%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
-- W.C. Fields
%
HOST SYSTEM NOT RESPONDING, PROBABLY DOWN. DO YOU WANT TO WAIT? (Y/N)
%
HOST SYSTEM RESPONDING, PROBABLY UP...
%
Hotels are tired of getting ripped off. I checked into a hotel and they
had towels from my house.
-- Mark Guido
%
Houdini escaping from New Jersey!
%
Household hint:
If you are out of cream for your coffee,
mayonnaise makes a dandy substitute.
%
Housework can kill you if done right.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
-- Neil Armstrong
%
How apt the poor are to be proud.
-- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth-Night"
%
How can you be in two places at once
when you're not anywhere at all?
%
How can you do 'New Math' problems with an 'Old Math' mind?
-- Schulz
%
How can you govern a nation which has 246 kinds of cheese?
-- Charles de Gaulle
%
How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
-- Pink Floyd
%
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our
thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another
in the waking state?
-- Plato
%
How can you think and hit at the same time?
-- Yogi Berra
%
How can you work when the system's so crowded?
%
How come everyone's going so slow if it's called rush hour?
%
How come financial advisors never seem to be as wealthy as they
claim they'll make you?
%
How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
%
How come we never talk anymore?
%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%
How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards
in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?
-- A. Cooper
%
How could they think women a recreation?
Or the repetition of bodies of steady interest?
Only the ignorant or the busy could. That elm
of flesh must prove a luxury of primes;
be perilous and dear with rain of an alternate earth.
Which is not to damn the forested China of touching.
I am neither priestly nor tired, and the great knowledge
of breasts with their loud nipples congregates in me.
The sudden nakedness, the small ribs, the mouth.
Splendid. Splendid. Splendid. Like Rome. Like loins.
A glamour sufficient to our long marvelous dying.
I say sufficient and speak with earned privilege,
for my life has been eaten in that foliate city.
To ambergris. But not for recreation.
I would not have lost so much for recreation.
Nor for love as the sweet pretend: the children's game
of deliberate ignorance of each to allow the dreaming.
Not for the impersonal belly nor the heart's drunkenness
have I come this far, stubborn, disastrous way.
But for relish of those archipelagoes of person.
To hold her in hand, closed as any sparrow,
and call and call forever till she turn from bird
to blowing woods. From woods to jungle. Persimmon.
To light. From light to princess. From princess to woman
in all her fresh particularity of difference.
Then oh, through the underwater time of night
indecent and still, to speak to her without habit.
This I have done with my life, and am content.
I wish I could tell you how it is in that dark,
standing in the huge singing and the alien world.
-- Jack Gilbert, "Don Giovanni on his way to Hell"
%
How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows.
%
How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
-- Elliot, "E.T."
%
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
How doth the VAX's C-compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.
How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.
%
How is the world ruled, and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to
journalists, and they believe what they read.
-- Karl Kraus, "Aphorisms and More Aphorisms"
%
How kind of you to be willing to live someone's life for them.
%
How many "coming men" has one known! Where on earth do they all go to?
-- Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
%
"How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
carried by a waiter at a nice party?"
Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell
what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then
say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it
back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another
cheese!" and so on.
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
How many priests are needed for a Boston Mass?
%
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."
%
How many weeks are there in a light year?
%
How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to
Dayton?
-- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey
%
How much does she love you?
Less than you'll ever know.
%
How much for your women? I want to buy your
daughter... how much for the little girl?
-- Jake Blues, "The Blues Brothers"
%
How much net work could a network work, if a network could net work?
%
How much of their influence on you is a result of your influence on them?
%
How often I found where I should be going
only by setting out for somewhere else.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
How sharper than a hound's tooth it is to have a thankless serpent.
%
How sharper than a serpent's tooth is a sister's "See?"
-- Linus Van Pelt
%
How to become a sysop:
I grew a beard, started wearing only t-shirts and jeans, and
developed a surly attitude. The group accepted me, and I've never
worked a full day in my life since then.
-- rho/slashdot
%
How to Raise Your I.Q. by Eating Gifted Children
-- Book title by Lewis B. Frumkes
%
How untasteful can you get?
%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of
you.
%
How you look depends on where you go.
%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity
in my traditional manner... sulking and nausea.
-- Tom K. Ryan
%
However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There
is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs.
There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ,
or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any
powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used
sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are
not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force
government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree
with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they
threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and
tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen
that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and
"D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to
claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more
angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group
who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step
of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans
in the name of "conservatism."
-- Senator Barry Goldwater, Congressional Record
%
HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill., motion
that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment making
changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits. The Senate amendment
was an amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the House
amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill. The original Senate amendment
was the conference agreement on the bill. Agreed to.
-- Albuquerque Journal
%
Hubbard's Law:
Don't take life too seriously;
you won't get out of it alive.
%
Hug me now, you mad, impetuous fool!!
Oh wait...
I'm a computer, and you're a person. It would never work out.
Never mind.
%
Huh?
%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929.
Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating
table to prevent her interference, he placed a urethral catheter into
a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and
walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory
x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize.
%
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
-- T. S. Eliot, "Four Quartets: Burnt Norton"
%
Human resources are human first, and resources second.
-- J. Garbers
%
Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober,
responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and
immature.
-- Tom Robbins
%
Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough.
-- Alan Kay
%
Humility is the first of the virtues -- for other people.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%
Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
-- William Gilbert
%
Humorists always sit at the children's table.
-- Woody Allen
%
"Humpf!" Humpfed a voice! "For almost two days you've run wild and insisted on
chatting with persons who've never existed. Such carryings-on in our peaceable
jungle! We've had quite enough of you bellowing bungle! And I'm here to
state," snapped the big kangaroo, "That your silly nonsensical game is all
through!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "Me, too!"
"With the help of the Wickersham Brothers and dozens of Wickersham
Uncles and Wickersham Cousins and Wickersham In-Laws, whose help I've engaged,
You're going to be roped! And you're going to be caged! And, as for your
dust speck... Hah! That we shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of Beezle-But
oil!"
-- Dr. Seuss, "Horton Hears a Who"
%
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!
All the king's horses,
And all the king's men,
Had scrambled eggs for breakfast again!
%
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
to... to... uh.....
%
Hydrogen: A colorless, odorless, lighter than air gas which, given
time, turns into people.
-- Harlow Shapley
%
I:
The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin
with a silk sow. The same is true of money.
II:
If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would
probably be twice as good as yesterday was.
III:
There are no lazy veteran lion hunters.
IV:
If you can afford to advertise, you don't need to.
V:
One-tenth of the participants produce over one-third of the output.
Increasing the number of participants merely reduces the average
output.
-- Norman Augustine
%
I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people
are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen
carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence
terrifies people the most.
-- Bob Dylan
%
I acted to show my love for Jodie Foster.
-- John Hinckley
%
I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Congs.
-- Muhammad Ali
%
I allow the world to live as it chooses,
and I allow myself to live as I choose.
%
I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor
or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority
viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority.
-- Richard M. Nixon
What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
I always choose my friends for their good looks and my enemies for their
good intellects. Man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
%
I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.
-- David Bowie
%
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it.
It is never any good to oneself.
-- Oscar Wilde, "An Ideal Husband"
%
I always say beauty is only sin deep.
-- Saki, "Reginald's Choir Treat"
%
I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people's
accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
-- Chief Justice Earl Warren
%
I always wake up at the crack of ice.
-- Joe E. Lewis
%
I always will remember -- I was in no mood to trifle;
'Twas a year ago November -- I got down my trusty rifle
I went out to shoot some deer And went out to stalk my prey --
On a morning bright and clear. What a haul I made that day!
I went and shot the maximum I tied them to my bumper and
The game laws would allow: I drove them home somehow,
Two game wardens, seven hunters, Two game wardens, seven hunters,
And a cow. And a cow.
The Law was very firm, it People ask me how I do it
Took away my permit-- And I say, "There's nothin' to it!
The worst punishment I ever endured. You just stand there lookin' cute,
It turns out there was a reason: And when something moves, you shoot."
Cows were out of season, and And there's ten stuffed heads
One of the hunters wasn't insured. In my trophy room right now:
Two game wardens, seven hunters,
And a pure-bred gurnsey cow.
-- Tom Lehrer, "The Hunting Song"
%
I am a bookaholic. If you are a decent
person, you will not sell me another book.
%
I am a computer.
I am dumber than any human and smarter than any administrator.
%
I am a conscientious man, when I throw
rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.
-- Ogden Nash, "Everybody's Mind to Me a Kingdom Is"
%
I am a deeply superficial person.
-- Andy Warhol
%
I am a friend of the working man, and I would rather be his friend
than be one.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
I am a man: nothing human is alien to me.
-- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
%
I am a PC technician - however, this has unfortunately caused my
computer to be running Win98.
-- seen on a FreeBSD mailing-list
%
I am America's child, a spastic slogging on demented
limbs drooling I'll trade my PhD for a telephone voice.
-- Burt Lanier Safford III, "An Obscured Radiance"
%
I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
-- Winston Churchill
%
I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
buy some more.
-- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
%
I am convinced that the truest act of courage is to sacrifice ourselves
for others in a totally nonviolent struggle for justice. To be a man
is to suffer for others.
-- Cesar Chavez
%
I am fairly unrepentant about her poetry. I really think that three
quarters of it is gibberish. However, I must crush down these thoughts
otherwise the dove of peace will shit on me.
-- Noel Coward on Edith Sitwell
%
I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.
-- Katharine Whitehorn
%
I am getting into abstract painting. Real abstract -- no brush, no canvas,
I just think about it. I just went to an art museum where all of the art
was done by children. All the paintings were hung on refrigerators.
-- Steven Wright
%
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person,
of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell
you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
-- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
%
I am just a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy.
-- Yul Brynner, 1956
%
I am looking for a honest man.
-- Diogenes the Cynic
%
I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.
%
I am NOMAD!
%
I am not a crook.
-- Richard Nixon
%
I am not a politician and my other habits are also good.
-- A. Ward
%
I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.
-- William Allen White
%
I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
-- Paul McCracken
%
I am not now and never have been a girl friend of Henry Kissinger.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.
-- Dennis Ritchie
%
I am not sure what this is, but an "F" would only dignify it.
-- English Professor
%
I am of the belief that catnip arrived on the planet in the same spaceship
that delivered cats. It is the only thing they have from their home
planet. Tuna, chicken, sparrow-brains, etc., these are all things of our
world that they like, but catnip is crack from home.
-- Bill Cole
%
I am professionally trained in computer science, which is to say
(in all seriousness) that I am extremely poorly educated.
-- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason"
%
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared
for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
-- Winston Churchill
%
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- Professor Lowd, English, Ohio University
%
I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
with an option to buy.
%
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
%
I am the wandering glitch -- catch me if you can.
%
I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.
-- John Donne
%
I am two with nature.
-- Woody Allen
%
I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty,
I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the
sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are
loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
-- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
%
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and
steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,
they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
%
I asked a teacher what the opposite of a miracle was and she, without
thinking, I assume, said it was an act of God.
-- Terry Prachett (Daily Mail 21 june 2008)
%
I asked the engineer who designed the communication terminal's keyboards
why these were not manufactured in a central facility, in view of the
small number needed [1 per month] in his factory. He explained that this
would be contrary to the political concept of local self-sufficiency.
Therefore, each factory needing keyboards, no matter how few, manufactures
them completely, even molding the keypads.
-- Isaac Auerbach, IEEE "Computer", Nov. 1979
%
I attribute my success to intelligence, guts, determination, honesty,
ambition, and having enough money to buy people with those qualities.
%
I B M
U B M
We all B M
For I B M!!!!
-- H.A.R.L.I.E.
%
I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
-- Gilda Radner
%
I began many years ago, as so many young men do, in searching for the
perfect woman. I believed that if I looked long enough, and hard enough,
I would find her and then I would be secure for life. Well, the years
and romances came and went, and I eventually ended up settling for someone
a lot less than my idea of perfection. But one day, after many years
together, I lay there on our bed recovering from a slight illness. My
wife was sitting on a chair next to the bed, humming softly and watching
the late afternoon sun filtering through the trees. The only sounds to
be heard elsewhere were the clock ticking, the kettle downstairs starting
to boil, and an occasional schoolchild passing beneath our window. And
as I looked up into my wife's now wrinkled face, but still warm and
twinkling eyes, I realized something about perfection... It comes only
with time.
-- James L. Collymore, "Perfect Woman"
%
I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life,
particularly if he has income and she is pattable.
-- Ogden Nash
%
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute
-- where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic)
how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom
to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or
political preference -- and where no man is denied public office merely
because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or
the people who might elect him.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
I believe in sex and death -- two experiences that come once in a lifetime.
-- Woody Allen
%
I believe that professional wrestling is clean
and everything else in the world is fixed.
-- Frank Deford, sports writer
%
I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac
thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the
total discrediting of the world of reality.
-- Salvador Dali
%
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers
%
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
-- Marvin Minsky
%
I BET WHAT HAPPENED was they discovered fire and invented the wheel on
the same day. Then that night, they burned the wheel.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I BET WHEN NEANDERTHAL KIDS would make a snowman, someone would always
end up saying, "Don't forget the thick heavy brows." Then they would get
embarrassed because they remembered they had the big hunky brows too, and
they'd get mad and eat the snowman.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I bet you have fun chasing the soap around the bathtub.
-- Princess Diana, to a one-armed war veteran during
a visit to a London veterans hospital
%
I brake for chezlogs!
%
I braved the contempt of my friends last week and ventured out to see
Bambi, the Disney rerelease that is proving to be a hit once again in the
box office. I was looking forward to a gentle, soothing, late afternoon
relief from the Washington Summer. Instead I was traumatized. As a
psycho-sexual return to the horrors of early adolescence, it couldn't be
more effective. For the first half-hour, you're lulled into an agreeable
sense of security and comfort. Birds twitter; small rabbits turn out to
be great conversationalists. Pop is what Senator Moynihan would describe
as an absent father, but Mom's there to make you feel OK in the odd
thunderstorm. You make great friends, fool around on the ice, discover
the meadow, generally mellow out. Then, without any particular warning,
your mom gets shot, your voice breaks, huge growths start appearing on
your head, and your peers start heading off into the clover with the
apparent intention of having sex. Next thing you know, the forest burns
down. If I were still eight, I think I'd prefer Rambo III.
-- Townsend Davis
%
I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up.
-- Biff Barf
%
I called my parents the other night, but I forgot about the time difference.
They're still living in the fifties.
-- Strange de Jim
%
I came, I saw, I deleted all your files.
%
I came out of twelve years of college and I didn't even know how to sew.
All I could do was account -- I couldn't even account for myself.
-- Firesign Theatre
%
I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for my mother.
%
I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan
prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very
bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after
relentless day.
-- Betty MacDonald
%
I can give you my word, but I know what it's worth and you don't.
-- Nero Wolfe, "Over My Dead Body"
%
I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.
-- Jay Gould
%
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart,
and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
-- Larry Lee
%
I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
%
I can relate to that.
%
I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
true.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%
I can see him a'comin'
With his big boots on,
With his big thumb out,
He wants to get me.
He wants to hurt me.
He wants to bring me down.
But some time later,
When I feel a little straighter,
I'll come across a stranger
Who'll remind me of the danger,
And then.... I'll run him over.
Pretty smart on my part!
To find my way... In the dark!
-- Phil Ochs
%
I can write better than anybody who can write faster,
and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.
-- A. J. Liebling
%
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman
%
I cannot believe that God plays dice with the cosmos.
-- Albert Einstein, on the randomness of quantum mechanics
%
I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
-- F. H. Wales (1936)
%
I cannot draw a cart, nor eat dried oats;
If it be man's work I will do it.
%
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
-- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
%
I can't believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the quickest.
-- Steven Pearl
%
I CAN'T come back, I don't know how it works.
-- Frank Morgan as The Wizard, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh
%
I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
-- Florence Henderson
%
I can't die until the government finds a safe place to bury my liver.
-- Phil Harris
%
I Can't Get Over You, So I Get Up and Go Around to the Other Side
If You Won't Leave Me Alone, I'll Find Someone Who Will
I Knew That You'd Committed a Sin When You Came Home Late With
Your Socks Outside-in
I'm a Rabbit in the Headlights of Your Love
Don't Kick My Tires If You Ain't Gonna Take Me For a Ride
I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
I've Got Red Eyes From Your White Lies and I'm Blue All the Time
-- proposed Country-Western song titles from "Wordplay"
%
I can't mate in captivity.
-- Gloria Steinem, on why she has never married
%
I can't seem to bring myself to say, "Well, I guess I'll be toddling along."
It isn't that I can't toddle. It's that I can't guess I'll toddle.
-- Robert Benchley
%
I can't stand squealers; hit that guy.
-- Albert Anastasia
%
I can't stand this proliferation of paperwork. It's useless to fight the
forms. You've got to kill the people producing them.
-- Vladimir Kabaidze, general director of the Ivanovo Machine
Building Works (near Moscow) in a speech to the Communist
Party Conference
%
I can't understand it.
I can't even understand the people who can understand it.
-- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands
%
I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
-- Fred Allen
%
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas.
I'm frightened of the old ones.
-- John Cage
%
I collect rare photographs... I have two... One of Houdini locking his
keys in his car... the other is a rare picture of Norman Rockwell beating
up a child.
-- Steven Wright
%
I come from a small town whose population never changed. Each time
a woman got pregnant, someone left town.
-- Michael Prichard
%
I consider a new device or technology to have been
culturally accepted when it has been used to commit a murder.
-- M. Gallaher
%
I consider the day misspent that I am not
either charged with a crime, or arrested for one.
-- "Ratsy" Tourbillon
%
I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
dance with the cows till you come home.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I could never learn to like her --
except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.
-- Mark Twain
%
I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less.
%
I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the
time I found out that M&Ms really DO melt in your hand.
-- Peter Oakley
%
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise.
%
I didn't believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives. I don't see why
I should have to believe in it in this one.
-- Strange de Jim
%
I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! Can't prove anything!
-- Bart Simpson
%
I didn't get sophisticated -- I just got tired.
But maybe that's what sophisticated is -- being tired.
-- Rita Gain
%
I didn't know he was dead; I thought he was British.
%
I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.
%
I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions.
The curtain was up.
%
I disagree with what you say, but will defend
to the death your right to tell such LIES!
%
I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk
and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously,
unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell
you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.
-- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
%
I distrust a man who says when. If he's got to be careful not to drink
too much, it's because he's not to be trusted when he does.
-- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
%
I do desire we may be better strangers.
-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
%
I do enjoy a good long walk -- especially when my wife takes one.
%
I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to
minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary
accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a
mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the
bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always
different.
-- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
%
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman
Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church,
nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church.
-- Thomas Paine
%
I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do will encounter
quick retribution. All will be suspended, and I don't care if it wrecks
the National League for five years. This is the United States of America
and one citizen has as much right to play as another.
-- Ford Frick, National League President, reacting to a
threatened strike by some Cardinal players in 1947 if
Jackie Robinson took the field against St. Louis. The
Cardinals backed down and played.
%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
%
I do not know myself and God forbid that I should.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern,
any adequate account of that nature with which I am acquainted. Mythology
comes nearest to it of any.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a
butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.
-- Chuang-tzu
%
I do not remember ever having seen a sustained argument by an author which,
starting from philosophical premises likely to meet with general acceptance,
reached the conclusion that a praiseworthy ordering of one's life is to
devote it to research in mathematics.
-- Sir Edmund Whittaker, "Scientific American", Vol. 183
%
I do not seek the ignorant; the ignorant seek me -- I will instruct them.
I ask nothing but sincerity. If they come out of habit, they become
tiresome.
-- I Ching
%
I do not take drugs -- I am drugs.
-- Salvador Dali
%
I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
don't believe in astrology.
-- James R. F. Quirk
%
I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just
a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more
numbers!!
%
I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of
a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
-- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to
run their own business. I know men that would make my wife a better
husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
I don't care what star you're following, get that camel off my front lawn!
-- Heard in Bethlehem
%
I don't care where I sit as long as I get fed.
-- Calvin Trillin
%
I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
nominating.
-- Boss Tweed
%
I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't
deserve that either.
-- Jack Benny
%
I don't do it for the money.
-- Donald Trump, Art of the Deal
%
I don't drink, I don't like it, it makes me feel too good.
-- K. Coates
%
I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking.
-- Katherine Cebrian
%
I don't get no respect.
%
I don't have an eating problem. I eat.
I get fat. I buy new clothes. No problem.
%
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I don't have any use for bodyguards, but I do have a specific use for two
highly trained certified public accountants.
-- Elvis Presley
%
I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got
hundreds of people waiting to abuse me.
-- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
%
I don't kill flies, but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above
globes. They freak out and yell "Whooa, I'm *way* too high."
-- Bruce Baum
%
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
-- Elvis Presley
%
I don't know what Descartes' got,
But booze can do what Kant cannot.
-- Mike Cross
%
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much
more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
I don't know why anyone would want a computer in their home.
-- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, 1974
%
I don't know why we're here, I say we all go home and free associate.
%
I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't,
because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I'd just hate it.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
I don't like the Dutchman. He's a crocodile. He's sneaky.
I don't trust him.
-- Jack "Legs" Diamond, just before a peace conference
with Dutch Schultz.
I don't trust Legs. He's nuts. He gets excited and starts pulling a
trigger like another guy wipes his nose.
-- Dutch Schultz, just before a peace conference with
"Legs" Diamond.
%
I don't make the rules, Gil, I only play the game.
-- Cash McCall
%
I don't mind arguing with myself.
It's when I lose that it bothers me.
-- Richard Powers
%
I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path.
-- Ronald Mabbitt
%
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.
-- Victor Hugo
%
I don't need no arms around me...
I don't need no drugs to calm me...
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I need anything at all!
All in all, it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all, it was all just bricks in the wall.
-- Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall", Part III
%
I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?
%
I don't remember it, but I have it written down.
%
I don't see what's wrong with giving Bobby a little experience before
he starts to practice law.
-- John F. Kennedy, upon appointing his brother
Attorney-General.
%
I DON'T THINK I'M ALONE when I say I'd like to see more and more planets
fall under the ruthless domination of our solar system.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
"I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
%
I don't think they are going to give a shit about the Republican
Committee trying to bug the Democratic Committee's headquarters.
-- Richard Nixon, 1972
%
"I don't understand," said the scientist, "why you lemmings all rush down
to the sea and drown yourselves."
"How curious," said the lemming. "The one thing I don't understand is why
you human beings don't."
-- James Thurber
%
I don't understand you anymore.
%
I don't wanna argue, and I don't wanna fight,
But there will definitely be a party tonight...
%
I don't want a pickle,
I just wanna ride on my motorcycle.
And I don't want to die,
I just want to ride on my motorcycle.
-- Arlo Guthrie
%
I don't want people to love me. It makes for obligations.
-- Jean Anouilh
%
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.
I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
-- Woody Allen
%
I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is
thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists
broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake.
Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off
their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ...
-- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE
COMING!"
%
I don't want to bore you, but there's nobody else around for me to bore.
%
I don't want to live on in my work, I want to live on in my apartment.
-- Woody Allen
%
I don't wish to appear overly inquisitive, but are you still alive?
%
I dote on his very absence.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%
I doubt, therefore I might be.
%
I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual
becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
I drink to make other people interesting.
-- George Jean Nathan
%
I either want less decadence or more chance to participate in it.
%
I enjoy the time that we spend together.
%
I exist, therefore I am paid.
%
I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
%
I feel sorry for your brain... all alone in that great big head...
%
I fell asleep reading a dull book,
and I dreamt that I was reading on,
so I woke up from sheer boredom.
%
I figure that if God actually does exist, He's big enough to understand an
honest difference of opinion.
- Isaac Asimov
%
I finally went to the eye doctor. I got contacts.
I only need them to read, so I got flip-ups.
-- Steven Wright
%
I find this corpse guilty of carrying a concealed weapon and I fine it $40.
-- Judge Roy Bean, finding a pistol and $40 on a man he'd
just shot.
%
I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words.
%
I found Rome a city of bricks and left it a city of marble.
-- Augustus Caesar
%
I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment.
-- Gotama Buddha
%
I gave my love an Apple, that had no core;
I gave my love a building, that had no floor;
I wrote my love a program, that had no end;
I gave my love an upgrade, with no cryin'.
How can there be an Apple, that has no core?
How can there be a building, that has no floor?
How can there be a program, that has no end?
How can there be an upgrade, with no cryin'?
An Apple's MOS memory don't use no core!
A building that's perfect, it has no flaw!
A program with GOTOs, it has no end!
I lied about the upgrade, with no cryin'!
%
I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most
*_h_o_r_r_i_f_y_i_n_g* 20
minutes of my life!
%
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-- Mae West
%
I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.
-- Chauncey Depew
%
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
-- Pete Seeger
%
I give you the man who -- the man who -- uh, I forgets the man who?
-- Beauregard Bugleboy
%
I go on working for the same reason a hen goes on laying eggs.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
I go the way that Providence dictates.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
I got my driver's license photo taken out of focus on purpose. Now
when I get pulled over the cop looks at it (moving it nearer and
farther, trying to see it clearly)... and says, "Here, you can go."
-- Steven Wright
%
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were
wearing masks for.
-- James Boren
%
I got this powdered water -- now I don't know what to add.
-- Steven Wright
%
I got tired of listening to the recording on the phone at the movie
theater. So I bought the album. I got kicked out of a theater the
other day for bringing my own food in. I argued that the concession
stand prices were outrageous. Besides, I hadn't had a barbecue in a
long time. I went to the theater and the sign said adults $5 children
$2.50. I told them I wanted 2 boys and a girl. I once took a cab to
a drive-in movie. The movie cost me $95.
-- Steven Wright
%
I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.
-- Butch Cassidy
%
I GUESS I KINDA LOST CONTROL because in the middle of the play I ran up
and lit the evil puppet villain on fire.
No, I didn't. Just kidding. I just said that to illustrate one of the
human emotions which is freaking out. Another emotion is greed, as when
you kill someone for money or something like that. Another emotion is
generosity, as when you pay someone double what he paid for his stupid
puppet.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I GUESS I'LL NEVER FORGET HER. And maybe I don't want to. Her spirit
was wild, like a wild monkey. Her beauty was like a beautiful horse
being ridden by a wild monkey. I forget her other qualities.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I guess I've been so wrapped up in playing the game that I never took
time enough to figure out where the goal line was -- what it meant to
win -- or even how you won.
-- Cash McCall
%
I guess I've been wrong all my life, but so have billions of
other people... Certainty is just an emotion.
-- Hal Clement
%
I GUESS OF ALL MY UNCLES, I liked Uncle Caveman the best. We called him
Uncle Caveman because he lived in a cave and because sometimes he'd eat
one of us. Later, we found out he was a bear.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I guess the Little League is even littler than we thought.
-- D. Cavett
%
I GUESS WE WERE ALL GUILTY, in a way. We shot him, we skinned him, and
we all got a complimentary bumper sticker that said, "I helped skin Bob."
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I had a dream last night...
I dreamt about 1976.
I dreamt about a country with incurable brain damage...
I even dreamt they gave it a heart transplant.
Then I woke up and I knew it was only a nightmare...
so I went back to sleep again.
-- Ralph Steadman, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%
I had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all. Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus. I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable -- but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
-- Winston Churchill
%
I had a virgin once. I had to go to Guatemala for her. She was blind
in one eye, and she had a stuffed alligator that said, "Welcome to Miami
Beach."
-- The Stunt Man
%
I had another dream the other day about government financial management
people. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they
had stepped out of a painting by Goya.
%
I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small
and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a
painting by Goya.
-- Stravinsky
%
I had never been too political, but I knew how white people treated black
people and it was hard for me to come back to the bullshit white people
put a black person through in this country. To realize you don't have any
power to make things different is a bitch.
-- Miles Davis
%
I had no shoes and I pitied myself. Then I met a man who had no feet,
so I took his shoes.
-- Dave Barry
%
I had the rare misfortune of being one of the first people to try and
implement a PL/1 compiler.
-- T. Cheatham
%
I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
Moore show I heard the word "damn!"
-- Mary Lou Bax
%
I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense.
%
I hate babies. They're so human.
-- H. H. Munro
%
I hate dying.
-- Dave Johnson
%
I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
it's going to be up all night.
-- Steven Wright
%
I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them,
and I know how bad I am.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
I hate quotations.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park
there's nothing else to do.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
I hate trolls. Maybe I could metamorph it into something else -- like a
ravenous, two-headed, fire-breathing dragon.
-- Willow
%
I have a box of telephone rings under my bed. Whenever I get lonely, I
open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call. One day I dropped the
box all over the floor. The phone wouldn't stop ringing. I had to get
it disconnected. So I got a new phone. I didn't have much money, so I
had to get an irregular. It doesn't have a five. I ran into a friend
of mine on the street the other day. He said why don't you give me a
call. I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone
doesn't have a five. He asked how long had it been that way. I said I
didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a dog; I named him Stay. So when I'd go to call him, I'd say, "Here,
Stay, here..." but he got wise to that. Now when I call him he ignores me
and just keeps on typing.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a dream. I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia,
the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to
sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
I have a friend whose a billionaire. He invented Cliff's notes. When
I asked him how he got such a great idea he said, "Well first I...
I just... to make a long story short..."
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a hard time being attracted to anyone who can beat me up.
-- John McGrath, Atlanta sportswriter, on women weightlifters
%
I have a hobby. I have the world's largest collection of sea shells.
I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen
some of it.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller, like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
-- Robert L. Stevenson
%
I have a map of the United States. It's actual size.
I spent last summer folding it.
People ask me where I live, and I say, "E6".
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died.
-- Richard Diran
%
I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once
in a while I turn it on and off. On and off. On and off. One day I
got a call from a woman in France who said "Cut it out!"
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a terrible headache, I was putting on toilet water and the lid fell.
%
I have a theory that it's impossible to prove anything,
but I can't prove it.
%
I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
any time!
%
I have a very strange feeling about this...
-- Luke Skywalker
%
I have already given two cousins to the war and I stand ready to
sacrifice my wife's brother.
-- Artemus Ward
%
I have always noticed that whenever a radical takes
to Imperialism, he catches it in a very acute form.
-- Winston Churchill, 1903
%
I have an existential map. It has "You are here" written all over it.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have become me without my consent.
%
I have come up with a surefire concept for a hit television show, which
would be called "A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark."
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per
cent an idiot.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable
to sit still in a room.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats.
I tell them the truth and they never believe me.
-- Camillo Di Cavour
%
I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and
to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and
support of the woman I love.
-- Edward, Duke of Windsor, 1936, announcing his abdication
of the British throne in order to marry the American
divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson.
%
I have found little that is good about human beings. In my experience
most of them are trash.
-- Sigmund Freud
%
I have gained this by philosophy:
that I do without being commanded what others
do only from fear of the law.
-- Aristotle
%
I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
-- Edgar Allan Poe
%
I have had my television aerials removed. It's the moral equivalent
of a prostate operation.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge
%
I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.
-- Plato
%
I have just had eighteen whiskeys in a row.
I do believe that is a record.
-- Dylan Thomas, his last words
%
I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
I have learned silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind.
-- Kahlil Gibran
%
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on
Some people's n'oeuvres.
-- Warren Knox
%
I have lots of things in my pockets;
None of them is worth anything.
Sociopolitical whines aside,
Gan you give me, gratis, free,
The price of half a gallon
Of Gallo extra bad
And most of the bus fare home.
%
I have made mistakes but I have never made the
mistake of claiming that I have never made one.
-- James Gordon Bennett
%
I have made this letter longer than usual
because I lack the time to make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
I have more hit points that you can possible imagine.
%
I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
_B_O_D_Y!
-- from "Cerebus" #82
%
I have never been one to sacrifice
my appetite on the altar of appearance.
-- A. M. Readyhough
%
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain
%
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
-- Rob Pike, on X
Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
gone in two years. He was half right.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
-- Jim Gettys
%
I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts
already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic
establishment.
-- Alan Bennett
%
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race,
in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
-- Thoreau
%
I have no doubt the Devil grins,
As seas of ink I spatter.
Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins--
The other kind don't matter.
-- Robert W. Service
%
I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his
own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks
of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%
I have not yet begun to byte!
%
I have nothing but utter contempt for the courts of this land.
-- George Wallace
%
I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying,
and for this reason: I can never be satisfied with anyone who would
be blockhead enough to have me.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
I have often looked at women and committed adultery in my heart.
-- Jimmy Carter
%
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines. I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself. But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and
after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government
of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only
commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgment of my labors, nor even
the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the
reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were
a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the
execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some
justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I
venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will
ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if
made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to
declare the construction of such machinery impracticable...
And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed
by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its
advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I
think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
-- Charles Babbage, "The Life of a Philosopher"
%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
I have seen the Great Pretender and he is not what he seems.
%
I have that old biological urge,
I have that old irresistible surge,
I'm hungry.
%
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
I have to convince you, or at least snow you ...
-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%
I have to think hard to name an interesting man who does not drink.
-- Richard Burton
%
I have travelled the length and breadth of this country, and have talked with
the best people in business administration. I can assure you on the highest
authority that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year.
-- Editor in charge of business books at Prentice-Hall
publishers, responding to Karl V. Karlstrom (a junior
editor who had recommended a manuscript on the new
science of data processing), c. 1957
%
I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.
-- John D. Rockefeller
%
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-- Poul Anderson
%
I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
%
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
%
I hear the sound that the machines make,
and feel my heart break, just for a moment.
%
I hear what you're saying but I just don't care.
%
I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very
interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell
more than he knows.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing...
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
I hold your hand in mine, dear, I press it to my lips,
I take a healthy bite from your dainty fingertips,
My joy would be complete, dear, if you were only here,
But still I keep your hand as a precious souvenir.
The night you died I cut it off, I really don't know why,
For now each time I kiss it I get bloodstains on my tie,
I'm sorry now I killed you, our love was something fine,
So until they come to get me I will hold your hand in mine.
-- Tom Lehrer, "I Hold Your Hand In Mine"
%
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while
secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
%
I just asked myself... what would John DeLorean do?
-- Raoul Duke
%
I just ate a whole package of Sweet Tarts and a can of Coke.
I think I saw God.
-- B. Hathrume Duk
%
I just got off the phone with Sonny Barger [President of the Hell's Angels].
He wants me to appear as a character witness for him at his murder trial
and said he'd be glad to appear as a character witness on my behalf if I
ever needed one. Needless to say, I readily agreed.
-- Thomas King Forcade, publisher of "High Times"
%
I just got out of the hospital after a
speed reading accident. I hit a bookmark.
-- Steven Wright
%
I just know I'm a better manager when I have Joe DiMaggio in center field.
-- Casey Stengel
%
I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
-- Bill Hoest
%
I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day.
I haven't had time for tobacco since.
-- Arturo Toscanini
%
I knew her before she was a virgin.
-- Oscar Levant, on Doris Day
%
I *knew* I had some reason for not logging you off...
If I could just remember what it was.
%
I knew one thing: as soon as anyone said you didn't need a gun, you'd better
take one along that worked.
-- Raymond Chandler
%
I know if you been talkin' you done said
just how surprised you wuz by the living dead.
You wuz surprised that they could understand you words
and never respond once to all the truth they heard.
But don't you get square!
There ain't no rule that says they got to care.
They can always swear they're deaf, dumb and blind.
%
I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
%
I know not how I came into this,
shall I call it a dying life or a living death?
-- St. Augustine
%
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
-- Albert Einstein
%
I know on which side my bread is buttered.
-- John Heywood
%
I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.
-- Charles Schulz
%
I know the disposition of women: when you will, they won't; when
you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.
-- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
%
I know what "custody" [of the children] means. "Get even." That's all
custody means. Get even with your old lady.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
I know what you're thinking -- "Did he fire six shots or only five?"
Well, to tell you the truth, in all the excitement, I kind of lost track
myself. But being this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the
world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself
one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do you, punk?
-- Harry Callahan, badge #2211
%
I know you believe you understand what you think this fortune says,
but I'm not sure you realize that what you are reading is not what
it means.
%
I know you think you thought you knew what you thought I said,
but I'm not sure you understood what you thought I meant.
%
I know you're in search of yourself, I just haven't seen you anywhere.
%
I lately lost a preposition;
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair
And angrily I cried, "Perdition!
Up from out of under there."
Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor,
And yet I wondered, "What should he come
Up from out of under for?"
-- Morris Bishop
%
I lay my head on the railroad tracks,
Waitin' for the double E.
The railroad don't run no more.
Poor poor pitiful me. [chorus]
Poor poor pitiful me, poor poor pitiful me.
These young girls won't let me be,
Lord have mercy on me!
Woe is me!
Well, I met a girl, West Hollywood,
Well, I ain't naming names.
But she really worked me over good,
She was just like Jesse James.
She really worked me over good,
She was a credit to her gender.
She put me through some changes, boy,
Sort of like a Waring blender. [chorus]
I met a girl at the Rainbow Bar,
She asked me if I'd beat her.
She took me back to the Hyatt House,
I don't want to talk about it. [chorus]
-- Warren Zevon, "Poor Poor Pitiful Me"
%
I learned to play guitar just to get the girls, and anyone who says they
didn't is just lyin'!
-- Willie Nelson
%
I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
-- Art Leo
%
I like myself, but I won't say I'm as handsome as the bull
that kidnaped Europa.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
%
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want
peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
the way and let them have it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.
%
I like young girls. Their stories are shorter.
-- Tom McGuane
%
I like your game but we have to change the rules.
%
I live the way I type; fast, with a lot of mistakes.
%
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts
to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg
%
I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic.
I may not get there, but I'm going first class.
-- Art Buchwald
%
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special
person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
-- Rita Rudner
%
I love children. Especially when they cry -- for then
someone takes them away.
-- Nancy Mitford
%
I love dogs, but I hate Chihuahuas. A Chihuahua isn't a dog.
It's a rat with a thyroid problem.
%
I love mankind ... It's people I hate.
-- Schulz
%
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I've ever known.
-- Walt Disney
%
I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils.
-- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
%
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
-- Robert Duval, "Apocalypse Now"
%
I love to eat them Smurfies
Smurfies what I love to eat
Bite they ugly heads off,
Nibble on they bluish feet.
%
I love treason but hate a traitor.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar
%
I love you more than anything in this world. I don't expect that will last.
-- Elvis Costello
%
I love you, not only for what you are,
but for what I am when I am with you.
-- Roy Croft
%
I loved her with a love thirsty and desperate. I felt that we two might
commit some act so atrocious that the world, seeing us, would find it
irresistible.
-- Gene Wolfe, "The Shadow of the Torturer"
%
I married beneath me. All women do.
-- Lady Nancy Astor
%
I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the
speed of light.
-- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
%
I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up!
%
I may kid around about drugs, but really, I take them seriously.
-- Doctor Graper
%
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I met a wonderful new man. He's fictional, but you can't have everything.
-- Cecelia, "The Purple Rose of Cairo"
%
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
-- The STAR WARS Song, to "Lola", by the Kinks
%
I met my latest girl friend in a department store. She was looking at
clothes, and I was putting Slinkys on the escalators.
-- Steven Wright
%
I might have gone to West Point, but I was too proud to speak to a
congressman.
-- Will Rogers
%
I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's;
I will not Reason and Compare; my business is to Create.
-- William Blake, "Jerusalem"
%
I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
-- Alexander Woolcott
%
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up.
-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
%
I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts!
%
I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres
and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit
-- around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if
we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand
feet for the base.
And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson
sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770
m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to
roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the
sun. Very little air will leak over the edges.
Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface
area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the
crowding.
-- Larry Niven, "Ringworld"
%
I need another lawyer like I need another hole in my head.
-- Fratianno
%
I needed the good will of the legislature of four states. I formed the
legislative bodies with my own money. I found that it was cheaper that
way.
-- Jay Gould
%
I never cheated an honest man, only rascals. They wanted
something for nothing. I gave them nothing for something.
-- Joseph "Yellow Kid" Weil
%
I never deny, I never contradict. I sometimes forget.
-- Benjamin Disraeli, British PM, on dealing with the
Royal Family
%
I never did it that way before.
%
I never expected to see the day when girls would get sunburned in the
places they do today.
-- Will Rogers
%
I never failed to convince an audience that the best thing they
could do was to go away.
%
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I never killed a man that didn't deserve it.
-- Mickey Cohen
%
I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
-- Mae West
%
I never made a mistake in my life.
I thought I did once, but I was wrong.
-- Lucy Van Pelt
%
I never met a man I didn't want to fight.
-- Lyle Alzado, professional football lineman
%
I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
%
I never pray before meals -- my mom's a good cook.
%
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers;
what I said was all saloonkeepers were Democrats.
%
I never saw a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But I can tell you anyhow
I'd rather see than be one.
-- Gellett Burgess
I've never seen a purple cow
I never hope to see one
But from the milk we're getting now
There certainly must be one
-- Odgen Nash
Ah, yes, I wrote "The Purple Cow"
I'm sorry now I wrote it
But I can tell you anyhow
I'll kill you if you quote it.
-- Gellett Burgess, many years later
%
I never take work home with me; I always leave it in some bar along the way.
%
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
-- W.C. Fields
%
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
I only know what I read in the papers.
-- Will Rogers
%
I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!
-- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
%
I opened the drawer of my little desk and a single letter fell out, a
letter from my mother, written in pencil, one of her last, with unfinished
words and an implicit sense of her departure. It's so curious: one can
resist tears and "behave" very well in the hardest hours of grief. But
then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window... or one notices
that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed... or
a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
-- Letters From Colette
%
I owe, I owe,
It's off to work I go...
%
I owe the government $3400 in taxes. So I sent them two hammers and a
toilet seat.
-- Michael McShane
%
I owe the public nothing.
-- J. P. Morgan
%
I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as
the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must
not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we
must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts,
in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from
wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they
will be happy.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no
restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
nerve disease.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
-- Francis Bellamy, 1892
%
I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone.
-- Steven Wright
%
I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
%
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
-- Alexandre Dumas the Younger
%
I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war.
-- Cicero
Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.
-- Poor Richard
%
I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
-- William F. Buckley
%
I put contact lenses in my dog's eyes. They had little pictures of cats
on them. Then I took one out and he ran around in circles.
-- Steven Wright
%
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of
tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If
they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go
crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible.
These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even
aspire to crudeness.
-- William Gibson, "Johnny Mnemonic"
%
I put up my thumb... and it blotted out the planet Earth.
-- Neil Armstrong
%
I read a column by George Will that Scarface should be rated X because
parents were taking their children to see it. So what? Why should the
motion-picture industry be responsible for our morality?
Dad says to Mom, "Honey, Scarface is in town."
"What's it about?"
"Human scum who kill each other over cocaine deals."
"Sounds great! Let's take the kids!"
-- Ian Shoales
%
I read Playboy for the same reason I read National Geographic.
To see the sights I'm never going to visit.
%
I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
-- Aneurin Bevan
%
I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that
the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile
so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the
plumber.
But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such
as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of
the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never
win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually
write about, such as nose-picking.
-- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
Political Fallout"
%
I really had to act; 'cause I didn't have any lines.
-- Marilyn Chambers
%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens
who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known
something of what has been passing in their time.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the
reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if
I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.
-- Stephen King
%
I refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on
believing that some men are my equals.
-- Brigid Brophy
%
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
%
I remember once being on a station platform in Cleveland at four in the
morning. A black porter was carrying my bags, and as we were waiting for
the train to come in, he said to me: "Excuse me, Mr. Cooke, I don't want to
invade your privacy, but I have a bet with a friend of mine. Who composed
the opening theme music of 'Omnibus'? My friend said Virgil Thomson." I
asked him, "What do you say?" He replied, "I say Aaron Copeland." I said,
"You're right." The porter said, "I knew Thomson doesn't write counterpoint
that way." I told that to a network president, and he was deeply unimpressed.
-- Alistair Cooke
%
I remember Ulysses well... Left one day for the post office
to mail a letter, met a blonde named Circe on the streetcar,
and didn't come back for 20 years.
%
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some
kind of loophole.
-- Leo Kessler
%
I replaced the headlights on my car with strobe lights. Now it
looks like I'm the only one moving.
-- Steven Wright
%
I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
I respect the institution of marriage. I have always thought that every
woman should marry -- and no man.
-- Benjamin Disraeli, "Lothair"
%
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New
England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in
New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for
countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
if they don't get it.
-- Mark Twain
%
I sat down beside her, said hello, offered to buy her a drink...
and then natural selection reared its ugly head.
%
I saw a man pursuing the Horizon,
'Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this,
I accosted the man,
"It is futile," I said.
"You can never--"
"You lie!" He cried,
and ran on.
-- Stephen Crane
%
I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.
-- Steven Wright
%
I saw Lassie. It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid
never spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that
deserve a series?"
%
I saw what you did and I know who you are.
%
I see a bad moon rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today.
Don't go 'round tonight,
It's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise.
-- J. C. Fogerty, "Bad Moon Rising"
%
I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
they do get 'em lowered down enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neighbors to
the south. We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about
us; for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
I sent a letter to the fish, I said it very loud and clear,
I told them, "This is what I wish." I went and shouted in his ear.
The little fishes of the sea, But he was very stiff and proud,
They sent an answer back to me. He said "You needn't shout so loud."
The little fishes' answer was And he was very proud and stiff,
"We cannot do it, sir, because..." He said "I'll go and wake them if..."
I sent a letter back to say I took a kettle from the shelf,
It would be better to obey. I went to wake them up myself.
But someone came to me and said But when I found the door was locked
"The little fishes are in bed." I pulled and pushed and kicked and
knocked,
I said to him, and I said it plain And when I found the door was shut,
"Then you must wake them up again." I tried to turn the handle, But...
"Is that all?" asked Alice.
"That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
%
I sent a message to another time,
But as the days unwind -- this I just can't believe,
I sent a message to another plane,
Maybe it's all a game -- but this I just can't conceive.
...
I met someone who looks at lot like you,
She does the things you do, but she is an IBM.
She's only programmed to be very nice,
But she's as cold as ice, whenever I get too near,
She tells me that she likes me very much,
But when I try to touch, she makes it all too clear.
...
I realize that it must seem so strange,
That time has rearranged, but time has the final word,
She knows I think of you, she reads my mind,
She tries to be unkind, she knows nothing of our world.
-- ELO, "Yours Truly, 2095"
%
I shall come to you in the night and we shall see who is stronger --
a little girl who won't eat her dinner or a great big man with cocaine
in his veins.
-- Sigmund Freud, in a letter to his fiancee
%
I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether
it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether
he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right
that matters, but victory.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
I shot an arrow in to the air, and it stuck.
-- graffito in Los Angeles
On a clear day,
U.C.L.A.
-- graffito in San Francisco
There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our
lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
-- Robert Orben
%
I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than
most western countries.
-- George Burns
%
I smell a wumpus.
%
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker
Brothers -- they're going to make a game out of it.
-- Woody Allen
%
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his
ability.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
I steal.
-- Sam Giancana, explaining his livelihood to his draft board
Easy. I own Chicago. I own Miami. I own Las Vegas.
-- Sam Giancana, when asked what he did for a living
%
I stick my neck out for nobody.
-- Humphrey Bogart, "Casablanca"
%
I stood on the leading edge,
The eastern seaboard at my feet.
"Jump!" said Yoko Ono
I'm too scared and good-looking, I cried.
Go on and give it a try,
Why prolong the agony, all men must die.
-- Roger Waters, "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking"
%
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
-- Shirley Temple
%
I suggest a new strategy, Artoo: let the Wookiee win.
-- CP30
%
I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which
direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After
much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot
tub to face is up.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school,
Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool,
Or find myself a rock 'n' roll band,
That needs a helping hand,
Oh, Maggie I wish I'd never seen your face.
-- Rod Stewart, "Maggie May"
%
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer. Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:
[110.13]:
"When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
to interfere with oncoming traffic."
[22.17b]:
"Learning to change lanes takes time and patience. The best
recommendation that can be made is to go to a Celtics [basketball]
game; study the fast break and then go out and practice it
on the highway."
[41.16]:
"Never bump a baby carriage out of a crosswalk unless the kid's really
asking for it."
%
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer. Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:
[131.16d]:
"Directional signals are generally not used except during vehicle
inspection; however, a left-turn signal is appropriate when making
a U-turn on a divided highway."
[96.7b]:
"When paying tolls, remember that it is necessary to release the
quarter a full 3 seconds before passing the basket if you are
traveling more than 60 MPH."
[110.13]:
"When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
to interfere with oncoming traffic."
%
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer. Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:
[173.15b]:
"When competing for a section of road or a parking space, remember
that the vehicle in need of the most body work has the right-of-way."
[141.2a]:
"Although it is altogether possible to fit a 6' car into a 6'
parking space, it is hardly ever possible to fit a 6' car into
a 5' parking space."
[105.31]:
"Teenage drivers believe that they are immortal, and drive accordingly.
Nevertheless, you should avoid the temptation to prove them wrong."
%
I suppose that in a few hours I will sober up. That's such a sad
thought. I think I'll have a few more drinks to prepare myself.
%
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it
is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh.
-- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"
%
I tell ya, drugs never worked out for me. The first time I tried smoking
pot I didn't know what I was doing. I smoked half the joint, got the
munchies, and ate the other half.
Well, the first time I tried coke I was so embarrassed. I kept getting the
bottle stuck up my nose.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
I tell ya, gambling never agreed with me. Last week I went to the track
and they shot my horse with the opening gun.
Well, just last week I was at a Chinese restaurant and when I opened my
fortune cookie I found the guy's check sitting at the next table. I said,
"Hey, buddy, I got your check", he said, "Thanks."
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
I tell ya, I knew my morning wasn't going right. When I put on my shirt
the button fell off, when I picked up my briefcase, the handle fell off,
I tell ya, I was afraid to go to the bathroom.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
I think... I think it's in my basement... Let me go upstairs and check.
-- Escher
%
I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward
or it dies. Well, what we have on our hands here is a dead shark.
-- Woody Allen
%
I think I'll snatch a kiss and flee.
-- Shakespeare
%
I think I'm schizophrenic. One half of me's
paranoid and the other half's out to get him.
%
I think it is true for all _n. I was just playing it safe with _n >= 3
because I couldn't remember the proof.
-- Baker, Pure Math 351a
%
I THINK MAN INVENTED THE CAR by instinct.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.
%
I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so
desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly.
-- Saki, "Reginald on Worries"
%
I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
-- Monty Python
%
I think that I shall never hear
A poem lovelier than beer.
The stuff that Joe's Bar has on tap,
With golden base and snowy cap.
The stuff that I can drink all day
Until my mem'ry melts away.
Poems are made by fools, I fear
But only Schlitz can make a beer.
%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Nash
%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Ogden Nash
%
I think that I shall never see
A thing as lovely as a tree.
But as you see the trees have gone
They went this morning with the dawn.
A logging firm from out of town
Came and chopped the trees all down.
But I will trick those dirty skunks
And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'.
%
I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the
farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars
singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors.
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
%
I think the world is ready for the story of an ugly duckling, who grew up to
remain an ugly duckling, and lived happily ever after.
-- Chick
%
I think the world is run by C students.
-- Al McGuire
%
I think the world would be a more peaceful place if people
could just keep their fingers out of the fortune files.
-- Jordan K. Hubbard
%
I THINK THERE SHOULD BE SOMETHING in science called the "reindeer effect."
I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone
say, "Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer
effect."
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I think, therefore I am... I think.
%
I think there's a world market for about five computers.
-- attr. Thomas J. Watson (Chairman of the Board, IBM), 1943
%
I THINK THEY SHOULD CONTINUE the policy of not giving a Nobel Prize for
paneling.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I think we are in Rats Alley where the dead men lost their bones.
-- T. S. Eliot
%
I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think
we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.
When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we
are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was
driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa
Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,
were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous
conversation ...
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
-- Firesign Theatre
%
I think we're in trouble.
-- Han Solo
%
I think your opinions are reasonable,
except for the one about my mental instability.
-- Psychology Professor, Farifield University
%
"I thought that you said you were 20 years old!"
"As a programmer, yes," she replied,
"And you claimed to be very near two meters tall!"
"You said you were blonde, but you lied!"
Oh, she was a hacker and he was one, too,
They had so much in common, you'd say.
They exchanged jokes and poems, and clever new hacks,
And prompts that were cute or risque'.
He sent her a picture of his brother Sam,
She sent one from some past high school day,
And it might have gone on for the rest of their lives,
If they hadn't met in L.A.
"Your beard is an armpit," she said in disgust.
He answered, "Your armpit's a beard!"
And they chorused: "I think I could stand all the rest
If you were not so totally weird!"
If she had not said what he wanted to hear,
And he had not done just the same,
They'd have been far more honest, and never have met,
And would not have had fun with the game.
-- Judith Schrier,
"Face to Face After Six Months of Electronic Mail"
%
I thought there was something fishy about the butler. Probably a Pisces,
working for scale.
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger"
%
I thought YOU silenced the guard!
%
I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!
-- Winston Churchill
%
I took a course in speed reading, learning to read straight down the middle
of the page, and I was able to go through "War and Peace" in twenty minutes.
It's about Russia.
-- Woody Allen
%
I treasure this strange combination found in very few persons: a fierce
desire for life as well as a lucid perception of the ultimate futility of
the quest.
-- Madeleine Gobeil
%
I truly wish I could be a great surgeon or philosopher or author or anything
constructive, but in all honesty I'd rather turn up my amplifier full blast
and drown myself in the noise.
-- Charles Schmid, the "Tucson Murderer"
%
I trust the first lion he meets will do his duty.
-- J. P. Morgan on Teddy Roosevelt's safari
%
I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.
-- Bill Veeck
%
I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.
-- Judge Harold T. Stone
%
I turned my air conditioner the other way around, and it got cold out.
The weatherman said "I don't understand it. I was supposed to be 80
degrees today," and I said "Oops."
In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... so
I never have to go upstairs.
I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in
front of it in only eight minutes.
-- Steven Wright
%
I understand why you're confused. You're thinking too much.
-- Carole Wallach
%
I use not only all the brains I have, but all those I can borrow as well.
-- Woodrow Wilson
%
I use technology in order to hate it more properly.
-- Nam June Paik
%
I used to be a rebel in my youth.
This cause... that cause... (chuckle) I backed 'em ALL! But I learned.
Rebellion is simply a device used by the immature to hide from his own
problems. So I lost interest in politics. Now when I feel aroused by
a civil rights case or a passport hearing... I realize it's just a device.
I go to my analyst and we work it out. You have no idea how much better
I feel these days.
-- J. Feiffer
%
I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
%
I used to be disgusted, now I find I'm just amused.
-- Elvis Costello
%
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
-- Mae West
%
I used to be such a sweet sweet thing, 'til they got a hold of me,
I opened doors for little old ladies, I helped the blind to see,
I got no friends 'cause they read the papers, they can't be seen,
With me, and I'm feelin' real shot down,
And I'm, uh, feelin' mean,
No more, Mr. Nice Guy,
No more, Mr. Clean,
No more, Mr. Nice Guy,
They say "He's sick, he's obscene".
My dog bit me on the leg today, my cat clawed my eyes,
Ma's been thrown out of the social circle, and Dad has to hide,
I went to church, incognito, when everybody rose,
The reverend Smithy, he recognized me,
And punched me in the nose, he said,
(chorus)
He said "You're sick, you're obscene".
-- Alice Cooper, "No More Mr. Nice Guy"
%
I used to have a drinking problem.
Now I love the stuff.
%
I used to live in a house by the freeway. When I went anywhere, I had
to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway.
I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights. Now it looks
like I'm the only one moving.
I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know
the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going
to be out that long."
I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out. Now
my car goes 500 miles an hour.
-- Steven Wright
%
I used to think I was a child; now I think I am an adult -- not because
I no longer do childish things, but because those I call adults are no
more mature than I am.
%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%
I used to think romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme
foolishness. I no longer thought that. There's nothing foolish in
loving anyone. Thinking you'll be loved in return is what's foolish.
-- Rita Mae Brown
%
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in
my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
-- Emo Phillips
%
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near
the place.
-- Steven Wright
%
I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I
don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected
with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger,
the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier
in the summer.
-- Brendan Behan
%
I waited and waited and when no message came I knew it must be from you.
%
I want to be the white man's brother, not his brother-in-law.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch "St.
Elsewhere", won't scream, "FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR 'HEE
HAW'!!"
-- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
%
I want to marry a girl just like the girl that married dear old dad.
-- Freud
%
I want to reach your mind -- where is it currently located?
%
I was appalled by this story of the destruction of a member of a valued
endangered species. It's all very well to celebrate the practicality of
pigs by ennobling the porcine sibling who constructed his home out of
bricks and mortar. But to wantonly destroy a wolf, even one with an
excessive taste for porkers, is unconscionable in these ecologically
critical times when both man and his domestic beasts continue to maraud
the earth.
Sylvia Kamerman, "Book Reviewing"
%
I was at this restaurant. The sign said "Breakfast Anytime." So I
ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is
a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows
up.
-- Will Rogers
%
I was born in a barrel of butcher knives
Trouble I love and peace I despise
Wild horses kicked me in my side
Then a rattlesnake bit me and he walked off and died.
-- Bo Diddley
%
I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
get off my driveway.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was eatin' some chop suey,
With a lady in St. Louie,
When there sudden comes a knockin' at the door.
And that knocker, he says, "Honey,
Roll this rocker out some money,
Or your daddy shoots a baddie to the floor."
-- Mr. Miggle
%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did.
I said I didn't know.
-- Mark Twain
%
I was in a bar and I walked up to a beautiful woman and said, "Do you live
around here often?" She said, "You're wearing two different-color socks."
I said, "Yes, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness."
She said, "How do you feel?" And I said, "You know when you're sitting on a
chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs and you lean too far so
you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like
that all the time."
-- Steven Wright, "Gentlemen's Quarterly"
%
I was in a beauty contest once. I not only came in last, I was hit in
the mouth by Miss Congeniality.
-- Phyllis Diller
%
I was in accord with the system so long as it
permitted me to function effectively.
-- Albert Speer
%
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
-- Lucinda Childs "Einstein On The Beach"
%
I was in Vegas last week. I was at the roulette table, having a
lengthy argument about what I considered an Odd number.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was offered a job as a hoodlum and I turned it down cold. A thief is
anybody who gets out and works for his living, like robbing a bank or
breaking into a place and stealing stuff, or kidnaping somebody. He really
gives some effort to it. A hoodlum is a pretty lousy sort of scum. He
works for gangsters and bumps guys off when they have been put on the spot.
Why, after I'd made my rep, some of the Chicago Syndicate wanted me to work
for them as a hood -- you know, handling a machine gun. They offered me
two hundred and fifty dollars a week and all the protection I needed. I
was on the lam at the time and not able to work at my regular line. But
I wouldn't consider it. "I'm a thief," I said. "I'm no lousy hoodlum."
-- Alvin Karpis, "Public Enemy Number One"
%
I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
-- Emile Henry Gauvreay
%
I was playing poker the other night... with Tarot cards. I got a
full house and four people died.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was the best I ever had.
-- Woody Allen
%
I was toilet-trained at gunpoint.
-- Billy Braver
%
I was working on a case. It had to be a case, because I couldn't afford a
desk. Then I saw her. This tall blond lady. She must have been tall
because I was on the third floor. She rolled her deep blue eyes towards
me. I picked them up and rolled them back. We kissed. She screamed. I
took the cigarette from my mouth and kissed her again.
%
I wasn't kissing her, I was whispering in her mouth.
-- Chico Marx
%
I watch television because you don't know what it will do if you leave it
in the room alone.
%
I went home with a waitress,
The way I always do.
How I was I to know?
She was with the Russians too.
I was gambling in Havana,
I took a little risk.
Send lawyers, guns, and money,
Dad, get me out of this.
-- Warren Zevon, "Lawyers, Guns and Money"
%
I went into a general store ... they wouldn't sell me anything specific.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it.
If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it.
It's the truth.
-- Charlie Chaplin
%
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to
expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for
stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming
the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted
to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the
answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer
showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found
an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the
program to the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star:
Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars"
%
I went over to my friend, he was eatin' a pickle.
I said "Hi, what's happenin'?"
He said "Nothin'."
Try to sing this song with that kind of enthusiasm;
As if you just squashed a cop.
-- Arlo Guthrie, "Motorcycle Song"
%
I went to a Grateful Dead Concert and they played for SEVEN hours.
Great song.
-- Fred Reuss
%
I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
for him then.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20
years ago. When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors
would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they
all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!"
Years later, I went back to the same hotel. I noticed the room keys had
been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors.
There was a computer in every doorknob.
-- Danny Hillis
%
I went to my mother and told her I intended to commence a different life.
I asked for and obtained her blessing and at once commenced the career
of a robber.
-- Tiburcio Vasquez
%
I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
included.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
statues that are in all the other museums.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
it took seven others to beat him!
%
I will always love the false image I had of you.
%
I will follow the good side right to the fire,
but not into it if I can help it.
-- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
%
I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the
year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The
Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out
the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me that I may sponge away the
writing on this stone!
-- Charles Dickens
%
I will make you shorter by the head.
-- Elizabeth I
%
I will never lie to you.
%
I will not be briefed or debriefed, my underwear is my own.
%
I will not drink!
But if I do...
I will not get drunk!
But if I do...
I will not in public!
But if I do...
I will not fall down!
But if I do...
I will fall face down so that they cannot see my company badge.
%
I will not forget you.
%
I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
-- Shel Silverstein, "Hug O' War"
%
I will not say that women have no character; rather, they have a new
one every day.
-- Heine
%
I wish a robot would get elected president. That way, when he came to town,
we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.
-- Jack Handey
%
I WISH I HAD A KRYPTONITE CROSS, because then you could keep both Dracula
and Superman away.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I wish there was a knob on the TV where you could turn up the
intelligence. They've got one called brightness, but it doesn't
seem to work.
-- Gallagher
%
I wish you humans would leave me alone.
%
I wish you were a Scotch on the rocks.
%
I woke up a feelin' mean
went down to play the slot machine
the wheels turned round,
and the letters read
"Better head back to Tennessee Jed"
-- Grateful Dead
%
I woke up this morning and discovered that everything in my apartment
had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica. I told my roommate,
"Isn't this amazing? Everything in the apartment has been stolen and
replaced with an exact replica." He said, "Do I know you?"
-- Steven Wright
%
"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I
know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must
be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people
I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles."
-- Bastian B. Bux
%
I wonder what the leash and collar set does for excitement?
-- Tramp, Lady and the Tramp
%
I worked in a health food store once. A guy came in and asked me,
"If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet?"
-- Steven Wright
%
I would be batting the big feller if they wasn't ready with the other one,
but a left-hander would be the thing if they wouldn't have knowed it already
because there is more things involved than could come up on the road, even
after we've been home a long while.
-- Casey Stengel
%
I would gladly raise my voice in praise of women,
only they won't let me raise my voice.
-- Winkle
%
I would have made a good pope.
-- Richard Nixon
%
I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have
gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the
missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.
-- Oliver North
%
I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block
of wax... and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the
image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we
forget or do not know.
-- Plato, Dialogs, Theateus 191
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to image activation and termination.]
%
I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in
understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good,
our tasks will be solved.
-- Warren G. Harding
%
I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection
with income tax policies.
-- William F. Buckley
%
I would like to know
What I was fencing in
And what I was fencing out.
-- Robert Frost
%
I would much rather have men ask why
I have no statue, than why I have one.
-- Marcus Procius Cato
%
I would not like to be a political leader in Russia. They never know when
they're being taped.
-- Richard Nixon
I love America. You always hurt the one you love.
-- David Frye impersonating Nixon
%
I would rather be a serf in a poor man's house
and be above ground than reign among the dead.
-- Achilles, "The Odessey", XI, 489-91
%
I would rather say that a desire to drive fast
sports cars is what sets man apart from the animals.
%
I wouldn't be so paranoid if you weren't all out to get me!!
%
I wouldn't marry her with a ten foot pole.
%
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity
for everyone, but they've always worked for me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
I wrecked trains because I like to see people die. I like to hear
them scream.
-- Sylvestre Matuschka, "the Hungarian Train Wreck Freak",
escaped prison 1937, not heard from since
%
Iam
not
very
happy
acting
pleased
whenever
prominent
scientists
overmagnify
intellectual
enlightenment
%
IBM:
[Internation Business Machines Corp.] Also known as Itty Bitty
Machines or The Lawyer's Friend. The dominant force in computer
marketing, having supplied worldwide some 75% of all known hardware
and 10% of all software. To protect itself from the litigious envy
of less successful organizations, such as the US government, IBM
employs 68% of all known ex-Attorneys' General.
%
IBM:
I've Been Moved
Idiots Become Managers
Idiots Buy More
Impossible to Buy Machine
Incredibly Big Machine
Industry's Biggest Mistake
International Brotherhood of Mercenaries
It Boggles the Mind
It's Better Manually
Itty-Bitty Machines
%
IBM Advanced Systems Group -- a bunch of mindless jerks,
who'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes...
-- with regrets to D. Adams
%
IBM had a PL/I,
Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
It was a total loss.
%
IBM: It may be slow, but it's hard to use.
%
IBM Pollyanna Principle:
Machines should work. People should think.
%
IBM's original motto:
Cogito ergo vendo; vendo ergo sum.
%
I'd be a poorer man if I'd never seen an eagle fly.
-- John Denver
[I saw an eagle fly once. Fortunately, I had my eagle fly swatter handy. Ed.]
%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%
I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee.
-- Princess Leia Organa
%
I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack,
above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even
feel it.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
I'd like to meet the guy who invented beer and see what he's working on now.
%
I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the
whole field to private industry.
-- Joseph Heller
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
to undo it.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
snore.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in
"Y".
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
came back.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to stay
tuned.
%
I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair.
-- Bette Davis, "Cabin in the Cotton"
%
I'd never cry if I did find
A blue whale in my soup...
Nor would I mind a porcupine
Inside a chicken coop.
Yes life is fine when things combine,
Like ham in beef chow mein...
But lord, this time I think I mind,
They've put acid in my rain.
--- Milo Bloom
%
I'd never join any club that would have the likes of me as a member.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I'd probably settle for a vampire if he were romantic enough.
Couldn't be any worse than some of the relationships I've had.
-- Brenda Starr
%
I'd rather be led to hell than managed to heaven.
%
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%
I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy.
-- Fred Allen
[Also attributed to S. Clay Wilson. Ed.]
%
I'd rather have two girls at 21 each than one girl at 42.
-- W.C. Fields
%
I'd rather just believe that it's done by little elves running around.
%
I'd rather laugh with the sinners,
Than cry with the saints,
The sinners are much more fun!
-- Billy Joel, "Only The Good Die Young"
%
I'd rather push my Harley than ride a rice burner.
%
Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
solitary confinement.
%
Identify your visitor.
%
Idiot Box, n.:
The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Idiot, n.:
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
IDLENESS:
Leisure gone to seed.
%
Idleness is the holiday of fools.
%
If 10 years from now, when you are doing something quick
and dirty, you suddenly visualize that I am looking over your
shoulders and say to yourself, "Dijkstra would not have liked this",
well that would be enough immortality for me.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-- Roy Santoro
%
If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
at about 30 miles/second.
-- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
%
If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far.
-- Paul White
%
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus forecast
is a camel's behind.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
If a can of Alpo costs 38 cents, would it cost $2.50 in Dog Dollars?
%
If a child annoys you, quiet him by brushing their hair. If this doesn't
work, use the other side of the brush on the other end of the child.
%
If A equals success, then the formula is _A = _X + _Y + _Z. _X is work. _Y
is play. _Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If A fool persists in his folly he shall become wise.
-- William Blake
%
If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler,
there will be N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
-- T. Cheatham
%
If a guru falls in the forest with no one to hear him, was he
really a guru at all?
-- Strange de Jim, "The Metasexuals"
%
If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it
is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty.
-- Joseph C. Goulden
%
IF A KID ASKS YOU where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him
is, "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing
to tell him is, "Probably because of something you did."
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
If a listener nods his head when you're
explaining your program, wake him up.
%
If a man has a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
If a man has talent and cannot use it, he has failed.
-- Thomas Wolfe
%
If a man is not a liberal at 25, he has no heart.
If he's not a conservative by 45, he has no brain.
%
If a man loses his reverence for any part of life,
he will lose his reverence for all of life.
-- Albert Schweitzer
%
If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the
separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience,
it might well prolong his life.
-- Charles Darling, "Scintillae Juris, 1877
%
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
... it expects what never was and never will be.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom;
and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it
will lose that, too.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better,
and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can
convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
-- Sir Peter Medawar, "The Art of the Soluble"
%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%
If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped.
The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position
in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop. The law of
gravity supersedes the law of golf.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
If a shameless woman expects to be defiled and then dies of her fierce
love because you do not consent, will chastity also be homicide?
-- Saint Augustine
%
If a small child asks you where rain comes from, I think a reasonable response
is simply that "God is crying." And, if he asks you why God is crying, the
only possible answer is "Probably because of something you did."
%
If a system is administered wisely,
its users will be content.
They enjoy hacking their code
and don't waste time implementing
labor-saving shell scripts.
Since they dearly love their accounts,
they aren't interested in other machines.
There may be telnet, rlogin, and ftp,
but these don't access any hosts.
There may be an arsenal of cracks and malware,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy reading their mail,
take pleasure in being with their newsgroups,
spend weekends working at their terminals,
delight in the doings at the site.
And even though the next system is so close
that users can hear its key clicks and biff beeps,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.
%
If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude.
If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the
game right. If it plays the game right, it will win -- unless, of
course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make
goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?
-- Sparky Anderson
%
If a thing's worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
If a thing's worth having, it's worth cheating for.
-- W.C. Fields
%
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
%
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever
to get a "fix" of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude
that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
-- Rob Stampfli
%
If all be true that I do think,
There be five reasons why one should drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
If all else fails, lower your standards.
%
If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?
%
If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot
platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave
that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.
%
If all the seas were ink,
And all the reeds were pens,
And all the skies were parchment,
And all the men could write,
These would not suffice
To write down all the red tape
Of this Government.
%
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
-- Paul Beatty
%
If all the world's economists were laid end to end,
we wouldn't reach a conclusion.
-- William Baumol
%
If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner,
and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops,
not just because you fear she might be crazy. If she tells her tale on
camera, you might listen. Watching strangers on television , even
responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged - voyeurs
collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community. Never
have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little.
-- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television
in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional".
%
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
%
If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car, it'll be the last
car he ever lays down in front of.
-- George Wallace
%
If any man wishes to be humbled and mortified,
let him become president of Harvard.
-- Edward Holyoke
%
If anyone has seen my dog, please contact me at x2883 as soon as possible.
We're offering a substantial reward. He's a sable collie, with three legs,
blind in his left eye, is missing part of his right ear and the tip of his
tail. He's been recently fixed. Answers to "Lucky".
%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%
If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment.
%
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
%
If at first you don't succeed, quit; don't be a nut about success.
%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
%
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
-- W. E. Hickson
%
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.
Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.
-- W.C. Fields
[Also attributed to Roy Mengot. Ed.]
%
If at first you don't succeed, you must be a programmer.
%
If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.
-- Leonard Levinson
%
If at first you fricassee, fry, fry again.
%
If atheism is to be used to express the state of mind in which God is
identified with the unknowable, and theology is pronounced to be a
collection of meaningless words about unintelligible chimeras, then
I have no doubt, and I think few people doubt, that atheists are as
plentiful as blackberries.
-- Leslie Stephen
%
If bankers can count, how come they have
eight windows and only four tellers?
%
If Beethoven's Seventh Symphony is not by
some means abridged, it will soon fall into disuse.
-- Philip Hale, Boston music critic, 1837
%
If built in great numbers, motels will be used for nothing
but illegal purposes.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%
If Carter is the answer, it must have been a VERY silly question.
%
If Christianity was morality, Socrates would be the Saviour.
-- William Blake
%
If clear thinking created sparks, we could safely store dynamite in James
Watt's office.
-- Wayne Shannon
%
If coke is a joke, I'm waiting around for the next line.
%
If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency), it will
serve us right.
-- Alistair Cooke
%
If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%
If ever the pleasure of one has to be bought by the pain of the other,
there better be no trade. A trade by which one gains and the other loses
is a fraud.
-- Dagny Taggart, "Atlas Shrugged"
%
If ever you want to touch the hand and the heart of God Almighty, you can
do it through the body of someone you love. Anytime. Anywhere. Without
no middleman.
-- Theodore Sturgeon, "Godbody"
%
If every kid had a funny tooth to bite down on whenever the world disappointed
him, prussic acid could solve our population problems in one generation.
-- G.C. Edmonson's Albert, "The Man Who Corrupted Earth"
%
If everybody minded their own business, the world would go
around a deal faster.
-- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%
If everything on the road of life seems to
be coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
%
If everything seems to be going well,
you have obviously overlooked something.
%
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
If food be the music of love, eat up, eat up.
%
If for every rule there is an exception, then we have established that there
is an exception to every rule. If we accept "For every rule there is an
exception" as a rule, then we must concede that there may not be an exception
after all, since the rule states that there is always the possibility of
exception, and if we follow it to its logical end we must agree that there
can be an exception to the rule that for every rule there is an exception.
-- Bill Boquist
%
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
-- Voltaire, "Epitres, XCVI"
%
If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three
to a can.
%
If God had a beard, he'd be a UNIX programmer.
%
If God had intended Man to program, we'd be born with serial I/O ports.
%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears.
%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads.
%
If God had meant for us to be in the Army,
we would have been born with green, baggy skin.
%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%
If God had not given us sticky tape,
it would have been necessary to invent it.
%
If God had really intended men to fly,
he'd make it easier to get to the airport.
-- George Winters
%
If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would
have made them cute and furry.
-- Dave Barry
%
If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had
only ten apostles.
%
If God had wanted you to go around nude,
He would have given you bigger hands.
%
If God hadn't wanted you to be paranoid,
He wouldn't have given you such a vivid imagination.
%
If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
%
If God is One, what is bad?
-- Charles Manson
%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%
If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.
-- Yiddish saying
%
If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
-- Marvin Kitman
%
If God wanted us to have a President,
He would have sent us a candidate.
-- Jerry Dreshfield
%
If graphics hackers are so smart,
why can't they get the bugs out of fresh paint?
%
If happiness is in your destiny, you need not be in a hurry.
-- Chinese proverb
%
If he had only learnt a little less, how
infinitely better he might have taught much more!
%
If he once again pushes up his sleeves in order to compute for 3 days
and 3 nights in a row, he will spend a quarter of an hour before to
think which principles of computation shall be most appropriate.
-- Voltaire, "Diatribe du docteur Akakia"
%
If he should ever change his faith,
it'll be because he no longer thinks he's God.
%
If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell,
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstore sells,
When you reach the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me,
Heroes often fail,
You won't read that book again, because
the ending is just too hard to take.
I walk away, like a movie star,
Who gets burned in a three way script,
Enter number two,
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me,
But for now, love, let's be real
I never thought I could act this way,
And I've got to say that I just don't get it,
I don't know where we went wrong but the feeling is gone
And I just can't get it back...
-- Gordon Lightfoot, "If You Could Read My Mind"
%
If I could stick my pen in my heart,
I would spill it all over the stage.
Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya,
Would you think the boy was strange?
Ain't he strange?
...
If I could stick a knife in my heart,
Suicide right on the stage,
Would it be enough for your teenage lust,
Would it help to ease the pain?
Ease your brain?
-- Rolling Stones, "It's Only Rock'N Roll"
%
If I 'cp /bin/csh /dev/audio' shouldn't I hear the ocean?
-- Danno Coppock
%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
%
If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it around.
Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble; that's
as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for
you'll see a lot of it and you had better be on speaking terms with it.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%
If *I* had a hammer, there'd be no more folk singers.
%
IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's
got to be a better way.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell,
I'd sell the plantation and go home.
-- Eugene P. Gallagher
%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
-- Ted Turner
%
If I had done everything I'm credited with, I'd be speaking to you from
a laboratory jar at Harvard.
-- Frank Sinatra
AS USUAL, YOUR INFORMATION STINKS.
-- Frank Sinatra, telegram to "Time" magazine
%
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I
would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this
trip. I know of very few things I would take seriously. I would be crazier.
I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets. I'd
travel and see. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly
and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments and,
if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to
have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many
years ahead each day. I have been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel
lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky
more. I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more. I would
ride on more merry-go-rounds. I'd pick more daisies.
%
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%
If I have not seen so far it is because I stood in giant's footsteps.
%
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with
the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on
my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.
-- Gauss
Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders while computer scientists
stand on each other's toes.
-- Richard Hamming
It has been said that physicists stand on one another's shoulders. If
this is the case, then programmers stand on one another's toes, and
software engineers dig each other's graves.
-- Unknown
%
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
-- Brian K. Reid
%
If I have to lay an egg for my country, I'll do it.
-- Bob Hope
%
If I knew what brand [of whiskey] he drinks,
I would send a barrel or so to my other generals.
-- Abraham Lincoln, on General Grant
%
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
-- Johann van Goethe
%
If I made peace with Russia today, I'd only attack her again tomorrow. I
just couldn't help myself.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
If I promised you the moon and the stars, would you believe it?
-- Alan Parsons Project
%
If I set here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think
I'm an engineer working on something.
-- S. R. McElroy
%
If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?
%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
-- Bert Whitney
%
If I want your opinion, I'll ask you to fill out the necessary form.
%
If I were a grave-digger or even a hangman, there are some people I could
work for with a great deal of enjoyment.
-- Douglas Jerrold
%
If I were to walk on water, the press would say I'm only doing it
because I can't swim.
-- Bob Stanfield
%
If I'd known computer science was going to be like this,
I'd never have given up being a rock 'n' roll star.
-- G. Hirst
%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
%
If I'm over the hill, why is it I don't recall ever being on top?
-- Jerry Muscha
%
If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount of work, the
answer can be obtained by simple inspection.
%
If in doubt, mumble.
%
If it ain't baroque, don't fix it.
%
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
%
If it doesn't smell yet, it's pretty fresh.
-- Dave Johnson, on dead seagulls
%
If it happens once, it's a bug.
If it happens twice, it's a feature.
If it happens more than twice, it's a design philosophy.
%
If it has syntax, it isn't user-friendly.
%
If it heals good, say it.
%
If it is a Miracle, any sort of evidence will
answer, but if it is a Fact, proof is necessary.
-- Samuel Clemens
%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%
If it smells it's chemistry, if it crawls it's biology, if it doesn't work
it's physics.
%
If it takes a bloodbath, lets get it over with. No more appeasement.
-- Ronald Reagan
%
If it wasn't for Newton, we wouldn't have to eat bruised apples.
%
If it wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
%
If it wasn't so warm out today, it would be cooler.
%
If it were not for the presents, an elopement would be preferable.
-- George Ade, "Forty Modern Fables"
%
If it were thought that anything I wrote was influenced by Robert Frost,
I would take that particular work of mine, shred it, and flush it down
the toilet, hoping not to clog the pipes. A more sententious, holding-
forth old bore who expected every hero-worshiping adenoidal little twerp
of a student-poet to hang on to his every word I never saw.
-- James Dickey
%
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
%
If it's not in the computer, it doesn't exist.
%
If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
%
If it's worth doing, do it for money.
%
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing for money.
%
If it's worth hacking on well, it's worth hacking on for money.
%
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make
fun of it.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%
If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot to
send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think the
other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if *fifty* pieces
of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, why
they'll think something *else* is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets lost,
they'll just *know* that uunet is down and think it's a conspiracy to keep
them from their God given right to receive Net Mail ...
-- Leith (Casey) Leedom, apologies to Arlo Guthrie
%
If Karl, instead of writing a lot about Capital,
had made a lot of Capital, it would have been much better.
-- Karl Marx's Mother
%
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
%
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
%
If life is merely a joke, the question
still remains: for whose amusement?
%
If life isn't what you wanted, have you asked for anything else?
%
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
-- Tom Robbins
%
If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
you've got in the house.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
-- Lily Tomlin
%
If Love Were Oil, I'd Be About A Quart Low
-- Book title by Lewis Grizzard
%
If Machiavelli were a hacker, he'd have worked for the CSSG.
-- Phil Lapsley
%
If Machiavelli were a programmer, he'd have worked for AT&T.
%
If man is only a little lower than the angels, the angels should reform.
-- Mary Wilson Little
%
If mathematically you end up with the wrong
answer, try multiplying by the page number.
%
If men acted after marriage as they do during courtship, there would
be fewer divorces -- and more bankruptcies.
-- Frances Rodman
%
If men are not afraid to die,
it is of no avail to threaten them with death.
If men live in constant fear of dying,
And if breaking the law means a man will be killed,
Who will dare to break the law?
There is always an official executioner.
If you try to take his place,
It is like trying to be a master carpenter and cutting wood.
If you try to cut wood like a master carpenter,
you will only hurt your hand.
-- Tao Te Ching, "Lao Tsu, #74"
%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would
be a merrier world.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien
%
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little
of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking,
and from that to incivility and procrastination.
-- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
%
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and
over again, there is no use in reading it at all.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any connection
of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of religious teaching
in state-maintained schools, the immediate and superficial answer is not
far to seek. ... The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the
various denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that, if any
connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival denomination would
get an unfair advantage.
-- John Dewey, "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
%
If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
-- A. Einstein
%
If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
-- Oscar Wilde,
"Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young"
%
If only Dionysus were alive! Where would he eat?
-- Woody Allen
%
If only God would give me some clear sign!
Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%
If only you had a personality instead of an attitude.
%
If only you knew she loved you, you could
face the uncertainty of whether you love her.
%
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
%
If parents would only realize how they bore their children.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
he should see how bad it is with representation.
%
If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward,
then we are a sorry lot indeed.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If people concentrated on the really important things in life,
there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
-- Doug Larson
%
If people drank ink instead of Schlitz, they'd be better off.
-- Edward E. Hippensteel
[What brand of ink? Ed.]
%
If people have to choose between freedom and sandwiches, they
will take sandwiches.
-- Lord Boyd-orr
Eats first, morals after.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera"
%
If people say that here and there someone has been taken away and maltreated,
I can only reply: You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
-- Hermann Goering
%
If people see that you mean them no harm,
they'll never hurt you, nine times out of ten!
%
If practice makes perfect, and nobody's perfect, why practice?
%
If preceded by a '-' , the timezone shall be east of the Prime
Meridian; otherwise, it shall be west (which may be indicated by
an optional preceding '+' ).
-- POSIX 2001
The "+" or "-" indicates whether the time-of-day is ahead of
(i.e., east of) or behind (i.e., west of) Universal Time.
-- RFC 2822
%
If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
-- Nora Ephron, "Heartburn"
%
If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of progress?
%
If puns were deli meat, this would be the wurst.
%
If rabbits feet are so lucky, what happened to the rabbit?
%
If reporters don't know that truth is plural, they ought to be lawyers.
-- Tom Wicker
%
If researchers wrote nursery rhymes...
Little Miss Muffet sat on her gluteal region,
Eating components of soured milk.
On at least one occasion,
along came an arachnid and sat down beside her,
Or at least in her vicinity,
And caused her to feel an overwhelming, but not paralyzing, fear,
Which motivated the patient to leave the area rather quickly.
-- Ann Melugin Williams
%
If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on television with
pool cues, who would win?
1) Ricky Schroder
2) Gary Coleman
3) The television viewing public
-- David Letterman
%
If sarcasm were posted on Usenet, would anybody notice?
-- James Nicoll
%
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical
world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by
the use of the mathematics of probability.
-- Vannevar Bush
%
If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many
books on how to?
-- Bette Midler
%
If she had not been cupric in her ions,
Her shape ovoidal,
Their romance might have flourished.
But he built tetrahedral in his shape,
His ions ferric,
Love could not help but die,
Uncatylised, inert, and undernourished.
%
If society fits you comfortably enough, you call it freedom.
-- Robert Frost
%
If some people didn't tell you,
you'd never know they'd been away on vacation.
%
If someone had told me I would be Pope
one day, I would have studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
%
If someone says he will do something "without fail", he won't.
%
If something has not yet gone wrong then it would
ultimately have been beneficial for it to go wrong.
%
If swimming is so good for your figure, how come whales look the
way they do?
%
If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem.
-- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
-- Stanley Garn
%
If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a
Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon,
and explode once a year killing everyone inside.
-- Robert Cringely, InfoWorld
%
If the church put in half the time on covetousness that it does on lust,
this would be a better world.
-- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
%
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
-- Norm Schryer
%
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get
the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in
college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural
method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall
learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should
be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the
young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not
by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise
instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the
attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools,
not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to
put on a professor.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
If the designers of X-window built cars, there would be no fewer than five
steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same
principles -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful
feature, that.
-- From the programming notebooks of a heretic, 1990
%
If the ends don't justify the means, then what does?
-- Robert Moses
%
If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical
would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.
-- Doug Larson
[Not to mention, butterfly would be flutterby. Ed.]
%
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If the future isn't what it used to be, does that
mean that the past is subject to change in times to come?
%
If the girl you love moves in with another guy once, it's more than enough.
Twice, it's much too much. Three times, it's the story of your life.
%
If the government doesn't trust the people, why
doesn't it dissolve them and elect a new people?
%
If the grass is greener on other side of fence,
consider what may be fertilizing it.
%
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it,
we would be so simple we couldn't.
%
If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
me!
-- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
%
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation,
I would have recommended something simpler.
-- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile,
Commenting on the Almagest, by Ptolemy.
%
If the master dies and the disciple grieves,
the lives of both have been wasted.
%
If the meanings of "true" and "false" were switched,
then this sentence would not be false.
%
If the Nazi's had television with satellite technology, we'd all be
goose-stepping. Americans are just as suggestible.
-- Frank Zappa
%
If the odds are a million to one against something
occurring, chances are 50-50 it will.
%
If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
-- Anatole France
%
If the rich could pay the poor to die for them,
what a living the poor could make!
%
If the shoe fits, it's ugly.
%
If the standard says that [things] depend on the phase of the moon,
the programmer should be prepared to look out the window as necessary.
-- Chris Torek
%
If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will.
%
If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job.
Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count
on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening,
paper folding, or something.
-- C. Philip Wood
%
If the very old will remember, the very young will listen.
-- Chief Dan George
%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.
If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.
If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however,
church attendance will exceed all expectations.
-- Reverend Chichester
%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur
of this life.
-- Albert Camus
%
If there is a wrong way to do something, then someone will do it.
-- Edward A. Murphy Jr.
%
If there is any realistic deterrent to marriage, it's the fact that you
can't afford divorce.
-- Jack Nicholson
%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
-- Art Hoppe
%
If there is no wind, row.
-- Polish proverb
%
If there really was a Jewish conspiracy to run the world, my rabbi would
have let me in on it by now. I contribute enough to the shule.
-- Saul Goodman
%
If there was any justice in the world, "trust" would be a four-letter word.
%
If there were a school for, say, sheet metal workers, that after three
years left its graduates as unprepared for their careers as does law
school, it would be closed down in a minute, and no doubt by lawyers.
-- Michael Levin, "The Socratic Method
%
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
something out of you.
-- Muhammad Ali
%
If they sent one man to the moon, why can't they send them all?
%
If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical,
go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I get as crude as possible. These
days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire
to crudeness...
-- Johnny Mnemonic
%
If they were so inclined, they could impeach
him because they don't like his necktie.
-- Attorney General William Saxbe
%
If things don't improve soon, you'd better ask them to stop helping you.
%
If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
%
If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
It's not time yet.
%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%
If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
yesterday?
%
If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
-- Lily Tomlin
%
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
Jerry Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his
helmet off.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign
itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
%
If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.
-- Ernest Hemingway
%
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely.
%
If voting could change the system, it would be illegal.
If not voting could change the system, it would be illegal.
%
If we all work together, we can totally disrupt the system.
%
If we can ever make red tape nutritional, we can feed the world.
-- R. Schaeberle, "Management Accounting"
%
If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would
all be millionaires.
-- Abigail Van Buren
%
If we do not change our direction we are
likely to end up where we are headed.
%
If we don't survive, we don't do anything else.
-- John Sinclair
%
If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time
of it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
If we relied conclusively on scientific data for every one of our
findings, I'm afraid all of our work would be inconclusive.
-- Henry Hudson, of the Meese Pornography Commission, on
criticism of its conclusion that pornography causes sex
crimes.
%
If we see the light at the end of the tunnel
It's the light of an oncoming train.
-- Robert Lowell
%
If we spoke a different language, we
would perceive a somewhat different world.
-- Wittgenstein
%
If we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty,
we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.
-- Samuel Adams
%
If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.
%
If we were meant to get up early, God would have created us
with alarm clocks.
%
If we won't stand together, we don't stand a chance.
%
If what they've been doing hasn't solved the problem, tell them to
do something else.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting"
%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
-- Marguerite Emmons
%
If wishes were horses, then beggars would be thieves.
%
If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the
beginning of our menstrual cycle, when the female hormone is at its
lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that in those few days
women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?
-- Gloria Steinham
%
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
-- Aristotle Onassis
%
If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer.
Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter
than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.
-- Andrew Plotkin
%
If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it.
Quit work and play for once!
%
If you analyse anything, you destroy it.
-- Arthur Miller
%
If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
-- Ann Edwards-Duff
%
If you are a police dog, where's your badge?
-- Question James Thurber used to drive his German Shepherd
crazy.
%
If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.
-- Anton Chekov
%
If you are going to walk on thin ice, you may as well dance.
%
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work. If you are real
good, you will get out of it.
%
If you are honest because honesty is the best policy,
your honesty is corrupt.
%
If you are looking for a kindly, well-to-do older gentleman who is no
longer interested in sex, take out an ad in The Wall Street Journal.
-- Abigail Van Buren
%
If you are not for yourself, who will be for you?
If you are for yourself, then what are you?
If not now, when?
%
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient
evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than
words.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
%
If you are over 80 years old and accompanied
by your parents, we will cash your check.
%
If you are shooting under 80 you are neglecting your business;
over 80 you are neglecting your golf.
-- Walter Hagen
%
If you are smart enough to know that you're not
smart enough to be an Engineer, then you're in Business.
%
If you are too busy to read, then you are too busy.
%
If you are what you eat, does that mean Euelle Gibbons really was a nut?
%
If you aren't rich you should always look useful.
-- Louis-Ferdinand Celine
%
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
-- J. Paul Getty
%
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing
theirs, then you clearly don't understand the situation.
%
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
%
If you can not say it, you can not whistle it, either.
-- Wittgenstein
%
If you can read this, you're too close.
%
If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
If you cannot in the long run tell everyone
what you have been doing, your doing was worthless.
-- Edwin Schrodinger
%
If you can't be good, be careful.
If you can't be careful, give me a call.
%
If you can't get your work done in the first 24 hours, work nights.
%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%
If you can't read this, blame a teacher.
%
If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%
If you can't understand it, it is intuitively obvious.
%
If you catch a man, throw him back.
-- Woman's Liberation Slogan, c. 1975
%
If you continually give you will continually have.
%
If you could only get that wonderful feeling of
accomplishment without having to accomplish anything.
%
If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
%
If you didn't have most of your friends,
you wouldn't have most of your problems.
%
If you didn't have to work so hard,
you'd have more time to be depressed.
%
If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
-- John Galsworthy
%
If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about
it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.
-- Carlyle
%
If you do something right once, someone will ask you to do it again.
%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%
If you don't count some of Jehovah's injunctions, there are no humorists
in the Bible.
-- Mordecai Richler
%
If you don't do it, you'll never know what
would have happened if you had done it.
%
If you don't do the things that are not worth doing, who will?
%
If you don't drink it, someone else will.
%
If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
-- Clarence Day
%
If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
-- Freeman Dyson
%
If you don't have the time right now,
will you have redo right time later?
%
If you don't have time to do it right, where
are you going to find the time to do it over?
%
If you don't know what game you're playing, don't ask what the score is.
%
If you don't like the way I drive, stay off the sidewalk!
%
If you don't say anything, you won't be called on to repeat it.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
If you don't strike oil in twenty minutes, stop boring.
-- Andrew Carnegie, on public speaking
%
If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
Lavoris in the toilet.
-- Jay Leno
%
If you drink, don't park. Accidents make people.
%
If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
either of you for the rest of the day.
%
If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
have to get a toehold in the public eye.
%
If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program
an imbedded system. The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that
it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention
will suffice to remove it. An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything
it hears from the outside world. It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff
around, and adapt again. I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming
carefulness here. No. Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted
raging maniacal paranoia. For example, our ethernet front ends need to know
what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs
properly. How do you find out what your network number is? Easy, you ask a
gateway. Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network
numbers. Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before
you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all
over creation. Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he
was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong
network number? Never supposed to happen. Tough. Supposing that your
software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network
number than before, what's it supposed to do about it? This is not discussed
in the protocol document. Never supposed to happen. Tough. I think you
get my drift.
%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.
%
If you explain something so clearly that no
one can possibly misunderstand, someone will.
%
If you fail to plan, plan to fail.
%
If you find a solution and become attached to it,
the solution may become your next problem.
%
If you flaunt it, expect to have it trashed.
%
If you float on instinct alone, how can you
calculate the buoyancy for the computed load?
-- Christopher Hodder-Williams
%
If you fool around with something long
enough, it will eventually break.
%
If you give a man enough rope, he'll claim he's tied up at the office.
%
If you give Congress a chance to vote on
both sides of an issue, it will always do it.
-- Les Aspin, D, Wisconsin
%
If you go on with this nuclear arms race,
all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.
-- Winston Churchill
%
If you go out of your mind, do it quietly,
so as not to disturb those around you.
%
If you go parachuting, and your parachute doesn't open, and your friends are
all watching you fall, I think a funny gag would be to pretend you were
swimming.
-- Jack Handey
%
If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
%
If you had better tools, you could more
effectively demonstrate your total incompetence.
%
If you had just one moment to live
And they granted you one special wish
Would you ask for something
Like another chance.
-- Traffic, "The Low Spark of Hi Heeled Boys"
%
If you hands are clean and your cause is just
and your demands are reasonable, at least it's a start.
%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%
If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
-- Bette Davis
%
If you have nothing to do, don't do it here.
%
If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a
new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation,
does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions. You must
make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats.
The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if
you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer
will be courteous as well as responsive. Since you are out of sympathy with
cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the
dedication ceremonies of a cat hospital. But bear in mind that your opinion
of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker. Try to keep things
straight.
-- Strunk and White, "The Elements of Style"
%
If you have seen one city slum you have seen them all.
-- Spiro Agnew
%
If you have to ask how much it is, you can't afford it.
%
If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.
-- Louis Armstrong
%
If you have to hate, hate gently.
%
If you have to think twice about it, you're wrong.
%
If you haven't enjoyed the material in the last few lectures then a career
in chartered accountancy beckons.
-- Advice from the lecturer in the middle of the Stochastic
Systems course.
%
If you hype something and it succeeds, you're a genius -- it wasn't a
hype. If you hype it and it fails, then it was just a hype.
-- Neil Bogart
%
If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot
yourself in the posterior.
-- A. J. Liebling, "The Press"
%
If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
%
If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of
rubbish into it.
-- William Orton
%
If you knew what to say next, would you say it?
%
If you know the answer to a question, don't ask.
-- Petersen Nesbit
%
If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.
-- Mark Twain
%
If you laid all the Elvis impersonators in the world, end to end...
you'd wanna run and get a steam roller, real fast.
-- David Letterman
%
If you learn one useless thing every day, in a single year you'll learn
365 useless things.
%
If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was
probably worth it.
%
If you liked the Earth you'll love Heaven.
%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
-- Graham Summer
%
If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
-- Simone De Beauvoir
%
If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made
because very few people die past the age of a hundred.
-- George Burns
%
If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets
and fire them all off, wouldn't you?
-- Garrison Keillor
%
If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life.
-- Robert Pante, fashion consultant
%
If you look like your driver's license photo -- see a doctor.
If you look like your passport photo -- it's too late for a doctor.
%
If you lose a son you can always get another,
but there's only one Maltese Falcon.
-- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon"
%
If you lose your temper at a newspaper columnist,
he'll get rich or famous or both.
%
If you love someone, set them free.
If they don't come back, then call them up when you're drunk.
%
If you love something set it free. If it doesn't
come back to you, hunt it down and kill it.
%
If you make a mistake you right it
immediately to the best of your ability.
%
If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year
with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
%
If you marry a man who cheats on his wife, you'll
be married to a man who cheats on his wife.
-- Ann Landers
%
If you meet somebody who tells you that he loves you more than anybody
in the whole wide world, don't trust him. It means he experiments.
%
If you mess with a thing long enough, it'll break.
-- Schmidt
%
If you MUST get married, it is always advisable to marry beauty.
Otherwise, you'll never find anybody to take her off your hands.
%
If you need anything just whistle.
You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?
Just put your lips together and blow.
-- Lauren Bacall, "To Have and Have Not"
%
If you notice that a person is deceiving you,
they must not be deceiving you very well.
%
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Maslow
%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain
%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow enobled and none dare criticize it.
%
If you put it off long enough, it might go away.
%
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery.
But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine,
is somehow enobled and no-one dare criticise it.
-- Pierre Gallois
%
If you put your supper dish to your ear you can hear the sounds of a
restaurant.
-- Snoopy
%
If you really want to do something new, the good won't help you with it.
Let me have men about me that are arrant knaves. The wicked, who have
something on their conscience, are obliging, quick to hear threats, because
they know how it's done, and for booty. You can offer them things because
they will take them. Because they have no hesitations. You can hang them
if they get out of step. Let me have men about me that are utter villains
-- provided that I have the power, the absolute power, over life and death.
-- Hermann Goering
%
If you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
%
If you remember the 60's, you weren't there.
%
If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire
deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading
are precisely those that challenge our convictions.
%
If you see an onion ring -- answer it!
%
If you sell diamonds, you cannot expect to have many customers.
But a diamond is a diamond even if there are no customers.
-- Swami Prabhupada
%
If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're
the sucker.
%
If you sow your wild oats, hope for a crop failure.
%
If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
%
If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from
many it's research.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
If you stew apples like cranberries,
they taste more like prunes than rhubarb does.
-- Groucho Marx
%
If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock.
Or some joker who is slicker,
Will trick you of your liquor,
If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.
%
If you stick your head in the sand,
one thing is for sure, you're gonna get your rear kicked.
%
If you suspect a man, don't employ him.
%
If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have
schizophrenia.
-- Thomas Szasz
%
If you teach your children to like computers and to know how to gamble
then they'll always be interested in something and won't come to no real
harm.
%
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
-- Mark Twain
%
If you think before you speak the other guy gets his joke in first.
%
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag,
wait till you see what happens tomorrow!
%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive,
try missing a couple of car payments.
-- Earl Wilson
%
If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you
don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.
-- Bruce Schneier
%
If you think the pen is mightier than the sword, the next time
someone pulls out a sword I'd like to see you get up there with
your Bic.
%
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
-- Arthur Kasspe
%
If you think the system is working,
ask someone who's waiting for a prompt.
%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
If you think things can't get worse it's probably only because you
lack sufficient imagination.
%
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be
to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to
say they had a nice time. Now you'll be expected to throw another party
next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake
up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if
they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious
to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having
another one ...
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door,
unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that
they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone,
your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
-- Dave Barry
%
If you took all of the grains of sand in the world, and lined
them up end to end in a row, you'd be working for the government!
-- Mr. Interesting
%
If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
-- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
%
If you treat people right they will treat you right -- 90% of the time.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%
If you try to please everyone, somebody is not going to like it.
%
If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
-- A. L.
%
If you wait long enough, it will go away... after having
done its damage. If it was bad, it will be back.
%
If you want divine justice, die.
-- Nick Seldon
%
If you want me to be a good little bunny
just dangle some carats in front of my nose.
-- Lauren Bacall
%
If you want to be ruined, marry a rich woman.
-- Michelet
%
If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's
read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.
-- Don Marquis
%
If you want to know how old a man is, ask his brother-in-law.
%
If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
he gave it to.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
-- Woody Allen
%
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
%
If you want to read about love and marriage you've got to buy two separate
books.
-- Alan King
%
If you want to see card tricks, you have to expect to take cards.
-- Harry Blackstone
%
If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft.
Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory
containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with
the word "National".
-- George Will
%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word
you say, talk in your sleep.
%
If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it,
even if they don't know what it means.
-- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
%
If you waste your time cooking, you'll miss the next meal.
%
If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that
fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and
heartbeats.
%
If you wish to be happy for one hour, get drunk.
If you wish to be happy for three days, get married.
If you wish to be happy for a month, kill your pig and eat it.
If you wish to be happy forever, learn to fish.
-- Chinese Proverb
%
If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
%
If you wish to succeed, consult three old people.
%
If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who wore fur
boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.
-- Anton Chekov
%
If you work for a man, in heaven's name, work for him.
If he pays you wages which supply you bread and butter, work for him; speak
well of him; stand by him, and by the institution he represents.
If put to a pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.
If you must vilify, condemn and eternally find disparage -- resign your
position, and when you are outside, damn to your heart's content...
but, as long as you are part of the institution do not condemn it.
If you do that, you are loosening the tendrils that are holding you to the
institution, and at the first high wind that comes along, you will
be uprooted and blown away, and probably will never know the reason
why.
%
If you would keep a secret from an enemy, tell it not to a friend.
%
If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some.
-- Ben Franklin
%
If you would understand your own age, read the works
of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.
%
If you'd like to cultivate insomnia,
Bed down with a pretty girl.
Amor vincit omnia.
%
If your aim in life is nothing; you can't miss.
%
If your bread is stale, make toast.
%
If your enemy is buried in quicksand up to his neck, pull him out.
If he is buried up to his eyes, step on his head.
-- Niccoli Machiavelli, "The Prince"
%
If your happiness depends on what somebody else does,
I guess you do have a problem.
-- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
%
If your life was a horse, you'd have to shoot it.
%
If your mind grows weak,
Don't yield to the weakness.
Even if tired of thought,
Never stop thinking.
My sons and descendants,
Don't get exhausted in reason--
But become experienced.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
If your mother knew what you're doing,
she'd probably hang her head and cry.
%
If your parents don't have kids, neither will you.
%
If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no
longer be fantasies.
-- Fran Lebowitz
%
If you're a young Mafia gangster out on your first date, I bet it's real
embarrassing if someone tries to kill you.
-- Jack Handey
%
If you're careful enough, nothing
bad or good will ever happen to you.
%
If you're carrying a torch, put it down.
The Olympics are over.
%
If you're constantly being mistreated,
you're cooperating with the treatment.
%
If you're crossing the nation in a covered wagon, it's better to have four
strong oxen than 100 chickens. Chickens are OK but we can't make them work
together yet.
-- Ross Bott, Pyramid U.S., on multiprocessors at AUUGM '89
%
If you're going to America, bring your own food.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
If you're going to do something tonight
that you'll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.
-- Henny Youngman
%
If you're going to walk on thin ice, you might as well dance.
%
If you're happy, you're successful.
%
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
%
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
%
If you're worried by earthquakes and nuclear war,
As well as by traffic and crime,
Consider how worry-free gophers are,
Though living on burrowed time.
-- Richard Armour, WSJ, 11/7/83
%
If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
-- Ronald Reagan
%
Ignisecond, n.:
The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car
door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Ignorance is bliss.
-- Thomas Gray
Fortune updates the great quotes, #42:
BLISS is ignorance.
%
Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the
rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.
-- Franklin K. Dane
%
Ignorance is when you don't know anything and somebody finds it out.
%
Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people
so resolutely pursuing it.
%
Ignore previous fortune.
%
Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
Et le m^omerade horgrave.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Iles's Law:
There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly
at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see
it. Neither will Iles.
%
I'll be comfortable on the couch. Famous last words.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
I'll be Grateful when they're Dead.
%
I'll burn my books.
-- Christopher Marlowe
%
I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun.
-- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
%
I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
listen to it!
-- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
%
I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell ... their heart's
in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Summing Up"
%
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
I'll learn to play the Saxophone,
I play just what I feel.
Drink Scotch whisky all night long,
And die behind the wheel.
They got a name for the winners in the world,
I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide,
Call me Deacon Blues.
-- Becker and Fagan, "Deacon Blues"
%
I'll meet you... on the dark side of the moon...
-- Pink Floyd
%
I'll never get off this planet.
-- Luke Skywalker
%
I'll pretend to trust you if you'll pretend to trust me.
%
I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood.
-- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
%
I'll turn over a new leaf.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask
any Indian.
-- Robert Orben
Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
-- Jack Paar
%
Illegitimi non carborundum
(translation: no carbonated drinks allowed.)
%
Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot:
it's more like the land He's trying to ignore.
%
Illiterate? Write today, for free help!
%
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
-- Voltaire
%
I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe
that I could have evolved from man.
%
"I'm a doctor, not a mechanic."
-- "The Doomsday Machine", when asked if he had heard of
the idea of a doomsday machine.
"I'm a doctor, not an escalator."
-- "Friday's Child", when asked to help the very pregnant
Ellen up a steep incline.
"I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer."
-- Devil in the Dark", when asked to patch up the Horta
"I'm a doctor, not an engineer."
-- "Mirror, Mirror", when asked by Scotty for help in
Engineering aboard the ISS Enterprise.
"I'm a doctor, not a coal miner."
-- "The Empath", on being beneath the surface of Minara 2
"I'm a surgeon, not a psychiatrist."
-- "City on the Edge of Forever", on Edith Keeler's remark
that Kirk talked strangely.
"I'm no magician, Spock, just an old country doctor."
-- "The Deadly Years", to Spock while trying to cure the
aging effects of the rogue comet near Gamma Hydra 4.
"What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor?"
-- "The Corbomite Maneuver", when Kirk rushed off from a
physical exam to answer the alert.
%
I'm a Hollywood writer; so I put on
a sports jacket and take off my brain.
%
I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
%
I'm a lucky guy, and I'm happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to
thank everyone for making this night necessary.
-- Yogi Berra at a dinner in his honor
%
I'm all for computer dating, but I
wouldn't want one to marry my sister.
%
I'm also inclined to believe that if you wait long enough, you will
eventually have more than 255 of almost *anything*....
-- A. Lyman Chapin
%
I'm always looking for a new idea that
will be more productive than its cost.
-- David Rockefeller
%
I'm an artist.
But it's not what I really want to do.
What I really want to do is be a shoe salesman.
I know what you're going to say --
"Dreamer! Get your head out of the clouds."
All right! But it's what I want to do.
Instead I have to go on painting all day long.
The world should make a place for shoe salesmen.
-- J. Feiffer
%
I'm an evolutionist; I refuse to believe
that I could have been created by man.
%
I'm changing my name to Chrysler
I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
I'll tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
I'm changing my name to Chrysler,
I'm heading for that great receiving line.
When they hand a million grand out,
I'll be standing with my hand out,
Yessir, I'll get mine!
-- Tom Paxton
%
I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
%
"I'm dying," he croaked.
"My experiment was a success," the chemist retorted.
"You can't really train a beagle," he dogmatized.
"That's no beagle, it's a mongrel," she muttered.
"The fire is going out," he bellowed.
"Bad marksmanship," the hunter groused.
"You ought to see a psychiatrist," he reminded me.
"You snake," she rattled.
"Someone's at the door," she chimed.
"Company's coming," she guessed.
"Dawn came too soon," she mourned.
"I think I'll end it all," Sue sighed.
"I ordered chocolate, not vanilla," I screamed.
"Your embroidery is sloppy," she needled cruelly.
"Where did you get this meat?" he bridled hoarsely.
-- Gyles Brandreth, "The Joy of Lex"
%
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
-- George McGovern
%
I'm for bringing back the birch, but only for consenting adults.
-- Gore Vidal
%
I'm free -- and freedom tastes of reality.
%
I'm glad I was not born before tea.
-- Sidney Smith (1771-1845)
%
I'm glad that I'm an American,
I'm glad that I am free,
But I wish I were a little doggy,
And McGovern were a tree.
%
I'm going through my "I want to go back to New York" phase today. Happens
every six months or so. So, I thought, perhaps unwisely, that I'd share
it with you.
> In New York in the winter it is million degrees below zero and
the wind travels at a million miles an hour down 5th avenue.
> And in LA it's 72.
> In New York in the summer it is a million degrees and the humidity
is a million percent.
> And in LA it's 72.
> In New York there are a million interesting people.
> And in LA there are 72.
%
I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
-- Fred Allen
%
I'm going to give my psychoanalyst one more year, then I'm going to Lourdes.
-- Woody Allen
%
I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
-- Spider Robinson
%
I'm going to raise an issue and stick it in your ear.
-- John Foreman
%
I'm going to Vietnam at the request of the White House. President Johnson
says a war isn't really a war without my jokes.
-- Bob Hope
%
I'm hungry, time to eat lunch.
%
I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
-- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
%
I'm just as sad as sad can be!
I've missed your special date.
Please say that you're not mad at me
My tax return is late.
-- Modern Lines for Modern Greeting Cards
%
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
living apart.
-- E.E. Cummings
%
I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
She's traversed me seven times before.
And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
N-ary the tree I am, I am,
N-ary the tree I am.
-- Stolen from Paul Revere and the Raiders
%
I'm not a lovable man.
-- Richard Nixon
%
I'm not a real movie star -- I've still got the same wife I started out
with twenty-eight years ago.
-- Will Rogers
%
I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to
match the men.
-- George Eliot
%
I'm not even going to *bother* comparing C to BASIC or FORTRAN.
-- L. Zolman, creator of BDS C
%
I'm not laughing with you, I'm laughing at you.
%
I'm not offering myself as an example;
every life evolves by its own laws.
%
I'm not prejudiced, I hate everyone equally.
%
I'm not proud.
%
I'm not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'M NOT GOING!
%
I'm not sure I've even got the brains to be President.
-- Barry Goldwater, in 1964
%
I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert!
%
I'm not the person your mother warned you about... her imagination isn't
that good.
-- Amy Gorin
%
I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol
that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
%
I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli-
gence?" I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there,
and use the word *billions*, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing
to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as
yet no compelling evidence for it. And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you
really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but
what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's
okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in.
-- Carl Sagan
%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but
totally unprepared for everyday life.
%
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
-- I could be just as proud for half the money.
-- Arthur Godfrey
%
I'm really enjoying not talking to you...
Let's not talk again REAL soon...
%
I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
(your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage.
-- English Professor, Providence College
%
I'm so broke I can't even pay attention.
%
I'm so miserable without you, it's almost like you're here.
%
I'm sorry, but after reading this thread, I'm having a hard time
coming up with an explanation for this nonsense which doesn't involve
you being a dumbass.
-- Bill Paul <wpaul@FreeBSD.org>
%
I'm sorry, but my kharma just ran over your dogma.
%
I'm sorry I missed.
-- Squeaky Fromme
%
I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you.
%
I'm still waiting for the advent of the computer science groupie.
%
I'm successful because I'm lucky.
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, "The Pirates of Penzance"
%
I'm very old-fashioned. I believe that people should marry for life,
like pigeons and Catholics.
-- Woody Allen
%
I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's
lives.
%
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
-- A. Einstein
%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
thinks of complaining.
-- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
%
Imagine me going around with a pot belly.
It would mean political ruin.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
What's the first question that the computer community asks?
"Is it PC compatible?"
%
Imagine there's no heaven... it's easy if you try.
-- John Lennon, "Imagine"
%
Imagine what we can imagine!
-- Arthur Rubinstein
%
Imbalance of power corrupts and monopoly of power corrupts absolutely.
-- Genji
%
Imbesi's Law with Freeman's Extension:
In order for something to become clean, something else must
become dirty; but you can get everything dirty without getting
anything clean.
%
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
-- Fred Allen
%
Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant.
%
Immanuel Kant but Kubla Khan.
%
Immature artists imitate, mature artists steal.
-- Lionel Trilling
%
Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
-- T. S. Eliot, "Philip Massinger"
%
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%
Immutability, Three Rules of:
(1) If a tarpaulin can flap, it will.
(2) If a small boy can get dirty, he will.
(3) If a teenager can go out, he will.
%
Impartial, adj.:
Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
%
Impossible, adj.:
(1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
(2) I can't be bothered; (3) God can't be bothered. Meaning (3) may
perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
%
In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled
waffles.
%
In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't
get parts.
%
In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The
creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across.
%
In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred
syrup.
%
In 1967, the Soviet Government minted a beautiful silver ruble with Lenin
in a very familiar pose - arms raised above him, leading the country to
revolution. But, it was clear to everybody, that if you looked at it from
behind, it was clear that Lenin was pointing to 11:00, when the Vodka
shops opened, and was actually saying, "Comrades, forward to the Vodka shops.
It became fashionable, when one wanted to have a drink, to take out the
ruble and say, "Oh my goodness, Comrades, Lenin tells me we should go.
%
In 1989, the United States, which was displeased with the policies of the
dictator of Panama, invaded that country and placed in power a government
more to its liking.
In 1990, Iraq, which was displeased with the policies of the dictator of
Kuwait, invaded that country and placed in power a government more to its
liking.
%
In a bottle, the neck is always at the top.
%
In a circuit with a fast-acting fuse,
an IC will blow to protect the fuse.
%
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves:
the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
%
In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death
by slow starvation. The old principle: Who does not work shall not eat,
has been replaced by a new one: Who does not obey shall not eat.
-- Leon Trotsky, 1937
%
In a display of perverse brilliance, Carl the repairman mistakes a room
humidifier for a mid-range computer but manages to tie it into the network
anyway.
-- The 5th Wave
%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language.
Only we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%
In a gathering of two or more people, when a lighted cigarette is
placed in an ashtray, the smoke will waft into the face of the non-smoker.
%
In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the
other really likes.
-- Elizabeth Ashley
%
In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence ...
in time every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent
to carry out its duties ... Work is accomplished by those employees who
have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
-- Dr. Laurence J. Peter, "The Peter Principle"
%
In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
-- Frank Mankiewicz
%
In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
-- Mark Twain
%
In a surprise raid last night, federal agent's ransacked a house in search
of a rebel computer hacker. However, they were unable to complete the arrest
because the warrant was made out in the name of Don Provan, while the only
person in the house was named don provan. Proving, once again, that Unix is
superior to Tops10.
%
In a whiskey it's age, in a cigarette it's
taste and in a sports car it's impossible.
%
In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call
this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
%
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All
those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the
devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up
as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to
be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's
beloved.
-- Russell Baker
%
In an orderly world, there's always a place for the disorderly.
%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
-- The Peter Principle
%
In any country there must be people who have to die. They are the
sacrifices any nation has to make to achieve law and order.
-- Idi Amin Dada
%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%
In any problem, if you find yourself doing an infinite amount of work,
the answer may be obtained by inspection.
%
In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations --
it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir.
-- Stuart Keate
%
In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
%
IN BOX:
A catch basin for everything you don't want
to deal with, but are afraid to throw away.
%
In breeding cattle you need one bull for every twenty-five cows, unless
the cows are known sluts.
-- Johnny Carson
%
In Brooklyn, we had such great pennant races, it
made the World Series just something that came later.
-- Walter O'Malley, Dodgers owner
%
In buying horses and taking a wife
shut your eyes tight and commend yourself to God.
%
In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he
thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent
teacher should know. "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig
said, "up to the mathematicians."
-- The New York Times, October 22, 1985
%
In California they don't throw their garbage away -- they make
it into television shows.
-- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"
%
In case of atomic attack, all work rules will be temporarily suspended.
%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling
against prayer in schools will be temporarily canceled.
%
In case of fire, stand in the hall and shout "Fire!"
-- The Kidner Report
%
In case of fire, yell "FIRE!"
%
In case of injury notify your superior immediately.
He'll kiss it and make it better.
%
In charity there is no excess.
-- Francis Bacon
%
In childhood a woman must be subject to her father; in youth to her
husband; when her husband is dead, to her sons. A woman must never
be free of subjugation.
-- The Hindu Code of Manu
%
In Christianity, a man may have only one wife.
This is called Monotony.
%
In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
to get her attention.
%
In computing, the mean time to failure keeps getting shorter.
%
In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
in any motor vehicle.
%
In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
-- Winston Churchill, on General Montgomery
%
In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
neighbor.
%
In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
%
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, delve deep into the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In work, be competent.
In action, be careful of your timing.
-- Lao Tsu
%
In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
In every hierarchy the cream rises until it sours.
-- Dr. Laurence J. Peter
%
In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.
Find the fun and snap! The job's a game.
And every task you undertake, becomes a piece of cake,
a lark, a spree; it's very clear to see.
-- Mary Poppins
%
In every non-trivial program there is at least one bug.
%
In fact, S. M. Simpson, eventually devised an efficient 24-point Fourier
transform, which was a precursor to the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform
in 1965. The FFT made all of Simpson's efficient autocorrelation and
spectrum programs instantly obsolete, on which he had worked half a lifetime.
-- Proc. IEEE, Sept. 1982, p.900
%
In fiction the recourse of the powerless is murder;
in life the recourse of the powerless is petty theft.
%
In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up because
I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the
Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came
for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up.
-- Pastor Martin Niemoller
%
In God we trust; all else we walk through.
%
In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker
know the truth of the matter about which he is to speak?
-- Plato
%
In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
the sidewalks when a concert is on.
%
In her first passion woman loves her lover,
In all the others all she loves is love.
-- George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Don Juan"
%
In high school in Brooklyn
I was the baseball manager,
proud as I could be
I chased baseballs,
gathered thrown bats
handed out the towels Eventually, I bought my own
It was very important work but it was dark blue while
for a small spastic kid, the official ones were green
but I was a team member Nobody ever said anything
When the team got to me about my blue jacket;
their warm-up jackets the guys were my friends
I didn't get one Yet it hurt me all year
Only the regular team to wear that blue jacket
got these jackets, and among all those green ones
surely not a manager Even now, forty years after,
I still recall that jacket
and the memory goes on hurting.
-- Bart Lanier Safford III, "An Obscured Radiance"
%
In Hollywood, all marriages are happy. It's trying to live together
afterwards that causes the problems.
-- Shelley Winters
%
In Hollywood, if you don't have happiness, you send out for it.
-- Rex Reed
%
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into
use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather
which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
-- Mark Twain
%
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror,
murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci
and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had
five hundred years of democracy and peace -- and what did they produce?
The cuckoo-clock.
-- Orson Welles, "The Third Man"
%
In just seven days, I can make you a man!
-- The Rocky Horror Picture Show
[ (and seven nights...) Ed.]
%
In less than a century, computers will be making substantial
progress on ... the overriding problem of war and peace.
-- James Slagle
%
In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
pocket.
%
In like a dimwit, out like a light.
-- Pogo
%
In love, she who gives her portrait promises the original.
-- Bruton
%
In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
either flying or waiting to board a plane.
%
In marriage, as in war, it is permitted
to take every advantage of the enemy.
%
In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but
the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they
have obtained from books of travel.
-- Mark Twain
%
In matters of principle, stand like a rock;
in matters of taste, swim with the current.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
In Mexico we have a word for sushi: bait.
-- Josi Simon
%
In Minnesota they ask why all football fields in Iowa have artificial turf.
It's so the cheerleaders won't graze during the game.
%
In most instances, all an argument
proves is that two people are present.
%
In my end is my beginning.
-- Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
%
In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending
your left leg, it's modern architecture.
-- Nancy Banks Smith
%
IN MY OPINION anyone interested in improving himself should not rule out
becoming pure energy.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
In Nature there are neither rewards nor
punishments, there are consequences.
-- R. G. Ingersoll
%
In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
%
In olden times sacrifices were made at the altar --
a practice which is still continued.
-- Helen Rowland
%
In order to dial out, it is necessary to broaden one's dimension.
%
In order to discover who you are, first learn who everybody else is;
you're what's left.
%
In order to get a loan you must first prove you don't need it.
%
In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom.
It is not always an easy sacrifice.
%
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
universe.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence
is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
In our system there's no intermediate step between a definitive Supreme
Court decision and violent revolution.
-- Al Gore (New York Magazine, May 29 2006)
%
In Oz, never say "krizzle kroo" to a Woozy.
%
In Pierre Trudeau, Canada has finally produced
a Prime Minister worthy of assassination.
-- John Diefenbaker
%
In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
%
In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying
of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public
view."
%
In practice, failures in system development, like unemployment in Russia,
happens a lot despite official propaganda to the contrary.
-- Paul Licker
%
In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you
want the other person.
-- Margaret Anderson
%
In reply to a message by Scott Long:
> Note: this amounts to life support for floppies. The end IS coming.
Say it ain't so! If you establish a dangerous trend like this in
your support for floppy booting, the next thing you know, some
computer manufacturer will start shipping machines without ANY FLOPPY
DRIVE AT ALL, leading to the infocalypse, the four horsemen pouring
their vials upon the earth, the birth of the anti-christ (or PERL 6,
whichever comes first), dogs and cats living together, etc.
It's the end of days, I tell you! The end! Can the FreeBSD/NetBSD
merger be that far off?
-- Jordan Hubbard (31 January 2006)
%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
In San Francisco, Halloween is redundant.
-- Will Durst
%
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really
good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change
their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really
do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are
human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot
recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
-- Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address
%
In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
is over six feet in length.
%
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian.
%
In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
%
In spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.
-- Anne Frank
%
In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.
-- Alan Kay
%
In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
moving automobile.
%
[In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
_s_e_e the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
rolled back.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
"In the age of the internet attaching a famous name to your personal
opinion to give more weight to it is a very valid strategy."
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
In the beginning there was nothing. And the Lord said "Let There Be Light!"
And still there was nothing, but at least now you could see it.
%
In the beginning was the word.
But by the time the second word was added to it,
There was trouble.
For with it came syntax ...
-- John Simon
%
In the course of reading Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the
Mathematical Field", I have come across evidence supporting a fact
which we coffee achievers have long appreciated: no really creative,
intelligent thought is possible without a good cup of coffee. On page
14, Hadamard is discussing Poincare's theory of fuchsian groups and
fuchsian functions, which he describes as "... one of his greatest
discoveries, the first which consecrated his glory ..." Hadamard refers
to Poincare having had a "... sleepless night which initiated all that
memorable work ..." and gives the following, very revealing quote:
"One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and
could not sleep. Ideas rose in crowds; I felt them collide
until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable
combination."
Too bad drinking black coffee was contrary to his custom. Maybe he
could really have amounted to something as a coffee achiever.
%
In the days of old,
When Knights were bold,
And women were too cautious;
Oh, those gallant days,
When women were women,
And men were really obnoxious.
%
In the dimestores and bus stations
People talk of situations
Read books repeat quotations
Draw conclusions on the wall.
-- Bob Dylan
%
In the early morning queue,
With a listing in my hand.
With a worry in my heart, There on terminal number 9,
Waitin' here in CERAS-land. Pascal run all set to go.
I'm a long way from sleep, But I'm waitin' in the queue,
How I miss a good meal so. With this code that ever grows.
In the early mornin' queue, Now the lobby chairs are soft,
With no place to go. But that can't make the queue move fast.
Hey, there it goes my friend,
I've moved up one at last.
-- Ernest Adams, "Early Morning Queue", to "Early
Morning Rain" by G. Lightfoot
%
In the eyes of my dog, I'm a man.
-- Martin Mull
%
In the first place, God made idiots;
this was for practice; then he made school boards.
-- Mark Twain
%
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
%
In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians.
-- Joseph Stalin
%
In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals.
You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them.
%
In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
In the highest society, as well as in the lowest,
woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.
-- Tolstoy
%
In the land of the dark the Ship of the
Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead.
-- Egyptian Book of the Dead
%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
-- Alan Perlis
%
In the long run we are all dead.
-- John Maynard Keynes
%
In the middle of a wide field is a pot of gold. 100 feet to the north stands
a smart manager. 100 feet to the south stands a dumb manager. 100 feet to
the east is the Easter Bunny, and 100 feet to the west is Santa Claus.
Q: Who gets to the pot of gold first?
A: The dumb manager. All the rest are myths.
%
In the midst of one of the wildest parties he'd ever been to, the young man
noticed a very prim and pretty girl sitting quietly apart from the rest of
the revelers. Approaching her, he introduced himself and, after some quiet
conversation, said, "I'm afraid you and I don't really fit in with this
jaded group. Why don't I take you home?""
"Fine," said the girl, smiling up at him demurely. "Where do you
live?"
%
In the misfortune of our friends we find something that is not
displeasing to us.
-- La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims"
%
In the next world, you're on your own.
%
In the Old West a wagon train is crossing the plains. As night falls the
wagon train forms a circle, and a campfire is lit in the middle. After
everyone has gone to sleep two lone cavalry officers stand watch over the
camp.
After several hours of quiet, they hear war drums starting from
a nearby Indian village they had passed during the day. The drums get
louder and louder.
Finally one soldier turns to the other and says, "I don't like
the sound of those drums."
Suddenly, they hear a cry come from the Indian camp: "IT'S
NOT OUR REGULAR DRUMMER."
%
In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or a
loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it to
you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by forty
lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you stole a dog
and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit punches, although it
was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong enough to punch you.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and
struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny
and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the
crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.
-- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian
novel.
%
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old
Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred
thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the
Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is
something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of
conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
%
In the Spring, I have counted 136
different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
-- Mark Twain, on New England weather
%
In the stairway of life, you'd best take the elevator.
%
In the time of peace and harmony
Be a kind-hearted friend.
In the time of conflict with enemies
Be a falcon of advance and attack.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop
out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques.
-- Art Linkletter
%
In the war of wits, he's unarmed.
%
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.
%
In these matters the only certainty is that there is nothing certain.
-- Pliny the Elder
%
In this vale
Of toil and sin
Your head grows bald
But not your chin.
-- Burma Shave
%
In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be
thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
In this world some people are going to like me and some are not.
So, I may as well be me. Then I know if someone likes me, they like me.
%
In this world there are only two tragedies. One is
not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
In this world, truth can wait; she's used to it.
%
In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
my advice.
-- Winston Churchill
%
In time, every post tends to be occupied by an
employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.
-- Dr. L. J. Peter
%
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
%
In /users3 did Kubla Kahn
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where /bin, the sacred river ran
Through Test Suites measureless to Man
Down to a sunless C.
%
In war it is not men, but the man who counts.
-- Napoleon
%
In war, truth is the first casualty.
-- U Thant
%
In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse
along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
%
In which level of metalanguage are you now speaking?
%
In wine there is truth (In vino veritas).
-- Pliny
%
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree
But only if the NFL to a franchise would agree.
%
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forest ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
-- S. T. Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn"
%
In youth, it was a way I had
To do my best to please,
And change, with every passing lad,
To suit his theories.
But now I know the things I know,
And do the things I do;
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you!
-- Dorothy Parker, "Indian Summer"
%
INCENTIVE PROGRAM:
The system of long and short-term rewards that a corporation uses
to motivate its people. Still, despite all the experimentation with
profit sharing, stock options, and the like, the most effective
incentive program to date seems to be "Do a good job and you get to
keep it."
%
Include me out.
%
Increased knowledge will help you now.
Have mate's phone bugged.
%
Incumbent, n.:
Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Indecision is the true basis for flexibility.
%
Indeed, the first noble truth of Buddhism, usually translated as
`all life is suffering,' is more accurately rendered `life is filled
with a sense of pervasive unsatisfactoriness.'
-- M. D. Epstein
%
INDEX:
Alphabetical list of words of no possible interest where an
alphabetical list of subjects with references ought to be.
%
Indiana is a state dedicated to basketball. Basketball, soybeans, hogs and
basketball. Berkeley, needless to say, is not nearly as athletic. Berkeley
is dedicated to coffee, angst, potholes and coffee.
-- Carolyn Jones
%
Indifference will certainly be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
%
Individualists unite!
%
Indomitable in retreat; invincible in
advance; insufferable in victory.
-- Winston Churchill, on General Montgomery
%
Infancy, n.:
The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies
about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Infidel, n.:
In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion;
in Constantinople, one who does.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken down.
%
Information Center, n.:
A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
%
Information is the inverse of entropy.
%
Information Processing:
What you call data processing when people are so disgusted with
it they won't let it be discussed in their presence.
%
Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations
Sign on a cabin door of a Soviet Black Sea cruise liner:
Helpsavering apparata in emergings behold many whistles!
Associate the stringing apparata about the bosums and meet
behind, flee then to the indifferent lifesaveringshippen
obedicing the instructs of the vessel.
On the door in a Belgrade hotel:
Let us know about any unficiency as well as leaking on
the service. Our utmost will improve it.
-- Colin Bowles
%
Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations
Sign on a cathedral in Spain:
It is forbidden to enter a woman, even a foreigner if
dressed as a man.
Above the entrance to a Cairo bar:
Unaccompanied ladies not admitted unless with husband
or similar.
On a Bucharest elevator:
The lift is being fixed for the next days.
During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.
-- Colin Bowles
%
Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations
Various signs in Poland:
Right turn toward immediate outside.
Go soothingly in the snow, as there lurk the ski demons.
Five o'clock tea at all hours.
In a men's washroom in Sidney:
Shake excess water from hands, push button to start,
rub hands rapidly under air outlet and wipe hands
on front of shirt.
-- Colin Bowles, San Francisco Chronicle
%
ingrate, n:
A man who bites the hand that feeds him,
and then complains of indigestion.
%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
Ink, n.:
A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and
promote intellectual crime.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one
likes oneself.
-- Joan Didion, "On Self Respect"
%
INNOVATE:
Annoy people.
%
Innovation is hard to schedule.
-- Dan Fylstra
%
INNUENDO:
Italian enema.
%
Insanity is considered a ground for divorce, though by the very same
token it is the shortest detour to marriage.
-- Wilson Mizner
%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%
Insanity is the final defense. It's hard to get a refund when
the salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
%
INSECURITY:
Finding out that you've mispronounced for years one of your
favorite words.
Realizing halfway through a joke that you're telling it to
the person who told it to you.
%
Insomnia isn't anything to lose sleep over.
%
Inspector: "Mrs. Freem, was this your husband's first
hunting accident?"
Mrs. Freem: "His first fatal one, yes."
-- Woody Allen
%
Inspiration without perspiration is usually sterile.
%
Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five
years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
-- Edgar W. Howe
%
Instead of thinking of spam as a disease that might be eliminated,
it is more useful to think of it like crime, war and cockroaches.
It is not realistic to expect to eliminate any of these, no matter
how much anyone might wish otherwise. Therefore the best we can
hope to accomplish is to bring spam under reasonable control...
-- Dave Crocker
%
Integrity has no need for rules.
%
Intel CPUs are not defective, they just act that way.
-- Henry Spencer
%
Intellect annuls Fate.
So far as a man thinks, he is free.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Interchangeable parts won't.
%
INTEREST:
What borrowers pay, lenders receive, stockholders own, and
burned out employees must feign.
%
Interesting poll results reported in today's New York Post: people on the
street in midtown Manhattan were asked whether they approved of the US
invasion of Grenada. Fifty-three percent said yes; 39 percent said no;
and 8 percent said "Gimme a quarter?"
-- David Letterman
%
Interfere? Of course we should interfere! Always do what you're
best at, that's what I say.
-- Doctor Who
%
Interpreter, n.:
One who enables two persons of different languages to understand
each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the
interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
%
INTOXICATED:
When you feel sophisticated without being able to pronounce it.
%
Introducing, the 1010, a one-bit processor.
INSTRUCTION SET
Code Mnemonic What
0 NOP No Operation
1 JMP Jump (address specified by next 2 bits)
Now Available for only 12 1/2 cents!
%
Invest in physics -- own a piece of Dirac!
%
Involvement with people is always a very delicate thing --
it requires real maturity to become involved and not get all messed up.
-- Bernard Cooke
%
I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
A bit or byte to read or write,
I/O, I/O, I/O...
%
IOT trap -- core dumped
%
IOT trap -- mos dumped
%
Iowa State -- the high school after high school!
-- Crow T. Robot
%
Iowans ask why Minnesotans don't drink more Kool-Aid. That's because
they can't figure out how to get two quarts of water into one of those
little paper envelopes.
%
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
%
IRONY:
A windy day, when, just as a beautiful girl with
a short skirt approaches, dust blows in your eyes.
%
Irrationality is the square root of all evil.
-- Douglas Hofstadter
%
Is a computer language with goto's totally Wirth-less?
%
Is a person who blows up banks an econoclast?
%
Is a wedding successful if it comes off without a hitch?
%
Is death legally binding?
%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as
a soap bubble?
%
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
-- Steven Wright
%
Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know that?
%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning
of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out,
and such as are out wish to get in?
-- Ralph Emerson
%
Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.
-- Woody Allen, "All You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex"
%
Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?
-- Mae West
%
Is that really YOU that is reading this?
%
Is there life before breakfast?
%
Is this really happening?
%
Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!
%
Isn't air travel wonderful?
Breakfast in London, dinner in New York, luggage in Brazil.
%
Isn't it conceivable to you that an intelligent
person could harbor two opposing ideas in his mind?
-- Adlai Stevenson, to reporters
%
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
listen to weather forecasts and economists?
-- Kelvin Throop III
%
Isn't it ironic that many men spend a great part of their lives
avoiding marriage while single-mindedly pursuing those things that
would make them better prospects?
%
Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live
there?
-- Herb Caen
%
Isn't it strange that the same people that
laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously?
%
ISO applications:
A solution in search of a problem!
%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
The Course of Progress:
Most things get steadily worse.
The Path of Progress:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%
It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he
had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked,
"What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed
Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival
came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer
this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the
Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's
your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked,
"Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
%
It appears that PL/I (and its dialects) is, or will be, the
most widely used higher level language for systems programming.
-- J. Sammet
%
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.
It lies behind starts and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.
%
"It could be that Walter's horse has wings" does not imply that there is
any such animal as Walter's horse, only that there could be; but "Walter's
horse is a thing which could have wings" does imply Walter's horse's
existence. But the conjunction "Walter's horse exists, and it could be
that Walter's horse has wings" still does not imply "Walter's horse is a
thing that could have wings", for perhaps it can only be that Walter's
horse has wings by Walter having a different horse. Nor does "Walter's
horse is a thing which could have wings" conversely imply "It could be that
Walter's horse has wings"; for it might be that Walter's horse could only
have wings by not being Walter's horse.
I would deny, though, that the formula [Necessarily if some x has property P
then some x has property P] expresses a logical law, since P(x) could stand
for, let us say "x is a better logician than I am", and the statement "It is
necessary that if someone is a better logician than I am then someone is a
better logician than I am" is false because there need not have been any me.
-- A. N. Prior, "Time and Modality"
%
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
It did not occur to me that my being with two men continuously would
interest anyone or arouse anyone's misgivings. I asked for an invitation
for Heinrich too, as often as it seemed possible, when Paulus and I were
invited to a social gathering. I felt the set of rules others lived by
was irrelevant. My childhood attitude -- every attempt to adjust is
hopeless and you might just as well follow your own attitudes -- must have
carried me.
-- Hannah Tillich, "From Time to Time"
%
It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations.
%
It does not matter if you fall down as long as you
pick up something from the floor while you get up.
%
It doesn't matter what you do, it only matters what you say you've
done and what you're going to do.
%
It doesn't matter whether you win or lose -- until you lose.
%
It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out
next morning it was someone else.
-- Rogers
%
It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan
which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons,
insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather
than be the instrument of his army's downfall.
-- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
%
It gets late early out there.
-- Yogi Berra
%
It got to the point where I had to get a haircut
or both feet firmly planted in the air.
%
It hangs down from the chandelier
Nobody knows quite what it does
Its color is odd and its shape is weird
It emits a high-sounding buzz
It grows a couple of feet each day
and wriggles with sort of a twitch
Nobody bugs it 'cause it comes from
a visiting uncle who's rich!
-- To "It Came Upon A Midnight Clear"
%
It happened long ago
In the new magic land
The Indians and the buffalo
Existed hand in hand
The Indians needed food
They need skins for a roof
The only took what they needed
And the buffalo ran loose
But then came the white man
With his thick and empty head
He couldn't see past his billfold
He wanted all the buffalo dead
It was sad, oh so sad.
-- Ted Nugent, "The Great White Buffalo"
%
It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown
came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and
applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I
think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
wits, who believe that it is a joke.
-- S. A. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
%
It has been justly observed by sages of all lands that although a man may be
most happily married and continue in that state with the utmost contentment,
it does not necessarily follow that he has therefore been struck stone-blind.
-- H. Warner Munn
%
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *_o_n_l_y* by amusing oneself that
one can learn."
-- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
%
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
It has been said that Public Relations is the art of winning friends
and getting people under the influence.
-- Jeremy Tunstall
%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%
It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill,
or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing. It dehumanizes those who
achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom
good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy
notions. This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all
infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from
folklore to Article of Belief. It enhances their self-esteem and lightens
their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that
appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge,
and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
competence will be quite enough.
-- The Underground Grammarian
%
It has long been an axiom of mine that the
little things are infinitely the most important.
-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"
%
It has long been known that birds will occasionally build nests in the
manes of horses. The only known solution to this problem is to sprinkle
baker's yeast in the mane, for, as we all know, yeast is yeast and nest
is nest, and never the mane shall tweet.
%
It has long been known that one horse can run faster
than another -- but which one? Differences are crucial.
-- Lazarus Long
%
It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of
indulgence for infanticide. A question of interest, my dear Sir! The jury
is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim
of infanticide.
-- Edmond About
%
It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens,
to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.
-- Marcus Porcius Cato
%
It is a lesson which all history teaches
wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
-- Emerson
%
It is a poor judge who cannot award a prize.
%
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
-- Aeschylus
%
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was
my age, he had been dead for 2 years.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
It is a very humbling experience to make a multimillion-dollar mistake, but
it is also very memorable. I vividly recall the night we decided how to
organize the actual writing of external specifications for OS/360. The
manager of architecture, the manager of control program implementation, and
I were threshing out the plan, schedule, and division of responsibilities.
The architecture manager had 10 good men. He asserted that they
could write the specifications and do it right. It would take ten months,
three more than the schedule allowed.
The control program manager had 150 men. He asserted that they
could prepare the specifications, with the architecture team coordinating;
it would be well-done and practical, and he could do it on schedule.
Furthermore, if the architecture team did it, his 150 men would sit twiddling
their thumbs for ten months.
To this the architecture manager responded that if I gave the control
program team the responsibility, the result would not in fact be on time,
but would also be three months late, and of much lower quality. I did, and
it was. He was right on both counts. Moreover, the lack of conceptual
integrity made the system far more costly to build and change, and I would
estimate that it added a year to debugging time.
-- Frederick Brooks Jr., "The Mythical Man Month"
%
It is a wise father that knows his own child.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program.
What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing
thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical?
-- Alan Perlis
%
It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
Urbana, Illinois.
%
It is all right to hold a conversation,
but you should let go of it now and then.
-- Richard Armour
%
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course,
you are an exceptionally good liar.
-- Jerome K. Jerome
%
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
-- Voltaire
%
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But
conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
misinterpreted ...
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy"
%
It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.
-- Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid)
%
It is bad luck to be superstitious.
-- Andrew W. Mathis
%
[It is] best to confuse only one issue at a time.
-- K&R
%
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
coming up it.
-- Henry Allen
%
It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
One in a million, perhaps.
%
It is better to be bow-legged than no-legged.
%
It is better to be on penicillin, than never to have loved at all.
%
It is better to burn out than it is to rust.
%
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
%
It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
%
It is better to have loved a short man than never to have loved a tall.
%
It is better to have loved and lost -- much better.
%
It is better to have loved and lost than just to have lost.
%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark.
%
It is better to live rich than to die rich.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
It is better to remain childless than to father an orphan.
%
It is better to travel hopefully than to fly Continental.
%
It is better to wear chains than to believe you are free,
and weight yourself down with invisible chains.
%
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
%
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits:
freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-- Mark Twain
%
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails,
admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
%
It is contrary to reasoning to say that there
is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing.
-- Descartes
%
It is convenient that there be gods, and,
as it is convenient, let us believe there are.
-- Publius Ovidius Naso (Ovid)
%
It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might
remember.
-- Eugene McCarthy
%
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it.
-- Upton Sinclair
%
It is difficult to legislate morality in the absence of moral legislators.
%
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
-- Rod Serling
%
It is difficult to soar with the eagles when you work with turkeys.
%
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a
better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat
your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of
attention, the harder the task.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
%
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
-- Alfred Adler
%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%
It is easier to make a saint out of a libertine than out of a prig.
-- George Santayana
%
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
%
It is easier to run down a hill than up one.
%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
%
It is easy when we are in prosperity to give advice to the afflicted.
-- Aeschylus
%
It is enough to make one sympathize with a tyrant for the determination
of his courtiers to deceive him for their own personal ends...
-- Russell Baker and Charles Peters
%
It is equally bad when one speeds on the guest unwilling to go, and when he
holds back one who is hastening. Rather one should befriend the guest who
is there, but speed him when he wishes.
-- Homer, "The Odyssey"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to scheduling.]
%
It is exactly because a man cannot do a
thing that he is a proper judge of it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This
is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the
last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give
enough.
-- Quentin Crisp, "How to Become a Virgin"
%
It is far better to be deceived than to be undeceived by those we love.
%
It is far more impressive when others discover your good qualities
without your help.
-- Miss Manners
%
It is Fortune, not Wisdom, that rules man's life.
%
It is fruitless:
to become lacrymose over precipitately departed lactate fluid.
to attempt to indoctrinate a superannuated canine with
innovative maneuvers.
%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
It is hard to predict, in particular about the future.
-- Robert Storm Petersen
%
It is idle to attempt to talk a young woman out of her passion:
love does not lie in the ear.
-- Walpole
%
It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
Boulevard at one time.
%
It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
%
It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward
the vividly imaginative. For although it may momentarily appear to be the
case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by
crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised.
%
It is impossible to defend perfectly
against the attack of those who want to die.
%
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly
unless one has plenty of work to do.
-- Jerome Klapka Jerome
%
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
a tune.
-- Woody Allen
%
It is impossible to make anything
foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
%
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and
certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
-- Woody Allen
%
IT IS IN PROCESS:
So wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless.
%
It is indeed desirable to be well descended,
but the glory belongs to our ancestors.
-- Plutarch
%
It is like saying that for the cause of peace,
God and the Devil will have a high-level meeting.
-- Rev. Carl McIntire, on Nixon's China trip
%
It is most dangerous nowadays for a husband to pay any attention to his
wife in public. It always makes people think that he beats her when
they're alone. The world has grown so suspicious of anything that looks
like a happy married life.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our
offense consists in doubting it.
-- Justice Robert H. Jackson
%
It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
It is much easier to suggest solutions
when you know nothing about the problem.
%
It is much harder to find a job than to keep one.
%
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
-- Kingsley Amis
%
It is not a good omen when goldfish commit suicide.
%
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do,
that makes life blessed.
-- Goethe
%
It is not enough that I should succeed. Others must fail.
-- Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald's
[Also attributed to David Merrick. Ed.]
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
[Great minds think alike? Ed.]
%
It is not enough to have a good mind.
The main thing is to use it well.
-- Rene Descartes
%
It is not enough to have great qualities,
we should also have the management of them.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
It is not every question that deserves an answer.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
It is not for me to attempt to fathom the
inscrutable workings of Providence.
-- The Earl of Birkenhead
%
It is not good for a man to be without knowledge,
and he who makes haste with his feet misses his way.
-- Proverbs 19:2
%
It is not necessary to inquire whether a woman would like something for
dessert. The answer is yes, she would like something for dessert, but
she would like you to order it so she can pick at it with your fork. She
does not want you to call attention to this by saying, 'If you wanted a
dessert, why didn't you order one?' You must understand, she has the
dessert she wants. The dessert she wants is contained within yours.
-- Merrill Marcoe, "An Insider's Guide to the American Woman"
%
It is not that polar co-ordinates are complicated, it is simply
that Cartesian co-ordinates are simpler than they have a right to be.
-- Kleppner & Kolenhow, "An Introduction to Mechanics"
%
It is not the critic who counts, or how the strong man stumbled, or whether
the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and who spends himself in a
worthy cause, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that
he'll never be with those cold and timid souls who never know either victory
or defeat.
-- Teddy Roosevelt
%
It is November first 1940; in the famous sound stage of THE WIZARD OF OZ on
the MGM lot, a little man is lying face-up on the yellow brick road. His
wide eyes stare upward into the blinding stage lights. He is wearing a
kind of comic soldier's uniform with a yellow coat and puffy sleeves and
big fez-like blue and yellow hat with a feather on top. His yellow hair
and beard are the phony straw color of Hollywood. He could pass for some
kind of cute in the typical tinsel-town way if it wasn't for the knife
sticking out of his chest. *Someone had murdered a Munchkin.*
-- Stuart Kaminsky, "Murder on the Yellow Brick Road"
%
It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
-- Elizabeth Carpenter
%
It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.
%
It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort
to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics and
chemistry.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
It is often easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
-- Grace Murray Hopper
%
It is one thing to praise discipline, and another to submit to it.
-- Cervantes
%
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live
at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result
is the only thing that makes the result come true.
-- William James
%
It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
dignity.
%
It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared
to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
-- Havelock Ellis
%
It is only with the heart one can see clearly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
-- The Fox, 'The Little Prince"
%
It is perfectly permissible for every system call to fail with [ENOTADUCK]
unless the first five bytes of the caller's address space contain the
word "quack".
-- Garrett Wollman
%
It is possible by ingenuity and at the expense of clarity... {to do almost
anything in any language}. However, the fact that it is possible to push
a pea up a mountain with your nose does not mean that this is a sensible
way of getting it there. Each of these techniques of language extension
should be used in its proper place.
-- Christopher Strachey
%
It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen.
-- Maimie Van Doren
%
It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that
have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are
mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat
rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they
kill me. You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest.
-- Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's
%
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories,
his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the
worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one
day like any other day, only shorter.
-- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
%
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this,
too, shall pass away."
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%
It is so soon that I am done for, I wonder what I was begun for.
-- Epitaph, Cheltenham Churchyard
%
It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
devil when he is the only explanation of it.
-- Ronald Knox, "Let Dons Delight"
%
It is so very hard to be an on-your-own-take-care-of-
yourself-because-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown up.
%
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
%
It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad
crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed
until the other has gone.
%
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind
%
It is the nature of extreme self-lovers, as they will
set a house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs.
-- Francis Bacon
%
It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
%
It is the wisdom of crocodiles, that shed tears when they would devour.
-- Francis Bacon
%
It is the wise bird who builds his nest in a tree.
%
It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously
lives, works and has his being.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%
It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for five
straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But it takes
Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
%
It is up to us to produce better-quality movies.
-- Lloyd Kaufman,
producer of "Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator"
%
It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist.
It produces a false impression.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
It is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.
-- Roger Babson
%
It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
It isn't easy being a Friday kind of person in a Monday kind of world.
%
It isn't easy being green.
-- Kermit the Frog
%
It isn't easy being the parent of a six-year-old. However, it's a pretty
small price to pay for having somebody around the house who understands
computers.
%
It isn't necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be
unhappy.
-- Groucho Marx
%
It isn't whether you win or lose, it's how much money you end up with.
-- Jack T. Shakespeare
%
It just doesn't seem right to go over the river and through the woods
to Grandmother's condo.
%
It looked like something resembling white marble, which was
probably what it was: something resembling white marble.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%
It looks like it's up to me to save our skins.
Get into that garbage chute, flyboy!
-- Princess Leia Organa
%
IT MAKES ME MAD when I go to all the trouble of having Marta cook up about
a hundred drumsticks, then the guy at Marineland says, "You can't throw
that chicken to the dolphins. They eat fish."
Sure they eat fish if that's all you give them! Man, wise up.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
It [marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair
to get in, and those within despair of getting out.
-- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
%
It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether *I* win
or lose.
-- Darrin Weinberg
%
It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
good either if you speak when your head is empty.
%
It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is
better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.
-- Lazarus Long
%
It may be that your whole purpose in life
is simply to serve as a warning to others.
%
It may or may not be worthwhile, but it still has to be done.
%
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of
a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit
by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders
in those who would gain by the new ones.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513
%
It must have been some unmarried fool that said "A child can ask questions
that a wise man cannot answer"; because, in any decent house, a brat that
starts asking questions is promptly packed off to bed.
-- Arthur Binstead
%
It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
%
It occurred to me lately that nothing has occurred to me lately.
%
It pays in England to be a revolutionary and a bible-smacker most of
one's life and then come round.
-- Lord Alfred Douglas
%
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.
%
It proves what they say, give the public what they want to see and
they'll come out for it.
-- Red Skelton, surveying the funeral of Hollywood
mogul Harry Cohn
%
It runs like _x, where _x is something unsavory.
-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%
It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones
slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much
more.
-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
%
It seems a little silly now, but this country
was founded as a protest against taxation.
%
It seems appropriate to me that Mapplethorpe's perverse images should
be situated so close to Congress, which perpetuates a number of
unnatural acts upon the body politic every day, without benefit of
artificial lubrication or foreplay.
-- Pat Calafia's review of Camille Paglia's
"Sex, Art and American Culture"
%
It seems intuitively obvious to me, which means that it might be wrong.
-- Chris Torek
%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
%
It seems that more and more mathematicians are using a new, high level
language named "research student".
%
It seems to make an auto driver mad if he misses you.
%
It seems to me that nearly every woman I know wants a man who knows how
to love with authority. Women are simple souls who like simple things,
and one of the simplest is one of the simplest to give. ... Our family
airedale will come clear across the yard for one pat on the head. The
average wife is like that.
-- Episcopal Bishop James Pike
%
It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the
municipality.
-- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
%
It so happens that everything that is stupid is not unconstitutional.
-- Supreme Court Justice Antonio Scalia
%
It takes a smart husband to have the last word and not use it.
%
It takes a special kind of courage to face what we all have to face.
%
It takes all kinds to fill the freeways.
-- Crazy Charlie
%
It takes both a weapon, and two people, to commit a murder.
%
It takes less time to do a thing right
than it does to explain why you did it wrong.
-- H. W. Longfellow
%
It takes two to tell the truth: one to speak and one to hear.
%
It took a while to surface, but it appears that a long-distance credit card
may have saved a U.S. Army unit from heavy casualties during the Grenada
military rescue/invasion. Major General David Nichols, Air Force ... said
the Army unit was in a house surrounded by Cuban forces. One soldier found
a telephone and, using his credit card, called Ft. Bragg, N.C., telling Army
officers there of the perilous situation. The officers in turn called the
Air Force, which sent in gunships to scatter the Cubans and relieve the unit.
-- Aviation Week and Space Technology
%
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
-- Robert Benchley
%
It turned out that the worm exploited three or four different holes in the
system. From this, and the fact that we were able to capture and examine
some of the source code, we realized that we were dealing with someone very
sharp, probably not someone here on campus.
-- Dr. Richard LeBlanc, associate professor of ICS, in
Georgia Tech's campus newspaper after the Internet worm.
%
It used to be the fun was in
The capture and kill.
In another place and time
I did it all for thrills.
-- Lust to Love
%
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-- Mark Twain
%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%
It was a brave man that ate the first oyster.
%
It was a fine, sweet night, the nicest since my divorce, maybe the nicest
since the middle of my marriage. There was energy, softness, grace and
laughter. I even took my socks off. In my circle, that means class.
-- Andrew Bergman "The Big Kiss-off of 1944"
%
It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The Greeks
never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies.
-- Edith Hamilton, "The Greek Way"
%
It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set
foot.
%
It was all so different before everything changed.
%
It was kinda like stuffing the wrong card in a computer,
when you're stickin' those artificial stimulants in your arm.
-- Dion, noted computer scientist
%
It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a breeze
was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was broken ...
--- James Dent
%
It was one time too many
One word too few
It was all too much for me and you
There was one way to go
Nothing more we could do
One time too many
One word too few
-- Meredith Tanner
%
It was Penguin lust... at its ugliest.
%
It was pity stayed his hand. "Pity I don't have any more bullets,"
thought Frito.
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty. Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime.
-- Thomas Aldrich
%
It was raining heavily, and the motorist had car trouble on a lonely country
road. Anxious to find shelter for the night, he walked over to a farmhouse
and knocked on the front door. No one responded. He could feel the water
from the roof running down the back of his neck as he stood on the stoop.
The next time he knocked louder, but still no answer. By now he was soaked
to the skin. Desperately he pounded on the door. At last the head of a
man appeared out of an upstairs window.
"What do you want?" he asked gruffly.
"My car broke down," said the traveler, "and I want to know if you
would let me stay here for the night."
"Sure," replied the man. "If you want to stay there all night, it's
okay with me."
%
It was the Law of the Sea, they said. Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
It was wonderful to find America, but it
would have been more wonderful to miss it.
-- Mark Twain
%
It wasn't exactly a divorce -- I was traded.
-- Tim Conway
%
It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly.
It was more like the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%
It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human
nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant
examples.
-- Charles Dickens
%
It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
two things still safe to eat.
-- Robert Fuoss
%
It would be nice to be sure of anything
the way some people are of everything.
%
It would save me a lot of time if you just gave up and went mad now.
%
italic, adj:
Slanted to the right to emphasize key phrases. Unique to
Western alphabets; in Eastern languages, the same phrases
are often slanted to the left.
%
It'll be a nice world if they ever get it finished.
%
It'll be just like Beggars Canyon back home.
-- Luke Skywalker
%
It's a .88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
-- Danny Vermin
%
It's a brave man who, when things are at their darkest, can kick back
and party!
-- Dennis Quaid, "Inner Space"
%
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson
%
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.
-- Cheers
%
It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
%
It's a naive, domestic operating system without any
breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
%
It's a poor workman who blames his tools.
%
It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression
when you lose yours.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
-- Steven Wright
%
It's a very *_U_N*lucky week in which to be took dead.
-- Churchy La Femme
%
It's all in the mind, ya know.
%
It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.
-- Mick Jagger
%
It's all so painfully empty and lonesome... I don't think I can stand
any more of it... the whole dreadful way we are born, die, and are
never missed. The fact there is *nobody*... nobody really... We come
out of a yawning tomb of flesh and sink back finally into another tomb.
What is the point of it all? Who thought up this sickening circle of
flesh and blood? We come into the world bleeding and cut and our bones
half-crushed only to emerge and suffer more torment, mutilation, and
then at the last lie down in some hole in the ground forever. Who could
have thought it up, I wonder?
-- James Purdy
%
It's always a long day; 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
%
It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
%
It's always darkest just before the lights go out.
-- Alex Clark
%
It's amazing how many people you could be friends
with if only they'd make the first approach.
%
It's amazing how much better you feel once you've given up hope.
%
It's amazing how much "mature wisdom" resembles being too tired.
%
It's amazing how nice people are to you when they know you're going away.
-- Michael Arlen
%
It's bad enough that life is a rat-race,
but why do the rats always have to win?
%
It's better to be quotable than to be honest.
-- Tom Stoppard
%
It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all.
-- Marty Winch
%
It's better to burn out than to fade away.
%
It's business doing pleasure with you.
%
It's clever, but is it art?
%
It's difficult to see the picture when you are inside the frame.
%
"It's easier said than done."
... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
done".
%
It's easier to be a liberal a long way from home.
-- Don Price
%
It's easier to get forgiveness for being
wrong than forgiveness for being right.
%
It's easier to take it apart than to put it back together.
-- Washlesky
%
It's easy to forgive someone for being wrong;
it's much harder to forgive them for being right.
%
It's easy to make a friend. What's hard is to make a stranger.
%
It's fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
-- Macy's
%
Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism
in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with
the ignorance of the community.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
It's faster horses,
Younger women,
Older whiskey and
More money.
-- Tom T. Hall, "The Secret of Life"
%
It's from Casablanca. I've been waiting all my life to use that line.
-- Woody Allen, "Play It Again, Sam"
%
It's getting uncommonly easy to kill people in large numbers, and the
first thing a principle does -- if it really is a principle -- is to
kill somebody.
-- Dorothy Sayers
%
It's gonna be alright,
It's almost midnight,
And I've got two more bottles of wine.
%
It's hard not to like a man of many qualities,
even if most of them are bad.
%
It's hard to argue that God hated Oklahoma.
If He didn't, why is it so close to Texas?
%
It's hard to be humble when you're perfect.
%
It's hard to drive at the limit, but
it's harder to know where the limits are.
-- Stirling Moss
%
It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.
-- Groucho Marx
%
It's hard to keep your shirt on when
you're getting something off your chest.
%
It's hard to outrun dead people because they don't have to breathe.
-- Hokey, describing "Night of the Living Dead"
%
It's hard to think of you as the end
result of millions of years of evolution.
%
It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
%
It's important that people know what you stand for.
It's more important that they know what you won't stand for.
%
It's interesting to think that many quite
distinguished people have bodies similar to yours.
%
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is.
If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't
our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
-- Oxford University Press, "Edpress News"
%
It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right.
Put your hands on your hips
And pull your knees in tight.
It's the pelvic thrust
That really gets you insa-a-a-a-ane
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
-- Rocky Horror Picture Show
%
It's just apartment house rules,
So all you 'partment house fools
Remember: one man's ceiling is another man's floor.
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
-- Paul Simon, "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor"
%
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
-- Walt Disney
%
It's later than you think.
%
It's later than you think, the joint
Russian-American space mission has already begun.
%
It's like deja vu all over again.
-- Yogi Berra
%
It's Like This
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk.
%
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because
you're going in the wrong direction.
%
It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
-- Sam Goldwyn
%
It's multiple choice time...
What is FORTRAN?
a: Between thre and fiv tran.
b: What two computers engage in before they interface.
c: Ridiculous.
%
Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence.
It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God.
-- Mark Twain
%
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
%
It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding
a sickness you like.
-- Jackie Mason
%
It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
-- George Burns
%
It's no use crying over spilt milk -- it only makes it salty for the cat.
%
It's not against any religion to want to dispose of a pigeon.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
-- Phil White
%
It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either.
-- Kevin White, Mayor of Boston
%
It's not easy being green.
-- Kermit
%
It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
-- Alexander Korda
%
It's not hard to admit errors that are [only] cosmetically wrong.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
It's not just a computer -- it's your ass.
-- Cal Keegan
%
It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
what you're taking for it...
%
It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
%
It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
the ground.
-- Daniel B. Luten
%
It's not that I'm afraid to die.
I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-- Woody Allen
%
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing.
%
It's not the men in my life, but the life in my men that counts.
-- Mae West
%
It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
-- Garfield
%
It's not whether you win or lose but how you played the game.
-- Grantland Rice
%
It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you look playing the game.
%
It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.
%
It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is
the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages
"You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
It's only by NOT taking the human race seriously that I retain
what fragments of my once considerable mental powers I still possess.
-- Roger Noe
%
It's our fault. We should have given him better parts.
-- Jack Warner, on hearing that Reagan had been
elected governor of California.
[Warner is also reported to have said, when told of Reagan's candidacy
for governor, "No, Jimmy Stewart for Governor; Reagan for best friend."]
%
It's possible that the whole purpose of your life is to serve
as a warning to others.
%
It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness;
poverty and wealth have both failed.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%
It's reassuring to know that if you behave strangely enough,
society will take full responsibility for you.
%
It's recently come to Fortune's attention that scientists have stopped
using laboratory rats in favor of attorneys. Seems that there are not
only more of them, but you don't get so emotionally attached. The only
difficulty is that it's sometimes difficult to apply the experimental
results to humans.
[Also, there are some things even a rat won't do. Ed.]
%
It's so beautifully arranged on the plate -- you know someone's fingers
have been all over it.
-- Julia Child on nouvelle cuisine
%
It's so confusing choosing sides in the heat of the moment,
just to see if it's real,
Oooh, it's so erotic having you tell me how it should feel,
But I'm avoiding all the hard cold facts that I got to face,
So ask me just one question when this magic night is through,
Could it have been just anyone or did it have to be you?
-- Billy Joel, "Glass Houses"
%
It's sweet to be remembered, but it's often cheaper to be forgotten.
%
It's ten o'clock; do you know where your processes are?
%
It's the good girls who keep the diaries, the bad girls never have the time.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%
It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises
the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
It's the same old story; boy meets beer, boy drinks beer...
boy gets another beer.
-- Cheers
%
It's the thought, if any, that counts!
%
It's useless to try to hold some people to anything they say while they're
madly in love, drunk, or running for office.
%
It's very glamorous to raise millions of dollars, until it's time for the
venture capitalist to suck your eyeballs out.
-- Peter Kennedy, chairman of Kraft & Kennedy
%
It's very inconvenient to be mortal -- you never
know when everything may suddenly stop happening.
%
IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or
equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to
spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it
inevitably unsuccessful.
V. All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel
them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an
adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to
the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole.
The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding
auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.
VI. As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a
character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of
altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common
as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled. A "wacky"
character has the option of self-replication only at manic high
speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.
-- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
%
I've already told you more than I know.
%
I've always considered statesmen to be more expendable than soldiers.
%
I've always felt sorry for people that don't drink -- remember,
when they wake up, that's as good as they're gonna feel all day!
%
I've always made it a solemn practice to never
drink anything stronger than tequila before breakfast.
-- R. Nesson
%
I've been in more laps than a napkin.
-- Mae West
%
I've Been Moved!
%
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
-- Totie Fields
%
I've been on this lonely road so long,
Does anybody know where it goes,
I remember last time the signs pointed home,
A month ago.
-- Carpenters, "Road Ode"
%
I've been there.
%
I've built a better model than the one at Data General
For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.
I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
I've built a better model than the one at Data General.
-- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
"Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
by Gilbert & Sullivan)
%
I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
%
I've finally learned what "upward compatible" means.
It means we get to keep all our old mistakes.
-- Dennie van Tassel
%
I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was
this little hole in the bottom ...
-- John Croll
%
I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
%
I've got a very bad feeling about this.
-- Han Solo
%
I've got all the money I'll ever need if I die by 4 o'clock.
-- Henny Youngman
%
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
on the same day.
%
I've looked at the listing, and it's right!
-- Joel Halpern
%
I've never been canoeing before, but I imagine there must
be just a few simple heuristics you have to remember...
Yes, don't fall out, and don't hit rocks.
%
I've never been drunk, but often I've been overserved.
-- George Gobel
%
I've never been hurt by anything I didn't say.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
I've never had a problem with drugs; I've had problems with the police.
-- Keith Richards
I never turn blue in anyone's bathroom. I think that's the height of
bad taste.
-- Keith Richards
%
I've never struck a woman in my life, not even my own mother.
-- W.C. Fields
%
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.
%
I've only got 12 cards.
%
I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer.
-- Senator Claghorn
%
I've spent almost all of my life with highly intelligent men. They're not
like other men. Their spirit is great and stimulating. They hate strife;
indeed they reject it. Their inventive gifts are boundless. They demand
devotion and obedience. And a sense of humor. I happily gave all of this.
I was lucky to be chosen and clever enough to understand them.
-- Marlene Dietrich, on her friendship with Ernest Hemingway
%
I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
Like a bright exhalation in the evening
And no man see me more.
-- Shakespeare
%
I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes
me claustrophobic, and the others either give me a stiff neck or lockjaw.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%
jake hates
all the girls(the
shy ones, the bold paul scorns all
ones; the meek the girls(the
proud sloppy sleek) bright ones, the dim
all except the cold ones; the slim
ones plump tiny tall)
all except the
dull ones
gus loves all the
girls(the
warped ones, the lamed mike likes all the girls
ones; the mad (the
moronic maimed) fat ones, the lean
all except ones; the mean
the dead ones kind dirty clean)
all
except the green ones
-- e e cummings
%
James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
-- Tom Stoppard
%
James McNeill Whistler's (painter of "Whistler's Mother") failure in his
West Point chemistry examination once provoked him to remark in later life,
"If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a major general."
%
Jane and I got mixed up with a television show -- or as we call it back
east here: TV -- a clever contraction derived from the words Terrible
Vaudeville. However, it is our latest medium -- we call it a medium
because nothing's well done. It was discovered, I suppose you've heard,
by a man named Fulton Berle, and it has already revolutionized social
grace by cutting down parlour conversation to two sentences: "What's on
television?" and "Good night".
-- Goodman Ace, letter to Groucho Marx, in The Groucho
Letters, 1967
%
Japan, n:
A fictional place where elves, gnomes and economic imperialists
create electronic equipment and computers using black magic. It
is said that in the capital city of Akihabara, the streets are
paved with gold and semiconductor chips grow on low bushes from
which they are harvested by the happy natives.
%
Jealousy is all the fun you think they have.
%
Jenkinson's Law:
It won't work.
%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%
Jim, it's Grace at the bank. I checked your Christmas Club account.
You don't have five-hundred dollars. You have fifty. Sorry, computer foul-up!
%
Jim, it's Jack. I'm at the airport. I'm going to Tokyo and wanna pay
you the five-hundred I owe you. Catch you next year when I get back!
%
Jim Nasium's Law:
In a large locker room with hundreds of lockers, the few people
using the facility at any one time will all have lockers next to
each other so that everybody is cramped.
%
Jim, this is Janelle. I'm flying tonight, so I can't make our date, and
I gotta find a safe place for Daffy. He loves you, Jim! It's only two
days, and you'll see. Great Danes are no problem!
%
Jim, this is Matty down at Ralph's and Mark's. Some guy named Angel
Martin just ran up a fifty buck bar tab. And now he wants to charge it
to you. You gonna pay it?
%
JOB INTERVIEW:
The excruciating process during which personnel officers
separate the wheat from the chaff -- then hire the chaff.
%
job Placement, n:
Telling your boss what he can do with your job.
%
Joe Cool always spends the first two weeks at college sailing his Frisbee.
-- Snoopy
%
Joe sat as his dying wife's bedside.
Her voice was little more than a whisper.
"Joe, darling," she breathed, "I've got a confession to make
before I go. I ... I'm the one who took the $10,000 from your safe...
I spent it on a fling with your best friend, Charles. And it was I who
forced your mistress to leave the city. And I am the one who reported
your income-tax evasion to the I.R.S..."
"That's all right, dearest, don't give it a second thought,"
whispered Joe. "I'm the one who poisoned you."
%
Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
%
jogger, n:
An odd sort of person with a thing for pain.
%
John Dame May Oscar
Was Gay Was Whitty Was Wilde
But Gerard Hopkins But John Greenleaf But Thornton
Was Manley Was Whittier Was Wilder
-- Willard Espy
%
JOHN PAUL ELECTED POPE!!
(George and Ringo miffed.)
%
John the Baptist after poisoning a thief,
Looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief,
Saying tell me great leader, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?
The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly,
Saying death to all those who would whimper and cry.
And dropping a barbell he points to the sky,
Saying the sun is not yellow, it's chicken.
-- Bob Dylan, "Tombstone Blues"
%
Johnny Carson's Definition:
The smallest interval of time known to man is that which occurs
in Manhattan between the traffic signal turning green and the
taxi driver behind you blowing his horn.
%
Johnson's First Law:
When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
most inconvenient possible time.
%
Johnson's law:
Systems resemble the organizations that create them.
%
Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called "Bureaucracy".
Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do anything loses.
%
Join the army, see the world, meet interesting,
exciting people, and kill them.
%
Join the march to save individuality!
%
Join the Navy; sail to far-off exotic lands,
meet exciting interesting people, and kill them.
%
Jones' First Law:
Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
importance of their original contribution.
%
Jone's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%
Jones' Second Law:
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
to blame it on.
%
Joshu: What is the true Way?
Nansen: Every way is the true Way.
J: Can I study it?
N: The more you study, the further from the Way.
J: If I don't study it, how can I know it?
N: The Way does not belong to things seen: nor to things unseen.
It does not belong to things known: nor to things unknown. Do
not seek it, study it, or name it. To find yourself on it, open
yourself as wide as the sky.
%
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
-- Matthew Arnold
%
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.
%
Juall's Law on Nice Guys:
Nice guys don't always finish last; sometimes they don't finish.
Sometimes they don't even get a chance to start!
%
Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that
reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away
someone else's cash.
-- P. G. Wodehouse, "Louder and Funnier"
%
Just a few of the perfect excuses for having some strawberry shortcake.
Pick one.
1: It's less calories than two pieces of strawberry shortcake.
2: It's cheaper than going to France.
3: It neutralizes the brownies I had yesterday.
4: Life is short.
5: It's somebody's birthday. I don't want them to celebrate alone.
6: It matches my eyes.
7: Whoever said, "Let them eat cake." must have been talking to me.
8: To punish myself for eating dessert yesterday.
9: Compensation for all the time I spend in the shower not eating.
10: Strawberry shortcake is evil. I must help rid the world of it.
11: I'm getting weak from eating all that healthy stuff.
12: It's the second anniversary of the night I ate plain broccoli.
%
Just a song before I go, Going through security
To whom it may concern, I held her for so long.
Traveling twice the speed of sound She finally looked at me in love,
It's easy to get burned. And she was gone.
When the shows were over Just a song before I go,
We had to get back home, A lesson to be learned.
And when we opened up the door Traveling twice the speed of sound
I had to be alone. It's easy to get burned.
She helped me with my suitcase,
She stands before my eyes,
Driving me to the airport
And to the friendly skies.
-- Crosby, Stills, Nash, "Just a Song Before I Go"
%
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
(and nobody cares about it).
-- Bill Joy 6/21/85
%
Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I
cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in
daydreams about women.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions
seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires one side to be
totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner. The reason
there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all
the facts. Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is
not acting from political motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep
sense of respect for the whole truth.
-- Stephen R. Schwambach
%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
-- Irene Peter
%
Just because he's dead is no reason to lay off work.
%
Just because I turn down a contract on a guy doesn't mean he isn't
going to get hit.
-- Joey
%
Just because the message may never be
received does not mean it is not worth sending.
%
Just because they are called 'forbidden' transitions does not mean that they
are forbidden. They are less allowed than allowed transitions, if you see
what I mean.
-- From a Part 2 Quantum Mechanics lecture
%
Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.
-- Bob Dylan
%
Just because your doctor has a name for your
condition doesn't mean he knows what it is.
%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%
Just close your eyes, tap your heels together three times,
and think to yourself, `There's no place like home.'
-- Billie Burke as Glinda, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
Just give Alice some pencils and she will stay busy for hours.
%
Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
get a prompt, type like hell.
%
Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody
who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth
about his or her love affairs.
-- Rebecca West
%
Just machines to make big decisions,
Programmed by men for compassion and vision,
We'll be clean when their work is done,
We'll be eternally free, yes, eternally young,
What a beautiful world this will be,
What a glorious time to be free.
-- Donald Fagon, "What A Beautiful World"
%
Just once, I wish we would encounter
an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets.
-- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
%
Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?
-- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
%
Just remember, it all started with a mouse.
-- Walt Disney
%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%
`Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
`Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.'
-- Lewis Carroll, "The Hunting of the Snark"
%
Just think -- blessed SCSI cables! Do a big enough sacrifice and create
a +5 blessed SCSI cable of connectivity.
-- Lionel Lauer
%
Just to have it is enough.
%
Just weigh your own hurt against the hurt
of all the others, and then do what's best.
-- Lovers and Other Strangers
%
Just what does "it" mean in the sentence, "What time is it?"
%
Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a
faster rat!!!
%
Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone,
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you,
I went out this morning and I wrote down this song,
Just can't remember who to send it to...
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain,
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end,
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
But I always thought that I'd see you again.
Thought I'd see you one more time again.
-- James Taylor, "Fire and Rain"
%
Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven!
-- Michael J. Wagner
%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%
Justice, n:
A decision in your favor.
%
K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
Cobol's wordy and confining;
KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
Kafka's Law:
In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
-- Franz Kafka, "RS's 1974 Expectation of Days"
%
Kamikazes do it once.
%
KANSAS:
Where the men are men and so are the women!
%
Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to
wear tail lights.
%
Karlson's Theorem of Snack Food Packages:
For all P, where P is a package of snack food, P is a SINGLE-SERVING
package of snack food.
Gibson the Cat's Corollary:
For all L, where L is a package of lunch meat, L is Gibson's package
of lunch meat.
%
Kath: Can he be present at the birth of his child?
Ed: It's all any reasonable child can expect if the dad is present
at the conception.
-- Joe Orton, "Entertaining Mr. Sloane"
%
Katz' Law:
Men and nations will act rationally when
all other possibilities have been exhausted.
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives.
-- Abba Eban
%
Kaufman's First Law of Party Physics:
Population density is inversely proportional
to the square of the distance from the keg.
%
Kaufman's Law:
A policy is a restrictive document to prevent a recurrence
of a single incident, in which that incident is never mentioned.
%
Keep a diary and one day it'll keep you.
-- Mae West
%
Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
%
Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she
With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me...
-- Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus"
%
Keep cool, but don't freeze.
-- Hellman's Mayonnaise
%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%
Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee:
1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
force is technically termed "car suck").
2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
than "Watch this!"
3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly
proportional to the cost of hitting it. For instance, a
Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or
a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy.
4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the
cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the
Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you
in the head and knock you silly.
%
Keep it short for pithy sake.
%
Keep on keepin' on.
%
Keep patting your enemy on the back until a
small bullet hole appears between your fingers.
-- Joe Bonanno
%
Keep the number of passes in a compiler to a minimum.
-- D. Gries
%
Keep the phase, baby.
%
Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.
%
Keep women you cannot. Marry them and they come to hate the way
you walk across the room; remain their lover, and they jilt you
at the end of six months.
-- Moore
%
Keep your boss's boss off your boss's back.
%
Keep your Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now... try to get something DONE!
%
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
Keep your laws off my body!
%
Keep your mouth shut and people will think you stupid;
Open it and you remove all doubt.
%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
%
Kennedy's Market Theorem:
Given enough inside information and unlimited credit,
you've got to go broke.
%
Kent's Heuristic:
Look for it first where you'd most like to find it.
%
kern, v:
1. To pack type together as tightly as the kernels on an ear
of corn. 2. In parts of Brooklyn and Queens, N.Y., a small,
metal object used as part of the monetary system.
%
KERNEL:
A part of an operating system that preserves the medieval
traditions of sorcery and black art.
%
Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
and parking for the faculty.
%
Kettering's Observation:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.
%
Kids always brighten up a house; mostly by leaving the lights on.
%
Kids have *_n_e_v_e_r* taken guidance from their parents. If you could
travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the
original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate
teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate
teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Kill a commy for your mommy.
%
Kill 'em all, and let God sort 'em out.
%
Kill for the love of killing! Kill for the love of Kali!
-- Hindu saying
%
Kill Kill,
Hate Hate,
Murder, Maim, and Mutilate!
%
Kill your parents.
-- Jerry Rubin
%
Killing turkeys causes winter.
%
Kilroe hic erat!
%
Kime's Law for the Reward of Meekness:
Turning the other cheek merely ensures two bruised cheeks.
%
Kin, n.:
An affliction of the blood
%
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
-- Mark Twain
%
Kindness is the beginning of cruelty.
-- Muad'dib
%
Kington's Law of Perforation:
If a straight line of holes is made in a piece of paper, such
as a sheet of stamps or a check, that line becomes the strongest
part of the paper.
%
Kinkler's First Law:
Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law:
All the easy problems have been solved.
%
Kirk to Enterprise...
%
Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
%
Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
any of its streets.
%
Kiss a non-smoker; taste the difference.
%
Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
%
Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
%
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
%
Kissing a fish is like smoking a bicycle.
%
Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.
%
Kissing don't last, cookery do.
-- George Meredith
%
Kissing your hand may make you feel very good, but a diamond and
sapphire bracelet lasts for ever.
-- Anita Loos, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"
%
Kitchen activity is highlighted.
Butter up a friend.
%
Kites rise highest against the wind -- not with it.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Klatu barada nikto.
%
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
%
Klein bottle for sale -- inquire within.
%
Kleptomaniac, n.:
A rich thief.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Kliban's First Law of Dining:
Never eat anything bigger than your head.
%
Klingon phaser attack from front!!!!!
100% Damage to life support!!!!
%
Kludge, n:
An ill-assorted collection of poorly-matching parts, forming a
distressing whole.
-- Jackson Granholm, "Datamation"
%
Knebel's Law:
It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading
causes of statistics.
%
Knights are hardly worth it.
I mean, all that shell and so little meat...
%
Knock, knock!
Who's there?
Sam and Janet.
Sam and Janet who?
Sam and Janet Evening...
%
Knock Knock... (who's there?) Ether! (ether who?) Eather Bunny... Yea!
[chorus]
Yeay!
Stay on the Happy side, always on the happy side,
Stay on the Happy side of life!
Bum bum bum bum bum bum
You will feel no pain, as we drive you insane,
So Stay on the Happy Side of life!
Knock Knock... (who's there?) Anna! (anna who?)
An another eather bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock... (who's there?) Stilla! (stilla who?)
Still another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock... (who's there?) Yetta! (yetta who?)
Yet another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock... (who's there?) Cargo! (cargo who?)
Cargo beep beep and run over eather bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock... (who's there?) Boo! (boo who?)
Don't Cry! Eather bunny be back next year! [chorus]
%
Knocked, you weren't in.
-- Opportunity
%
Know how to save 5 drowning lawyers?
-- No?
GOOD!
%
Know Thy User.
%
Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%
Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
-- Henry N. Camp
%
KNOWLEDGE:
Things you believe.
%
Knowledge is power.
-- Francis Bacon
%
Knowledge is power -- knowledge shared is power lost.
-- Aleister Crowley
%
Knowledge without common sense is folly.
%
Knucklehead: "Knock, knock"
Pee Wee: "Who's there?"
Knucklehead: "Little ol' lady."
Pee Wee: "Liddle ol' lady who?"
Knucklehead: "I didn't know you could yodel"
%
Kramer's Law:
You can never tell which way the train went by looking at the tracks.
%
Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
LA:
Where the only way to determine that the seasons have changed
is to note that people have changed the main topic of conversation.
From mud slides to brush fires.
%
Labor, n.:
One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Lack of capability is usually disguised by lack of interest.
%
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Lackland's Laws:
1. Never be first.
2. Never be last.
3. Never volunteer for anything.
%
Lactomangulation, n.:
Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
La-dee-dee, la-dee-dah.
%
Ladies and Gentlemen, Hobos and Tramps,
Cross-eyed mosquitos and bowlegged ants,
I come before you to stand behind you
To tell you of something I know nothing about.
Next Thursday (which is good Friday),
There will be a convention held in the
Women's Club which is strictly for Men.
Admission is free, pay at the door,
Pull up a chair, and sit on the floor.
It was a summer's day in winter,
And the snow was raining fast,
As a barefoot boy with shoes on,
Stood sitting in the grass.
Oh, that bright day in the dead of night,
Two dead men got up to fight.
Three blind men to see fair play,
Forty mutes to yell "Hooray"!
Back to back, they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
Came and arrested those two dead boys.
%
Ladies, here's a hint: If you're playing against a friend who has big
boobs, bring her to the net and make her hit backhand volleys. That's
the hardest shot for the well endowed. "I've got to hit over them or
under them, but I can't hit through," Annie Jones used to always moan
to me. Not having much in my bra, I found it hard to sympathize with
her.
-- Billie Jean King
%
Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one...
Lady, lady, better run!
-- Dorothy Parker, "Social Note"
%
Lady Luck brings added income today.
Lady friend takes it away tonight.
%
Lady Nancy Astor:
"Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee."
Winston Churchill:
"Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."
Lady Astor was giving a costume ball and Winston Churchill asked her what
disguise she would recommend for him. She replied, "Why don't you come
sober, Mr. Prime Minister?"
During a visit to America, Winston Churchill was invited to a buffet
luncheon at which cold fried chicken was served. Returning for a second
helping, he asked politely, "May I have some breast?"
"Mr. Churchill," replied the hostess, "in this country we ask for
white meat or dark meat." Churchill apologized profusely.
The following morning, the lady received a magnificent orchid from
her guest of honor. The accompanying card read: "I would be most obliged if
you would pin this on your white meat."
%
Ladybug, ladybug,
Look to your stern!
Your house is on fire,
Your children will burn!
So jump ye and sing, for
The very first time
The four lines above
Have been put into rhyme.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Laetrile is the pits.
%
Laissez Faire Economics is the theory that if
each acts like a vulture, all will end as doves.
%
Lake Erie died for your sins.
%
((lambda (foo) (bar foo)) (baz))
%
Lamonte Cranston once hired a new Chinese manservant. While describing his
duties to the new man, Lamonte pointed to a bowl of candy on the coffee
table and warned him that he was not to take any. Some days later, the new
manservant was cleaning up, with no one at home, and decided to sample some
of the candy. Just than, Cranston walked in, spied the manservant at the
candy, and said:
"Pardon me Choy, is that the Shadow's nugate you chew?"
%
Langsam's Laws:
(1) Everything depends.
(2) Nothing is always.
(3) Everything is sometimes.
%
Language is a virus from another planet.
-- William Burroughs
%
Lank: Here we go. We're about to set a new record.
Earl: (to the crowd) How about a date?
Lank: We've done it. Earl has set a new record. Turned down by
20,000 women.
-- Lank and Earl
%
Lansdale seized on the idea of using Nixon to build support for the
[Vietnamese] elections ... really honest elections, this time. "Oh, sure,
honest, yes, that's right," Nixon said, "so long as you win!" With that
he winked, drove his elbow into Lansdale's arm and slapped his own knee.
-- Richard Nixon, quoted in "Sideshow" by W. Shawcross
%
Large increases in cost with questionable increases in
performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.
-- Lord Kalvin
%
Largest Number of Driving Test Failures
By April 1970 Mrs. Miriam Hargrave had failed her test thirty-nine
times. In the eight preceding years she had received two hundred and
twelve driving lessons at a cost of L300. She set the new record while
driving triumphantly through a set of red traffic lights in Wakefield,
Yorkshire. Disappointingly, she passed at the fortieth attempt (3 August
1970) but eight years later she showed some of her old magic when she was
reported as saying that she still didn't like doing right-hand turns.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
Larkinson's Law:
All laws are basically false.
%
LASER:
Failed death ray.
%
Last guys don't finish nice.
-- Stanley Kelley, on the cult of victory at all costs
%
Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow, and when I woke up
the pillow was gone.
-- Tommy Cooper
%
Last night I met upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
Gee how I wish he'd go away!
%
Last night the power went out. Good thing my camera had a flash....
The neighbors thought it was lightning in my house, so they called the cops.
-- Steven Wright
%
Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police record.
I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense of humor.
%
Last week's pet, this week's special.
%
Last year we drove across the country... We switched on the driving...
every half mile. We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip.
I don't remember what it was.
-- Steven Wright
%
Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won.
%
Latin is a language,
As dead as can be.
First it killed the Romans,
And now it's killing me.
%
Laugh, and the world ignores you. Crying doesn't help either.
%
Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.
%
Laugh and the world thinks you're an idiot.
%
Laugh at your problems: everybody else does.
%
Laugh when you can; cry when you must.
%
Laughing at you is like drop kicking a wounded humming bird.
%
Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
-- Victor Borge
%
Laura's Law:
No child throws up in the bathroom.
%
Lavish spending can be disastrous.
Don't buy any lavishes for a while.
%
Law enforcement officers should use only the minimum
force necessary in dealing with disorders when they arise.
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
Law of Communications:
The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased
area of misunderstanding.
%
Law of Continuity:
Experiments should be reproducible.
They should all fail the same way.
%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed.
%
Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary:
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
%
Law of the Jungle:
He who hesitates is lunch.
%
Law of the Yukon:
Only the lead dog gets a change of scenery.
%
Law stands mute in the midst of arms.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
Lawful Dungeon Master -- and they're MY laws!
%
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory keeps all its data in an old gray trunk.
%
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.
-- Otto von Bismarck
%
Laws of Computer Programming:
1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
2. Any given program costs more and takes longer.
3. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
4. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
5. Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
6. The value of a program is proportional the weight of its output.
7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of
the programmer who must maintain it.
%
Laws of Serendipity:
(1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
something.
(2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
be engaged in making an inferior one.
%
Lawsuit, n.:
A machine which you go into as a pig and come out as a sausage.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Lawyer's Rule:
When the law is against you, argue the facts.
When the facts are against you, argue the law.
When both are against you, call the other lawyer names.
%
Lay off the muses, it's a very tough dollar.
-- S. J. Perelman
%
Lay on, MacDuff, and curs'd be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!".
-- Shakespeare
%
Layers are for cakes, not for software.
-- Bart Smaalders
%
Lays eggs inside a paper bag;
The reason, you will see, no doubt,
Is to keep the lightning out.
But what these unobservant birds
Have failed to notice is that herds
Of bears may come with buns
And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.
%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%
LAZY:
Marrying a pregnant woman.
%
Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it; what
is happening in America is that those parades are getting smaller and
smaller -- and there are many more of them.
-- John Naisbitt, "Megatrends"
%
Learn from other people's mistakes, you don't have time to make your own.
%
Learn to pause -- or nothing worthwhile can catch up to you.
%
Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
%
Learning at some schools is like drinking from a firehose.
%
LEARNING CURVE:
An astonishing new theory, discovered by management consultants
in the 1970's, asserting that the more you do something the
quicker you can do it.
%
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
everything else follows in the same way.
-- Alan J. Perlis
%
Learning without thought is labor lost;
thought without learning is perilous.
-- Confucius
%
Leave no stone unturned.
-- Euripides
%
Lee's Law:
Mother said there would be days like this,
but she never said that there'd be so many!
%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%
Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the
fun?
%
Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
"Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he
can."
%
Leibowitz's Rule:
When hammering a nail, you will never hit your
finger if you hold the hammer with both hands.
%
Lemma: All horses are the same color.
Proof (by induction):
Case n = 1: In a set with only one horse, it is obvious that all
horses in that set are the same color.
Case n = k: Suppose you have a set of k+1 horses. Pull one of these
horses out of the set, so that you have k horses. Suppose that all
of these horses are the same color. Now put back the horse that you
took out, and pull out a different one. Suppose that all of the k
horses now in the set are the same color. Then the set of k+1 horses
are all the same color. We have k true => k+1 true; therefore all
horses are the same color.
Theorem: All horses have an infinite number of legs.
Proof (by intimidation):
Everyone would agree that all horses have an even number of legs. It
is also well-known that horses have forelegs in front and two legs in
back. 4 + 2 = 6 legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a
horse to have! Now the only number that is both even and odd is
infinity; therefore all horses have an infinite number of legs.
However, suppose that there is a horse somewhere that does not have an
infinite number of legs. Well, that would be a horse of a different
color; and by the Lemma, it doesn't exist.
%
Lemmings don't grow older, they just die.
%
Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.
%
Lensmen eat Jedi for breakfast.
%
LEO (Jul. 23 to Aug. 22)
Your presence, poise, charm and good looks won't even help you today.
Look over your shoulder; an ugly person may be following you. Be on
your toes. Brush your teeth. Take Geritol.
%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are pushy.
Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike honest
criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieves.
%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore. Your
ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because you've got
a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of fact, if you can
laugh at what happens to you today, you've got a sick sense of humor.
%
Lesbian QOTD:
I didn't give up sex, I just gave up premature ejaculation.
%
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Let he who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.
%
Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish.
-- Shakespeare, "Coriolanus"
%
Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash and
another number.
-- James Estes
%
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
-- William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI
%
Let me put it this way: today is going to be a learning experience.
%
Let me take you a button-hole lower.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
%
Let me tell you who the actual "front-runners" are. On one side, you have
George Bush, who is currently going through a sort of fraternity hazing
wherein he has to perform a series of humiliating stunts to win the approval
of the Republican Right. For example, they had him make a speech oozing
praise all over William Loeb, deceased publisher of the Manchester (N.H.)
Union Leader and Slime Journalist. Loeb had dumped viciously all over George
in the 1980 New Hampshire primary. But when the Right held a big tribute
for Loeb, George came back to the fold, like a man with a bungee cord wrapped
around his neck.
-- Dave Barry
%
Let my own body be exhausted,
But not the wealth of my state.
Let my mortal body vanish,
But not the power of my state.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
Let no guilty man escape.
-- U. S. Grant
%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
-- Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 18)
%
Let sleeping dogs lie.
-- Charles Dickens
%
Let the machine do the dirty work.
-- "The Elements of Programming Style", Kernighan and Plauger
%
Let the meek inherit the earth -- they have it coming to them.
-- James Thurber
%
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
-- William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania
%
Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best way
they can. I'm sick of the job. It's a thankless one and full of grief.
-- Capone
%
Let thy maid servant be faithful, strong, and homely.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
Let us go then you and I
while the night is laid out against the sky
like a smear of mustard on an old pork pie.
Nice poem Tom. I have ideas for changes though, why not come over?
-- Ezra
%
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
-- T. S. Eliot, "Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
%
Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
You first.
%
Let us never negotiate out of fear,
but let us never fear to negotiate.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
Let us not look back in anger or forward
in fear, but around us in awareness.
-- James Thurber
%
Let us remember that ours is a nation of lawyers and order.
%
Let us treat men and women well;
Treat them as if they were real;
Perhaps they are.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Let your conscience be your guide.
-- Pope
%
L'etat c'est moi.
[The state, that's me.]
-- Louis XIV
%
Let's just be friends and make no special effort to ever see each other again.
%
Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every
relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you
really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end.
For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities
I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy...
Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back."
-- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
%
Let's love each other slowly,
reaching for a plane,
of exquisite pleasure,
and delicate pain.
-- Adam Beslove
%
Let's not complicate our relationship
by trying to communicate with each other.
%
Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.
%
Let's remind ourselves that last year's fresh idea is today's cliche.
-- Austen Briggs
%
Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your
hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental
Anguish. You would sue:
* The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
in there".
* The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
cretin like yourself.
* Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
a large cash settlement anyway.
-- Dave Barry
%
Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of
dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your
tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to
spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe
money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will
probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?
It's not his money.
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
Sevenoaks
%
LEVERAGE:
Even if someone doesn't care what the world thinks
about them, they always hope their mother doesn't find out.
%
Leveraging always beats prototyping.
%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
The first piece of luggage out of the
chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever.
%
L'hazard ne favorise que l'esprit prepare.
-- L. Pasteur
%
Liar, n.:
A lawyer with a roving commission.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Liar: one who tells an unpleasant truth.
-- Oliver Herford
%
LIBERAL:
Someone too poor to be a capitalist and too rich to be a communist.
%
Liberals are the first to dump you if you con them or get into
trouble. Conservatives are better. They never run out on you.
-- Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo
%
Liberty don't work as good in practice as it does in speeches.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
%
LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your desire
for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and polite. Someone
is watching you, so stop staring like that.
%
LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay.
Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most
Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal
disease.
%
LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 23)
Major achievements, new friends, and a previously unexplored way
to make a lot of money will come to a lot of people today, but
unfortunately you won't be one of them. Consider not getting out
of bed today.
%
Lie, n.:
A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.
%
Lieberman's Law:
Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%
Lies! All lies! You're all lying against my boys!
-- Ma Barker
%
LIFE:
A whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%
LIFE:
Learning about people the hard way -- by being one.
%
LIFE:
That brief interlude between nothingness and eternity.
%
Life -- Love It or Leave It.
%
Life begins at the centerfold and expands outward.
-- Miss November, 1966
%
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
-- Paul Gauguin
%
Life can be so tragic -- you're here today and here tomorrow.
%
Life does not begin at the moment of conception or the moment of birth.
It begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies.
%
Life exists for no known purpose.
%
Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society
being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded responsible
thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money
system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.
-- Valerie Solanas
%
Life is a biochemical reaction to the stimulus of the surrounding
environment in a stable ecosphere, while a bowl of cherries is a
round container filled with little red fruits on sticks.
%
Life is a concentration camp. You're stuck here and there's no way
out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.
-- Woody Allen
%
Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
-- Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"
%
Life is a game. In order to have a game, something has to be more
important than something else. If what already is, is more important
than what isn't, the game is over. So, life is a game in which what
isn't, is more important than what is. Let the good times roll.
-- Werner Erhard
%
Life is a game of bridge -- and you've just been finessed.
%
Life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporania;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Comment"
%
Life is a grand adventure -- or it is nothing.
-- Helen Keller
%
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.
%
Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire to
change his bed.
-- Charles Baudelaire
%
Life is a series of rude awakenings.
-- R. V. Winkle
%
Life is a serious burden, which no thinking,
humane person would wantonly inflict on someone else.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
Life is a sexually transferred disease with 100% mortality.
%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%
Life is an exciting business, and most
exciting when it is lived for others.
%
Life is both difficult and time consuming.
%
Life is cheap, but the accessories can kill you.
%
Life is difficult because it is non-linear.
%
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
-- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"
%
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
%
Life is just a bowl of cherries, but why do I always get the pits?
%
Life is knowing how far to go without crossing the line.
%
Life is like a 10 speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.
-- C. Schultz
%
Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
eat it nevertheless.
-- Flaubert
%
Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it.
%
Life is like a diaper - short and loaded.
%
Life is like a sewer.
What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Life is like a simile.
%
Life is like a tin of sardines.
We're, all of us, looking for the key.
-- Beyond the Fringe
%
Life is like an analogy
%
Life is like an egg stain on your chin --
you can lick it, but it still won't go away.
%
Life is like an onion: you peel it off
one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after
layer and then you find there is nothing in it.
-- James Huneker
%
Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was
going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then
being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
%
Life is like bein' on a mule team. Unless you're
the lead mule, all the scenery looks about the same.
%
Life is not for everyone.
%
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
-- Titus Lucretius Carus
%
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
-- Goethe
%
Life is the living you do,
Death is the living you don't do.
-- Joseph Pintauro
%
Life is the urge to ecstasy.
%
Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
%
Life is too important to take seriously.
-- Corky Siegel
%
Life is too short to be taken seriously.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
-- Storm Jameson
%
Life is wasted on the living.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe"
%
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
-- John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy"
%
Life, like beer, is merely borrowed.
-- Don Reed
%
Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
-- Marvin, from
Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Life may have no meaning, or, even worse,
it may have a meaning of which you disapprove.
%
Life only demands from you the strength you possess.
Only one feat is possible -- not to have run away.
-- Dag Hammarskjold
%
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention
of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but
rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out,
and loudly proclaiming --WOW---What A RIDE!!
%
Life Sucks. Cynical, misanthropic male, 34, looking for soul mate but
certain not to find her. Drop me a note. I'll call you, we'll talk and
I'll ask you out to dinner where I'll probably spend more than I can
afford in a feeble attempt to impress you. Then we'll realize we have
absolutely nothing in common and we'll go our separate ways, more
embittered and depressed than before (if such a thing is possible).
%
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all.
-- Thomas J. Kopp
%
Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility.
-- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
%
Life without caffeine is stimulating enough.
-- Sanka Ad
%
Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
weren't for other people.
-- Blore
%
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
-- Dave Olson
%
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Life's too short to dance with ugly women.
%
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has bought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.
-- James Weldon Johnson
%
Lighten up, while you still can,
Don't even try to understand,
Just find a place to make your stand,
And take it easy.
-- The Eagles, "Take It Easy"
%
LIGHTHOUSE:
A tall building on the seashore in which the government
maintains a lamp and the friend of a politician.
%
LIKE:
When being alive at the same time is a wonderful coincidence.
%
Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate
the difference between one young woman and another.
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Major Barbara"
%
Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek,
shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm
as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like
bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood;
she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a
man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the
right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
-- Rachel Sheeley, winner
The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never
see her little dog Pritzi again.
-- Claudia Fields, runner-up
It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a
tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it
was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.
-- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up
Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is
named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy
night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the
worst possible novel.
%
Like corn in a field I cut you down,
I threw the last punch way too hard,
After years of going steady, well, I thought it was time,
To throw in my hand for a new set of cards.
And I can't take you dancing out on the weekend,
I figured we'd painted too much of this town,
And I tried not to look as I walked to my wagon,
And I knew then I had lost what should have been found,
I knew then I had lost what should have been found.
And I feel like a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford
I'm as low as a paid assassin is
You know I'm cold as a hired sword.
I'm so ashamed we can't patch it up,
You know I can't think straight no more
You make me feel like a bullet, honey,
a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford.
-- Elton John "I Feel Like a Bullet"
%
Like I said, love wouldn't be so blind if the braille
weren't so damned great!
-- Armistead Maupin
%
Like, if I'm not for me, then fer shure, like who will be? And if, y'know,
if I'm not like fer anyone else, then hey, I mean, what am I? And if not
now, like I dunno, maybe like when? And if not Who, then I dunno, maybe
like the Rolling Stones?
-- Rich Rosen (Rabbi Valiel's paraphrase of famous quote
attributed to Rabbi Hillel.)
%
Like my parents, I have never been a regular church member or churchgoer.
It doesn't seem plausible to me that there is the kind of God who watches
over human affairs, listens to prayers, and tries to guide people to follow
His precepts -- there is just too much misery and cruelty for that. On the
other hand, I respect and envy the people who get inspiration from their
religions.
-- Benjamin Spock
%
Like punning, programming is a play on words.
%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct
a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
-- Alan McKay
%
Like the time I ran away...
And turned around and you were standing close to me.
-- YES, "Going For The One/Awaken"
%
Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone.
%
Like ya know? Rock 'N Roll is an esoteric language that unlocks the
creativity chambers in people's brains, and like totally activates their
essential hipness, which of course is like totally necessary for saving
the earth, like because the first thing in saving this world, is getting
rid of stupid and square attitudes and having fun.
-- Senior Year Quote
%
Like you, I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things. Here are just a few:
Q -- Is there life after death?
A -- Definitely. I speak from personal experience here. On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache. Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead. I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
-- Dave Barry
%
Likewise, the national appetizer, brine-cured herring with raw onions,
wins few friends, Germans excepted.
-- Darwin Porter "Scandinavia On $50 A Day"
%
Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
Kennedy exactly one hundred years later in 1946.
Lincoln was elected president in November 1860.
Kennedy in November 1960.
Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who urged him not to go to
the theatre.
Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who advised against his going
to Dallas.
Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and ran off into a warehouse.
Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran off into a theatre.
Lincoln was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson.
Kennedy was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson.
The first Johnson was born in 1808.
The second Johnson was born in 1908.
-- Alistair Cooke, "Letter From America", 26nov2001
%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%
"Lines that are parallel meet at Infinity!"
Euclid repeatedly, heatedly, urged.
Until he died, and so reached that vicinity:
in it he found that the damned things diverged.
-- Piet Hein
%
Linus: Hi! I thought it was you.
I've been watching you from way off... You're looking great!
Snoopy: That's nice to know.
The secret of life is to look good at a distance.
%
Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow.
Maybe we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown:
No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday
will get better.
%
Linus' Law:
There is no heavier burden than a great potential.
%
Lions in the street and roaming,
Dogs in heat, rabid, foaming,
A beast caged in the heart of the city.
The body of his mother lying in the summer ground,
He fled the town.
Went down south across the border,
Left the chaos and disorder
Back there, over his shoulder.
One morning he awoke in a green hotel,
A strange creature groaning beside him.
Sweat oozed from its shiny skin.
Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin.
-- Jim Morrison, "Celebration of the Lizard"
%
LISP:
To call a spade a thpade.
%
Lisp, Lisp, Lisp Machine,
Lisp Machine is Fun.
Lisp, Lisp, Lisp Machine,
Fun for everyone.
%
Lisp Users:
Due to the holiday next Monday, there will be no garbage collection.
%
Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out
the right thing to do. Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing,
but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the
right thing to do and what is the right way to do it. That is the problem.
But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of
bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President.
This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people, and it reflects
their desires, they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a thing
that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously
just by a few words or any particular -- say, a little this and that, or even
a panacea so alleged.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, in response to: "Has the
government been lacking in courage and boldness in
facing up to the recession?"
%
Literature is mostly about sex and not much about having children and life
is the other way round.
-- David Lodge, "The British Museum is Falling Down"
%
Littering is dumb.
-- Ronald Macdonald
%
Little Fly,
Thy summer's play If thought is life
My thoughtless hand And strength & breath,
Has brush'd away. And the want
Of thought is death,
Am not I
A fly like thee? Then am I
Or art not thou A happy fly
A man like me? If I live
Or if I die.
For I dance
And drink & sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
-- William Blake, "The Fly"
%
Little girls, like butterflies, need no excuse.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Little known fact about Middle Earth: The Hobbits had a very
sophisticated computer network! It was a Tolkien Ring...
%
Little Known Facts, #23:
Did you know... that if you dial 911 in Los Angeles you get
the BMW repair garage?
%
Little Mary on the ice,
Went out to have a frisk,
Now wasn't little Mary nice,
Her pretty *?
%
Live fast, die young, and leave a flat patch of fur on the highway!
-- The Squirrels' Motto (The "Hell's Angels of Nature")
%
Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse.
-- James Dean
%
Live from New York ... It's Saturday Night!
%
Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
%
Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is
published around the world -- even if what is published is not true.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
-- Josh Billings
%
Living here in Rio, I have lots of coffees to choose from. And when
you're on the lam like me, you appreciate a good cup of coffee.
-- "Great Train Robber" Ronald Biggs' coffee commercial
%
Living in California is like living in a bowl of granola.
What ain't flakes and nuts is fruits.
%
Living in Hollywood is like living in a bowl of granola.
What ain't fruits and nuts is flakes.
%
Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
-- Candice Bergen
%
Living in New York City gives people real incentives
to want things that nobody else wants.
-- Andy Warhol
%
Living in the complex world of the future is somewhat
like having bees live in your head. But, there they are.
%
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it
includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
%
LIVING YOUR LIFE:
A task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
%
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And plunged it deep into the VAX;
Don't you envy people who
Do all the things _Y_O_U want to do?
%
Lo! Men have become the tool of their tools.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these
interest rates, we don't need it."
%
Lobster:
Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are squeamish
about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only proper
method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your
guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're
cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on
the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs. Grasp the
lobster behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty
eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then
flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will
refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a memory!" The lobster will
squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe at you with one of its claws.
Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot. Justice has been served, and shortly
you and your friends will be, too.
-- Dave Barry, Cooking: The Art of Turning Appliances
and Utensils into Excuses and Apologies
%
Lockwood's Long Shot:
The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street
aren't one in a million, but once would be enough.
%
Logic doesn't apply to the real world.
-- Marvin Minsky
%
Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_a_w_f_u_l*.
%
Logic is a pretty flower that smells bad.
%
Logic is the chastity belt of the mind!
%
Logicians have but ill defined
As rational the human kind.
Logic, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
-- Oliver Goldsmith
%
LOGO for the Dead
LOGO for the Dead lets you continue your computing activities from
"The Other Side."
The package includes a unique telecommunications feature which lets you
turn your TRS-80 into an electronic Ouija board. Then, using Logo's
graphics capabilities, you can work with a friend or relative on this
side of the Great Beyond to write programs. The software requires that
your body be hardwired to an analog-to-digital converter, which is then
interfaced to your computer. A special terminal (very terminal) program
lets you talk with the users through Deadnet, an EBBS (Ectoplasmic
Bulletin Board System).
LOGO for the Dead is available for 10 percent of your estate
from NecroSoft inc., 6502 Charnelhouse Blvd., Cleveland, OH 44101.
-- '80 Microcomputing
%
Loneliness is a terrible price to pay for independence.
%
Lonely is a man without love.
-- Englebert Humperdinck
%
Lonely men seek companionship.
Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet.
%
Lonesome?
Like a change?
Like a new job?
Like excitement?
Like to meet new and interesting people?
JUST SCREW-UP ONE MORE TIME!!!!!!!
%
Long ago I proposed that unsuccessful candidates for the Presidency
be quietly hanged, as a matter of public sanitation and decorum.
The sight of their grief must have a very evil effect upon the young.
-- H. L. Mencken, "A Carnival of Buncombe"
%
Long computations which yield zero are probably all for naught.
%
Long life is in store for you.
%
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and
long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his
pain and his aloneness without regret?
-- Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"
%
Look! Before our very eyes, the future is becoming the past.
%
Look afar and see the end from the beginning.
%
Look at it this way:
Your daughter just named the fresh turkey you brought
home "Cuddles", so you're going out to buy a canned ham.
And you're still drinking ordinary scotch?
%
Look at it this way:
Your wife's spending $280 a month on meditation lessons to
forget $26,000 of college education.
And you're still drinking ordinary scotch?
%
Look before you leap.
-- Samuel Butler
%
Look ere ye leap.
-- John Heywood
%
Look out! Behind you!
%
Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us
to pay income taxes, too?
-- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
%
Look, we trade every day out there with hustlers, deal-makers, shysters,
con-men. That's the way businesses get started. That's the way this
country was built.
-- Hubert Allen
%
Lookie, lookie, here comes cookie...
-- Stephen Sondheim
%
Loose bits sink chips.
%
Lord, defend me from my friends; I can account for my enemies.
-- Charles D'Hericault
%
Lord, what fools these mortals be!
-- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
%
Losing your drivers' license is just
God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!"
%
Lost: gray and white female cat.
Answers to electric can opener.
%
Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
%
Lots of folks are forced to skimp to support a government that won't.
%
Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
-- Frank Hubbard
%
Lots of girls can be had for a song.
Unfortunately, it often turns out to be the wedding march.
%
Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in
Halstead, Kansas.
%
Louie Louie, me gotta go
Louie Louie, me gotta go
Fine little girl she waits for me
Me catch the ship for cross the sea
Me sail the ship all alone Three nights and days me sail the sea
Me never thinks me make it home Me think of girl constantly
(chorus) On the ship I dream she there
I smell the rose in her hair
Me see Jamaica moon above (chorus, guitar solo)
It won't be long, me see my love
I take her in my arms and then
Me tell her I never leave again
-- The real words to The Kingsmen's classic "Louie Louie"
%
LOVE:
I'll let you play with my life if you'll let me play with yours.
%
LOVE:
Love ties in a knot in the end of the rope.
%
LOVE:
When, if asked to choose between your lover
and happiness, you'd skip happiness in a heartbeat.
%
LOVE:
When it's growing, you don't mind watering it with a few tears.
%
LOVE:
When you don't want someone too close--
because you're very sensitive to pleasure.
%
LOVE:
When you like to think of someone on days that begin with a morning.
%
Love -- the last of the serious diseases of childhood.
%
Love ain't nothin' but sex misspelled.
%
Love America - or give it back.
%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest
labor-saving devices the world has ever seen.
%
Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
-- Sigmund Freud
%
Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to love.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
Love in your heart wasn't put there to stay.
Love isn't love 'til you give it away.
-- Oscar Hammerstein II
%
Love is a grave mental disease.
-- Plato
%
Love is a slippery eel that bites like hell.
-- Matt Groening
%
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra, which suddenly flips
over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come.
-- Matt Groening, "Love is Hell"
%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Love is always open arms. With arms open you allow love to come and
go as it wills, freely, for it will do so anyway. If you close your
arms about love you'll find you are left only holding yourself.
%
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real
with the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Goethe
%
Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.
-- Dr. Karl Bowman
%
Love is being stupid together.
-- Paul Valery
%
Love is dope, not chicken soup. I mean, love is something to be passed
around freely, not spooned down someone's throat for their own good by a
Jewish mother who cooked it all by herself.
%
Love is in the offing.
-- The Homicidal Maniac
%
Love is in the offing. Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%
Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very
pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love
grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning
and unquenchable.
-- Bruce Lee
%
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
-- Jerome K. Jerome
%
Love is never asking why?
%
Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
%
Love is sentimental measles.
%
Love is staying up all night with a sick child, or a healthy adult.
%
Love is the answer; but while you are waiting for the answer, sex
raises some pretty good questions.
-- Woody Allen
%
Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Love is the desire to prostitute oneself. There is, indeed, no exalted
pleasure that cannot be related to prostitution.
-- Charles Baudelaire
%
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
-- M. Hirschfield
%
Love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.
-- Saint Exupery
%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Love IS what it's cracked up to be.
%
Love is what you've been through with somebody.
-- James Thurber
%
Love isn't only blind, it's also deaf, dumb, and stupid.
%
Love makes fools, marriage cuckolds, and patriotism malevolent imbeciles.
-- Paul Leautaud, "Passe-temps"
%
Love makes the world go 'round, with a little help from intrinsic angular
momentum.
%
Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags.
-- Sidney Paternoster, "The Folly of the Wise"
%
Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
%
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
-- Eric Segal, "Love Story"
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
-- Ryan O'Neill, "What's Up Doc?"
%
Love means nothing to a tennis player.
%
Love tells us many things that are not so.
-- Krainian Proverb
%
Love the sea? I dote upon it -- from the beach.
%
Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
-- Louise Beal
%
Love thy neighbor, tune thy piano.
%
Love to eat them mousies,
Mousies I love to eat.
Bite they little heads off,
Nibble at they tiny feet.
-- Kliban
%
Love, which is quickly kindled in a gentle heart,
seized this one for the fair form
that was taken from me-and the way of it afflicts me still.
Love, which absolves no loved one from loving,
seized me so strongly with delight in him,
that, as you see, it does not leave me even now.
Love brought us to one death.
-- La Divina Commedia: Inferno V, vv. 100-06
%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy
trying to figure out what you're up to.
%
Love your neighbour, yet don't pull down your hedge.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
Lowery's Law:
If it jams -- force it. If it
breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
%
LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.
%
Lucas is the source of many of the components of the legendarily reliable
British automotive electrical systems. Professionals call the company "The
Prince of Darkness". Of course, if Lucas were to design and manufacture
nuclear weapons, World War III would never get off the ground. The British
don't like warm beer any more than the Americans do. The British drink warm
beer because they have Lucas refrigerators.
%
Luck can't last a lifetime, unless you die young.
-- Russell Banks
%
Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet.
-- P. E. Trudeau
%
Lucky, adj:
When you have a wife and a cigarette
lighter -- both of which work.
%
Lucky is he for whom the belle toils.
%
Lucy: Dance, dance, dance. That is all you ever do.
Can't you be serious for once?
Snoopy: She is right! I think I had better think
of the more important things in life!
(pause)
Tomorrow!!
%
Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser.
-- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew"
%
Lunatic Asylum, n.:
The place where optimism most flourishes.
%
Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
-- Bergan Evans
%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%
Ma Bell is a mean mother!
%
MAC user's dynamic debugging list evaluator? Never heard of that.
%
Machine-Independent, adj.:
Does not run on any existing machine.
%
Machine-independent program:
A program that will not run on any machine.
%
Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
and play games -- but not with pleasure.
-- Leo Rosten
%
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine.
-- Andy Warhol
%
Machines that have broken down will work perfectly when the
repairman arrives.
%
macho, adj.:
Jogging home from your vasectomy.
%
Macho does not prove mucho.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
%
Mad, adj.:
Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child --
if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
-- W.C. Fields
%
Madison's Inquiry:
If you have to travel on the Titanic, why not go first class?
%
Madness takes its toll.
%
MAFIA, n:
[Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
entire nodal aggravations.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
Magary's Principle:
When there is a public outcry to cut deadwood and fat from any
government bureaucracy, it is the deadwood and the fat that do
the cutting, and the public's services are cut.
%
Magic is always the best solution -- especially reliable magic.
%
Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
knowledge.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Magnocartic, adj.:
Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping
carts.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Magpie, n.:
A bird whose thievish disposition suggested
to someone that it might be taught to talk.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
MAIDEN AUNT:
A girl who never had the sense to say "uncle."
%
Maiden, n:
A young person of the unfair sex addicted to clewless conduct and
views that madden to crime. The genus has a wide geographical
distribution, being found wherever sought and deplored wherever found.
The maiden is not altogether unpleasing to the eye, nor (without her
piano and her views) insupportable to the ear, though in respect to
comeliness distinctly inferior to the rainbow, and, with regard to
the part of her that is audible, beaten out of the field by the
canary -- which, also, is more portable.
Male, n.:
A member of the unconsidered, or negligible sex. The male of the
human race is commonly known to the female as Mere Man. The genus
has two varieties: good providers and bad providers.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
-- N. R. Maier, "American Psychologist", March 1960
Corollaries:
1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
%
Maintainer's Motto:
If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
%
Maj. Bloodnok: Seagoon, you're a coward!
Seagoon: Only in the holiday season.
Maj. Bloodnok: Ah, another Noel Coward!
%
Major premise:
Sixty men can do sixty times as much work as one man.
Minor premise:
A man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion:
Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
Secondary Conclusion:
Do you realize how many holes there would be if people
would just take the time to take the dirt out of them?
%
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Majorities, of course, start with minorities.
-- Robert Moses
%
Majority, n.:
That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%
Make a wish, it might come true.
%
Make headway at work. Continue to let things deteriorate at home.
%
Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!
%
Make it right before you make it faster.
%
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.
-- Daniel Hudson Burnham
%
Make sure your code does nothing gracefully.
%
Make war not sex. (It's safer.)
%
Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has
been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the
message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
-- System V.2 administrator's guide
%
Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%
MALPRACTICE:
The reason surgeons wear masks.
%
Man 1: Ask me. "What is the most important thing about telling a good
joke?"
Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
Man 1: _T_I_M_I_N_G!
%
Man and wife make one fool.
%
Man belongs wherever he wants to go.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Man has always assumed that he is more intelligent than dolphins because
he has achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- while
all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good
time. But, conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were
far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Man has made his bedlam; let him lie in it.
-- Fred Allen
%
Man has never reconciled himself to the ten commandments.
%
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Man is a military animal,
Glories in gunpowder, and loves parade.
-- P. J. Bailey
%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon
to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this--
no dog exchanges bones with another.
-- Adam Smith
%
Man is by nature a political animal.
-- Aristotle
%
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft...
and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Man is the measure of all things.
-- Protagoras
%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
%
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms
with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-- Samuel Butler, 1835-1902
%
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps;
for he is the only animal that is struck with the
difference between what things are and what they ought to be.
-- William Hazlitt
%
Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.
-- Arthur R. Miller
%
Man, n.:
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own
species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity
as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Man proposes, God disposes.
-- Thomas a Kempis
%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
is an enemy.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Man who arrives at party two hours late
will find he has been beaten to the punch.
%
Man who falls in blast furnace is certain to feel overwrought.
%
Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self.
%
Man who sleep in beer keg wake up stickey.
%
Man will never fly.
Space travel is merely a dream.
All aspirin is alike.
%
Management: How many feet do mice have?
Reply: Mice have four feet.
M: Elaborate!
R: Mice have five appendages, and four of them are feet.
M: No discussion of fifth appendage!
R: Mice have five appendages; four of them are feet; one is a tail.
M: What? Feet with no legs?
R: Mice have four legs, four feet, and one tail per unit-mouse.
M: Confusing -- is that a total of 9 appendages?
R: Mice have four leg-foot assemblies and one tail assembly per body.
M: Does not fully discuss the issue!
R: Each mouse comes equipped with four legs and a tail. Each leg
is equipped with a foot at the end opposite the body; the tail
is not equipped with a foot.
M: Descriptive? Yes. Forceful NO!
R: Allotment of appendages for mice will be: Four foot-leg assemblies,
one tail. Deviation from this policy is not permitted as it would
constitute misapportionment of scarce appendage assets.
M: Too authoritarian; stifles creativity!
R: Mice have four feet; each foot is attached to a small leg joined
integrally with the overall mouse structural sub-system. Also
attached to the mouse sub-system is a thin tail, non-functional and
ornamental in nature.
M: Too verbose/scientific. Answer the question!
R: Mice have four feet.
%
MANAGEMENT:
The art of getting other people to do all the work.
%
MANAGER:
A man known for giving great meeting.
%
Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
don't think, right?"
-- Dr. Who
%
man-hour, n:
A sexist, obsolete measure of macho effort, equal to 60 Kiplings.
%
MANIC-DEPRESSIVE:
Easy glum, easy glow.
%
Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.
-- Plotinus
%
Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
primitive umpire.
What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
%
Manly's Maxim:
Logic is a systematic method of coming to the wrong conclusion
with confidence.
%
Man's horizons are bounded by his vision.
%
Man's reach must exceed his grasp, for why else the heavens?
%
Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual
conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
manual, n:
A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a given
item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The information
you need is in the others.
-- Ray Simard
%
Many a bum show has been saved by the flag.
-- George M. Cohan
%
Many a family tree needs trimming.
%
Many a long dispute between divines may thus be abridged: It is so. It
is not so. It is so. It is not so.
-- Benjamin Franklin, "Poor Richard's Almanack"
%
Many a man that can't direct you to a corner drugstore will
get a respectful hearing when age has further impaired his mind.
-- Finley Peter Dunne
%
Many a town that didn't have enough work to support a single lawyer
can easily support two or more.
%
Many a writer seems to think he is never profound
except when he can't understand his own meaning.
-- George D. Prentice
%
Many are called, few are chosen.
Fewer still get to do the choosing.
%
Many are called, few volunteer.
%
Many are cold, but few are frozen.
%
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
%
Many companies that have made themselves dependent on [the equipment of a
certain major manufacturer] (and in doing so have sold their soul to the
devil) will collapse under the sheer weight of the unmastered complexity of
their data processing systems.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
Many enraged psychiatrists are inciting a weary butcher. The butcher is
weary and tired because he has cut meat and steak and lamb for hours and
weeks. He does not desire to chant about anything with raving psychiatrists,
but he sings about his gingivectomist, he dreams about a single cosmologist,
he thinks about his dog. The dog is named Herbert.
-- Racter, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed"
%
Many hands make light work.
-- John Heywood
%
Many husbands go broke on the money their wives save on sales.
%
Many mental processes admit of being roughly measured. For instance,
the degree to which people are bored, by counting the number of their
fidgets. I not infrequently tried this method at the meetings of the
Royal Geographical Society, for even there dull memoirs are occasionally
read. [...] The use of a watch attracts attention, so I reckon time
by the number of my breathings, of which there are 15 in a minute. They
are not counted mentally, but are punctuated by pressing with 15 fingers
successively. The counting is reserved for the fidgets. These observations
should be confined to persons of middle age. Children are rarely still,
while elderly philosophers will sometimes remain rigid for minutes altogether.
-- Francis Galton, 1909
%
Many of the characters are fools and they are always playing
tricks on me and treating me badly.
-- Jorge Luis Borges, from "Writers on Writing" by Jon Winokur
%
Many of the convicted thieves Parker has met began their
life of crime after taking college Computer Science courses.
-- Roger Rapoport, "Programs for Plunder", Omni, March 1981
%
Many pages make a thick book.
%
Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very
thin paper.
%
Many people are desperately looking for some wise advice
which will recommend that they do what they want to do.
%
Many people are secretly interested in life.
%
Many people are unenthusiastic about their work.
%
Many people are unenthusiastic about your work.
%
Many people feel that if you won't let
them make you happy, they'll make you suffer.
%
Many people feel that they deserve some kind of
recognition for all the bad things they haven't done.
%
Many people resent being treated like the person they really are.
%
Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Many people write memos to tell you they have nothing to say.
%
Many receive advice, few profit by it.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday....
-- Walt Kelly
%
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man,
You, with your fresh thoughts
Care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name
Sorrow's springs are the same:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins
%
Marigold: Jealousy
Mint: Virute
Orange blossom: Your purity equals your loveliness
Orchid: Beauty, magnificence
Pansy: Thoughts
Peach blossom: I am your captive
Petunia: Your presence soothes me
Poppy: Sleep
Rose, any color: Love
Rose, deep red: Bashful shame
Rose, single, pink: Simplicity
Rose, thornless, any: Early attachment
Rose, white: I am worthy of you
Rose, yellow: Decrease of love, rise of jealousy
Rosebud, white: Girlhood, and a heart ignorant of love
Rosemary: Remembrance
Sunflower: Haughtiness
Tulip, red: Declaration of love
Tulip, yellow: Hopeless love
Violet, blue: Faithfulness
Violet, white: Modesty
Zinnia: Thoughts of absent friends
* An upside-down blossom reverses the meaning.
%
Marijuana is nature's way of saying, "Hi!".
%
Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students
who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize
it in order to protect themselves.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
Dentists are incapable of asking questions
that require a simple yes or no answer.
%
MARRIAGE:
An old, established institution, entered into by two people deeply
in love and desiring to make a commitment to each other expressing
that love. In short, commitment to an institution.
%
MARRIAGE:
Convertible bonds.
%
Marriage always demands the greatest understanding of the art of
insincerity possible between two human beings.
-- Vicki Baum
%
Marriage causes dating problems.
%
Marriage, in life, is like a duel in the midst of a battle.
-- Edmond About
%
Marriage is a ghastly public confession of a strictly private intention.
%
Marriage is a great institution -- but I'm
not ready for an institution yet.
-- Mae West
%
Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be
surprised at the large number that re-enlist.
-- James Garner
%
Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.
%
Marriage is a three ring circus:
engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.
-- Roger Price
%
Marriage is an institution in which two undertake
to become one, and one undertakes to become nothing.
%
Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a brand of beer
exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go to work
in the brewery.
-- George Jean Nathan
%
Marriage is learning about women the hard way.
%
Marriage is like twirling a baton, turning handsprings, or eating with
chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.
%
Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.
-- Baskins
%
Marriage is not merely sharing the fettucine, but sharing the
burden of finding the fettucine restaurant in the first place.
-- Calvin Trillin
%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%
Marriage is the process of finding out what
kind of man your wife would have preferred.
%
Marriage is the waste-paper basket of the emotions.
%
Marriage, n:
The evil aye.
%
Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on earth.
-- John Lyly
%
Marry in haste and everyone starts counting the months.
%
MARTA SAYS THE INTERESTING thing about fly-fishing is that its two lives
connected by a thin strand.
Come on, Marta, grow up.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
MARTA WAS WATCHING THE FOOTBALL GAME with me when she said, "You know most
of these sports are based on the idea of one group protecting its
territory from invasion by another group."
"Yeah," I said, trying not to laugh. Girls are funny.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
Martin was probably ripping them off. That's some family, isn't it?
Incest, prostitution, fanaticism, software.
-- Charles Willeford, "Miami Blues"
%
'Martyrdom' is the only way a person can become famous without ability.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Marvelous! The super-user's going to boot me!
What a finely tuned response to the situation!
%
Marvin the Nature Lover spied a grasshopper hopping along in the grass,
and in a mood for communing with nature, rare even among full-fledged
Nature Lovers, he spoke to the grasshopper, saying: "Hello, friend
grasshopper. Did you know they've named a drink after you?"
"Really?" replied the grasshopper, obviously pleased. "They've
named a drink Fred?"
%
Marxist Law of Distribution of Wealth:
Shortages will be divided equally among the peasants.
%
Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
It followed her through rain or snow, lightning, sleet or hail.
It fetched the evening paper, her slippers, and the mail.
She never had a moments peace; the lamb was always on her heels,
And on her feet its head would rest, while she ate her meals.
It followed her to school one day, the devotion never ended.
The lamb waltzed into her history class and Mary got suspended.
The night she went to Senior Prom, she thought she had him beat,
Until she heard a mournful "Baaa" coming from her car's seat.
Oh, Mary had a little lamb, it surely didn't please her.
So for dinner she had lambchops; the rest is in the freezer.
-- Alma Garcia
%
Maryann's Law:
You can always find what you're not looking for.
%
Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam
dancing.
-- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
%
Maslow's Maxim:
If the only tool you have is a hammer,
you treat everything like a nail.
%
Mason's First Law of Synergism:
The one day you'd sell your soul for something, souls are a glut.
%
Massachusetts has the best politicians money can buy.
%
Mastery of UNIX, like mastery of language, offers real freedom. The
price of freedom is always dear, but there's no substitute.
-- Thomas Scoville
%
Masturbation is the thinking man's television.
-- Christopher Hampton
%
Mate, this parrot wouldn't VOOM if you put four million volts through it!
-- Monty Python
%
Mater artium necessitas.
[Necessity is the mother of invention].
%
Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.
-- Malcolm Smith
%
MATH AND ALCOHOL DON'T MIX!
Please, don't drink and derive.
Mathematicians
Against
Drunk
Deriving
%
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
-- R. Drabek
%
mathematician, n:
Some one who believes imaginary things appear right before your i's.
%
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate
into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can
play.
-- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
James Blish
%
Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.
-- Henry Adams
%
Mathematicians take it to the limit.
%
Mathematics deals exclusively with the relations of concepts
to each other without consideration of their relation to experience.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what
one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
-- Russell
%
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth but supreme beauty --
a beauty cold and austere, like that of a sculpture, without appeal to any
part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trapping of painting or music,
yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the
greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense
of being more than man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is
to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Matrimony is the root of all evil.
%
Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence.
%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed,
nor can it be returned without a receipt.
%
Matter will be damaged in direct proportion to its value.
%
[Maturity consists in the discovery that] there comes a critical moment
where everything is reversed, after which the point becomes to understand
more and more that there is something which cannot be understood.
-- S. Kierkegaard
%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer
%
Matz's Law:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
%
May a hundred thousand midgets invade your home singing cheezy lounge-lizard
versions of songs from The Wizard of Oz.
%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
%
May all your PUSHes be POPped.
%
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
%
May the bluebird of happiness twiddle your bits.
%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
%
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits.
%
May those that love us love us; and those that don't love us, may
God turn their hearts; and if he doesn't turn their hearts, may
he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping.
%
May you die in bed at 95, shot by a jealous spouse.
%
May you have many beautiful and obedient daughters.
%
May you have many handsome and obedient sons.
%
May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full moon on a dark night,
and a smooth road all the way to your door.
%
May you live in uninteresting times.
-- Chinese proverb
%
May your camel be as swift as the wind.
%
May your SO always know when you need a hug.
%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your
Mouth with the Force of a Thousand Caramels.
%
Maybe ain't ain't so correct, but I notice that
lots of folks who ain't using ain't ain't eatin' well.
-- Will Rogers
%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
-- R. S. Barton
%
Maybe Jesus was right when he said that the meek shall inherit the
earth -- but they inherit very small plots, about six feet by three.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Maybe we can get together and show off to each other sometimes.
%
Maybe we should think of this as one perfect week... where we found each
other, and loved each other... and then let each other go before anyone
had to seek professional help.
%
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but
these days you can certainly charge it.
%
May's Law:
The quality of correlation is inversely proportional to the density
of control. (The fewer the data points, the smoother the curves.)
%
McDonald's -- Because you're worth it.
%
McEwan's Rule of Relative Importance:
When traveling with a herd of elephants,
don't be the first to lie down and rest.
%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
$19.95.
%
Meader's Law:
Whatever happens to you, it will previously
have happened to everyone you know, only more so.
%
Meade's Maxim:
Always remember that you are absolutely unique,
just like everyone else.
%
Meanehwael, baccat meaddehaele, monstaer lurccen;
Fulle few too many drincce, hie luccen for fyht.
[D]en Hreorfneorht[d]hwr, son of Hrwaerow[p]heororthwl,
AEsccen aewful jeork to steop outsyd.
[P]hud! Bashe! Crasch! Beoom! [D]e bigge gye
Eallum his bon brak, byt his nose offe;
Wicced Godsylla waeld on his asse.
Monstaer moppe fleor wy[p] eallum men in haelle.
Beowulf in bacceroome fonecall bemaccen waes;
Hearen sond of ruccus saed, "Hwaet [d]e helle?"
Graben sheold strang ond swich-blaed scharp
Sond feorth to fyht [d]e grimlic foe.
"Me," Godsylla saed, "mac [d]e minsemete."
Heoro cwyc geten heold wi[p] faemed half-nelson
Ond flyng him lic frisbe bac to fen.
Beowulf belly up to meaddehaele bar,
Saed, "Ne foe beaten mie faersom cung-fu."
Eorderen cocca-colha yce-coeld, [d]e reol [p]yng.
%
Meantime, in the slums below Ronnie's Ranch, Cynthia feels as if some one
has made voodoo boxen of her and her favorite backplanes. On this fine
moonlit night, some horrible persona has been jabbing away at, dragging
magnets over, and surging these voodoo boxen. Fortunately, they seem to
have gotten a bit bored and fallen asleep, for it looks like Cynthia may
get to go home. However, she has made note to quickly put together a totem
of sweaty, sordid static straps, random bits of wire, flecks of once meaniful
oxide, bus grant cards, gummy worms, and some bits of old pdp backplane to
hang above the machine room. This totem must be blessed by the old and wise
venerable god of unibus at once, before the idolatization of vme, q and pc
bus drive him to bitter revenge. Alas, if this fails, and the voodoo boxen
aren't destroyed, there may be more than worms in the apple. Next, the
arrival of voodoo optico transmitigational magneto killer paramecium, capable
of teleporting from cable to cable, screen to screen, ear to ear and hoof
to mouth...
%
Measure twice, cut once.
%
Mediocrity finds safety in standardization.
-- Frederick Crane
%
Meekness is uncommon patience in planning a worthwhile revenge.
%
Meester, do you vant to buy a duck?
%
meeting, n:
An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%
MEETINGS:
A place where minutes are kept and hours are lost.
%
Meetings are an addictive, highly self indulgent activity that
corporations and other large organizations habitually engage
in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
-- Dave Barry
%
MEMO:
An interoffice communication too often written more for
the benefit of the person who sends it than the person
who receives it.
%
MEMORIES OF MY FAMILY MEETINGS still are a source of strength to me. I
remember we'd all get into the car -- I forget what kind it was -- and
drive and drive.
I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some bees there. The
smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we
played. I remember a bigger, older guy whom we called "Dad." We'd eat
some stuff or not and then I think we went home.
I guess some things never leave you.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
Memory fault -- brain fried
%
Memory fault -- core...uh...um...core... Oh dammit, I forget!
%
Memory fault - where am I?
%
Memory should be the starting point of the present.
%
Men are always ready to respect anything that bores them.
-- Marilyn Monroe
%
Men are superior to women.
-- The Koran
%
Men are those creatures with two legs and eight hands.
-- Jayne Mansfield
%
Men aren't attracted to me by my mind.
They're attracted by what I don't mind...
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%
Men freely believe that what they wish to desire.
-- Julius Caesar
%
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one
thing they marry later; for another thing they die earlier.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Men have as exaggerated an idea of their
rights as women have of their wrongs.
-- E. W. Howe
%
Men live for three things, fast cars, fast women and fast food.
%
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
%
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from religious conviction.
-- Blaise Pascal, "Pens�es", 1670
%
Men never make passes at girls wearing glasses.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them
pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
%
Men of quality are not afraid of women for equality.
%
Men often believe -- or pretend -- that the "Law" is something sacred, or
at least a science -- an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.
%
Men ought to know that from the brain and from the brain only arise our
pleasures, joys, laughter, and jests as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs
and tears. ... It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious,
inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings us
sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness
and acts that are contrary to habit...
-- Hippocrates "The Sacred Disease"
%
Men say of women what pleases them; women do with men what pleases them.
-- DeSegur
%
Men seldom show dimples to girls who have pimples.
%
Men still remember the first kiss after women have forgotten the last.
%
Men take only their needs into consideration -- never their abilities.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
%
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings,
and speech only to conceal their thoughts.
-- Voltaire
%
Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split
before. Thus was the Empire forged.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Men who cherish for women the highest
respect are seldom popular with them.
-- Joseph Addison
%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
cork makes when it is popped.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city
can never hope to acquire it.
%
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsen.
%
Mental power tended to corrupt, and absolute intelligence tended to
corrupt absolutely, until the victim eschewed violence entirely in
favor of smart solutions to stupid problems.
-- Piers Anthony
%
Mental things which have not gone in through the
senses are vain and bring forth no truth except detrimental.
-- Leonardo
%
Menu, n.:
A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
%
Meskimen's Law:
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
do it over.
%
MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
%
Message from Our Sponsor on ttyTV at 13:58 ...
%
Message will arrive in the mail.
Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%
METEOROLOGIST:
One who doubts the established fact that it is
bound to rain if you forget your umbrella.
%
Metermaids eat their young.
%
methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin-
ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala-
nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta-
minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly-
cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl-
leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu-
cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva-
lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro-
sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu-
cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe-
nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala-
nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas-
partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl-
glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl-
valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu-
cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi-
nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse-
rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl-
glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly-
sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro-
lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl-
glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
-- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%
MICRO:
Thinker toys.
%
Micro Credo:
Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%
Microbiology Lab: Staph Only!
%
Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks.
%
Microwaves frizz your heir.
%
Mieux vaut tard que jamais!
%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to
get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
-- Casablanca
%
Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
inconsiderate."
-- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
%
Miksch's Law:
If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%
Militant agnostic: I don't know, and you don't either.
%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Miller's Slogan:
Lose a few, lose a few.
%
millihelen, adj:
The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what
to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
%
Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that politics is
almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum and Tweedledee,"
they say. "I will not vote." Having abstained, they are presented with a
President who appoints the people who are going to rummage around in their
lives for the next four years. Consider all the people who sat home in a
stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert Humphrey. They showed Humphrey.
Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the
Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among
the gold and the black.
-- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
%
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is
particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself,
to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.
But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit
me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
%
Mind your own business, Spock. I'm sick of your halfbreed interference.
%
Mind your own business, then you don't mind mine.
%
Minicomputer:
A computer that can be afforded on the budget of a middle-level
manager.
%
Minnesota --
home of the blonde hair and blue ears.
mosquito supplier to the free world.
come fall in love with a loon.
where visitors turn blue with envy.
one day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold.
land of many cultures -- mostly throat.
where the elite meet sleet.
glove it or leave it.
many are cold, but few are frozen.
land of the ski and home of the crazed.
land of 10,000 Petersons.
%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%
Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
%
MIPS:
Meaningless Indicator of Processor Speed
%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau
%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%
Misery no longer loves company.
Nowadays it insists on it.
-- Russell Baker
%
Misfortune, n.:
The kind of fortune that never misses.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Misfortunes arrive on wings and leave on foot.
%
Miss, n.:
A title with which we brand unmarried
women to indicate that they are in the market.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%
Mistrust first impulses; they are always right.
%
MIT:
The Georgia Tech of the North
%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
Any simple problem can be made insoluble
if enough meetings are held to discuss it.
%
Mittsquinter, adj.:
A ballplayer who looks into his glove after missing the ball,
as if, somehow, the cause of the error lies there.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans;
it's lovely to be silly at the right moment.
-- Horace
%
mixed emotions:
Watching a bus-load of lawyers plunge off a cliff.
With five empty seats.
%
Mix's Law:
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary building.
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary tax.
%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water 2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
Cinnamon
Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon
juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top
crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
-- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
%
Modeling paged and segmented memories is tricky business.
-- P. J. Denning
%
modem, adj:
Up-to-date, new-fangled, as in "Thoroughly Modem Millie." An
unfortunate byproduct of kerning.
%
Moderation in all things.
-- Publius Terentius Afer [Terence]
%
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade
themselves that they have a better idea.
-- John Ciardi
%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural
function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the
other. There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the
brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.
Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only. ... It is quite
conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected. But it
is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working
assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.
Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble. One cannot
logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
-- D. O. Hebb, "Organization of Behavior:
A Neuropsychological Theory", 1949
%
MODESTY:
Being comfortable that others will discover your greatness.
%
Modesty is a vastly overrated virtue.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
Modesty: the gentle art of enhancing your charm by pretending
not to be aware of it.
-- Oliver Herford
%
Moe: Wanna play poker tonight?
Joe: I can't. It's the kids' night out.
Moe: So?
Joe: I gotta stay home with the nurse.
%
Moe: What did you give your wife for Valentine's Day?
Joe: The usual gift -- she ate my heart out.
%
Moebius always does it on the same side.
%
Moebius strippers never show you their back side.
%
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him
how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.
The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.
%
Moishe Margolies, who weighed all of 105 pounds and stood an even five feet
in his socks, was taking his first airplane trip. He took a seat next to a
hulking bruiser of a man who happened to be the heavyweight champion of
the world. Little Moishe was uneasy enough before he even entered the plane,
but now the roar of the engines and the great height absolutely terrified him.
So frightened did he become that his stomach turned over and he threw up all
over the muscular giant siting beside him. Fortunately, at least for Moishe,
the man was sound asleep. But now the little man had another problem. How in
the world would he ever explain the situation to the burly brute when he
awakened? The sudden voice of the stewardess on the plane's intercom, finally
woke the bruiser, and Moishe, his heart in his mouth, rose to the occasion.
"Feeling better now?" he asked solicitously.
%
Molecule, n.:
The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from
the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit
of matter... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and
the atom in that it is an ion...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review
and be implemented it wasn't worth doing.
%
MOMENTUM:
What you give a person when they are going away.
%
Mommy, what happens to your files when you die?
%
Mom's Law:
When they finally do have to take you to the
hospital, your underwear won't be clean or new.
%
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
%
Monday, n.:
In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Monday, n.:
In Christian countries, the day after the football game.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Money and women are the most sought after and the least known of any two
things we have.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Money cannot buy love, nor even friendship.
%
Money cannot buy
The fuel of love
but is excellent kindling.
To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,
Is a keen observer of life,
The word intellectual suggests right away
A man who's untrue to his wife.
-- W. H. Auden, "Collected Shorter Poems"
%
Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you
awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.
-- C. B. Luce
%
Money can't buy love, but it improves your bargaining position.
-- Christopher Marlowe
%
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
-- Bob Dylan
%
Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
%
Money is its own reward.
%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
%
Money is the root of all wealth.
%
Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Money isn't everything -- but it's a long way ahead of what comes next.
-- Sir Edmond Stockdale
%
Money may buy friendship but money cannot buy love.
%
Money may not buy happiness, but it sure
puts you in a great bargaining position.
%
Money will say more in one moment than
the most eloquent lover can in years.
%
Moneyliness is next to Godliness.
-- Andries van Dam
%
Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses.
-- H. H. Munro
%
MONOTONY:
Marriage to one woman at a time.
%
MONTANA:
A grizzly bear praying for the early arrival of cable television.
%
MONTANA:
Where forty-three below keeps out the riff-raff.
%
Monterey... is decidedly the pleasantest and most civilized-looking place
in California ... [it] is also a great place for cock-fighting, gambling
of all sorts, fandangos, and various kinds of amusements and knavery.
-- Richard Henry Dama, "Two Years Before the Mast", 1840
%
moon, n:
1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
%
Moore's Constant:
Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody
does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.
%
mophobia, n:
Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
%
More are taken in by hope than by cunning.
-- Vauvenargues
%
More computing sins are committed in the name of efficiency (without
necessarily achieving it) than for any other single reason -- including
blind stupidity.
-- W. A. Wulf
%
More people are flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice.
-- R. S. Surtees
%
More people died at Chappaquidick than at 3-mile island.
%
More people have died in Ted Kennedy's car than in nuclear power plants.
%
MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last Saturday
night. The match started with a long period of silence while the Freudians
waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the Rogerians waited for
the Freudians to say something they could paraphrase. The stalemate was
broken when the Freudians' best player took the offensive and interpreted
the Rogerians' silence as reflecting their anal-retentive personalities.
At this the Rogerians' star player said "I hear you saying you think we're
full of ka-ka." This started a fight and the match was called by officials.
%
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path
leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction.
Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
%
Morris had been down on his luck for months, and, though not a devoutly
religious man, had begun to visit the local synagogue to ask God's help.
One week, out of desperation, he prayed, "God, I've been a good and decent
man all my life. Would it be so terrible if You let me win the lottery
just once?"
The despondent fellow returned week after week. One day, Morris,
nearly hopeless now, prayed, "God, I've never asked You for anything before.
I just want to win one little lottery."
"As he dejectedly rose to leave, God's voice boomed, "Morris, at
least meet Me halfway on this. Buy a ticket!"
%
Morton's Law:
If rats are experimented upon, they will develop cancer.
%
Mos Eisley Spaceport; you'll not find a more
wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
-- Obi-wan Kenobi, "Star Wars"
%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
Don't worry if it doesn't work right.
If everything did, you'd be out of a job.
%
MOSQUITO:
The state bird of New Jersey.
%
Most burning issues generate far more heat than light.
%
Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven
by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the
truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
them that it doesn't make any difference.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
Most folks they like the daytime,
'cause they like to see the shining sun.
They're up in the morning,
off and a-running till they're too tired for having fun.
But when the sun goes down,
and the bright lights shine, my daytime has just begun.
Now there are two sides to this great big world,
and one of them is always night.
If you can take care of business in the sunshine, baby,
I guess you're gonna be all right.
Don't come looking for me to lend you a hand.
My eyes just can't stand the light.
'Cause I'm a night owl honey, sleep all day long.
-- Carly Simon
%
Most general statements are false, including this one.
-- Alexander Dumas
%
Most of our lives are about proving something,
either to ourselves or to someone else.
%
Most of the fear that spoils our life comes from attacking
difficulties before we get to them.
-- Dr. Frank Crane
%
...most of us learned about love the hard way. Even warnings are probably
useless, for somehow, despite the severest warnings of parents and friends,
hundreds, thousands of women have forgotten themselves at the last minute
and succumbed to the lies, promises, flatteries, or mere attentions of
lusting, lovely men, landing themselves in complicated predicaments from
which some of them never recovered during their entire lives. And I am not
speaking only of your teenaged Midwesterners in 1958; I'm speaking of women
of every age in every city in every year. The notorious sexual revolution
has saved no one from the pain and confusion of love.
-- Alix Kates Shulman
%
Most of your faults are not your fault.
%
Most people are too busy to have time for anything important.
%
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and
they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment
to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the
moon.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Most people can do without the essentials, but not without the luxuries.
%
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
than they do.
-- Turgenev
%
Most people deserve each other.
-- Shirley
%
Most people don't need a great deal of love
nearly so much as they need a steady supply.
%
Most people eat as though they were fattening themselves for market.
-- E. W. Howe
%
Most people feel that everyone is entitled to their opinion.
%
Most people have a furious itch to talk about themselves and are restrained
only by the disinclination of others to listen. Reserve is an artificial
quality that is developed in most of us as the result of innumerable rebuffs.
-- W. S. Maugham
%
Most people have a mind that's open by appointment only.
%
Most people have two reasons for doing anything --
a good reason, and the real reason.
%
Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are,
at best, reformed or potential lunatics.
-- Susan Sontag
%
Most people need some of their problems
to help take their mind off some of the others.
%
Most people prefer certainty to truth.
%
Most people want either less corruption
or more of a chance to participate in it.
%
Most people will listen to your unreasonable demands,
if you'll consider their unacceptable offer.
%
Most people's favorite way to end a game is by winning.
%
Most public domain software is free, at least at first glance.
%
Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who
can't talk for people who can't read.
-- Frank Zappa
%
Most seminars have a happy ending. Everyone's glad when they're over.
%
Most Texans think Hanukkah is some sort of duck call.
-- Richard Lewis
%
MOTHER:
Half a word.
%
Mother Earth is not flat!
%
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
-- Arnold Bennett
%
Mother is the invention of necessity.
%
Mother said there would be days like this, but she never said there
would be so many.
%
Mother told me to be good but she's been wrong before.
%
Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be President, but they
don't want them to become politicians in the process.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
Mothers of large families (who claim to common sense)
Will find a Tiger will repay the trouble and expense.
-- Hilaire Belloc, "The Tiger"
%
Mount St. Helens should have used earth control.
%
MOUNT TAPE U1439 ON B3, NO RING
%
Mountain Dew and doughnuts... because breakfast is the most important meal
of the day.
%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
%
Mr. Rockford? This is Betty Joe Withers. I got four shirts of yours from
the Bo Peep Cleaners by mistake. I don't know why they gave me men's
shirts but they're going back.
%
Mr. Rockford? You don't know me, but I'd like to hire you. Could
you call me at... My name is... uh... Never mind, forget it!
%
Mr. Rockford; Miss Collins from the Bureau of Licenses. We got your
renewal before the extended deadline but not your check. I'm sorry but
at midnight you're no longer licensed as an investigator.
%
Mr. Rockford, this is the Thomas Crown School of Dance and Contemporary
Etiquette. We aren't going to call again! Now you want these free
lessons or what?
%
Mr. Salter's side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent.
When Lord Copper was right he said "Definitely, Lord Copper"; when he was
wrong, "Up to a point."
"Let me see, what's the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan?
Yokohama isn't it?"
"Up to a point, Lord Copper."
"And Hong Kong definitely belongs to us, doesn't it?"
"Definitely, Lord Copper."
-- Evelyn Waugh, "Scoop"
%
MSDOS is not dead, it just smells that way.
-- Henry Spencer
%
Much as they like to persuade us differently, lawyers are simply hired
consultants, and at some point you time them out.
-- Craig Partridge
%
Much of the excitement we get out of our work
is that we don't really know what we are doing.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Much to his Mum and Dad's dismay, Horace ate himself one day.
He didn't stop to say his grace, he just sat down and ate his face.
"We can't have this!" his Dad declared, "If that lad's ate, he should
be shared."
But even as he spoke they saw Horace eating more and more:
First his legs and then his thighs, his arms, his nose, his hair, his eyes...
"Stop him someone!" Mother cried, "Those eyeballs would be better fried!"
But all too late, for they were gone, and he had started on his dong...
"Oh! foolish child!" the father mourns "You could have deep-fried that
with prawns,
Some parsley and some tartar sauce..."
But H. was on his second course: his liver and his lights and lung,
His ears, his neck, his chin, his tongue; "To think I raised him from the cot,
And now he's going to scoff the lot!"
His Mother cried: "What shall we do? What's left won't even make a stew..."
And as she wept, her son was seen, to eat his head, his heart his spleen.
and there he lay: a boy no more, just a stomach on the floor...
None the less, since it *was* his, they ate it -- that's what haggis is.
%
Multics is security spelled sideways.
%
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,
365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365". He [ten-year-old Truman Henry
Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the
tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes
smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more
than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!"
An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be
as much fun to watch.
-- James R. Newman, "The World of Mathematics"
%
MUMMY:
An Egyptian who was pressed for time.
%
Mummy dust to make me old;
To shroud my clothes, the black of night;
To age my voice, an old hag's cackle;
To whiten my hair, a scream of fright;
A blast of wind to fan my hate;
A thunderbolt to mix it well --
Now begin thy magic spell!
-- The Evil Queen, "Snow White"
%
Mum's the word.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
Mundus vult decipi decipiatur ergo.
-- Xaviera Hollander
[The world wants to be cheated, so cheat.]
%
Murder is always a mistake -- one should never do anything one cannot
talk about after dinner.
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
%
Murphy was an optimist.
%
Murphy's Discovery:
Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in
trouble!
%
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work.
%
Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%
Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem.
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
Murphy's Laws:
(1) If anything can go wrong, it will.
(2) Nothing is as easy as it looks.
(3) Everything takes longer than you think it will.
%
Murray's Rule:
Any country with "democratic" in the title isn't.
%
Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.
-- Lao Tsu
%
Must be getting close to town -- we're hitting more people.
%
Must I hold a candle to my shames?
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%
Mustgo, n.:
Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
long it has become a science project.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
-- The Dragon to Grendel, in John Gardner's "Grendel"
%
My analyst told me that I was right out of my head,
But I said, "Dear Doctor, I think that it is you instead.
Because I have got a thing that is unique and new,
To prove it I'll have the last laugh on you.
'Cause instead of one head -- I've got two.
And you know two heads are better than one.
%
My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.
First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed
forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a
symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
OK.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
My best argument against discrimination is quite simple:
Does it really matter if the ABC people are inferior to the DEF people if
they can tell one end of a gun from the other?
%
My Bonnie looked into a gas tank,
The height of its contents to see!
She lit a small match to assist her,
Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me.
%
My boy is mean kid. I came home the other day and saw him taping worms
to the sidewalk, he sits there and watches the birds get hernias. Well,
only last Christmas I gave him a B-B gun and he gave me a sweatshirt with
a bulls-eye on the back.
I told my kids, "Someday, you'll have kids of your own." One of them
said, "So will you."
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
My brain is my second favorite organ.
-- Woody Allen
%
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo
of the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
-- Steven Wright
%
My calculator is my shepherd, I shall not want
It maketh me accurate to ten significant figures,
and it leadeth me in scientific notation to 99 digits.
It restoreth my square roots and guideth me along paths of floating
decimal points for the sake of precision.
Yea, tho I walk through the valley of surprise quizzes,
I will fear no prof, for my calculator is there to hearten me.
It prepareth a log table to comfort me, it prepareth an
arc sin for me in the presence of my teachers.
It anoints my homework with correct solutions, my interpolations are
over.
Surely, both precision and accuracy shall follow me all the days of my
life, and I shall dwell in the house of Texas instruments forever.
%
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty
nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and,
instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at
a hundred miles an hour ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at
the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which
turnoff to take when I got to the other end ... but being absolutely certain
that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were
just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
"My code is elegant", "Your code is sneaky", "His code is an ugly hack"
-- Colin Percival on irregular verbs
%
My cup hath runneth'd over with love.
%
My darling wife was always glum.
I drowned her in a cask of rum,
And so made sure that she would stay
In better spirits night and day.
%
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four.
Unless there are three other people.
-- Orson Welles
%
My doctorate's in Literature, but it seems like a pretty good pulse to me.
%
My experience with government is when things are non-controversial,
beautifully co-ordinated and all the rest, it must be that not much
is going on.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
My family history begins with me, but yours ends with you.
-- Iphicrates
%
My father, a good man, told me, "Never lose
your ignorance; you cannot replace it."
-- Erich Maria Remarque
%
My father taught me three things:
1: Never mix whiskey with anything but water.
2: Never try to draw to an inside straight.
3: Never discuss business with anyone who refuses to give his name.
%
My father was a God-fearing man, but he never
missed a copy of the New York Times, either.
-- E. B. White
%
My father was a saint, I'm not.
-- Indira Gandhi
%
My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce
and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side.
-- Senator Hubert Humphrey
%
My first basename is George "Catfish" Metkovich from our 1952 Pittsburgh
Pirates team, which lost 112 games. After a terrible series against the
New York Giants, in which our center fielder made three throwing errors
and let two balls get through his legs, manager Billy Meyer pleaded, "Can
somebody think of something to help us win a game?"
"I'd like to make a suggestion," Metkovich said. "On any ball hit
to center field, let's just let it roll to see if it might go foul."
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
%
My folks didn't come over on the Mayflower,
but they were there to meet the boat.
%
My friend has a baby. I'm writing down all the noises he makes so
later I can ask him what he meant.
-- Steven Wright
%
My geometry teacher was sometimes acute, and sometimes obtuse,
but always, always, he was right.
%
My girlfriend and I sure had a good time at the beach last summer. First
she'd bury me in the sand, then I'd bury her. This summer I'm going to go
back and dig her up.
%
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times
as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending
mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU.
I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it
would be better for us both if you were to just log out again.
%
My, how you've changed since I've changed.
%
My idea of roughing it is when room service is late.
%
My idea of roughing it turning the air conditioner too low.
%
My interest is in the future because I am
going to spend the rest of my life there.
%
My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?
-- MadameX
%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
And I wish he were in Asia.
-- Dorothy Parker, part 2
%
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
-- Dorothy Parker, part 3
%
My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right
thing to say. And then say it with the utmost levity.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
My mind can never know my body, although
it has become quite friendly with my legs.
-- Woody Allen, on Epistemology
%
My mother drinks to forget she drinks.
-- Crazy Jimmy
%
My mother loved children -- she would
have given anything if I had been one.
-- Groucho Marx
%
My mother once said to me, "Elwood," (she always called me Elwood)
"Elwood, in this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant."
For years I tried smart. I recommend pleasant.
-- Elwood P. Dowde, "Harvey"
%
My mother wants grandchildren, so I said, "Mom, go for it!"
-- Sue Murphy
%
My My, hey hey
Rock and roll is here to stay The king is gone but he's not forgotten
It's better to burn out This is the story of a Johnny Rotten
Than to fade away It's better to burn out than it is to rust
My my, hey hey The king is gone but he's not forgotten
It's out of the blue and into the black Hey hey, my my
They give you this, but you pay for that Rock and roll can never die
And once you're gone you can never come back There's more to the picture
When you're out of the blue Than meets the eye
And into the black
-- Neil Young
"My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue), Rust Never Sleeps"
%
My notion of a husband at forty is that a woman should
be able to change him, like a bank note, for two twenties.
%
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%
My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
And I wish I'd never met him.
-- Dorothy Parker, part 1
%
My own feelings are perhaps best described by saying that I am
perfectly aware that there is no Royal Road to Mathematics, in other
words, that I have only a very small head and must live with it.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems,
and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable. ... We should be
reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent
to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether or not
we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand,
slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point
from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now
would be to deny our history, our capabilities.
-- James A. Michener
%
My parents went to Niagra Falls and all I got was this crummy life.
%
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
Which, being finished, here the story ends;
'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
-- Byron
%
My philosophy is: Don't think.
-- Charles Manson
%
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
-- Errol Flynn
Any man who has $10,000 left when he dies is a failure.
-- Errol Flynn
%
My rackets are run on strictly American
lines, and they're going to stay that way.
-- A. Capone
%
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior
spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive
with our frail and feeble mind.
-- Albert Einstein
%
My ritual differs slightly. What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I
hop into the shower stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped
in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot
character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off
of while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog,
Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful
dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants
to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear
in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind
-- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new
part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift. Then I hop
right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children
have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen
exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
-- Dave Barry
%
My schoolmates would make love to anything that moved, but I never saw any
reason to limit myself.
-- Emo Philips
%
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii.
She sells C shells by the seashore.
%
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore
I do not like me anymore,
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse,
I ponder on the narrow house
I shudder at the thought of men
I'm due to fall in love again.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Enough Rope"
%
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
-- Christopher Morley
%
My uncle was the town drunk -- and we lived in Chicago.
-- George Gobel
%
My way of joking is to tell the truth.
That's the funniest joke in the world.
-- Muhammad Ali
%
My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies.
%
Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them.
-- Booth Tarkington
%
Mythology, n.:
The body of a primitive people's beliefs, concerning its origin,
early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Naches (rhymes with Bach' us, with "Bach" pronounced like the composer)
is what every Jewish parent wants from their children, lots of good
returns, good grades, good spouse, good grandchildren.
So, now that you all understand naches, the joke:
Two Jewish women are sitting having coffee.
"So, how's your daughter?"
"Oh, Rachel! She's fine, she just married a dentist!"
"Really? Isn't she the one that married the lawyer?"
"Yes, that's my Rachel."
"That's... that's nice. But isn't she the same one that married
the doctor?"
"Yes, that's her!"
"But didn't she marry a bank executive before that?"
"Yes, yes!"
"Ahhh. So much naches from one child!"
%
Nachman's Rule:
When it comes to foreign food, the less authentic the better.
-- Gerald Nachman
%
Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
-- '76 Olympics
%
'Naomi, sex at noon taxes.' I moan.
Never odd or even.
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
Madam, I'm Adam.
Sit on a potato pan, Otis.
-- The Mad Palindromist
%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he
says is wrong.
GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
will be right.
-- George Bernard Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
%
Narcolepulacyi, n.:
The contagious action of yawning, causing everyone in sight
to also yawn.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant said
"My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next time he
goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone might steal
it."
%
Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the villagers
gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time," said Nasrudin, "I
only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the villagers but the
stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The remaining villager
asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he said -- and quite distinctly,
for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed;
he had heard words actually spoken by the King, and seen the very man they
were spoken to.
%
Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to serve
him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk into your
shop?"
"Of course."
"Have you ever seen me before?"
"Never."
"Then how do you know it was me?"
%
Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
than the sun."
"Why?", he was asked.
"Because at night we need the light more."
%
Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver pie.
Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of meat from
his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it, "Foolish bird!
You have the liver, but what can you do with it without the recipe?"
%
National security is in your hands - guard it well.
%
Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of
scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
-- Mary Ellen Kelly
%
Natural laws have no pity.
%
Naturally the common people don't want war... but after all it is the leaders
of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to
drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people
can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you
have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists
for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same
in every country.
-- Hermann Goering
%
Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation
of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the
fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be
creamed?
-- Solomon Short
%
Nature abhors a virgin -- a frozen asset.
-- Clare Booth Luce
%
Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%
Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely
given them little.
-- Dr. Samuel Johnson
%
Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
-- Fran Leibowitz
%
Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be
tolerated until they acquire some sense.
-- William Phelps
%
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
-- Alexander Pope (on runtime bounds checking?)
%
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
-- Francis Bacon
%
Near the Studio Jean Cocteau
On the Rue des Ecoles
lived an old man
with a blind dog
Every evening I would see him
guiding the dog along
the sidewalk, keeping
a firm grip on the leash
so that the dog wouldn't
run into a passerby
Sometimes the dog would stop
and look up at the sky
Once the old man
noticed me watching the dog
and he said, "Oh, yes,
this one knows
when the moon is out,
he can feel it on his face"
-- Barry Gifford
%
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you
want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
Nearly every complex solution to a programming problem that I
have looked at carefully has turned out to be wrong.
-- Brent Welch
%
Necessity has no law.
-- St. Augustine
%
Necessity hath no law.
-- Oliver Cromwell
%
Necessity is a mother.
%
"Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity
is the mother of futile dodges" is much nearer the truth.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
-- William Pitt, 1783
%
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
-- Lin Yutang
%
Needs are a function of what other people have.
%
Neglect of duty does not cease, by repetition, to be neglect of duty.
-- Napoleon
%
Neil Armstrong tripped.
%
Neither spread the germs of gossip nor encourage others to do so.
%
Nemo me impune lacessit
[No one provokes me with impunity]
-- Motto of the Crown of Scotland
%
nerd pack, n:
Plastic pouch worn in breast pocket to keep pens from soiling
clothes. Nerd's position in engineering hierarchy can be
measured by number of pens, grease pencils, and rulers bristling
in his pack.
%
Network packets are like buses. You wait all day, and then 3Com
along at once.
%
Neuroses are red,
Melancholia's blue.
I'm schizophrenic,
What are you?
%
Neurotics build castles in the sky,
Psychotics live in them,
And psychiatrists collect the rent.
%
Neutrinos are into physicists.
%
Neutrinos have bad breadth.
%
neutron bomb, n:
An explosive device of limited military value because, as
it only destroys people without destroying property, it
must be used in conjunction with bombs that destroy property.
%
Never accept an invitation from a stranger unless he gives you candy.
-- Linda Festa
%
Never appeal to a man's "better nature." He may not have one.
Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Never argue with a fool -- people might not be able to tell the difference.
%
Never argue with a woman when she's tired -- or rested.
%
Never ask the barber if you need a haircut.
%
Never be afraid to tell the world who you are.
-- Anonymous
%
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark.
Professionals built the Titanic.
%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%
Never buy from a rich salesman.
-- Goldenstern
%
Never buy what you do not want
because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
%
Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.
%
Never delay the ending of a meeting or the beginning of a cocktail hour.
%
Never do programs contain so few bugs as when no debugging tools
are available.
-- Niklaus Wirth
%
Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
%
Never drink Coca-Cola in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled
with the chemicals in Coke produce hallucinations. People tend to change
into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually fly in the
window. (Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators have windows.)
%
Never drink from your finger bowl -- it contains only water.
%
Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc.
And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.
-- Nelson Algren, "What Every Young Man Should Know"
%
Never eat more than you can lift.
-- Miss Piggy
%
Never, ever lie to someone you love unless you're
absolutely sure they'll never find out the truth.
%
Never explain. Your friends do not need it
and your enemies will never believe you anyway.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Never face facts; if you do you'll never get up in the morning.
-- Marlo Thomas
%
Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.
%
Never frighten a small man -- he'll kill you.
%
Never get into fights with ugly people because they have nothing to lose.
%
Never give an inch!
%
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
-- Phyllis Diller, "Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints"
%
Never have children, only grandchildren.
-- Gore Vidal
%
Never have so many understood so little about so much.
-- James Burke
%
Never hit a man with glasses; hit him with a baseball bat.
%
Never insult an alligator until you've crossed the river.
%
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repainting.
-- Billy Rose
%
Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.
-- Quentin Crisp
%
Never kick a man, unless he's down.
%
Never laugh at live dragons.
-- Bilbo Baggins
%
Never leave anything to chance;
make sure all your crimes are premeditated.
%
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
Never let someone who says it cannot be done
interrupt the person who is doing it.
%
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
%
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
-- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
%
Never look a gift horse in the mouth.
-- Saint Jerome
%
Never look up when dragons fly overhead.
%
Never make anything simple and efficient when a
way can be found to make it complex and wonderful.
%
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
%
Never negotiate with the United States unless you have a nuclear
weapon.
-- Former deputy defense minister of India
%
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
%
Never offend with style when you can offend with substance.
%
Never pay a compliment as if expecting a receipt.
%
Never play pool with anyone named "Fats".
%
Never promise more than you can perform.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Never put off till run-time what you can do at compile-time.
-- D. Gries
%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after.
%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a
law against it by that time.
%
Never raise your hand to your children -- it leaves your midsection
unprotected.
-- Robert Orben
%
Never reveal your best argument.
%
Never say "Oops" in an operating room.
%
Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance with him.
%
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
%
Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are worse than your own.
-- Nelson Algren
%
Never speak ill of yourself, your friends will always say enough on
that subject.
-- Charles-Maurice De Talleyrand
%
NEVER swerve to hit a lawyer riding a bicycle -- it might be your bicycle.
%
Never tell. Not if you love your wife ... In fact, if your old lady walks
in on you, deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm
tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck `Lay
On Top Of Me Or I'll Die'. I didn't know what I was gonna do..."
-- Lenny Bruce
%
Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
%
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them WHAT to
do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
-- Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.
%
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle.
-- Steinbach
%
Never test the depth of the water with both feet.
%
Never trust a child farther than you can throw it.
%
Never trust a computer you can't repair yourself.
%
Never trust an automatic pistol or a D.A.'s deal.
-- John Dillinger
%
Never trust an operating system.
%
Never trust anybody whose arm is bigger than your leg.
%
Never trust anyone who says money is no object.
%
Never try to explain computers to a layman. It's easier to explain
sex to a virgin.
-- Robert Heinlein
(Note, however, that virgins tend to know a lot about computers.)
%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Never try to teach a pig to sing.
It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
%
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
-- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
%
Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon.
%
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
Never use "etc." -- it makes people think there is more where
there is not or that there is not space to list it all, etc.
%
Never volunteer for anything.
-- Lackland
%
Never worry about theory as long as the
machinery does what it's supposed to do.
-- Robert A. Heinlein
%
new, adj:
Different color from previous model.
%
New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
%
New England Life, of course. Why do you ask?
%
New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
%
New members are urgently needed in the Society
for Prevention of Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
%
New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
-- Monty Python's Big Red Book
%
New release:
Abortions are becoming so popular in some countries that the waiting
time to get one is lengthening rapidly. Experts predict that at this
rate there will soon be an up to a one year wait.
%
New systems generate new problems.
%
New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his
age, and his wife most often reminds him to act it.
-- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
%
New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.
%
New York now leads the world's great cities in the number of people around
whom you shouldn't make a sudden move.
-- David Letterman
%
New York-- to that tall skyline I come
Flyin' in from London to your door
New York-- lookin' down on Central Park
Where they say you should not wander after dark.
New York.
-- Simon and Garfunkel
%
New York's got the ways and means;
Just won't let you be.
-- The Grateful Dead
%
Newlan's Truism:
An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the
government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
%
Newman's Discovery:
Your best dreams may not come true;
fortunately, neither will your worst dreams.
%
NEWS FLASH!!
Today the East German pole-vault champion
became the West German pole-vault champion.
%
news: gotcha
%
NEWSFLASH!!
Rodney Fenster looked up the shaft of elevator number four at
1700 N. 17th St. this morning to see if the elevator was on its way down.
It was. Age 31.
%
Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then
print the chaff.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day.
As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.
%
Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
Nice guys don't finish nice.
%
Nice guys finish last.
-- Leo Durocher
%
Nice guys finish last, but we get to sleep in.
-- Evan Davis
%
Nice guys get sick.
%
Nick the Greek's Law of Life:
All things considered, life is 9 to 5 against.
%
Nietzsche is pietzsche, Goethe is murder.
%
Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again.
God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.
-- Woody Allen, "Hannah and Her Sisters"
%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his
name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name,
but Americans call him by value.
%
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;
One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.
%
Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
And tapes without any tracks;
Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
And tapes mixed up on the racks --
Take hold of the tape
And pull off the strip,
And then you'll be sure
Your tape drive will skip.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%
Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would.
The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.
-- Augustine
%
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
%
Nirvana? That's the place where the powers
that be and their friends hang out.
-- Zonker Harris
%
Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing
else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow
the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.
-- Larry Niven, "The Mote in God's Eye"
%
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
-- Aesop
%
No amount of careful planning will ever replace dumb luck.
%
No amount of genius can overcome a preoccupation with detail.
%
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
-- Fran Lebowitz
%
No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.
-- William Blake
%
no brainer:
A decision which, viewed through the retrospectoscope,
is "obvious" to those who failed to make it originally.
%
No character, however upright, is a match for
constantly reiterated attacks, however false.
-- Alexander Hamilton
%
No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.
-- MGM executive Irving Thalberg to Louis B. Mayer about
film rights to "Gone With the Wind".
Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
%
No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
effectively under such difficult conditions.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
No directory.
%
No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon
lectures which are really worth the attending.
-- Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"
%
No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself
on the grounds that it was human nature.
%
No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'
-- Dr. Who
%
No evil can happen to a good man.
-- Plato
%
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
-- Aristotle
%
No extensible language will be universal.
-- T. Cheatham
%
No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl;
no hatred so intense or immovable as that of woman for woman.
-- Landor
%
No good deed goes unpunished.
-- Clare Boothe Luce
%
No group of professionals meets except to
conspire against the public at large.
-- Mark Twain
%
No guest is so welcome in a friend's house that
he will not become a nuisance after three days.
-- Titus Maccius Plautus
%
No guts, no glory.
%
No hardware designer should be allowed to produce any piece of hardware
until three software guys have signed off for it.
-- Andy Tanenbaum
%
No, his mind is not for rent
To any god or government.
Always hopeful, yet discontent,
He knows changes aren't permanent -
But change is.
%
No house is childproofed unless the little darlings are in straitjackets.
%
No house should ever be on any hill or on anything.
It should be of the hill, belonging to it.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%
No, I don't have a drinking problem.
I drink, I get drunk, I fall down. No problem!
%
No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is
just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone
and Telegraph Company.
-- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking
machine, 1943.
%
No is no negative in a woman's mouth.
-- Sidney
%
No job too big; no fee too big!
-- Dr. Peter Venkman, "Ghostbusters"
%
No line available at 300 baud.
%
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of
absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness
within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and
doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone
of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
-- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House"
%
no maintenance:
Impossible to fix.
%
No man can have a reasonable opinion of women until he has long lost
interest in hair restorers.
-- Austin O'Malley
%
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating
one peanut.
-- Channing Pollock
%
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the
Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea,
Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if
a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes
me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
-- John Donne, "No Man is an Iland"
%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%
No man is an island if he's on at least one mailing list.
%
No man is useless who has a friend,
and if we are loved we are indispensable.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
%
No man would listen to you talk if he didn't know it was his turn next.
-- E. W. Howe
%
No man's ambition has a right to stand in
the way of performing a simple act of justice.
-- John Altgeld
%
No Marxist can deny that the interests of socialism are higher
than the interests of the right of nations to self-determination.
-- Lenin, 1918
%
No matter how celebrated the beauty of a woman, I would never spend a night
with her. The only celebrity with whom I would share a night is Max Planck.
But he is dead. So I live like a monk, aside from a little self gratification
in the afternoons.
-- Salvador Dali
%
No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up.
%
No matter how much you do you never do enough.
%
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for
signs of improvement.
-- Florida Scott-Maxwell
%
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will seriously
cramp his style.
%
No matter what happens, there is always someone who knew it would.
%
No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
%
No matter where I go, the place is always called "here".
%
No matter who you are, some scholar can show you
the great idea you had was had by someone before you.
%
No matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not,
th' supreme court follows th' iliction returns.
-- Mr. Dooley
%
No modern woman with a grain of sense ever sends little notes to an
unmarried man -- not until she is married, anyway.
-- Arthur Binstead
%
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it
all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly
the functions he is competent to. It is by dividing and subdividing these
republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until it
ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under
every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Joseph Cabell, 1816
%
No one becomes depraved in a moment.
-- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%
No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a
dirty little beast.
-- W. S. Gilbert
%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
No one can put you down without your full cooperation.
%
No one gets sick on Wednesdays.
%
No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.
%
No one has a higher opinion of him than he has.
-- Greg Lehey, FreeBSDcon 1999
%
No one knows like a woman how to say
things that are at once gentle and deep.
-- Hugo
%
No one knows what he can do till he tries.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.
-- Quintus Ennius
%
No one should have to wait until after ten o'clock for his english muffin!
-- Snoopy
%
No one so thoroughly appreciates the value of constructive criticism as the
one who's giving it.
-- Hal Chadwick
%
NO OPIUM-SMOKING IN THE ELEVATORS
-- sign in the Rand Hotel, New York, 1907
%
No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
the author.
-- Chris Shaw
%
No pig should go sky diving during monsoon
For this isn't really the norm.
But should a fat swine try to soar like a loon,
So what? Any pork in a storm.
No pig should go sky diving during monsoon,
It's risky enough when the weather is fine.
But to have a pig soar when the monsoon doth roar
Cast even more perils before swine.
%
No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
(refrain)
Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
(refrain)
Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
(refrain)
Refrain:
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
%
No poet or novelist wishes he was the only one who ever lived, but most of
them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly believe
their wish has been granted.
-- W. H. Auden, "The Dyer's Hand"
%
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
%
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
-- C. Schulz
%
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
%
"No program is perfect,"
They said with a shrug.
"The customer's happy--
What's one little bug?"
But he was determined, Then change two, then three more,
The others went home. As year followed year.
He dug out the flow chart And strangers would comment,
Deserted, alone. "Is that guy still here?"
Night passed into morning. He died at the console
The room was cluttered Of hunger and thirst
With core dumps, source listings. Next day he was buried
"I'm close," he muttered. Face down, nine edge first.
Chain smoking, cold coffee, And his wife through her tears
Logic, deduction. Accepted his fate.
"I've got it!" he cried, Said "He's not really gone,
"Just change one instruction." He's just working late."
-- The Perfect Programmer
%
No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence
different from the one identified by the given indication as an
indication-applied occurrence.
-- ALGOL 68 Report
%
No question is so difficult as one to which the answer is obvious.
%
No rock so hard but that a little wave
May beat admission in a thousand years.
-- Tennyson
%
No self-made man ever did such a good job
that some woman didn't want to make some alterations.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of
paper.
-- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
taken over by Rupert Murdoch
%
No skis take rocks like rental skis!
%
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary
for that purpose to keep awake all day.
-- Nietzsche
%
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
%
No sooner had Edger Allen Poe
Finished his old Raven,
then he started his Old Crow.
%
No sooner said than done -- so acts your man of worth.
-- Quintus Ennius
%
No spitting on the Bus!
Thank you, The Management.
%
No television performance takes as much preparation as an off-the-cuff talk.
-- Richard Nixon
%
No two persons ever read the same book.
-- Edmund Wilson
%
No use getting too involved in life --
you're only here for a limited time.
%
No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether
she will or will not be a mother.
-- Margaret H. Sanger
%
No woman can endure a gambling husband, unless he is a steady winner.
-- Lord Thomas Dewar
%
No woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of
him than he deserves.
-- Edgar Watson Howe
%
No wonder Clairol makes so much money selling shampoo.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat is an infinite loop!
%
No wonder you're tired! You understood so much today.
%
No yak too dirty; no dumpster too hollow.
%
Nobert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Weiner was, in
fact, very absent minded. The following story is told about him: when they
moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely
useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since
she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had
moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to
him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He
reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled
some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and
threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the
old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they
had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of
paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There
was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where
he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner
and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the
young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget."
The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the
story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't
quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it,
however, was pretty close to what actually happened...
-- Richard Harter
%
Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.
%
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing
it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%
Nobody ever died from oven crude poisoning.
%
Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
-- Kin Hubbard
%
Nobody ever ruined their eyesight by looking at the bright side of something.
%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
%
Nobody is one block of harmony. We are all afraid of something, or feel
limited in something. We all need somebody to talk to. It would be good
if we talked to each other--not just pitter-patter, but real talk. We
shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact;
that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too.
It's so much easier to be together when we drop our masks.
-- Liv Ullman
%
Nobody knows the trouble I've been.
%
Nobody knows what goes between his cold toes and his warm ears.
-- Roy Harper
%
Nobody loves me,
Everybody hates me,
I think I'll go out and eat worms.
I'm gonna cut their heads off,
Eat their insides out,
And throw way the skins.
Big, fat, juicy ones,
Little, skinny, cute ones,
Watch how they wiggle and they squirm.
%
Nobody really knows what happiness is, until they're married.
And then it's too late.
%
Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
%
Nobody shot me.
-- Frank Gusenberg, his last words, when asked by police
who had shot him 14 times with a machine gun in the
Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.
Only Capone kills like that.
-- George "Bugs" Moran, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
The only man who kills like that is Bugs Moran.
-- Al Capone, on the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
%
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order
for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the substance of
their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young and rob the old.
-- Lewis Lapham
%
Nobody takes a bribe. Of course at Christmas if you happen to hold out
your hat and somebody happens to put a little something in it, well, that's
different.
-- New York City Police Commissioner (Ret.) William P.
O'Brien, instructions to the force.
%
Nobody wants constructive criticism.
It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise.
%
Nobody's gonna believe that computers are intelligent until they start
coming in late and lying about it.
%
nohup rm -fr /&
%
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has
merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.
-- Mark Twain
%
nolo contendere:
A legal term meaning: "I didn't do it, judge, and I'll never do
it again."
%
nominal egg:
New Yorkerese for expensive.
%
Noncombatant, n.:
A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Non-Determinism is not meant to be reasonable.
-- M. J. 0'Donnell
%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%
None love the bearer of bad news.
-- Sophocles
%
None of our men are "experts." We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
-- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work"
%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%
Nonsense. Space is blue and birds fly through it.
-- Heisenberg
%
Nonsense and beauty have close connections.
-- E. M. Forster
%
Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
%
Noone ever built a statue to a critic.
%
No-one would remember the Good Samaritan if he had only had good
intentions. He had money as well.
-- Margaret Thatcher
%
Norm: Hey, everybody.
All: [silence; everybody is mad at Norm for being rich.]
Norm: [Carries on both sides of the conversation himself.]
Norm! (Norman.)
How are you feeling today, Norm?
Rich and thirsty. Pour me a beer.
-- Cheers, Tan 'n Wash
Woody: What's the latest, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Zsa-Zsa marries a millionaire, Peterson drinks a beer.
Film at eleven.
-- Cheers, Knights of the Scimitar
Woody: How are you today, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Never been better, Woody. ... Just once I'd like to be better.
-- Cheers, Chambers vs. Malone
%
Norm: Gentlemen, start your taps.
-- Cheers, The Coach's Daughter
Coach: How's life treating you, Norm?
Norm: Like it caught me in bed with his wife.
-- Cheers, Any Friend of Diane's
Coach: How's life, Norm?
Norm: Not for the squeamish, Coach.
-- Cheers, Friends, Romans, and Accountants
%
[Norm comes in with an attractive woman.]
Coach: Normie, Normie, could this be Vera?
Norm: With a lot of expensive surgery, maybe.
-- Cheers, Norman's Conquest
Coach: What's up, Normie?
Norm: The temperature under my collar, Coach.
-- Cheers, I'll Be Seeing You (Part 2)
Coach: What would you say to a nice beer, Normie?
Norm: Going down?
-- Cheers, Diane Meets Mom
%
[Norm goes into the bar at Vic's Bowl-A-Rama.]
Off-screen crowd: Norm!
Sam: How the hell do they know him here?
Cliff: He's got a life, you know.
-- Cheers, From Beer to Eternity
Woody: What can I do for you, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Elope with my wife.
-- Cheers, The Triangle
Woody: How's life, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Oh, I'm waiting for the movie.
-- Cheers, Take My Shirt... Please?
%
[Norm is angry.]
Woody: What can I get you, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Clifford Clavin's head.
-- Cheers, The Triangle
Sam: Hey, what's happening, Norm?
Norm: Well, it's a dog-eat-dog world, Sammy,
and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear.
-- Cheers, The Peterson Principle
Sam: How's life in the fast lane, Normie?
Norm: Beats me, I can't find the on-ramp.
-- Cheers, Diane Chambers Day
%
[Norm returns from the hospital.]
Coach: What's up, Norm?
Norm: Everything that's supposed to be.
-- Cheers, Diane Meets Mom
Sam: What's new, Normie?
Norm: Terrorists, Sam. They've taken over my stomach.
They're demanding beer.
-- Cheers, The Heart is a Lonely Snipehunter
Coach: What'll it be, Normie?
Norm: Just the usual, Coach. I'll have a froth of beer and a snorkel.
-- Cheers, King of the Hill
%
[Norm tries to prove that he is not Anton Kreitzer.]
Norm: Afternoon, everybody!
All: Anton!
-- Cheers, The Two Faces of Norm
Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: A flashing sign in my gut that says, ``Insert beer here.''
-- Cheers, Call Me, Irresponsible
Sam: What can I get you, Norm?
Norm: [scratching his beard] Got any flea powder? Ah, just kidding.
Gimme a beer; I think I'll just drown the little suckers.
-- Cheers, Two Girls for Every Boyd
%
Normal times may possibly be over forever.
%
Normally our rules are rigid; we tend to discretion, if for no other
reason than self-protection. We never recommend any of our graduates,
although we cheerfully provide information as to those who have failed
their courses.
-- Jack Vance, "Freitzke's Turn"
%
Nostalgia is living life in the past lane.
%
Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be.
%
Not all men who drink are poets.
Some of us drink because we aren't poets.
%
Not all who own a harp are harpers.
-- Marcus Terentius Varro
%
Not drinking, chasing women, or doing drugs won't
make you live longer -- it just seems that way.
%
Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to
the capitalist mode of production.
-- Herbert Marcuse
%
Not every question deserves an answer.
%
Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.
%
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
-- Shakespeare
%
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is
ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
-- Professor, EECS, George Washington University
I'm looking forward to working with you on this next year.
-- Professor, Harvard, on a senior thesis
%
Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad.
-- Rob Pike
%
Not that we needed all that stuff, but when you get locked into a
serious drug collection the tendency is to push it as far as you can.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.
-- Spinoza
%
Not to mention the fact that most of the good code for PC minix seems
to have been written by Bruce Evans.
-- Linus Torvalds, comp.os.minix, Jan. 1992
%
NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given.
All software is supplied as is, without guarantee. The user assumes
all responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these
features, including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system
abends, disk head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark
attack, nerve gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis,
local electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure,
invasion, hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction
surfaces, comic radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive
electronic components, windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated
chickens, malfunctioning mechanical or electrical sexual devices,
premature activation of the distant early warning system, peasant
uprisings, halitosis, artillery bombardment, explosions, cave-ins,
and/or frogs falling from the sky.
%
Note: The system panics with a "NULL pointer dereference" message
Failed due to : SunOS 5.8 is installed.
-- Output of a SunCheckup run on a Solaris 8 machine
%
Note to myself: use real bullets next time.
%
Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of
wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is
astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful
not to make any poultry jokes.
-- Woody Allen
%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Nothing can be done in one trip.
-- Snider
%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%
Nothing endures but change.
-- Heraclitus
[Yeah, yeah, "Everything changes but change itself." --JFK Ed.]
%
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a
proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
-- John Keats
%
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
-- Winston Churchill
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as
satisfying as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond
%
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
%
Nothing increases your golf score like witnesses.
%
Nothing is as simple as it seems at first
Or as hopeless as it seems in the middle
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
%
Nothing is but what is not.
%
Nothing is ever a total loss; it can always serve as a bad example.
%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light.
To prove this to yourself, try opening the
refrigerator door before the light comes on.
%
Nothing is finished until the paperwork is done.
%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young
%
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
-- A. H. Weiler
%
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which
millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
-- Nero Wolfe
%
Nothing is more quiet than the sound of hair going grey.
%
Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature.
She shows us only surfaces, but she is a million fathoms deep.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
-- Michel de Montaigne
%
Nothing is so often irretrievably missed as a daily opportunity.
-- Ebner-Eschenbach
%
Nothing lasts forever.
Where do I find nothing?
%
Nothing makes a person more productive than the last minute.
%
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Conscience makes egotists of us all.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.
-- Arthur Balfour
%
Nothing motivates a man more than to
see his boss put in an honest day's work.
%
Nothing, nothing, nothing, no error, no crime is so absolutely
repugnant to God as everything which is official; and why? because
the official is so impersonal and therefore the deepest insult
which can be offered to a personality.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
%
Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell
%
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at
which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
-- Quentin Crisp
%
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-- Mark Twain
%
Nothing succeeds like success.
-- Alexandre Dumas
%
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
-- Christopher Lascl
%
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charlie Brown
%
Nothing that's forced can ever be right,
If it doesn't come naturally, leave it.
That's what she said as she turned out the light,
And we bent our backs as slaves of the night,
Then she lowered her guard and showed me the scars
She got from trying to fight
Saying, oh, you'd better believe it.
[...]
Well nothing that's real is ever for free
And you just have to pay for it sometime.
She said it before, she said it to me,
I suppose she believed there was nothing to see,
But the same old four imaginary walls
She'd built for livin' inside
I said oh, you just can't mean it.
[...]
Well nothing that's forced can ever be right,
If it doesn't come naturally, leave it.
That's what she said as she turned out the light,
And she may have been wrong, and she may have been right,
But I woke with the frost, and noticed she'd lost
The veil that covered her eyes,
I said oh, you can leave it.
-- Al Stewart, "If It Doesn't Come Naturally, Leave It"
%
Nothing will dispel enthusiasm like a small admission fee.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
Nothing will ever be attempted
if all possible objections must be first overcome.
-- Dr. Johnson
%
NOTICE:
Anyone seen smoking will be assumed to be on fire and will
be summarily put out.
%
NOTICE:
-- THE ELEVATORS WILL BE OUT OF ORDER TODAY --
(The nearest working elevator is in the building across the street.)
%
Nouvelle cuisine, n:
French for "not enough food".
Continental breakfast, n:
English for "not enough food".
Tapas, n:
Spanish for "not enough food".
Dim Sum, n:
Chinese for more food than you've ever seen in your entire life.
%
November, n.:
The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Novinson's Revolutionary Discovery:
When comes the revolution, things will be different --
not better, just different.
%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
-- George Gordon, Lord Byron, "Don Juan"
%
Now I lay me back to sleep.
The speaker's dull; the subject's deep.
If he should stop before I wake,
Give me a nudge for goodness' sake.
-- Anonymous
%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
%
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I'll cry in anguish, "Mistake!! Mistake!!"
%
Now I lay me down to study,
I pray the Lord I won't go nutty.
And if I fail to learn this junk,
I pray the Lord that I won't flunk.
But if I do, don't pity me at all,
Just lay my bones in the study hall.
Tell my teacher I've done my best,
Then pile my books upon my chest.
%
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Now is the time for drinking;
now the time to beat the earth with unfettered foot.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
Now it's time to say goodbye
To all our company...
M-I-C (see you next week!)
K-E-Y (Why? Because we LIKE you!)
M-O-U-S-E.
%
Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It leaves me only fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
-- A. E. Housman
%
Now that day wearies me,
My yearning desire
Will receive more kindly,
Like a tired child, the starry night.
Hands, leave off your deeds,
Mind, forget all thoughts;
All of my forces
Yearn only to sink into sleep.
And my soul, unguarded,
Would soar on widespread wings,
To live in night's magical sphere
More profoundly, more variously.
-- Hermann Hesse, "Going to Sleep"
%
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next time
some housewife or boutique owner turned diet expert appears on TV to plug
her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for eating coffee
cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself the following questions:
1: Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a food?
2: Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
3: Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as prescribed...
without French-fried onion rings, pizza with double cheese, or the
occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living right doesn't really make
you live longer, it just *seems* like longer.)
That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
%
Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ...
-- "The Begatting of a President"
%
Now there's a violent movie titled, "The Croquet Homicide,"
or "Murder With Mallets Aforethought."
-- Shelby Friedman, WSJ
%
Now there's three things you can do in a baseball game:
you can win or you can lose or it can rain.
-- Casey Stengel
%
Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a
smurfette.
-- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
%
Nowlan's Theory:
He who hesitates is not only lost, but several miles from
the next freeway exit.
%
Now's the time to have some big ideas
Now's the time to make some firm decisions
We saw the Buddha in a bar down south
Talking politics and nuclear fission
We see him and he's all washed up --
Moving on into the body of a beetle
Getting ready for a long long crawl
He ain't nothing -- he ain't nothing at all...
Death and Money make their point once more
In the shape of Philosophical assassins
Mark and Danny take the bus uptown
Deadly angels for reality and passion
Have the courage of the here and now
Don't taking nothing from the half-baked buddhas
When you think you got it paid in full
You got nothing -- you got nothing at all...
We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
We know his name and he mustn't get away.
We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
It would take one shot -- to blow him away...
-- Shriekback, "Gunning for the Buddha"
%
Nuclear powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.
-- Alex Lewyt (President of the Lewyt Corporation,
manufacturers of vacuum cleaners), quoted in The New York
Times, June 10, 1955.
%
[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
-- Edwin Meese III
%
Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
normal routines, for children and adults alike.
-- Willard F. Libby, "You Can Survive Atomic Attack"
%
Nuclear war would really set back cable.
-- Ted Turner
%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%
Nuke the unborn gay female whales for Jesus.
%
Nuke them till they glow, then shoot them in the dark.
%
(null cookie; hope that's ok)
%
Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit.
-- Seneca
%
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
%
Nurse Donna: Oh, Groucho, I'm afraid I'm gonna wind up an old maid.
Groucho: Well, bring her in and we'll wind her up together.
Nurse Donna: Do you believe in computer dating?
Groucho: Only if the computers really love each other.
%
Nusbaum's Rule:
The more pretentious the corporate name, the smaller the
organization. (For instance, the Murphy Center for the
Codification of Human and Organizational Law, contrasted
to IBM, GM, and AT&T.)
%
O! If I were a fish
I'd lay hap'ly on my dish.
Yes, that's my one and only wish --
To be a fish!
For fish don't ever mish;
They needn't flush after they pish!
Yes, and life's just swish, swish, swish,
For all the fish!!!
%
O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?
%
O imitators, you slavish herd!
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
-- Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure", II, 2
%
O Lord, grant that we may always be right,
for Thou knowest we will never change our minds.
%
O love, could thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire,
Might we not smash it to bits
And mould it closer to our hearts' desire?
-- Omar Khayyam, tr. Fitzgerald
%
Oatmeal raisin.
%
Objects are lost only because people
look where they are not rather than where they are.
%
O'Brian's Law:
Everything is always done for the wrong reasons.
%
O'Brien held up his left hand, its back toward Winston, with the
thumb hidden and the four fingers extended.
"How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"
"Four."
"And if the Party says that it is not four but five --
then how many?"
"Four."
The word ended in a gasp of pain.
-- George Orwell
%
Observe yon plumed biped fine.
To activate its captivation,
Deposit on its termination,
A quantity of particles saline.
%
Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
%
Obviously, a major malfunction has occurred.
-- Steve Nesbitt, voice of Mission Control, January 28,
1986, as the shuttle Challenger exploded within view
of the grandstands.
%
Obviously the only rational solution to your problem is suicide.
%
OCCAM'S ERASER:
The philosophical principle that even the simplest
solution is bound to have something wrong with it.
%
Occident, n.:
The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is
largely inhabited by Christians, powerful sub-tribe of the
Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating,
which they are pleased to call "war" and "commerce." These, also,
are the principal industries of the Orient.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
OCEAN:
A body of water occupying about two-thirds
of a world made for man -- who has no gills.
%
Odets, where is thy sting?
-- George S. Kaufman
%
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.
%
Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this:
to know so much and have control over nothing.
-- Herodotus
%
Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
amount of hot air.
-- Thomas L. Martin
%
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
-- Plato
%
Of all the words of witch's doom
There's none so bad as which and whom.
The man who kills both which and whom
Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
-- Fletcher Knebel
%
Of all things man is the measure.
-- Protagoras
%
Of course a platonic relationship is possible -- but only between
husband and wife.
%
Of course it's possible to love a human being
if you don't know them too well.
-- Charles Bukowski
%
Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
tools aren't soluble in alcohol...
-- Crazy Nigel
%
Of course you can't flap your arms and fly to the moon.
After awhile you'd run out of air to push against.
%
Of course you have a purpose -- to find a purpose.
%
Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%. And of
TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a blazer.
%
Office Automation:
The use of computers to improve efficiency in the office
by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee.
%
Official Project Stages:
1. Uncritical Acceptance
2. Wild Enthusiasm
3. Dejected Disillusionment
4. Total Confusion
5. Search for the Guilty
6. Punishment of the Innocent
7. Promotion of the Non-participants
%
Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses
lampposts -- for support rather than illumination.
%
Often things ARE as bad as they seem!
%
Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.
%
Oh, Aunty Em, it's so good to be home!
%
Oh, by the way, which one's Pink?
-- Pink Floyd
%
Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%
Oh Father, my Father, Oh what must I do?
They're burning our streets and beating me blue.
"Listen my son, I'll tell you the truth:
Get a close haircut and spit-shine your shoes."
Oh Mother, my Mother, my confusions remove,
I long to embrace her whose hair is so smooth.
"Now listen my son, although you're confused,
Cut your hair close and shine all your shoes."
Oh Teacher, my Teacher, your life with me share.
What books ought I read? What thoughts do I dare?
"Oh Student, my Student, of dissent you beware.
Shine those dull shoes and cut short your hair."
Oh Preacher, my Preacher, does God really care?
Are all races equal? Are laws just and fair?
"Boy -- here's the answer, no need to despair:
Shine those new shoes and cut short that hair."
%
Oh freddled gruntbuggly, thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the goblerwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
see if I don't.
-- Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz
%
Oh, give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
And I'll show you a house with a really messy kitchen.
%
Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
Where the three-body problem is solved,
Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
And the cold virus never evolved. (chorus)
We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
And a kilogram weighs half a pound. (chorus)
If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
If we just find a big enough wrench. (chorus)
I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
And living up here is a bore.
Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
'Cause I'm moving next week to L4! (chorus)
CHORUS: Home, home on LaGrange,
Where the space debris always collects,
We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
Solar power and zero-gee sex.
-- to Home on the Range
%
Oh give me your pity!
I'm on a committee, We attend and amend
Which means that from morning And contend and defend
to night, Without a conclusion in sight.
We confer and concur,
We defer and demur, We revise the agenda
And reiterate all of our thoughts. With frequent addenda
And consider a load of reports.
We compose and propose,
We suppose and oppose, But though various notions
And the points of procedure are fun; Are brought up as motions,
There's terribly little gets done.
We resolve and absolve;
But we never dissolve,
Since it's out of the question for us
To bring our committee
To end like this ditty,
Which stops with a period, thus.
-- Leslie Lipson, "The Committee"
%
"Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the
dog] is good for almost every kind of game. He went duck hunting one time
and did real well at it. Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but,
you know, farm ducks. And it got Don Carlos all mixed up. Since the
ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he
wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something. So one morning
last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and
buried them." "What do you mean, buried them?" "Oh, he didn't hurt them.
He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth
and put them in the holes. Then he covered them up with mud except for
their heads. He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for
another one when Tony found him. We talked about it for a long time. Papa
said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't
know how to build a cage he put them in holes. He's a smart dog."
-- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning"
%
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
I muck with indices and structs all day
And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
%
Oh, I could while away the hours,
Smoking herbs and flowers,
Shooting up my veins,
De-dum, De-dum, De-dum
Tell you, I've been a-thinkin'
I could drive a shiny Lincoln,
If I dealt in good cocaine.
-- To 'If I Only Had A Brain' from "The Wizard of Oz"
%
Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
be irresponsible, too.
-- Lichty & Wagner
%
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
-- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
%
Oh I'm just a typical American boy
From a typical American town.
I believe in God and Senator Dodd
And keeping old Castro down.
And when it came my time to serve
I knew "Better Dead Than Red",
But when I got to my old draft board,
Buddy, this is what I said:
Chorus:
Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I've got a ruptured spleen,
And I always carry a purse!
I've got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat,
And my asthma's getting worse!
Yes, think of my career and my sweetheart dear,
And my poor old invalid aunt!
Besides I ain't no fool, I'm a-going to school
And I'm a-working in a defense plant!
-- Phil Ochs, "Draft Dodger Rag"
%
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a 4BSD?
My friends all got sources, so why can't I see?
Come all you moby hackers, come sing it out with me:
To hell with the lawyers from AT&T!
%
Oh, love is real enough, you will find it some day, but it has one
arch-enemy -- and that is life.
-- Jean Anouilh, "Ardele"
%
Oh, my friend, it is not what they take away from you that counts --
it's what you do with what you have left.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey
%
Oh no my dear, I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard.
-- Frank Morgan as The Wizard, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
Oh, so there you are!
%
Oh, the Slithery Dee, he crawled out of the sea.
He may catch all the others, but he won't catch me.
No, he won't catch me, stupid ol' Slithery Dee.
He may catch all the others, but AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
-- The Smothers Brothers
%
Oh this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is.
-- Gaius Valerius Catullus
%
Oh wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursel's as others see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us,
And foolish notion.
-- Robert Burns, National Poet of Scotland, 1759-1796
%
Oh wearisome condition of humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound.
-- Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke
%
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
%
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
-- Shakespeare
%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-- A. E. Housman
%
Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
%
Oh, ya doesn't have ta call me 'Johnson'! Well, you can call me 'Ray', or
you can call me 'Jay', or you can call me 'R.J.', or you can call me 'Ray
J.', or you can call me 'R.J.J.', or you can call me 'Ray J. Johnson', or
you can call me 'R.J. Johnson', but ya DOESN'T have to call me 'Johnson'...
%
Oh, yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of livin' is gone.
-- John Cougar, "Jack and Diane"
%
O.K., fine.
%
Ok, note to all reading this: if I ask for information and you don't
have the information available, don't bother sending me an e-mail
just to tell me that you don't have the information available. Wait
until you do have the information available, and then e-mail me. You'll
save precious time and electrons.
-- Bill Paul
%
OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard.
-- Dr. Joy
%
OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
%
Okay, Okay -- I admit it. You didn't change that program that worked
just a little while ago; I inserted some random characters into the
executable. Please forgive me. You can recover the file by typing in
the code over again, since I also removed the source.
%
Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.
%
Old age is always fifteen years old than I am.
-- B. Baruch
%
Old age is the harbor of all ills.
-- Bion
%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
%
Old age is too high a price to pay for maturity.
%
Old Grandad is dead but his spirits live on.
%
Old Japanese proverb:
There are two kinds of fools -- those who never climb Mt. Fuji,
and those who climb it twice.
%
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement.
%
Old mail has arrived.
%
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console
themselves for their inability to set a bad example.
-- La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims"
%
Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To fetch her poor daughter a dress.
When she got there, the cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter, I guess...
%
Old musicians never die, they just decompose.
%
Old programmers never die, they just become managers.
%
Old programmers never die, they just branch to a new address.
%
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.
%
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
%
Old timer, n:
One who remembers when charity was a virtue and not an organization.
%
Olivier's Law:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
%
omnibiblious, adj.:
Indifferent to type of drink. Ex: "Oh, you can get me anything.
I'm omnibiblious."
%
On a clear day, U.C.L.A.
%
On a clear disk you can seek forever.
-- P. Denning
%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
-- Wolfgang Pauli
%
On a tous un peu peur de l'amour, mais on
a surtout peur de souffrir ou de faire souffrir.
[One is always a little afraid of love, but
above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.]
%
On ability:
A dwarf is small, even if he stands on a mountain top;
a colossus keeps his height, even if he stands in a well.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca, 4BC - 65AD
%
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
what it does.
-- Will Rogers
%
On his way back from work, a driver came upon a horrible wreck in which one
car looked exactly like his neighbor's. Stopping hurriedly on the side of
the road, he ran toward the smoldering debris.
"Listen, mister," a policeman said, holding him back, "I can't let
you come any closer."
"But that may be my friend, Henry, in there," the anguished man
explained.
"OK, but it's pretty grisly," the cop cautioned. "There was a
decapitation."
The policeman reached into the back seat of the demolished car and
pulled forth the head, holding it at arm's length. "Is this your friend?"
"That's not him -- thank heavens," the man said. "Henry's much
taller."
%
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created jerks.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%
On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the
same moment -- halftime.
%
On the eighth day, God created FORTRAN.
%
On the night before her family moved from Kansas to California, the little
girl knelt by her bed to say her prayers. "God bless Mommy and Daddy and
Keith and Kim," she said. As she began to get up, she quickly added, "Oh,
and God, this is goodbye. We're moving to Hollywood."
%
On the subject of C program indentation:
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
-- Blair P. Houghton
%
On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
-- W.C. Fields' epitaph
%
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], "Pray, Mr.
Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers
come out?" I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of
ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage
%
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew,
and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
-- W.C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
%
Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
Once, adv.:
Enough.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Once again dread deed is done.
Canon sleeps,
his all-knowing eye shaded
to human chance and circumstance.
Peace reigns anew o'er Pine Valley,
but Canon's sleep is troubled.
Beware, scant days past the Ides of July.
Impatient hands wait eagerly
to grasp, to hold
scant moments of time
wrested from life in the full
glory of Canon's power;
held captive by his unblinking eye.
Three golden orbs stand watch;
one each to toll the day, hour, minute
until predestiny decrees his reawakening.
When that feared moment arrives,
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
-- "I extended the loan on your Camera, at the Pine
Valley Pawn Shop today"
%
Once Again From the Top
Correction notice in the Miami Herald: "Last Sunday, The Herald erroneously
reported that original Dolphin Johnny Holmes had been an insurance salesman
in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he had won the New York lottery in 1982 and
lost the money in a land swindle, that he had been charged with vehicular
homicide, but acquitted because his mother said she drove the car, and that
he stated that the funniest thing he ever saw was Flipper spouting water on
George Wilson. Each of these items was erroneous material published
inadvertently. He was not an insurance salesman in Raleigh, did not win the
lottery, neither he nor his mother was charged or involved in any way with
vehicular homicide, and he made no comment about Flipper or George Wilson.
The Herald regrets the errors."
-- "The Progressive", March, 1987
%
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
choice.
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
principles or your mistress".
%
Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it.
-- Homer
%
Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his
roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the
forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind
the railroad yards."
-- H. L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan,
counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution
law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
%
Once I finally figured out all of life's
answers, they changed the questions.
%
Once, I read that a man be never stronger
than when he truly realizes how weak he is.
-- Jim Starlin, "Captain Marvel #31"
%
Once is happenstance,
Twice is coincidence,
Three times is enemy action.
-- Auric Goldfinger
%
Once it hits the fan, the only rational choice is to
sweep it up, package it, and sell it as fertilizer.
%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon your knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."
Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings
infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can
grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it
possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
-- Rainer Rilke
%
Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in.
-- H. R. Haldeman
%
Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail,
And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail,
And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool,
He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!)
And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat,
He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat,
And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout!
And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out!
And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog,
And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god,
The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed,
But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed!
Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace,
And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste,
But all they ever found was this: "panic: never doubt",
And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out!
When the day is done and the moon comes out,
And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count,
When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey,
And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay,
You must mind the file protections and not snoop around,
Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down!
%
Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem. You see, during
a portion of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin
parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around. So,
to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the
end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the
page of the score before the bass cue. As the basses grew more and more
inebriated, two of them fell asleep. The conductor grew quite nervous (he
was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth;
the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out.
%
Once upon a time there...
%
Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled by a great bear. The peasants
were not very rich, and one of the few ways to become at all wealthy was
to become a Royal Knight. This required an interview with the bear. If
the bear liked you, you were knighted on the spot. If not, the bear would
just as likely remove your head with one swat of a paw. However, the family
of these unfortunate would-be knights was compensated with a beautiful
sheepdog from the royal kennels, which was itself a fairly valuable
possession. And the moral of the story is:
The mourning after a terrible knight, nothing beats the dog of the bear that
hit you.
%
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
the smaller prime numbers.
2: The Odd Prime --
It's the only even prime, therefore it's odd. QED.
3: The True Prime --
Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime
in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91
received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
at all.
Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
%
Once upon this midnight incoherent,
While you pondered sentient and crystalline,
Over many a broken and subordinate
Volume of gnarly lore,
While I pestered, nearly singing,
Suddenly there came a hewing,
As of someone profusely skulking,
Skulking at my chamber door.
%
Once you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all.
%
Once you've tried to change the world you find
it's a whole bunch easier to change your mind.
%
One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
somebody's listening.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
"One Architecture, One OS" also translates as "One Egg, One Basket".
%
"One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."
Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
-- Chuq Von Rospach
%
One Bell System - it sometimes works.
%
One Bell System - it used to work before they installed the Dimension!
%
One Bell System - it works.
%
One big pile is better than two little piles.
-- Arlo Guthrie
%
One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
-- Helen Keller
%
One can search the brain with a microscope and not find the
mind, and can search the stars with a telescope and not find God.
-- J. Gustav White
%
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
-- Professor Charles P. Issawi
%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast
to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists,
a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also
just stupid.
-- J. D. Watson, "The Double Helix"
%
One day an elderly Jewish Pole, living in Warsaw, finds an old lamp in his
attic. He starts to polish it and (poof!) a genie appears in a cloud of
smoke.
"Greetings, Mortal!" exclaims the genie, stretching and yawning, "For
releasing me I will grant you three wishes."
The old man thinks for a moment, then replies, "I want Genghis Khan
resurrected. I want him to re-unite the Mongol hordes, march to the Polish
border, decide he doesn't want to invade, and march back home."
"No sooner said than done!" thunders the genie. "Your second wish?"
"Hmmmm. I want Genghis Khan resurrected. I want him to re-unite the
Mongol hordes, march to the Polish border, decide he doesn't want to invade,
and march back home."
"But... well, all right! Your third wish?"
"I want Genghis Khan resurrected. I want him to re-unite his ---"
"OKOKOKOK! Right. Got it. Why do you want Genghis Khan to march
to Poland three times and never invade?"
The old man smiles. "He has to pass through Russia six times."
%
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the
truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced,
"Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question
which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the
guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth -- the alternative
is death by hanging."
"I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows."
"I don't believe you."
"Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!"
"But that would make it the truth!"
"Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
%
One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and
decides to do something about it. He calls up his best friend, who is a
mathematical genius. "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some
way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track? We could
make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life." The mathematician thinks
this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself.
A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any
success. The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes,
actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but
there a number of details to be figured out.
After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house,
looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have
some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right
track."
At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by
pounding on his door at three in the morning. He has dark circles under his
eyes. His hair hasn't been combed for many days. He appears to be wearing
the same clothes as the last time. He has several pencils sticking out from
behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face. "WE CAN DO
IT! WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!!
And it's so EASY! First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple
harmonic motion..."
%
One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
A mad meta-poet,
With nothing to say,
Wrote a mad meta-poem
That started: "One day,
[...]
sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
Were the words that the poet,
Finally chose,
To bring his mad poem,
To some sort of close".
%
One difference between a man and a machine
is that a machine is quiet when well oiled.
%
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
-- Larry Gelbart
%
One dusty July afternoon, somewhere around the turn of the century, Patrick
Malone was in Mulcahey's Bar, bending an elbow with the other street car
conductors from the Brooklyn Traction Company. While they were discussing the
merits of a local ring hero, the bar goes silent. Malone turns around to see
his wife, with a face grim as death, stalking to the bar.
Slapping a four-bit piece down on the bar, she draws herself up to her
full five feet five inches and says to Mulcahey, "Give me what himself has
been havin' all these years."
Mulcahey looks at Malone, who shrugs, and then back at Margaret Mary
Malone. He sets out a glass and pours her a triple shot of Rye. The bar is
totally silent as they watch the woman pick up the glass and knock back the
drink. She slams the glass down on the bar, gasps, shudders slightly, and
passes out; falling straight back, stiff as a board, saved from sudden contact
with the barroom floor by the ample belly of Seamus Fogerty.
Sometime later, she comes to on the pool table, a jacket under her
head. Her bloodshot eyes fell upon her husband, who says, "And all these
years you've been thinkin' I've been enjoying meself."
%
One expresses well the love he does not feel.
-- J. A. Karr
%
One family builds a wall, two families enjoy it.
%
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
-- George Herbert
%
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.
-- Henry Brook Adams
%
One girl can be pretty -- but a dozen are only a chorus.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Last Tycoon"
%
One good reason why computers can do more work than
people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
%
One good suit is worth a thousand resumes.
%
One good thing about music,
Well, it helps you feel no pain.
So hit me with music;
Hit me with music now.
-- Bob Marley, "Trenchtown Rock"
%
One good turn asketh another.
-- John Heywood
%
One good turn deserves another.
-- Gaius Petronius
%
One good turn usually gets most of the blanket.
%
One has to look out for engineers -- they begin with sewing machines
and end up with the atomic bomb.
-- Marcel Pagnol
%
One hundred women are not worth a single testicle.
-- Confucius
%
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
-- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
%
One is often kept in the right road by a rut.
-- Gustave Droz
%
One learns to itch where one can scratch.
-- Ernest Bramah
%
ONE LIFE TO LIVE for ALL MY CHILDREN in
ANOTHER WORLD all THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES.
%
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
%
One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
many ...
-- Anthony Chevins
%
One man's constant is another man's variable.
-- A. J. Perlis
%
One man's folly is another man's wife.
-- Helen Rowland
%
One man's "magic" is another man's engineering.
"Supernatural" is a null word.
%
One man's Mede is another man's Persian.
-- George M. Cohan
%
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
%
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends
can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
-- Clifton Fadiman
%
One meets his destiny often on the road he takes to avoid it.
%
One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
I'll tell you."
%
One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell by Dickens
without laughing.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%
One nuclear bomb can ruin your whole day.
%
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from
one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70
percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course,
simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good,
nobody can touch him.
-- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan. 1983
%
One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an
advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from
mathematics.
-- N. Wiener
%
One of the disadvantages of having children is that they eventually get old
enough to give you presents they make at school.
-- Robert Byrne
%
One of the large consolations for experiencing anything
unpleasant is the knowledge that one can communicate it.
-- Joyce Carol Oates
%
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant
%
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't
understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was
reknowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the
time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He preferred people to be
puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
One of the most overlooked advantages to computers is... If they do
foul up, there's no law against whacking them around a little.
-- Joe Martin
%
One of the most striking differences between a
cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
-- Mark Twain
%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "_s_o_m_e_b_o_d_y has to
buy
retail."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they
need no answer.
-- George Gordon, Lord Byron
%
One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best
way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who fainted
in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become disoriented and
imagine they were in Topeka Kansas.
%
One of the signs of Napoleon's greatness is the fact that he
once had a publisher shot.
-- Siegfried Unseld
%
One of the worst of my many faults is that I'm too critical of myself.
%
One of your most ancient writers, a historian named Herodotus, tells of a
thief who was to be executed. As he was taken away he made a bargain with
the king: in one year he would teach the king's favorite horse to sing
hymns. The other prisoners watched the thief singing to the horse and
laughed. "You will not succeed," they told him. "No one can."
To which the thief replied, "I have a year, and who knows what might
happen in that time. The king might die. The horse might die. I might die.
And perhaps the horse will learn to sing.
-- "The Mote in God's Eye", Niven and Pournelle
%
One organism, one vote.
%
One person's error is another person's data.
%
One picture is worth 128K words.
%
One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.
-- Chinese proverb
%
One pill makes you larger And if you go chasing rabbits
And, one pill makes you small. And you know you're going to fall.
And the ones that mother gives you, Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Don't do anything at all. Has given you the call.
Go ask Alice Call Alice
When she's ten feet tall. When she was just small.
When men on the chessboard When logic and proportion
Get up and tell you where to go. Have fallen sloppy dead,
And you've just had some kind of And the White Knight is talking
mushroom backwards
And your mind is moving low. And the Red Queen's lost her head
Go ask Alice Remember what the dormouse said:
I think she'll know. Feed your head.
Feed your head.
Feed your head.
-- Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
%
One planet is all you get.
%
One possible reason that things aren't going according to plan
is that there never was a plan in the first place.
%
One possible reason why things aren't going
according to plan is that there never was a plan.
%
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's
say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also
be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.
Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that
your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
One reason why George Washington
Is held in such veneration:
He never blamed his problems
On the former Administration.
-- George O. Ludcke
%
One Saturday afternoon, during the campaign to decide whether or not there
should be a Coastal Commission, I took a helicopter ride from Los Angeles
to San Diego. We passed several state beaches, some crowded and some
virtually empty. They had the same facilities, and in some cases the crowded
and the empty beach were within a quarter mile of each other. Obviously
many beach-goers prefer to be crowded together. Buying more beaches that
people won't go to because they prefer to be crowded together on one beach
is a ridiculous waste of our natural resources and our taxes.
-- Ronald Reagan
%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
ONE SIZE FITS ALL:
Doesn't fit anyone.
%
One small step for man, one giant stumble for mankind.
%
One thing about the past.
It's likely to last.
-- Ogden Nash
%
ONE THING KIDS LIKE is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take
my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to a burned-out
warehouse. "Oh, oh," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and
cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke.
I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty
late.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
One thing the inventors can't seem to
get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
%
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror.
-- W. K. Hartmann
%
One thought driven home is better than three left on base.
%
One toke over the line, sweet Mary,
One toke over the line,
Sittin' downtown in a railway station,
One toke over the line.
Waitin' for the train that goes home,
Hopin' that the train is on time,
Sittin' downtown in a railway station,
One toke over the line.
%
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
new model.
%
One way to stop a run away horse is to bet on him.
%
One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at
the stake while the votes were being counted.
-- Thomas B. Reed
%
One would like to stroke and caress human beings, but one dares not do so,
because they bite.
-- Vladimir Lenin
%
One-Shot Case Study, n:
The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes green.
%
On-line, adj.:
The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.
%
Only a fool has no doubts.
%
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
-- Laurence Peter
%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%
Only fools are quoted.
-- Anonymous
%
Only God can make random selections.
%
Only great masters of style can succeed in being obtuse.
-- Oscar Wilde
Most UNIX programmers are great masters of style.
-- The Unnamed Usenetter
%
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four
essential food groups -- alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.
-- Alex Levine
[Oh come on, everybody knows that the four basic food groups are
hot sugar, cold sugar, carbohydrates and grease. Ed.]
%
Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right
to use the editorial "we".
%
Only someone with nothing to be sorry for
smiles back at the rear of an elephant.
%
Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying.
-- Baba Ram Dass
%
Only the fittest survive. The vanquished acknowledge their unworthiness by
placing a classified ad with the ritual phrase "must sell -- best offer,"
and thereafter dwell in infamy, relegated to discussing gas mileage and lawn
food. But if successful, you join the elite sodality that spends hours
unpurifying the dialect of the tribe with arcane talk of bits and bytes, RAMS
and ROMS, hard disks and baud rates. Are you obnoxious, obsessed? It's a
modest price to pay. For you have tapped into the same awesome primal power
that produces credit-card billing errors and lost plane reservations. Hail,
postindustrial warrior, subduer of Bounceoids, pride of the cosmos, keeper of
the silicone creed: Computo, ergo sum. The force is with you -- at 110 volts.
May your RAMS be fruitful and multiply.
-- Curt Suplee, "Smithsonian", 4/83
%
Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.
-- Hannah Arendt
%
Only those who leisurely approach that which the masses are
busy about can be busy about that which the masses take leisurely.
-- Lao Tsu
%
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
%
Only two groups of people fall for flattery -- men and women.
%
Only two kinds of witnesses exist. The first live in a neighborhood where
a crime has been committed and in no circumstances have ever seen anything
or even heard a shot. The second category are the neighbors of anyone who
happens to be accused of the crime. These have always looked out of their
windows when the shot was fired, and have noticed the accused person standing
peacefully on his balcony a few yards away.
-- Sicilian police officer
%
Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one
of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him.
%
Only way to open lips of pigeon, sledgehammer.
%
Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
%
Onward through the fog.
%
Operator, please trace this call and tell me where I am.
%
Opiates are the religion of the upper-middle classes.
-- Debbie VanDam
%
Opium is very cheap considering you don't
feel like eating for the next six days.
-- Taylor Mead, famous transvestite
%
Oppernockity tunes but once.
%
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard
work, so most people don't recognize them.
%
Oprah Winfrey has an incredible talent for getting the wierdest people to
talk to. And you just HAVE to watch it. "Blind, masochistic minority,
crippled, depressed, government latrine diggers, and the women who love
them too much on the next Oprah Winfrey."
%
Optimism is the content of small men in high places.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack Up"
%
Optimism, n:
The belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, good, bad,
and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by
those accustomed to falling into adversity, and most acceptably expounded
with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible
to the light of disproof -- an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment
but death. It is hereditary, but not contagious.
%
Optimist:
Someone who goes down to the marriage
bureau to see if his license has expired.
%
Optimist, n:
A bagpiper with a beeper.
%
Optimist, n.:
A proponent of the belief that black is white.
A pessimist asked God for relief.
"Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God.
"No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that
would justify them."
"The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked
something -- the mortality of the optimist."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%
Oral sex is like being attacked by a giant snail.
-- Germaine Greer
%
Orcs really aren't so bad (if you use lots of catsup).
%
Order and simplification are the first steps toward
mastery of a subject -- the actual enemy is the unknown.
-- Thomas Mann
%
Oregano, n.:
The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
%
Oregon, n.:
Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
night.
%
O'Reilly's Law of the Kitchen:
Cleanliness is next to impossible
%
Oreo
%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams
%
Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born
to people you could not have possibly met.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
%
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
%
Other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.
-- Antony and Cleopatra
%
Others can stop you temporarily, only you can do it permanently.
%
Others will look to you for stability,
so hide when you bite your nails.
%
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
Murphy was an optimist.
%
Ouch! That felt good!
-- Karen Gordon
%
"Our attitude with TCP/IP is, `Hey, we'll do it, but don't make a big
system, because we can't fix it if it breaks -- nobody can.'"
"TCP/IP is OK if you've got a little informal club, and it doesn't make
any difference if it takes a while to fix it."
-- Ken Olsen, in Digital News, 1988
%
Our business in life is not to succeed
but to continue to fail in high spirits.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
%
Our congratulations go to a Burlington Vermont civilian employee of the
local Army National Guard base. He recently received a substantial cash
award from our government for inventing a device for optical scanning.
His device reportedly will save the government more than $6 million a year
by replacing a more expensive helicopter maintenance tool with his own,
home-made, hand-held model.
Not surprisingly, we also have a couple of money-saving ideas that we submit
to the Pentagon free of charge:
a. Don't kill anybody.
b. Don't build things that do.
c. And don't pay other people to kill anybody.
We expect annual savings to be in the billions.
-- Sojourners
%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars,
but the trouble is they charge fifteen cents for them.
%
Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the
office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of
juice. But only *_h_e* had a lollipop.
He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"
Her reply:
"He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it
means to be a programmer."
%
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear -- kept us in a
continuous stampede of patriotic fervor -- with the cry of grave national
emergency... Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we
did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded.
Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never
to have been quite real.
-- General Douglas MacArthur, 1957
%
Our houseplants have a good sense of humous.
%
Our informal mission is to improve the love life of operators worldwide.
-- Peter Behrendt, president of Exabyte
%
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be;
They are but broken lights of thee.
-- Tennyson
%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
In kernel as it is in user.
%
Our parents were of Midwestern stock and very strict. They didn't want us
to grow up to be spoiled and rich. If we left our tennis racquets in the
rain, we were punished.
-- Nancy Ellis (George Bush's sister), in the New Republic
%
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
-- Roy L. Ash, ex-president, Litton Industries
%
Our problems are so serious that the best
way to talk about them is lightheartedly.
%
Our sires' age was worse that our grandsires'.
We their sons are more worthless than they:
so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
Our swords shall play the orators for us.
-- Christopher Marlowe
%
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, that's the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!
-- Monty Python
%
Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it.
-- Alex Schure
%
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
-- General Omar N. Bradley
%
Ours is a world where people don't know what they
want and are willing to go through hell to get it.
%
Out of sight is out of mind.
-- Arthur Clough
%
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing can ever be made.
-- Immanuel Kant
%
Out of the mouths of babes does often come cereal.
%
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Over the shoulder supervision is more a
need of the manager than the programming task.
%
Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
%
Overall, the philosophy is to attack the availability problem from two
complementary directions: to reduce the number of software errors through
rigorous testing of running systems, and to reduce the effect of the remaining
errors by providing for recovery from them. An interesting footnote to this
design is that now a system failure can usually be considered to be the
result of two program errors: the first, in the program that started the
problem; the second, in the recovery routine that could not protect the
system.
-- A. L. Scherr, "Functional Structure of IBM Virtual
Storage Operating Systems, Part II: OS/VS-2
Concepts and Philosophies,"
IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 12, No. 4.
%
Overconfidence breeds error when we take for granted that the game will
continue on its normal course; when we fail to provide for an unusually
powerful resource -- a check, a sacrifice, a stalemate. Afterwards the
victim may wail, `But who could have dreamt of such an idiotic-looking
move?'
-- Fred Reinfeld, "The Complete Chess Course"
%
Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
%
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
%
Overheard:
"How do I feel? Great! And I kiss pretty good, too!"
%
Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
%
Owe no man any thing...
-- Romans 13:8
%
Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard. It is fatal in
concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m. Humans exposed to the
oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes. Symptoms resemble very
much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.). In higher
concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it
takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place. The reason
for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of
oxygen in 20% concentration. It apparently contributes to a complex
process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is
always fatal.
However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the
fact it is habit forming. The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is
sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent. After that, any
considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with
symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.
Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard. All of the fires that were reported in
the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be
due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings
in question.
Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and
tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is
too late.
-- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956
%
Ozman's Laws:
(1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he won't.
(2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they make.
(3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
(4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
%
paak, n: A stadium or inclosed playing field. To put or leave (a
vehicle) for a time in a certain location.
patato, n: The starchy, edible tuber of a widely cultivated plant.
Septemba, n: The 9th month of the year.
shua, n: Having no doubt; certain.
sista, n: A female having the same mother and father as the speaker.
tamato, n: A fleshy, smooth-skinned reddish fruit eaten in salads
or as a vegetable.
troopa, n: A state policeman.
Wista, n: A city in central Masschewsetts.
yaad, n: A tract of ground adjacent to a building.
-- Massachewsetts Unabridged Dictionary
%
PAIN:
Falling out of a twenty story building,
and snagging your eyelid on a nail.
%
PAIN:
One thing, at least it proves that you're alive!
%
PAIN:
Sliding down a 50-foot razor blade into a bucket of alcohol.
%
Pain is just God's way of hurting you.
%
Painting, n.:
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
exposing them to the critic.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Pandora's Rule:
Never open a box you didn't close.
%
panic: can't find /
%
panic: kernel segmentation violation. core dumped (only kidding)
%
panic: kernel trap (ignored)
%
Paprika Measure:
2 dashes == 1smidgen
2 smidgens == 1 pinch
3 pinches == 1 soupcon
2 soupcons == too much paprika
%
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much
better.
-- Laurie Anderson
%
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
%
Paralysis through analysis.
%
PARANOIA:
A healthy understanding of the way the universe works.
%
Paranoia doesn't mean the whole world isn't out to get you.
%
Paranoia is heightened awareness.
%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%
Paranoid Club meeting this Friday.
Now ... just try to find out where!
%
Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy
to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
-- D. J. Hicks
%
Pardon me while I laugh.
%
Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
%
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Everything else causes cancer in rats.
%
Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they
didn't have much of anything to do with it.
%
Parker's Law:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%
Parsley is gharsley.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%
PARTY:
A gathering where you meet people who drink
so much you can't even remember their names.
%
Pascal is a language for children wanting to be naughty.
-- Dr. Kasi Ananthanarayanan
%
Pascal is not a high-level language.
-- Steven Feiner
%
Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat.
-- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340
%
Pascal, n.:
A programming language named after a man who would turn over
in his grave if he knew about it.
-- Datamation, January 15, 1984
%
Pascal Users:
The Pascal system will be replaced next Tuesday by Cobol.
Please modify your programs accordingly.
%
Pascal Users:
To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed.
%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
%
Password:
%
Passwords are implemented as a result of insecurity.
%
Paster Crosstalk: What items are specifically mentioned by GOD as being
unclean? Now did you know... preying birds... praying mantises...
All birds of prey, all carrion eaters, fish eaters -- no good, can't
eat those. Nothing that does not have both fins and scales. Most
CREEPING things...
Alvarado: How 'bout caterpillars?
P: A caterpillar doesn't have a backbone. Nothing without a backbone
can get in.
A: How do you know? You char a caterpillar, it gets real stiff!
P: Well, I don't think that the Lord meant us to eat CHARRED
CATERPILLARS!
[...]
P: The hog, the squirrel... little squirrels. Who would want to eat
a LITTLE SQUIRREL?
A: If you're starving. If you're starving in the park one day.
P: You'd probably just CHAR 'em to get 'em stiff, wouldn't ya?
A: No, you SINGE 'em. You SINGE 'em and eat 'em. *I* read about the
Donner Pass, I know what man does when he's hungry.
P: Squirrels eating squirrels -- my GOD, that's sick!
A: That's sick, SURE. But a MAN eating a squirrel -- that's (heh, heh)
par for the course, Charlie.
-- Firesign Theatre
%
Patageometry, n.:
The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
under brain transplants.
%
Patch griefs with proverbs.
-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
%
patent:
A method of publicizing inventions so others can copy them.
%
"Pathetic," he said. "That's what it is. Pathetic."
(crosses stream)
"As I thought," he said, "no better from *this* side."
-- Eeyore
%
Patience is a minor form of despair, disguised as virtue.
-- Ambrose Bierce, on qualifiers
%
Patience is long forgotten by convenience in this life.
-- Carmen Caicedo Giraudy
%
Patience is the best remedy for every trouble.
-- Titus Maccius Plautus
%
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
-- S. Johnson, "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by J. Boswell
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
-- Ambrose Bierce
When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel,
he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform.
-- Sen. Roscoe Conkling
Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
-- Boies Penrose
%
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Pauca sed matura. (Few but excellent.)
-- Gauss
%
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
%
Paul's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
save.
%
Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.
%
Pause for storage relocation.
%
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
-- Frank Morgan as The Wizard, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
paycheck:
The weekly $5.27 that remains after deductions for federal
withholding, state withholding, city withholding, FICA,
medical/dental, long-term disability, unemployment insurance,
Christmas Club, and payroll savings plan contributions.
%
Payeen to a Twang
Derrida
Ore-Ida
potato.
If you dared,
I'd ask you
to go dig
up your ides under brown-
tubered skies.
where pitchforked
you will ask
Derrida?
%
Peace be to this house, and all that dwell in it.
%
Peace cannot be kept by force; it
can only be achieved by understanding.
-- A. Einstein
%
Peace is much more precious than a piece
of land... let there be no more wars.
-- Mohammed Anwar Sadat, 1918-1981
%
Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Peanut Blossoms
4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
8 eggs 4 tsp. soda
4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased
cookie sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top
each cookie with a Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly
to crack cookie. Makes a hell of a lot.
%
Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
Never eat rutabaga on any day of
the week that has a "y" in it.
%
Pedaeration, n.:
The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Pediddel, n.:
A car with only one working headlight.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Pedro Guerrero was playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984
when he made the comment that earns him a place in my Hall of Fame. Second
baseman Steve Sax was having trouble making his throws. Other players were
diving, screaming, signaling for a fair catch. At the same time, Guerrero,
at third, was making a few plays that weren't exactly soothing to manager
Tom Lasorda's stomach. Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous
motivational meetings and zeroed in on Guerrero: "How can you play third
base like that? You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball.
What is it?"
"I'm only thinking about two things," Guerrero said. "First, `I
hope they don't hit the ball to me.'" The players snickered, and even
Lasorda had to fight off a laugh. "Second, `I hope they don't hit the ball
to Sax.'"
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
%
Peeping Tom:
A window fan.
%
Peers's Law:
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
%
Pelorat sighed.
"I will never understand people."
"There's nothing to it. All you have to do is take a close look
at yourself and you will understand everyone else. How would Seldon have
worked out his Plan -- and I don't care how subtle his mathematics was --
if he didn't understand people; and how could he have done that if people
weren't easy to understand? You show me someone who can't understand
people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself
-- no offense intended."
-- Asimov, "Foundation's Edge"
%
Penguin Trivia #46:
Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
-- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
PENGUINICITY!!
%
pension:
A federally insured chain letter.
%
People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of
attention) have often been likened to snowflakes. This analogy is meant to
suggest that each is unique -- no two alike. This is quite patently not the
case. People ... are simply a dime a dozen. And, I hasten to add, their
only similarity to snowflakes resides in their invariable and lamentable
tendency to turn, after a few warm days, to slush.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
People are beginning to notice you.
Try dressing before you leave the house.
%
People are like onions -- you cut them up, and they make you cry.
%
People are unconditionally guaranteed to be full of defects.
%
People don't change; they only become more so.
%
People don't usually make the same mistake twice -- they make it three
times, four time, five times...
%
People in general do not willingly read
if they have anything else to amuse them.
-- S. Johnson
%
People love high ideals, but they got to be about 33-percent plausible.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
-- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an
election.
-- Otto von Bismarck
%
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction
rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
People often find it easier to be a
result of the past than a cause of the future.
%
People respond to people who respond.
%
People say I live in my own little fantasy world... well, at least they
*know* me there!
-- D. L. Roth
%
People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people
have been left out on the pleasure.
-- Russell Baker
%
People seem to think that the blanket phrase, "I only work here,"
absolves them utterly from any moral obligation in terms of the
public -- but this was precisely Eichmann's excuse for his job in
the concentration camps.
%
People tend to make rules for others and exceptions for themselves.
%
People that can't find something to live for always seem to find something
to die for. The problem is, they usually want the rest of us to die for
it too.
%
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
-- Ken Kesey
%
People usually get what's coming to them -- unless it's been mailed.
%
People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get
much better press than people who are just funny and smart.
-- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
%
People who claim they don't let little things bother
them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito.
%
People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.
-- Abigail Van Buren
%
People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
%
People who have no faults are terrible;
there is no way of taking advantage of them.
%
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't
what they want that they don't want it.
-- Ogden Nash
%
People who make no mistakes do not usually make anything.
%
People who push both buttons should get their wish.
%
People who take cat naps don't usually sleep in a cat's cradle.
%
People who take cold baths never have rheumatism, but they have
cold baths.
%
People who think they know everything
greatly annoy those of us who do.
%
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin
Franklin said it first.
%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%
People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they
did yesterday.
%
People with narrow minds usually have broad tongues.
%
People's Action Rules:
(1) Some people who can, shouldn't.
(2) Some people who should, won't.
(3) Some people who shouldn't, will.
(4) Some people who can't, will try, regardless.
(5) Some people who shouldn't, but try, will then blame others.
%
Per buck you get more computing action with the small computer.
-- R. W. Hamming
%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
[Confound those who have said our remarks before us.]
or
[May they perish who have expressed our bright ideas before us.]
-- Aelius Donatus
%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%
perfect guest:
One who makes his host feel at home.
%
Perfection is finally attained, not when there is no longer
anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%
Performance:
A statement of the speed at which a computer system works. Or
rather, might work under certain circumstances. Or was rumored
to be working over in Jersey about a month ago.
%
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered.
I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy
poetry without a certain unsoundness of mind.
-- Thomas Macaulay
%
Perhaps the biggest disappointments were the ones you expected anyway.
%
Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we would
behave very differently from those who now hold it -- when, in truth, in
order to get power we would have to become very much like them. (Lenin's
fatal mistake, both in theory and in practice.)
%
Perhaps the world's second words crime is boredom. The first is
being a bore.
-- Cecil Beaton
%
Perilous to all of us are the devices of
an art deeper than we ourselves possess.
-- Gandalf the Grey
%
Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way. "The cost may be
upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be
nearly 10m#. "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable
news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris. "Rarely does
the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been
prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a
periphrasis for November, and another for lingers. "The answer is in the
negative" is a periphrasis for No. "Was made the recipient of" is a
periphrasis for Was presented with. The periphrasis style is hardly possible
on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis,
case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack,
nature, reference, regard, respect". The existence of abstract nouns is a
proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of
civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are
by many held to be inseparable. These good people feel that there is an almost
indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news
instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory
developments."
-- Fowler's English Usage
%
Persistence in one opinion has never been considered
a merit in political leaders.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares", 1st century BC
%
Personifiers of the world, unite!
You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
-- Bernadette Bosky
%
Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
%
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting
to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author
-- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer"
%
pessimist:
A man who spends all his time worrying about how he can keep the
wolf from the door.
optimist:
A man who refuses to see the wolf until he seizes the seat of
his pants.
opportunist:
A man who invites the wolf in and appears the next day in a fur coat.
%
Pete: Waiter, this meat is bad.
Waiter: Who told you?
Pete: A little swallow.
%
Peter Fellgett's wildcard recipe:
Into a clean dish, place the dry ingredients and add the
liquids until the right consistency is obtained. Turn out
into suitable containers and cook until done.
%
Peter Wemm Murphy Field, n.:
A field of abnormally frequent and severe Murphy's Law events
emanating from Mr. Peter Wemm. The field was first discovered and
identified in Denmark during the initial FreeBSD SMP development.
Mr. Wemm was residing in Australia at the time.
%
Peter's hungry, time to eat lunch.
%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills, and the
mountains will look after themselves.
Peter's Principle of Success:
Get up one time more than you're knocked down.
Peter's Principle:
In every hierarchy, each employee tends to rise to the level of
his incompetence.
%
Peterson's Admonition:
When you think you're going down for the third time --
just remember that you may have counted wrong.
%
Peterson's Rules:
(1) Trucks that overturn on freeways
are filled with something sticky.
(2) No cute baby in a carriage is ever a girl when called one.
(3) Things that tick are not always clocks.
(4) Suicide only works when you're bluffing.
%
Petribar, n.:
Any sun-bleached prehistoric candy that has been sitting in
the window of a vending machine too long.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Phasers locked on target, Captain.
%
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersey.
%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
%
philosophy:
The ability to bear with calmness the misfortunes of our friends.
%
philosophy:
Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.
%
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
-- John Keats
%
Phone call for chucky-pooh.
%
Phosflink, v:
To flick a bulb on and off when it burns out (as if, somehow,
that will bring it back to life).
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Photographing a volcano is just about
the most miserable thing you can do.
-- Robert B. Goodman
[Who has clearly never tried to use a PDP-10. Ed.]
%
Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the
farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than
chickens and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Getting Married"
%
Pick another fortune cookie.
%
Picking up the pieces of my sweet shattered dream,
I wonder how the old folks are tonight,
Her name was Ann, and I'll be damned if I recall her face,
She left me not knowing what to do.
Carefree Highway, let me slip away on you,
Carefree Highway, you seen better days,
The morning after blues, from my head down to my shoes,
Carefree Highway, let me slip away, slip away, on you...
Turning back the pages to the times I love best,
I wonder if she'll ever do the same,
Now the thing that I call livin' is just bein' satisfied,
With knowing I got noone left to blame.
Carefree Highway, I got to see you, my old flame...
Searching through the fragments of my dream shattered sleep,
I wonder if the years have closed her mind,
I guess it must be wanderlust or tryin' to get free,
From the good old faithful feelin' we once knew.
-- Gordon Lightfoot, "Carefree Highway"
%
Pickle's Law:
If Congress must do a painful thing,
the thing must be done in an odd-number year.
%
Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ...
%
Piddle, twiddle, and resolve,
Not one damn thing do we solve.
-- 1776
%
Pie are not square. Pie are round. Cornbread are square.
%
Piece of cake!
-- G. S. Koblas
%
Pig, n.:
An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however,
is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Pilfering Treasure property is particularly dangerous: big thieves are
ruthless in punishing little thieves.
-- Diogenes
%
Pilots should avoid using illegal drugs.
-- AOPA's Pilot's Handbook, 1988
%
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again;"
So I piped: he wept to hear.
-- William Blake, "Songs of Innocence"
%
Pipo was born with few complications, but then the doctor accidently dropped
the infant on her head provoking her drunken father to drag the physician
outside where he would beat him to death with a live ocelot.
-- Love and Rockets
%
PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed
by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your associates
and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack confidence
and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible things to
small animals.
%
PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the American
Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as nobody
else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will probably
get run over by a bus.
%
PISCES (Feb.19 - Mar.20)
You will get some very interesting news of a promotion today.
It will go to someone in the office you dislike and will be the
job you wanted. Don't lend anyone a car today. You don't have
a car.
%
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
-- Don Marquis
%
pixel, n:
A mischievous, magical spirit associated with screen displays.
The computer industry has frequently borrowed from mythology:
Witness the sprites in computer graphics, the demons in artificial
intelligence, and the trolls in the marketing department.
%
P-K4
%
Plaese porrf raed.
-- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
%
Plagiarize, plagiarize,
Let no man's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
Don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize.
Only be sure to call it research.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Planet Claire has pink hair.
All the trees are red.
No one ever dies there.
No one has a head....
%
Plastic... Aluminum... These are the inheritors of the Universe!
Flesh and Blood have had their day... and that day is past!
-- Green Lantern Comics
%
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
couldn't compete successfully with poets.
-- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
Shell"
%
PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP:
What develops when two people get
tired of making love to each other.
%
Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill
them.
%
Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic
table.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
Please don't put a strain on our friendship
by asking me to do something for you.
%
Please don't recommend me to your friends--
it's difficult enough to cope with you alone.
%
PLEASE DON'T SMOKE HERE!
Penalty: An early, lingering death from cancer,
emphysema, or other smoking-caused ailment.
%
Please forgive me if, in the heat of battle,
I sometimes forget which side I'm on.
%
Please go away.
%
Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it.
%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%
Please keep your hands off the secretary's reproducing equipment.
%
Please, Mother! I'd rather do it myself!
%
Please remain calm, it's no use both of
us being hysterical at the same time.
%
Please stand for the National Anthem:
Australian's all, let us rejoice,
For we are young and free.
We've golden soil and wealth for toil
Our home is girt by sea.
Our land abounds in nature's gifts
Of beauty rich and rare.
In history's page, let every stage
Advance Australia Fair.
In joyful strains then let us sing,
Advance Australia Fair.
Thank you. You may resume your seat.
%
Please stand for the National Anthem:
God save our Gracious Queen!
Long live our Noble Queen!
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign o'er us!
God save the Queen!
Thank you. You may resume your seat.
%
Please stand for the National Anthem:
O Canada
Our home and native land
True patriot love
In all thy sons' command
With glowing hearts we see thee rise
The true north strong and free
From far and wide, O Canada
We stand on guard for thee
God keep our land glorious and free
O Canada we stand on guard for thee
O Canada we stand on guard for thee
Thank you. You may resume your seat.
%
Please stand for the National Anthem:
Oh, say can you see by dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Thank you. You may resume your seat.
%
Please take note:
%
Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas"
until you are told that those rooms are "punched out." Once punched out,
we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.
-- N. Meyrowitz
%
Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
%
PL/I -- "the fatal disease" -- belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
Plots are like girdles. Hidden, they hold your interest; revealed, they're
of no interest except to fetishists. Like girdles, they attempt to contain
an uncontainable experience.
-- R. S. Knapp
%
PLUG IT IN!!!
%
Plus ca change, plus c'est le meme chose.
%
Pohl's law:
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%
poisoned coffee, n:
Grounds for divorce.
%
Poland has gun control.
%
Police: Good evening, are you the host?
Host: No.
Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host: About the drugs?
Police: No.
Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police: No, the noise.
Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
The neighbors?
Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
ask the host to quiet things down?
Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive
religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
down.
%
Political history is far too criminal a subject to be a fit thing to
teach children.
-- W. H. Auden
%
Political speeches are like steer horns. A point
here, a point there, and a lot of bull in between.
-- Alfred E. Neuman
%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%
Politician, n.:
An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the
agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As
compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of
being alive.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Politician, n.:
From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or
"face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face).
Hence "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
-- Martin Pitt
%
Politicians are the same everywhere. They promise
to build a bridge even where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev
%
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
Politicians speak for their parties, and parties never are, never have
been, and never will be wrong.
-- Walter Dwight
%
Politics -- the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign
funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.
-- Oscar Ameringer
%
Politics and the fate of mankind are formed by men without ideals and
without greatness. Those who have greatness within them do not go in
for politics.
-- Albert Camus
%
Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as
dangerous. In war, you can only be killed once.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the
systematic organisation of hatreds.
-- Henry Adams, "The Education of Henry Adams"
%
Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart
enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
%
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing
between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to
realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
-- Ronald Reagan
%
Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next
week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to
explain why it didn't happen.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Politics, like religion, hold up the
torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
Politics makes strange bedfellows, and journalism makes strange politics.
-- Amy Gorin
%
Politics, n.:
A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles.
The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Pollyanna's Educational Constant:
The hyperactive child is never absent.
%
POLYGON:
Dead parrot.
%
Polymer physicists are into chains.
%
Poorman's Rule:
When you pull a plastic garbage bag from its handy dispenser
package, you always get hold of the closed end and try to
pull it open.
%
Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The white
smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before it dawned
on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his name had hilarious
possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with laughter, singing
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the chimney smokes
Pope Goestheveezl
The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter
streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic
functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant
Bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of Koln in 1653.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Populus vult decipi.
[The people like to be deceived.]
%
Porsche; there simply is no substitute.
-- Risky Business
%
Portable, adj.:
Survives system reboot.
%
POSITIVE:
Being mistaken at the top of your voice.
%
Positive, adj.:
Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Possessions increase to fill the space available for their storage.
-- Ryan
%
Post proelium, praemium.
[After the battle, the reward.]
%
Postmen never die, they just lose their zip.
%
Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents:
SPUD ROGERS OF THE 25TH CENTURY: Story of an Air Force potato that's
left in a rarely used chow hall for over two centuries and wakes up in a world
populated by soybean created imitations under the evil Dick Tater. Thanks to
him, the soy-potatoes learn that being a 'tater is where it's at. Memorable
line, "'Cause I'm just a stud spud!"
FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER SERIES: Crazed potato who was left in a
fryer too long and was charbroiled carelessly returns to wreak havoc on
unsuspecting, would-be teen camp cooks. Scenes include a girl being stuffed
with chives and Fleischman's Margarine and a boy served up on a side dish
with beets and dressing. Definitely not for the squeamish, or those on
diets that are driving them crazy.
FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER II,III,IV,V,VI: Much, much more of the same.
Except with sour cream.
%
Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents:
THE TATERNATOR: Cyborg spud returns from the future to present-day
McDonald's restaurant to kill the potatoes (girl 'tater) who will give birth
to the world's largest french fry (The Dark Powers of Burger King are clearly
behind this). Most quotable line: "Ah'll be baked..."
A FISTFUL OF FRIES: Western in which our hero, The Spud with No Name,
rides into a town that's deprived of carbohydrates thanks to the evil takeover
of the low-cal Scallopinni Brothers. Plenty of smokeouts, fry-em-ups, and
general butter-melting by all.
FOR A FEW FRIES MORE: Takes up where AFOF left off! Cameo by Walter
Cronkite, as every man's common 'tater!
%
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
%
POVERTY:
An unfortunate state that persists as long
as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
%
Poverty begins at home.
%
Poverty must have its satisfactions, else there would not be so many
poor people.
-- Don Herold
%
Power and ignorance is a detestable cocktail.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
%
Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
%
Power corrupts. Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
-- Vint Cerf
%
Power is poison.
%
Power is the finest token of affection.
%
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches...
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
%
Power, n:
The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
%
Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-- Lord Acton
%
PPRB -- Pillage, plunder, rape and burn.
%
Practical people would be more practical if
they would take a little more time for dreaming.
-- J. P. McEvoy
%
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
-- Henry Adams
%
Practically perfect people never permit
sentiment to muddle their thinking.
-- Mary Poppins
%
Practice is the best of all instructors.
-- Publilius
%
Practice yourself what you preach.
-- Titus Maccius Plautus
%
PRAIRIES:
Vast plains covered by treeless forests.
%
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
-- Stephen Coonts, "The Minotaur"
%
Praise the sea; on shore remain.
-- John Florio
%
Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore.
-- Russian Proverb
%
Pray, v:
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf
of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
-- Niels Bohr
%
Prejudice, n.:
A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
-- D. E. Knuth
%
Preserve the old, but know the new.
%
Preserve wildlife -- pickle a squirrel today!
%
Preserve Wildlife! Throw a party today!
%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic
pundits and forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%
President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50%
of the vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
-- The Washington Post
%
Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
It's on the other side.
%
Price's Advice:
It's all a game -- play it to have fun.
%
[Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves
the working man, he loves to see him work.
-- Winston Churchill
%
[Prime Minister MacDonald] has the gift of compressing the
largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Prince Hamlet thought Uncle a traitor
For having it off with his Mater;
Revenge Dad or not?
That's the gist of the plot,
And he did -- nine soliloquies later.
-- Stanley J. Sharpless
%
Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart. Harvard's is a subtle
taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco. It may even be a bad habit, for
all I know.
-- Prof. J. H. Finley '25
%
Priority:
A statement of the importance of a user or a program. Often
expressed as a relative priority, indicating that the user doesn't
care when the work is completed so long as he is treated less
badly than someone else.
%
Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.
-- Blake
%
Prizes are for children.
-- Charles Ives,
upon being given, but refusing, the Pulitzer prize
%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate How.
-- Frederick Winsor
%
Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have
orgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, which
is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
PROBLEM DRINKER:
A man who never buys.
%
Producers seem to be so prejudiced against actors who've had no training.
And there's no reason for it. So what if I didn't attend the Royal Academy
for twelve years? I'm still a professional trying to be the best actress
I can. Why doesn't anyone send me the scripts that Faye Dunaway gets?
-- Farrah Fawcett-Majors
%
Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
encryption standard and they came up with ...
Student: EBCDIC!
%
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng. 130
midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point on his exam.
Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average
has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%.
%
PROGRAM:
Any task that can't be completed in one telephone call or one
day. Once a task is defined as a program ("training program,"
"sales program," or "marketing program"), its implementation
always justifies hiring at least three more people.
%
program, n:
A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input
into error messages. tr.v. To engage in a pastime similar to banging
one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
%
Programmers do it bit by bit.
%
Programmers used to batch environments may find it hard to live
without giant listings; we would find it hard to use them.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
Programming Department:
Mistakes made while you wait.
%
Programming is an unnatural act.
%
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-- Rich Cook
%
PROGRESS:
Medieval man thought disease was caused by invisible demons
invading the body and taking possession of it.
Modern man knows disease is caused by microscopic bacteria
and viruses invading the body and causing it to malfunction.
%
Progress is impossible without change, and those who
cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Progress means replacing a theory that
is wrong with one more subtly wrong.
%
Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
-- James Thurber
%
Promise her anything, but give her Exxon unleaded.
%
Promising costs nothing, it's the delivering that kills you.
%
PROMOTION FROM WITHIN:
A system of moving incompetents up to the policy-making
level where they can't foul up operations.
%
Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead of the sword.
%
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
This technique is used on equations with 'n' in them. Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military use them.
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
We know it's true for n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than n. N is arbitrary, so we can take n
as large as we want. If n is sufficiently large, the case of n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important n are n less than n. We can
take n = n (from above), so it's true for n+1 because it's just about n.
QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
%
Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
legs for a horse.
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.
Topics to be covered in future issues include proof by:
Intimidation
Gesticulation (handwaving)
"Try it; it works"
Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
Blatant assertion
Changing all the 2's to _n's
Mutual consent
Lack of a counterexample, and
"It stands to reason"
%
Proper treatment will cure a cold in seven days,
but left to itself, a cold will hang on for a week.
-- Darrell Huff
%
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
BBW Branch Both Ways
BEW Branch Either Way
BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full
BH Branch and Hang
BMR Branch Multiple Registers
BOB Branch On Bug
BPO Branch on Power Off
BST Backspace and Stretch Tape
CDS Condense and Destroy System
CLBR Clobber Register
CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately
CM Circulate Memory
CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming
CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip
CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
%
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
DC Divide and Conquer
DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key
DO Divide and Overflow
EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator
EPI Execute Programmer Immediately
EROS Erase Read Only Storage
EXCE Execute Customer Engineer
HCF Halt and Catch Fire
IBP Insert Bug and Proceed
INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out])
PBC Print and Break Chain
PDSK Punch Disk
%
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
PI Punch Invalid
POPI Punch Operator Immediately
PVLC Punch Variable Length Card
RASC Read And Shred Card
RPM Read Programmers Mind
RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy)
RTAB Rewind tape and break
RWDSK rewind disk
RWOC Read Writing On Card
SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write
SLC Search for Lost Chord
SPSW Scramble Program Status Word
SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk
STROM Store in Read Only Memory
TDB Transfer and Drop Bit
WBT Water Binary Tree
%
Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Prototype designs always work.
-- Don Vonada
%
prototype, n.
First stage in the life cycle of a computer product, followed by
pre-alpha, alpha, beta, release version, corrected release version,
upgrade, corrected upgrade, etc. Unlike its successors, the
prototype is not expected to work.
%
Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
than the both put together.
%
Providence New Jersey is one of the few cities
where Velveeta cheese appears on the gourmet shelf.
%
Prunes give you a run for your money.
%
Pryor's Observation:
How long you live has nothing to do
with how long you are going to be dead.
%
PS: This message is not intended to supply the minimum
daily requirement of serious thought. Consult your doctor
or pharmacist, but not the one that just sent you electronic
junk mail or promises to make explicit drugs fast.
-- taken from Norman Wilson's .sig
%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
%
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents'
shortcomings.
-- Laurence J. Peter, "Peter's Principles"
%
Psychics will soon lead dogs to your body.
%
Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself
a therapy.
-- Karl Kraus
Psychiatry is the care of the id by the odd.
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
-- Carl G. Jung
%
psychologist, n:
Someone who watches everyone else when an attractive woman walks
into a room.
%
Psychologists think they're experimental psychologists.
Experimental psychologists think they're biologists.
Biologists think they're biochemists.
Biochemists think they're chemists.
Chemists think they're physical chemists.
Physical chemists think they're physicists.
Physicists think they're theoretical physicists.
Theoretical physicists think they're mathematicians.
Mathematicians think they're metamathematicians.
Metamathematicians think they're philosophers.
Philosophers think they're gods.
%
Psychology. Mind over matter.
Mind under matter? It doesn't matter.
Never mind.
%
Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Public use of any portable music system is a
virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies.
-- Zoso
%
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping
a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
%
Pudder's Law:
Anything that begins well will end badly.
(Note: The converse of Pudder's law is not true.)
%
Punning is the worst vice, and there's no vice versa.
%
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves
to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way
to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the
cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in
fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a
lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of
the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off of the TV screen.
%
PURGE COMPLETE.
%
PURITAN:
Someone who is deathly afraid that
someone, somewhere, is having fun.
%
Puritanism -- the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
-- H. L. Mencken, "A Book of Burlesques"
%
Purpitation, v:
To take something off the grocery shelf, decide you
don't want it, and then put it in another section.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Pushing 30 is exercise enough.
%
Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
%
Put a pot of chili on the stove to simmer.
Let it simmer. Meanwhile, broil a good steak.
Eat the steak. Let the chili simmer. Ignore it.
-- Recipe for chili from Allan Shrivers, former governor
of Texas.
%
Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest man.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte, "Maxims"
%
Put another password in,
Bomb it out, then try again.
Try to get past logging in,
We're hacking, hacking, hacking.
Try his first wife's maiden name,
This is more than just a game.
It's real fun, but just the same,
It's hacking, hacking, hacking.
%
Put cats in the coffee and mice in the tea!
%
Put no trust in cryptic comments.
%
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
%
Put your best foot forward.
Or just call in and say you're sick.
%
Put your brain in gear before starting your mouth in motion.
%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%
Put your trust in those who are worthy.
%
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%
Pyro's of the world... IGNITE !!!
%
Q: Are we not men?
A: We are Vaxen.
%
Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A: One per person.
%
Q: Do you think the idea of "one tool doing one job" has been
abandoned? ...
A: Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by
Perl.
-- Rob Pike
%
Q: Have you heard about the man who didn't pay for his exorcism?
A: He got re-possessed!
%
Q: How can we get the Beatles to reunite for one more concert?
A: With three more bullets.
%
Q: How can you tell if an elephant is having an affair with
your wife?
A: You have to wait 22 months.
%
Q: How can you tell if an elephant is sitting on your back
in a hurricane?
A: You can hear his ears flapping in the wind.
%
Q: How can you tell when a Burroughs salesman is lying?
A: When his lips move.
%
Q: How did the elephant get to the top of the oak tree?
A: He sat on an acorn and waited for spring.
Q: But how did he get back down?
A: He crawled out on a leaf and waited for autumn.
%
Q: How did the regular expression cross the road?
A: ^.*$
%
Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
%
Q: How do you catch a unique rabbit?
A: Unique up on it!
Q: How do you catch a tame rabbit?
A: The tame way!
%
Q: How do you keep a moron in suspense?
%
Q. How do you keep an Aggie busy at a terminal?
A. While he's not looking, switch it to "local".
%
Q: How do you know when you're in the <ethnic> section of Vermont?
A: The maple sap buckets are hanging on utility poles.
%
Q: How do you make an elephant float?
A: You get two scoops of elephant and some root beer...
%
Q: How do you save a drowning lawyer?
A: Throw him a rock.
%
Q: How do you shoot a blue elephant?
A: With a blue-elephant gun.
Q: How do you shoot a pink elephant?
A: Twist its trunk until it turns blue, then shoot it with
a blue-elephant gun.
%
Q: How do you stop an elephant from charging?
A: Take away his credit cards.
%
Q: How does a hacker fix a function which
doesn't work for all of the elements in its domain?
A: He changes the domain.
%
Q: How does a single woman in New York get rid of cockroaches?
A: She asks them for a commitment.
%
Q: How does a WASP propose marriage?
A: "How would you like to be buried with my people?"
%
Q: How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That's proprietary information. Answer available from AT&T on payment
of license fee (binary only).
%
Q: How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two. One to assure everyone that everything possible is being
done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
%
Q: How many Californians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Five. One to screw in the lightbulb and four to share the
experience. (Actually, Californians don't screw in
lightbulbs, they screw in hot tubs.)
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all
those Californians trying to share the experience.
%
Q: How many college football players does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but he gets three credits for it.
%
Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate.
It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them.
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%
Q: How many Democrats does it take to enjoy a good joke?
A: One more than you can find.
%
Q: How many elephants can you fit in a VW Bug?
A: Four. Two in the front, two in the back.
Q: How can you tell if an elephant is in your refrigerator?
A: There's a footprint in the mayo.
Q: How can you tell if two elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: There's two footprints in the mayo.
Q: How can you tell if three elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: The door won't shut.
Q: How can you tell if four elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: There's a VW Bug in your driveway.
%
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb
itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
%
Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. We'll fix it in software.
Q: How many system programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. The application can work around it.
Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. We'll document it in the manual.
Q: How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. The user can figure it out.
%
Q: How many Harvard MBAs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Just one. He grasps it firmly and the universe revolves around him.
%
Q: How many IBM 370s does it take to execute a job?
A: Four, three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%
Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fifteen. One to do it, and fourteen to write document number
GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility,
of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally
left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A:.....
consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
%
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot
to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for
reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb-assassin to break
the bulb in the first place.
%
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One. Only it's his light bulb when he's done.
%
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer",
and the party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb",
do hereby and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the
party of the second part shall be removed from the current
position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed
upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise
illumination of the area ranging from the front (north) door,
through the entryway, terminating at an area just inside the
primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of the carpet,
any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of
the second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement
between the parties.
The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not
be limited to, the following. The party of the first part
shall, with or without elevation at his option, by means of a
chair, stepstool, ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp
the party of the second part and rotate the party of the second
part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered
non-negotiable. Upon reaching a point where the party of the
second part becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the
party of the first part shall have the option of disposing of
the party of the second part in a manner consistent with all
relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes.
Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of
the first part shall have the option of beginning installation.
Aforesaid installation shall occur in a manner consistent with
the reverse of the procedures described in step one of this
self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation
should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being
non-negotiable.
The above described steps may be performed, at the option of
the party of the first part, by any or all agents authorized
by him, the objective being to produce the most possible
revenue for the Partnership.
%
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: You won't find a lawyer who can change a light bulb. Now, if
you're looking for a lawyer to screw a light bulb...
%
Q: How many marketing people does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I'll have to get back to you on that.
%
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
%
Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None: The lightbulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.
%
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
to the earlier joke.
%
Q: How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
light bulb?
A: Seven. Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim
that he's a doctor, not an electrician). Scotty, after checking
around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
that he "canna" see in the dark. Kirk will make an emergency stop at
the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promptly
killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
warp out of orbit. Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
given all lightbulbs they can carry. The new bulb is then inserted
and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
%
Q: How many people from New Jersey does it take to change a light
bulb?
A: Three. One to do it, one to watch, and the third to shoot the
witness.
%
Q: How many pre-med's does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Five: One to change the bulb and four to pull the ladder
out from under him.
%
Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has
to really want to change.
%
Q: How many Romulans does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Twelve. One to screw the light-bulb in, and eleven
to self-destruct the ship out of disgrace.
[Warning: do not tell this joke to Romulans or else be ready for
a fight. They consider it to be a disgrace, though it's
pretty good for a LBJ. Ed.]
%
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub
with brightly colored machine tools.
[Surrealist jokes just aren't my cup of fur. Ed.]
%
Q: How many WASPs does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: One.
%
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
of the way.
%
Q: How much does it cost to ride the Unibus?
A: 2 bits.
%
Q: How was Thomas J. Watson buried?
A: 9 edge down.
%
Q: Know what the difference between your latest project
and putting wings on an elephant is?
A: Who knows? The elephant *might* fly, heh, heh...
%
Q: Minnesotans ask, "Why aren't there more pharmacists from Alabama?"
A: Easy. It's because they can't figure out how to get the little
bottles into the typewriter.
%
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars.
What should I do?
A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on
believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably
be the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can.
No time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if
somebody else has made the correction.
And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're
the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have
to inform the whole net right away!
-- Brad Templeton, "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions
on Netiquette"
%
Q: What did one regular expression say to the other?
A: .+
%
Q: What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill?
A: "The elephants are coming over the hill."
Q: What did he say when saw them coming over the hill wearing
sunglasses?
A: Nothing, for he didn't recognize them.
%
Q: What did the regular expression match?
A: Identified the patterns "matc" and "match"
%
Q: What do a blonde and your computer have in common?
A: You don't know how much either of them mean to you until
they go down on you.
Q: What's the advantage to being married to a blonde?
A: You can park in the handicapped zone.
Q: Why did the blonde get so excited after she finished her jigsaw
puzzle in only 6 months?
A: Because on the box it said "From 2-4 years".
%
Q: What do little WASPs want to be when they grow up?
A: The very best person they can possibly be.
%
Q: What do monsters eat?
A: Things.
Q: What do monsters drink?
A: Coke. (Because Things go better with Coke.)
%
Q: What do they call the alphabet in Arkansas?
A: The impossible dream.
%
Q: What do WASPs do instead of making love?
A: Rule the country.
%
Q: What do Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common?
A: The same middle name.
%
Q: What do you call 15 blondes in a circle?
A: A dope ring.
Q: Why do blondes put their hair in ponytails?
A: To cover up the valve stem.
Q: Why did the blonde get so excited after she finished her jigsaw
puzzle in only 6 months?
A: Because on the box it said "From 2-4 years".
%
Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal?
A: Diyathinkhesaurus.
Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal with a dog?
A: Diyathinkhesaurus Rex.
%
Q: What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?
A: A stick.
%
Q: What do you call a brunette between two blondes?
A: An interpreter.
Q: Why do blondes have square breasts?
A: They forgot to take the tissues out of the box.
Q: What do you call ten blonds in a row?
A: A wind tunnel.
%
Q: What do you call a dog with no legs?
A: What does it matter? He can't come anyway.
[I got a dog with no legs -- I call him Cigarette.
Every night, I take him out for a drag. Ed.]
%
Q: What do you call a group of kids with low IQs, drinking diet cola,
eating fruit, and singing?
A: The Moron Tab and Apple Choir.
%
Q: What do you call a half-dozen Indians with Asian flu?
A: Six sick Sikhs (sic).
%
Q: What do you call a million cats at the bottom of Lake Michigan?
A: A good start.
%
Q: What do you call a principal female opera singer whose high C
is lower than those of other principal female opera singers?
A: A deep C diva.
%
Q. What do you call a TV set that fixes itself?
A. A Christian Science Monitor.
%
Q: What do you call a WASP who doesn't work for his father, isn't a
lawyer, and believes in social causes?
A: A failure.
%
Q: What do you call the money you pay to the government when
you ride into the country on the back of an elephant?
A: A howdah duty.
%
Q: What do you call the scratches that you get when a female
sheep bites you?
A: Ewe nicks.
%
Q: What do you get when you cross a mobster with an international
standard?
A: You get someone who makes you an offer that you can't understand!
%
Q: What do you get when you cross the Godfather with an attorney?
A: An offer you can't understand.
%
Q: What do you get when you stuff a flaming stick down a rabbit-hole?
A: Hot cross bunnies!
%
Q: What do you have when you have a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?
A: Not enough sand.
%
Q: What does a blonde do first thing in the morning?
A: She goes home.
Q: Why does a blonde have fur on the hem of her dress?
A: To keep her neck warm.
Q: How do you make a blonde laugh on Monday?
A: Tell her a joke on Friday.
%
Q: What does a WASP Mom make for dinner?
A: A crisp salad, a hearty soup, a lovely entree, followed by
a delicious dessert.
%
Q: What does it say on the bottom of Coke cans in North Dakota?
A: Open other end.
%
Q: What goes: Sis! Boom! Baaaaah!
A: Exploding sheep.
%
Q: What happens when four WASPs find themselves in the same room?
A: A dinner party.
%
Q: What is green and lives in the ocean?
A: Moby Pickle.
%
Q: What is it that a cow has four of and a woman has two of?
A: Feet.
%
Q: What is orange and goes "click, click?"
A: A ball point carrot.
%
Q: What is printed on the bottom of beer bottles in Minnesota?
A: Open other end.
%
Q: What is purple and commutes?
A: A boolean grape.
%
Q: What is purple and commutes?
A: An Abelian grape.
%
Q: What is purple and concord the world?
A: Alexander the Grape.
%
Q: What is the difference between a duck?
A: One leg is both the same.
%
Q: What is the difference between Texas and yogurt?
A: Yogurt has culture.
%
Q: What is the last thing a Kansas stripper takes off?
A: Her bowling shoes.
%
Q: What is the mating call of a blonde?
A: I think I'm drunk.
Q: What's the call of a disappointed blonde?
A: I *said*, I *think* I'm drunk!
Q: What is the mating call of the ugly blonde?
A: (Screaming) "I said: I'm drunk!"
%
Q: What is the sound of one cat napping?
A: Mu.
%
Q: What lies on the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A: A nervous wreck.
%
Q: What looks like a cat, flies like a bat, brays like a donkey, and
plays like a monkey?
A: Nothing.
%
Q: What regular expression do you often see around Christmas?
A: [^L]
%
Q: What's a light-year?
A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
%
Q: What's black and white and red all over?
A: Two nuns in a chainsaw fight.
%
Q: What's bruised, bleeding, and lies in a ditch?
A: Somebody who tells Aggie jokes.
%
Q: What's tan and black and looks great on a lawyer?
A: A doberman.
%
Q: What's the Blonde's cheer?
A: I'm blonde, I'm blonde, I'm B.L.O.N... ah, oh well..
I'm blonde, I'm blonde, yea yea yea...
Q: What do you call it when a blonde dies their hair brunette?
A: Artificial intelligence.
Q: How do you make a blonde's eyes light up?
A: Shine a flashlight in their ear.
%
Q. What's the capital of Canada?
A. American.
%
Q: What's the difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead
lawyer in the road?
A: There are skid marks in front of the dog.
%
Q: What's the difference between a duck and an elephant?
A: You can't get down off an elephant.
%
Q: What's the difference between a Mac and an Etch-a-Sketch?
A: You don't have to shake the Mac to clear the screen.
%
Q: What's the difference between a RHU cheerleader and a whale?
A: The moustache.
%
Q: What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?
A: One more drunk.
%
Q: What's the difference between Bell Labs and the Boy Scouts of America?
A: The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
%
Q. What's the difference between Los Angeles and yogurt?
A. Yogurt has a living, active culture.
%
Q: What's the difference between USL and the Graf Zeppelin?
A: The Graf Zeppelin represented cutting edge technology for its time.
%
Q: What's the difference between USL and the Titanic?
A: The Titanic had a band.
%
Q: What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
A: A canary with the super-user password.
%
Q: What's yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
A: Zorn's Lemon.
%
Q: Where's the Lone Ranger take his garbage?
A: To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump!
Q: What's the Pink Panther say when he steps on an ant hill?
A: Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant...
%
Q: Who cuts the grass on Walton's Mountain?
A: Lawn Boy.
%
Q: Why are Jewish divorces so expensive?
A: Because they're worth it!
%
Q: Why did the astrophysicist order three hamburgers?
A: Because he was hungry.
%
Q: Why did the blonde climb over the glass wall?
A: To see what was on the other side.
Q: Why do blondes like tilt steering wheels?
A: More head room.
Q: How does a blonde turn on the light after having sex?
A: She opens the car door.
%
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: He was giving it last rites.
%
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To see his friend Gregory peck.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A: To get to the other slide.
%
Q: Why did the germ cross the microscope?
A: To get to the other slide.
%
Q: Why did the lone ranger kill Tonto?
A: He found out what "kimosabe" really means.
%
Q: Why did the mathematician name his dog "Cauchy"?
A: Because he left a residue at every pole.
%
Q: Why did the programmer call his mother long distance?
A: Because that was her name.
%
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
%
Q: Why did the WASP cross the road?
A: To get to the middle.
%
Q: Why do firemen wear red suspenders?
A: To conform with departmental regulations concerning uniform dress.
%
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
%
Q: Why do people who live near Niagara Falls have flat foreheads?
A: Because every morning they wake up thinking "What *is* that noise?
Oh, right, *of course*!
%
Q: Why do the police always travel in threes?
A: One to do the reading, one to do the writing, and the other keeps
an eye on the two intellectuals.
%
Q: Why does Washington have the most lawyers per capita and
New Jersey the most toxic waste dumps?
A: God gave New Jersey first choice.
%
Q: Why don't blondes eat pickles?
A: Because they get their head stuck in the jars.
Q: Why do blondes wear underwear?
A: To keep their ankles warm.
Q: How do you kill a blonde?
A: Put spikes in her shoulder pads.
%
Q: Why don't lawyers go to the beach?
A: The cats keep trying to bury them.
%
Q: Why don't Scotsmen ever have coffee the way they like it?
A: Well, they like it with two lumps of sugar. If they drink
it at home, they only take one, and if they drink it while
visiting, they always take three.
%
Q: Why is Christmas just like a day at the office?
A: You do all of the work and the fat guy in the suit
gets all the credit.
%
Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation
function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?
A: That's the Law of Spline Demand.
%
Q: Why should blondes not be given coffee breaks?
A: It takes too long to retrain them.
Q: What's the mating call of the brunette?
A: All the blondes have gone home!
Q: How do you tell if a blonde's been using the computer?
A: There's white-out on the screen.
%
Q: Why should you always serve a Southern Carolina football man
soup in a plate?
A: 'Cause if you give him a bowl, he'll throw it away.
%
Q: Why was Stonehenge abandoned?
A: It wasn't IBM compatible.
%
QED.
%
QOTD:
"It's not the despair... I can stand the despair. It's the hope."
%
QOTD:
"A child of 5 could understand this! Fetch me a child of 5."
%
QOTD:
"A lack of advanced planning on your part does not constitute
an emergency on my part."
%
QOTD:
"A university faculty is 500 egotists with a common parking problem."
%
QOTD:
"All I want is a little more than I'll ever get."
%
QOTD:
"All I want is more than my fair share."
%
QOTD:
"Dead people are good at running because they don't
have to stop and breathe."
-- Hokey, watching "Night of the Living Dead"
%
QOTD:
"Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone."
%
QOTD:
"East is east... and let's keep it that way."
%
QOTD:
"Every morning I read the obituaries; if my name's not there,
I go to work."
%
QOTD:
"Everything I am today I owe to people, whom it is now
too late to punish."
%
QOTD:
"Flash! Flash! I love you! ...but we only have fourteen hours to
save the earth!"
%
QOTD:
"He eats like a bird... five times his own weight each day."
%
QOTD:
"Her other car is a broom."
%
QOTD:
"He's a perfectionist. If he married Raquel Welch, he'd expect
her to cook."
%
QOTD:
"He's such a hick he doesn't even have a trapeze in his bedroom."
%
QOTD:
"How can I miss you if you won't go away?"
%
QOTD:
"I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent."
%
QOTD:
"I am not sure what this is, but an 'F' would only dignify it."
%
QOTD:
"I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the
other hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out."
%
QOTD:
"I drive my car quietly, for it goes without saying."
%
QOTD:
"I haven't come far enough, and don't call me baby."
%
QOTD:
"I looked out my window, and saw Kyle Pettys' car upside down,
then I thought 'One of us is in real trouble.'"
-- Davey Allison, on a 150 m.p.h. crash
%
QOTD:
"I love your outfit, does it come in your size?"
%
QOTD:
"I may not be able to walk, but I drive from the sitting position."
%
QOTD:
"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
%
QOTD:
"I opened Pandora's box, let the cat out of the bag and put the
ball in their court."
-- Hon. J. Hacker (The Ministry of Administrative Affairs)
%
QOTD:
"I sprinkled some baking powder over a couple of potatoes, but it
didn't work."
%
QOTD:
"I thought I saw a unicorn on the way over, but it was just a
horse with one of the horns broken off."
%
QOTD:
"I treat her like a throughbred, and she's STILL a nag!"
%
QOTD:
"I tried buying a goat instead of a lawn tractor; had to return
it though. Couldn't figure out a way to connect the snow blower."
%
QOTD:
"I used to be an idealist, but I got mugged by reality."
%
QOTD:
"I used to be lost in the shuffle, now I just shuffle along with
the lost."
%
QOTD:
"I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance."
%
QOTD:
"I used to go to UCLA, but then my Dad got a job."
%
QOTD:
"I used to jog, but the ice kept bouncing out of my glass."
%
QOTD:
"I want a home, a family, an occasional spanking ..."
-- Kathy Ireland
%
QOTD:
"I won't say he's untruthful, but his wife has to call the
dog for dinner."
%
QOTD:
"I'd never marry a woman who didn't like pizza. I might play
golf with her, but I wouldn't marry her."
%
QOTD:
"If he learns from his mistakes, pretty soon he'll know everything."
%
QOTD:
"If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need the aftershave."
%
QOTD:
"If I'm what I eat, I'm a chocolate chip cookie."
%
QOTD:
"If it's too loud, you're too old."
%
QOTD:
"If you keep an open mind people will throw a lot of garbage in it."
%
QOTD:
"If you're looking for trouble, I can offer you a wide selection."
%
QOTD:
"I'll listen to reason when it comes out on CD."
%
QOTD:
"I'm just a boy named 'su'..."
%
QOTD:
"I'm not a nerd -- I'm 'socially challenged.'"
%
QOTD:
I'm not bald -- I'm "hair challenged".
[I thought that was "differently haired". Ed.]
%
QOTD:
"I'm not really for apathy, but I'm not against it either..."
%
QOTD:
"I'm on a seafood diet -- I see food and I eat it."
%
QOTD:
"In the shopping mall of the mind, he's in the toy department."
%
QOTD:
"It seems to me that your antenna doesn't bring in too many
stations anymore."
%
QOTD:
"It was so cold last winter that I saw a lawyer with his
hands in his own pockets."
%
QOTD:
"It wouldn't have been anything, even if it were gonna be a thing."
%
QOTD:
"It's a cold bowl of chili, when love don't work out."
%
QOTD:
"It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milk Bone underwear."
%
QOTD:
"It's been Monday all week today."
%
QOTD:
"It's been real and it's been fun, but it hasn't been real fun."
%
QOTD:
"It's hard to tell whether he has an ace up his sleeve or if
the ace is missing from his deck altogether."
%
QOTD:
"It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name."
%
QOTD:
"It's sort of a threat, you see. I've never been very good at
them myself, but I'm told they can be very effective."
%
QOTD:
"I've always wanted to work in the Federal Mint. And then go on
strike. To make less money."
%
QOTD:
"I've got one last thing to say before I go; give me back
all of my stuff."
%
QOTD:
"I've heard about civil Engineers, but I've never met one."
%
QOTD:
"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing
trivial."
%
QOTD:
"Just how much can I get away with and still go to heaven?"
%
QOTD:
"Let's do it."
-- Gary Gilmore, to his firing squad
%
QOTD:
"Like this rose, our love will wilt and die."
%
QOTD:
"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spend much of his life studying statistical
mechanics died in 1906 by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying
on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn."
-- Goodstein, States of Matter
%
QOTD:
"Money isn't everything, but at least it keeps the kids in touch."
%
QOTD:
"My ambition is to marry a rich woman who's too proud to let
her husband work."
%
QOTD:
"My life is a soap opera, but who gets the movie rights?"
%
QOTD:
"My mother was the travel agent for guilt trips."
%
QOTD:
"My shampoo lasts longer than my relationships."
%
QOTD:
"Of course it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with
a fake?"
%
QOTD:
"Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy."
%
QOTD:
"Oh, no, no... I'm not beautiful. Just very, very pretty."
%
QOTD:
"On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd say... oh, somewhere in there."
%
QOTD:
"Our parents were never our age."
%
QOTD:
"Overweight is when you step on your dog's tail and it dies."
%
QOTD:
"Sacred cows make great hamburgers."
%
QOTD:
"Say, you look pretty athletic. What say we put a pair of tennis
shoes on you and run you into the wall?"
%
QOTD:
"Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing."
%
QOTD:
"She's about as smart as bait."
%
QOTD:
"Silence is the only virtue he has left."
%
QOTD:
"Some people have one of those days. I've had one of those lives."
%
QOTD:
"Sure, I turned down a drink once. Didn't understand the question."
%
QOTD:
"Talent does what it can, genius what it must.
I do what I get paid to do."
%
QOTD:
"The baby was so ugly they had to hang a pork chop around its
neck to get the dog to play with it."
%
QOTD:
"The elder gods went to Suggoth and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
%
QOTD:
"The forest may be quiet, but that doesn't mean
the snakes have gone away."
%
QOTD:
"The only easy way to tell a hamster from a gerbil is that the
gerbil has more dark meat."
%
QOTD:
"There may be no excuse for laziness, but I'm sure looking."
%
QOTD:
"This is a one line proof... if we start sufficiently far to the
left."
%
QOTD:
"To hell with patience, I'm gonna kill me something!"
%
QOTD:
"Unlucky? If I bought a pumpkin farm, they'd cancel Halloween."
%
QOTD:
"What do you mean, you had the dog fixed? Just what made you
think he was broken!"
%
QOTD:
"What I like most about myself is that I'm so understanding
when I mess things up."
%
QOTD:
"What women and psychologists call `dropping your armor', we call
"baring your neck."
%
QOTD:
"Who? Me? No, no, NO!! But I do sell rugs."
%
QOTD:
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if real life supported control-Z?"
%
QOTD:
"Y'know how s'm people treat th'r body like a TEMPLE?
Well, I treat mine like 'n AMUSEMENT PARK... S'great..."
%
QOTD:
"You want me to put *holes* in my ears and hang things from them?
How... tribal."
%
QOTD:
"You're so dumb you don't even have wisdom teeth."
%
Quack!
Quack!! Quack!!
%
Quality control:
Assuring that the quality of a product does not get out of hand
and add to the cost of its manufacture or design.
%
Quality Control, n.:
The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
%
Quantity is no substitute for quality,
but its the only one we've got.
%
Quantum Mechanics is a lovely introduction to Hilbert Spaces!
-- Overheard at last year's Archimedeans' Garden Party
%
Quantum Mechanics is God's version of "Trust me."
%
QUARK:
The sound made by a well bred duck.
%
Quark! Quark! Beware the quantum duck!
%
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
-- Wm. Shakespeare
%
QUESTION AUTHORITY.
(Sez who?)
%
Question: Is it better to abide by the rules until
they're changed or help speed the change by breaking them?
%
Questionable day.
Ask somebody something.
%
Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?
%
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
%
Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
%
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
%
Quigley's Law:
Whoever has any authority over you,
no matter how small, will attempt to use it.
%
Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away.
-- Robert Orben
%
Quite frankly, I don't like you humans.
After what you all have done, I find being "inhuman" a compliment.
%
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
`
%
Qvid me anxivs svm?
%
Radicalism:
The conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today.
-- A. Bierce
%
RADIO SHACK LEVEL II BASIC
READY
>_
%
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
%
Raffiniert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht.
-- Albert Einstein
%
rain falls where clouds come
sun shines where clouds go
clouds just come and go
-- Florian Gutzwiller
%
Rainy days and automatic weapons always get me down.
%
Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.
%
Raising pet electric eels is gaining a lot of current popularity.
%
Ralph's Observation:
It is a mistake to let any mechanical object
realise that you are in a hurry.
%
RAM wasn't built in a day.
%
Random, n:
as in number, predictable.
as in memory access, unpredictable.
%
Rarely do people communicate; they just take turns talking.
%
Rascal, am I? Take THAT!
-- Errol Flynn
%
Rate yourself on the nerd-o-matic scale. (1 point for each YES answer)
Are your glasses mended with a strip of masking tape right over your nose?
Do you put pennies in the slots in your penny loafers?
Does your bow-tie flash "hey you kid" in red neon at parties?
Do you think pizza before noon is unhealthy?
Do you use the "greasy kid's stuff" to stick down your cowlick?
Do you wear a "nerd-pack" in your shirt pocket to keep the dozen
or so pencils from marking the cloth?
Do you think Mary Jane is somebody's name?
Is illegal fishing is something only a daring criminal would do?
Is Batman your hero? Superman? Green Lantern? The Shadow?
Do you think girls who kiss on the first date are loose?
0-2 -- You are really hip, a real cool cat, a hoopy frood.
3-5 -- There is hope for you yet.
6-7 -- Uh-oh, trouble in River City.
8-10 -- Your immortal soul is in peril.
11+ -- Does suicide seem attractive?
%
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I
saw at the airport... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer
magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it
bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won
secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul
when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault
insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long
before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the
A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical
engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store?
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE president
%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926
%
Re: Graphics:
A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately
described with pictures.
%
Reach into the thoughts of friends,
And find they do not know your name.
Squeeze the teddy bear too tight,
And watch the feathers burst the seams.
Touch the stained glass with your cheek,
And feel its chill upon your blood.
Hold a candle to the night,
And see the darkness bend the flame.
Tear the mask of peace from God,
And hear the roar of souls in hell.
Pluck a rose in name of love,
And watch the petals curl and wilt.
Lean upon the western wind,
And know you are alone.
-- Dru Mims
%
Reactor error - core dumped!
%
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain
%
Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
%
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
%
Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic
value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is
much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice
this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA.
%
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has
limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are
so poor at I/O.
%
Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are
so long they can't afford the disk space.
%
Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
%
Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker with
`programming systems', but those are so high level that they hardly count
(and rarely count accurately; precision is for applications).
%
Real computer scientists like having a computer on their desk, else how
could they read their mail?
%
Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run on
future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo sapiens
will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
%
Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured
programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-
trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
clear desks.
%
Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell
quiche.
%
Real programmers don't document; if it was
hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
%
Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the
illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much
good it did them.
%
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
spring up in the middle of the machine room.
%
Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write
in BASIC after reaching puberty.
%
Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress
freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who
wear white socks.
%
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for
programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
%
Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
%
Real programs don't eat cache.
%
Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they
use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
%
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
%
Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
systems could be virtual at *_a_l_l* levels. They would like personal
computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
Correctness Verification Aid packages.
%
Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the
job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like
using an undocumented external procedure.
%
Real Time, adj.:
Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
and then.
%
Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
afraid to break your face.
%
Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
down the system for days.
%
Real Users hate Real Programmers.
%
Real Users know your home telephone number.
%
Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
program doesn't deliver it.
%
Real Users never use the Help key.
%
Real wealth can only increase.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Real World, The n.:
1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may
be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4.
The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
"Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
deceased person.
%
Reality -- what a concept!
-- Robin Williams
%
Reality always seems harsher in the early morning.
%
Reality does not exist - yet.
%
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
%
Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
-- Patrick Sky
%
Reality is for people who can't deal with drugs.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Reality is for people who lack imagination.
%
Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
-- Alvy Ray Smith
%
Reality is just a crutch for people who can't handle science fiction.
%
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go
away.
-- Philip K. Dick
%
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for Mother Nature
cannot be fooled.
-- R. P. Feynman
%
Really?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!
%
Reappraisal, n:
An abrupt change of mind after being found out.
%
Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
%
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
Recent investments will yield a slight profit.
%
Recent research has tended to show that the Abominable No-Man
is being replaced by the Prohibitive Procrastinator.
-- C. N. Parkinson
%
Recently deceased blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan "comes to" after
his death. He sees Jimi Hendrix sitting next to him, tuning his guitar.
"Holy cow," he thinks to himself, "this guy is my idol." Over at the
microphone, about to sing, are Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and the
bassist is the late Barry Oakley of the Allman Brothers. So Stevie
Ray's thinking, "Oh, wow! I've died and gone to rock and roll heaven."
Just then, Karen Carpenter walks in, sits down at the drums, and says:
"'Close to You'. Hit it, boys!"
-- Told by Penn Jillette, of magic/comedy duo Penn and Teller
%
Reception area, n:
The purgatory where office visitors are condemned to spend
innumerable hours reading dog-eared back issues of trade
magazines like Modern Plastics, Chain Saw Age, and Chicken World,
while the receptionist blithely reads her own trade magazine --
Cosmopolitan.
%
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions.
%
Recipe for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster:
(1) Take the juice from one bottle of Ol' Janx Spirit
(2) Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of
Santraginus V (Oh, those Santraginean fish!)
(3) Allow 3 cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the
mixture (properly iced or the benzine is lost.)
(4) Allow four liters of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it.
(5) Over the back of a silver spoon, float a measure of
Qualactin Hypermint extract.
(6) Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve.
(7) Sprinkle Zamphuor.
(8) Add an olive.
(9) Drink... but... very carefully...
-- Douglas Adams
%
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
%
Recursion is the root of computation
since it trades description for time.
%
Recursion: n. See Recursion.
-- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
%
Regardless of whether a mission expands or contracts,
administrative overhead continues to grow at a steady rate.
%
Regnant populi.
%
Regression analysis:
Mathematical techniques for trying to understand why things are
getting worse.
%
Reichel's Law:
A body on vacation tends to remain on vacation unless acted upon by
an outside force.
%
Reinhart was never his mother's favorite -- and he was an only child.
-- Thomas Berger
%
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
%
Relations are simply a tedious pack of people, who haven't the remotest
knowledge of how to live, nor the smallest instinct about when to die.
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Importance of Being Earnest"
%
...relaxed in the manner of a man who
has no need to put up a front of any kind.
-- John Ball, "Mark One: the Dummy"
%
Reliable source, n:
The guy you just met.
%
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
-- Anatole France
%
Religion is a crutch, but that's okay... humanity is a cripple.
%
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
-- Napoleon
%
Religions revolve madly around sexual questions.
%
Rembrandt is not to be compared in the painting of character with our
extraordinarily gifted English artist, Mr. Rippingille.
-- John Hunt, British editor, scholar and art critic
Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
%
Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used
it.
-- Dave Barry
%
Remember -- only 10% of anything can be in the top 10%.
%
Remember Darwin; building a better
mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
%
Remember, DESSERT is spelled with two `s's while DESERT is spelled
with one, because EVERYONE wants two desserts, but NO ONE wants two
deserts.
-- Miss Oglethorp, Gr. 5, PS. 59
%
Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good
offense!
%
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%
Remember folks. Street lights timed for 35 MPH are also timed for 70 MPH.
-- Jim Samuels
%
Remember, God could only create the world in 6 days because he didn't
have an established user base.
%
Remember, Grasshopper, falling down 1000 stairs begins by tripping over
the first one.
-- Confusion
%
Remember, if it's being done correctly, here or abroad, it's
*not* the U.S. Army doing it!
-- Good Morning, Vietnam
%
Remember kids, if there's a loaded gun in the room, be sure
that you're the one holding it.
-- Mr. Greenfatigues
%
Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.
-- Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller)
"The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Across The Eighth Dimension"
%
Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
-- Dave Butler
%
Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when
you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
Remember that there is an outside world to see and enjoy.
-- Hans Liepmann
%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
worse in Cleveland.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Remember the good old days, when CPU was singular?
%
Remember the... the... uhh.....
%
Remember thee
Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
%
Remember to say hello to your bank teller.
%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
-- Mt.
%
Remember: use logout to logout.
%
Remembering is for those who have forgotten.
-- Chinese proverb
%
Remove me from this land of slaves,
Where all are fools, and all are knaves,
Where every knave and fool is bought,
Yet kindly sells himself for nought;
-- Jonathan Swift
%
Removing the straw that broke the camel's back
does not necessarily allow the camel to walk again.
%
Renning's Maxim:
Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
%
Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
-- Mark Twain
%
Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
-- Indiana University football cheer
%
Reply hazy, ask again later.
%
Reporter: "How did you like school when you were growing up, Yogi?"
Yogi Berra: "Closed."
%
Reporter: "What would you do if you found a million dollars?"
Yogi Berra: "If the guy was poor, I would give it back."
%
Reporter, n.:
A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
tempest of words.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
career by being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
can't help it.
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi):
Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%
Reputation, adj:
What others are not thinking about you.
%
Research is the best place to be: you work your buns off, and if it works
you're a hero; if it doesn't, well -- nobody else has done it yet either,
so you're still a valiant nerd.
%
Research is to see what everybody else has seen,
and think what nobody else has thought.
%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Research, n:
Consider Columbus:
He didn't know where he was going.
When he got there he didn't know where he was.
When he got back he didn't know where he had been.
And he did it all on someone else's money.
%
Resisting temptation is easier when you
think you'll probably get another chance later on.
%
Responsibility:
Everyone says that having power is a great responsibility. This is
a lot of bunk. Responsibility is when someone can blame you if something
goes wrong. When you have power you are surrounded by people whose job it
is to take the blame for your mistakes. If they're smart, that is.
-- Cerebus, "On Governing"
%
Retirement means that when someone says "Have a nice day", you
actually have a shot at it.
%
Reunite Gondwondaland!
%
Rev. Jim: What does an amber light mean?
Bobby: Slow down.
Rev. Jim: What... does... an... amber... light... mean?
Bobby: Slow down.
Rev. Jim: What.... does.... an.... amber.... light....
%
Revenge is a form of nostalgia.
%
Revenge is a meal best served cold.
%
Review Questions
1: If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
2: If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
3: If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in
a pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
%
Revolution, n:
A form of government abroad.
%
Revolution, n.:
In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
revolutionary, adj:
Repackaged.
%
Rhode's Law:
When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance,
or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or
circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted,
estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose
of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or
personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the
above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and
adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably,
and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to
assume otherwise, maybe.
%
Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men
should be happier than others.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Richard Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life.
He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress,
lifetime members of his own political party, the American people, and the
world.
-- Barry Goldwater
%
Riches cover a multitude of woes.
-- Menander
%
Rick: "How can you close me up? On what grounds?"
Renault: "I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is
going on here."
Croupier (handing money to Renault):
"Your winnings, sir."
Renault: "Oh. Thank you very much."
-- Casablanca
%
Riffle West Virginia is so small that the
Boy Scout had to double as the town drunk.
%
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
-- Steven Wright
%
"Rights" is a fictional abstraction. No one has "Rights", neither
machines nor flesh-and-blood. Persons... have opportunities, not
rights, which they use or do not use.
-- Lazarus Long
%
Ring around the collar.
%
Ritchie's Rule:
(1) Everything has some value -- if you use the right currency.
(2) Paint splashes last longer than the paint job.
(3) Search and ye shall find -- but make sure it was lost.
%
Robot, n:
Someone who's been made by a scientist.
%
Robot, n:
University administrator.
%
Robustness, adj:
Never having to say you're sorry.
%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
Unless the results are known in advance,
funding agencies will reject the proposal.
%
Romance, like alcohol, should be enjoyed, but should not be allowed to
become necessary.
-- Edgar Friedenberg
%
Rome was not built in one day.
-- John Heywood
%
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
%
Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill,
He jumped out the window 'cause he couldn't sit still,
Juliet was waiting with a safety net,
Said "don't bury me 'cause I ain't dead yet".
-- Elvis Costello
%
Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
-- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With
Pogo"
%
Roses are red;
Violets are blue.
I'm schizophrenic,
And so am I.
%
Rotten wood cannot be carved.
-- Confucius, "Analects", Book 5, Ch. 9
%
Round Numbers are always false.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
Row, row, row your bits, gently down the stream...
%
Rubber bands have snappy endings!
%
Rube Walker: "Hey, Yogi, what time is it?"
Yogi Berra: "You mean now?"
%
Rudd's Discovery:
You know that any senator or congressman could go home and make
$300,000 to $400,000, but they don't. Why? Because they can
stay in Washington and make it there.
%
Rudeness is a weak man's imitation of strength.
%
Rudin's Law:
If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will
do it every time.
Rudin's Second Law:
In a crisis that forces a choice to be made among alternative
courses of action, people tend to choose the worst possible
course.
%
rugby, n:
Elegant violence.
(Rugby players eat their dead.)
(Blood makes the grass grow!)
(Support your local hooker! Play rugby!)
[A "hooker" is part of the scrum. Thought you'd want to know. Ed.]
%
RUGGED:
Too heavy to lift.
%
Rule #1:
The Boss is always right.
Rule #2:
If the Boss is wrong, see Rule #1.
%
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person
shall be deemed to be a cat.
%
Rule #7: Silence is not acquiescence.
Contrary to what you may have heard, silence of those present is
not necessarily consent, even the reluctant variety. They simply may
sit in stunned silence and figure ways of sabotaging the plan after they
regain their composure.
%
Rule of Creative Research:
1) Never draw what you can copy.
2) Never copy what you can trace.
3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%
Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the
bathroom.
%
Rule of Life #1 -- Never get separated from your luggage.
%
Rule of the Great:
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%
Rule the Empire through force.
-- Shogun Tokugawa
%
Rules:
(1) The boss is always right.
(2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
%
Rules for Academic Deans:
(1) HIDE!!!!
(2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
-- Father Damian C. Fandal
%
Rules for driving in New York:
1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on.
3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
intersection.
%
Rules for Good Grammar #4.
1: Don't use no double negatives.
2: Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents.
3: Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
4: About them sentence fragments.
5: When dangling, watch your participles.
6: Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
7: Just between you and i, case is important.
8: Don't write run-on sentences when they are hard to read.
9: Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
10: Try to not ever split infinitives.
11: It is important to use your apostrophe's correctly.
12: Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.
13: Correct speling is essential.
14: A preposition is something you never end a sentence with.
15: While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally
careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not
become ensconsed in obscurity. In other words, eschew obfuscation.
%
Rules for Writers:
Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read. Don't use no double
negatives. Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate;
and never where it isn't. Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and
omit it when its not needed. No sentence fragments. Avoid commas, that are
unnecessary. Eschew dialect, irregardless. And don't start a sentence with
a conjunction. Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
Write all adverbial forms correct. Don't use contractions in formal writing.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided. It is incumbent on
us to avoid archaisms. Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have
snuck in the language. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies. If I've
told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole. Also,
avoid awkward or affected alliteration. Don't string too many prepositional
phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of
death. "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
%
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
(1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
(2) Never leave the table hungry.
(3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
(4) Enjoy your food.
(5) Enjoy your companion's food.
(6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
(7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
(8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
(9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
can always eat it later.
(10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
(11) Avoid blue food.
-- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet"
%
Ruling a big country is like cooking a small fish.
-- Lao Tsu
%
Rune's Rule:
If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost.
%
Russia has abolished God, but so far God has been more tolerant.
-- John Cameron Swayze
%
Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching. Working once a week,
he might have lasted a long time and become a great star.
-- Tris Speaker, commenting on Babe Ruth's plan to change
from being a pitcher to an outfielder.
Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
%
Ryan's Law:
Make three correct guesses consecutively
and you will establish yourself as an expert.
%
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
RY RY
RY WELCOME TO THE BABBAGE ANALYTICAL TIMESHARING SERVICE RY
RY * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * RY
RY RY
RY PLEASE NOTE THAT THE INTEGRATOR IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE RY
RY DUE TO THE WEEKLY GREASING SCHEDULE. WOULD ALL USERS KINDLY RY
RY RETURN ANY UNUSED PLUGBOARDS, AS THE PROGRAMMING TEAM ARE RY
RY RUNNING LOW. DIVISION UNIT 3 WILL BE OUT OF ACTION UNTIL RY
RY THURSDAY DUE TO EMERGENCY COG REPLACEMENT - PLEASE ENSURE RY
RY THAT YOUR PROGRAM DOES NOT ATTEMPT TO DIVIDE BY ZERO AS RY
RY THIS CAN CAUSE SEVERE DAMAGE (INCLUDING SHAFT BREAKAGES). RY
RY RY
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
.
.
SYSTEM READY.
?
-- Chris Suslowicz
%
Sacher's Observation:
Some people grow with responsibility -- others merely swell.
%
Sacred cows make great hamburgers.
%
SADISM:
A sadist refusing to whip a masochist.
%
sadoequinecrophilia, n:
Beating a dead horse.
%
Safety Third.
%
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.
1. Little things start bothering you: little things like worms,
bugs, ants.
2. Something is missing in your personal relationships.
3. Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
4. You have a hard time getting a waiter.
5. Exotic birds flock around you.
6. People ignore you at parties.
7. You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
8. You no longer get off on cocaine.
%
SAGDEEV CALLED ON THE U.S. TO MAKE A RECIPROCAL GESTURE:
In a recent speech in London, the irrepressible former head of the
Soviet Space Research Institute noted that the Soviet Government has offered
to convert its gigantic Krasnoyarsk radar in Siberia into an international
space research facility in response to U.S. complaints that the radar would
violate the ABM treaty. Sagdeev suggested that the U.S. reciprocate by
turning the unfinished U.S. embassy in Moscow into a nuclear crisis reduction
center. The communication system, he pointed out, is already in place.
%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority
of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People
laugh at you a great deal.
%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22 to Dec. 21)
Move slowly today, be deliberate. Indications are for bleeding
ulcers. Drink milk. Try not to be your usual offensive and
obnoxious self. Call your mother.
%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov.22 - Dec.21)
Your efforts to help a little old lady cross a street will
backfire when you learn that she was waiting for a bus. Subdue
impulse you have to push her out into traffic.
%
Said the attractive, cigar-smoking housewife to her girl-friend: "I
got started one night when George came home and found one burning in
the ashtray."
%
Sailing is fun, but scrubbing the decks is aardvark.
-- Heard on Noah's ark
%
Sailors in ships, sail on!
Even while we died, others rode out the storm.
%
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
-- George Orwell, "Reflections on Gandhi"
%
Saliva causes cancer, but only if swallowed
in small amounts over a long period of time.
-- George Carlin
%
Sally: C'mon, Ted, all I'm asking you to do is share your feelings
with me.
Ted: ALL? Do you realize what you're asking? Men aren't trained
to share. We're trained to protect ourselves by not
letting anyone too close. Good grief, if I go around
sharing everything with you, you could hang me out to dry.
Sally: It's called "trust," Ted.
Ted: "Sharing"? "Trust"? You're really asking me to sail into
uncharted waters here.
-- Sally Forth
%
Sam: What's going on, Normie?
Norm: My birthday, Sammy. Give me a beer, stick a candle in
it, and I'll blow out my liver.
-- Cheers, Where Have All the Floorboards Gone
Woody: Hey, Mr. P. How goes the search for Mr. Clavin?
Norm: Not as well as the search for Mr. Donut.
Found him every couple of blocks.
-- Cheers, Head Over Hill
%
Sam: What do you know there, Norm?
Norm: How to sit. How to drink. Want to quiz me?
-- Cheers, Loverboyd
Sam: Hey, how's life treating you there, Norm?
Norm: Beats me. ... Then it kicks me and leaves me for dead.
-- Cheers, Loverboyd
Woody: How would a beer feel, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Pretty nervous if I was in the room.
-- Cheers, Loverboyd
%
Sam: What's the good word, Norm?
Norm: Plop, plop, fizz, fizz.
Sam: Oh no, not the Hungry Heifer...
Norm: Yeah, yeah, yeah...
Sam: One heartburn cocktail coming up.
-- Cheers, I'll Gladly Pay You Tuesday
Sam: Whaddya say, Norm?
Norm: Well, I never met a beer I didn't drink. And down it goes.
-- Cheers, Love Thy Neighbor
Woody: What's your pleasure, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Boxer shorts and loose shoes. But I'll settle for a beer.
-- Cheers, The Bar Stoolie
%
Sam: What do you say, Norm?
Norm: Any cheap, tawdry thing that'll get me a beer.
-- Cheers, Birth, Death, Love and Rice
Sam: What do you say to a beer, Normie?
Norm: Hiya, sailor. New in town?
-- Cheers, Woody Goes Belly Up
Norm: [coming in from the rain] Evening, everybody.
All: Norm! (Norman.)
Sam: Still pouring, Norm?
Norm: That's funny, I was about to ask you the same thing.
-- Cheers, Diane's Nightmare
%
Sam: What's new, Norm?
Norm: Most of my wife.
-- Cheers, The Spy Who Came in for a Cold One
Coach: Beer, Norm?
Norm: Naah, I'd probably just drink it.
-- Cheers, Now Pitching, Sam Malone
Coach: What's doing, Norm?
Norm: Well, science is seeking a cure for thirst. I happen
to be the guinea pig.
-- Cheers, Let Me Count the Ways
%
SAN DIEGO:
Four million people, where you can't get a
good cheeseburger, no matter how hard you try.
%
San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city. I don't mean the
people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy. When
they boo you, you know they mean *you*. Music, that's what it is to me.
One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo.
-- George Halas, professional football coach
%
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
-- Herb Caen
%
San Francisco, n.:
Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
%
Sanity and insanity overlap a fine grey line.
%
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
-- Mark Harrold
%
Sank heaven for leetle curls.
%
Santa Claus is watching!
%
Santa Claus wears a red suit
He's a Communist.
He has long hair and a beard
Must be a pacifist.
And what's in the pipe that he's smoking?
Santa Claus comes in your house at night.
He must be a dope fiend to get you up tight.
Why do police guys beat on peace guys?
-- Arlo Guthrie, "The Pause of Mr. Claus"
%
Santa's elves are just a bunch of subordinate Clauses.
%
Satellite Safety Tip #14:
If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
%
Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
%
Satire is tragedy plus time.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
Satire is what closes in New Haven.
%
Satire is what closes Saturday night.
-- George Kaufman
%
Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.
%
Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
Is like being nowhere at all,
All through the day how the hours rush by,
You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
-- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
%
Satyrs have more faun.
%
Sauron is alive in Argentina!
%
Savage's Law of Expediency:
You want it bad, you'll get it bad.
%
Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be
surprised at how little you have.
-- Ernest Haskins
%
Save a tree -- kill an ISO working group today.
-- Jason Zions
%
Save energy: Drive a smaller shell.
%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%
Save gas, don't eat beans.
%
Save gas, don't use the shell.
%
Save the bales!
%
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
%
Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
%
Save yourself! Reboot in 5 seconds!
%
Say! You've struck a heap of trouble--
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die--
Why, you've still the sunshine left you
And the big blue sky.
-- R. W. Service
%
Say it with flowers,
Or say it with mink,
But whatever you do,
Don't say it with ink!
-- Jimmie Durante
%
Say many of cameras focused t'us,
Our middle-aged shots do us justice.
No justice, please, curse ye!
We really want mercy:
You see, 'tis the justice, disgusts us.
-- Thomas H. Hildebrandt
%
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue,
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
-- Dorothy Parker, "Fighting Words"
%
Say no, then negotiate.
-- Helga
%
Say something you'll be sorry for, I love receiving apologies.
%
Say "twenty-three-skiddoo" to logout.
%
SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
-- Ken Thompson
%
SCENARIO:
An imagined sequence of events that provides the context in
which a business decision is made. Scenarios always come in
sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case.
%
Scenary is here, wish you were beautiful.
%
Scene:
A small boy stands agasp on the stairway overlooking the living
room. A rather largish man in a big red suit with white fur and red and
white belled cap hunches over the fireplace, obviously interrupted in
filling stockings with packages taken from a huge bag slung over his
shoulder. His eyebrows are raised, matter-of-factly, as he spies the boy
intently watching him.
Caption:
"I'm sorry you've seen me, Billy. Now I'll have to kill you.
%
Schapiro's Explanation:
The grass is always greener on the other side --
but that's because they use more manure.
%
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
%
Schlattwhapper, n.:
The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Schmidt's Observation:
All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap
than a thin person.
%
Schwiggle, n.:
The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a
pencil.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Science and religion are in full accord but
science and faith are in complete discord.
%
Science Fiction, Double Feature.
Frank has built and lost his creature.
Darkness has conquered Brad and Janet.
The servants gone to a distant planet.
Wo, oh, oh, oh.
At the late night, double feature, Picture show.
I want to go, oh, oh, oh.
To the late night, double feature, Picture show.
-- Rocky Horror Picture Show
%
Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stones. But a
collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones
is a house.
-- Jules Henri Poincare
%
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
is not necessarily science.
-- Henri Poincair'e
%
Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes
out, but that is not the reason we are doing it
-- Richard Feynman
%
Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing.
%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%
Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
%
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
-- Edgar Allen Poe, "Science, a Sonnet"
%
Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
-- William Buckley
%
Scientists still know less about what attracts men
than they do about what attracts mosquitoes.
-- Dr. Joyce Brothers,
"What Every Woman Should Know About Men"
%
Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question.
They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that
was built. Finally the big day was at hand. All the computers were
linked together. They asked the question, "Is there a God?". Lights
started blinking, flashing and blinking some more. Suddenly, there
was a loud crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky,
struck the computers, and welded all the connections permanently
together. "There is now", came the reply.
%
Scintilate, scintilate, globule vivific,
Fain how I pause at your nature specific,
Loftily poised in the ether capacious,
Highly resembling a gem carbonaceous.
Scintilate, scintilate, globule vivific,
Fain how I pause at your nature specific.
%
Scintillation is not always identification for an auric substance.
%
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will achieve
the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. Most
Scorpio people are murdered.
%
SCORPIO (Oct. 23 to Nov. 21)
Friends abound today, seeking repayment of past loans. Smile. Check
for concealed weapons. Your natural cheerfulness makes others want
to throw up. Knock it off.
%
SCORPIO (Oct.24 - Nov.21)
You will receive word today that you are eligible to win a million
dollars in prizes. It will be from a magazine trying to get you to
subscribe, and you're just dumb enough to think you've got a chance
to win. You never learn.
%
Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%
Scott's second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
%
Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
Spock: Affirmative.
Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
%
Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
Oh, it's so much fun, in a flash.
Now the CPU won't run When the CPU
And the system is going to crash. Can print nothing out but "foo,"
The system is going to crash.
-- To The Caissons Go Rolling Along
%
Scratch the disks!
Drop the core!
Roll the tapes across the floor!
%
Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
%
Scribline, n.:
The blank area on the back of credit cards where one's
signature goes.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
Presidency.
-- Richard Nixon
%
'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!
-- Robert James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix
%
Sears has everything.
%
Seattle is so wet that people protect their property with watch-ducks.
%
Second Law of Business Meetings:
If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
will pick the wrong one.
Corollary:
If there is only one way to spell a name,
you will spell it wrong, anyway.
%
Second Law of Final Exams:
In your toughest final -- for the first time all year -- the most
distractingly attractive student in the class will sit next to you.
%
Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.
%
Secretary's Revenge:
Filing almost everything under "the".
%
"Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
multiline message byte.
In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
must be sent passive true.
The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
(1) The ANRS if DAV is false
(2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
(a) The LADS is active
(b) Nor LACS is active"
-- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
Programmable Instrumentation
%
Security check: INTRUDER ALERT!
%
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?
[Who guards the Guardians?]
%
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ...
%
See, these two penguins walked into a bar, which was really stupid, 'cause
the second one should have seen it.
%
Seeing a commotion in Harvard Square, a man strolled over and asked what
was going on. One of the onlookers explained to him that there was a Mooney
who had immersed himself in gasoline and was threatening to set fire to
himself to demonstrate his commitment to the Rev. Moon. The man gasped and
asked what was being done to defuse the obviously dangerous situation.
"Well", replied the onlooker, "we're taking up a collection -- so
far I've got two Bics, four Zippos and eighteen books of matches."
%
Seeing is believing.
You wouldn't have seen it if you hadn't believed it.
%
Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing.
-- James Thurber
%
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come.
-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
%
Seek simplicity -- and distrust it.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were
driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the
mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by
luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged
rocks. They all got out of the car:
The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it
into town and have a specialist look at it."
The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back
in and see if it does it again."
%
Seems like this duck waddles into a pharmacy, waddles up to the prescription
counter and rings the bell. The pharmacist walks up and asks, "Can I help
you?".
The duck replies, "Yes, I'd like a box of condoms, please."
"Certainly", says the pharmacist, "will that be cash or would
you like me to put it on your bill?"
Snarls the duck, "Just what kind of duck do you think I am?"
%
Seems like this farmer purchased an old, run-down, abandoned farm with plans
to turn it into a thriving enterprise. The fields are grown over with weeds,
the farmhouse is falling apart, and the fences are collapsing all around.
During his first day of work, the town preacher stops by to bless the man's
work, praying, "May you and God work together to make this the farm of your
dreams!"
A few months later, the preacher stops by again to call on the farmer.
Lo and behold, it's like a completely different place -- the farm house is
completely rebuilt and in excellent condition, there is plenty of cattle and
other livestock happily munching on feed in well-fenced pens, and the fields
are filled with crops planted in neat rows. "Amazing!" the preacher says.
"Look what God and you have accomplished together!"
"Yes, reverend," replies the farmer, "but remember what the farm was
like when God was working it alone!"
%
Seems like this guy wanders into a rural outfitting store in Alaska,
and starts talking to a rather grizzled old man sitting by the cash
register.
"Hear ya got a lotta' bears 'round here?"
"Yeah, you could say that," answers the old man.
"GRIZZLIES?!?!"
"A few."
"Got any bear bells?"
"What's that?"
"You know, them little dingle-bells ya put on yer backpack so
bears know yer there so's they can run away ... I'll take one fer black
bears, and one fer them grizzlies. Say, how do you know yer in grizzly
country, anyhow?"
"Look fer scatt. Grizzly scatt's different from black bear scatt."
"Well now, what's IN grizzly scatt that's different?"
"Bear bells."
%
Seems that a pollster was taking a worldwide opinion poll.
Her question was, "Excuse me; what's your opinion on the meat shortage?"
In Texas, the answer was "What's a shortage?"
In Poland, the answer was "What's meat?"
In the Soviet Union, the answer was "What's an opinion?"
In New York City, the answer was "What's excuse me?"
%
Seems this fellow was suffering from terrific headaches, and went to his
doctor about it. The physician made a number of tests, and informed the man
that the only thing for his headaches was castration. After a few more
months, the headaches became so intense that the man agreed to the operation.
Naturally enough, the ruination of his sex life depressed him tremendously,
and he decided to purchase a new wardrobe to make himself feel better.
He enters a men's clothing store and a salesman wanders over, looks him
up and down, and says, "Well, let's start with shirts... 15 neck, 34 sleeve."
The guy is amazed. "How'd you know?"
"Well, I've been here nearly 30 years, and I can tell sizes within
a quarter inch on every piece of clothing." The salesman's claim is borne
out. Slacks, 34 waist, 32 inseam; jacket: 42 long. And so on and so forth.
When the man has been completely outfitted he decides that he'd better buy
some new underwear.
The salesman looks at him and says, "Okay, that'll be a 34."
"No, that's wrong," says the man. "I've always worn a 32." The
salesman insists, pointing out his accuracy so far. The man argues, agreeing
that while he's been right so far, he has always worn a 32 in shorts.
Finally in exasperation, the salesman says, "Listen, I tell you,
you *have* to wear a 34. Otherwise, you'll get these *awful* headaches."
%
Seems this guy showed up at a party, and all of his friends jumped for
Joy. But she sidestepped, and they missed.
%
Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
Ice Cream cures all ills. Temporarily.
%
Self Test for Paranoia:
You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
your own fault.
%
Seminars, n.:
From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
%
semper en excretus
%
SEMPER UBI SUB UBI!!!!
%
Senate, n.:
A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
misdemeanors.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Send some filthy mail.
%
Sendmail may be safely run set-user-id to root.
-- Eric Allman, "Sendmail Installation Guide"
%
SENILITY:
The state of mind of elderly persons
with whom one happens to disagree.
%
Senor Castro has been accused of communist sympathies, but this means very
little since all opponents of the regime are automatically called communists.
In fact he is further to the right than General Batista.
-- "Cuba's Rightist Rebel", The Economist, April 26, 1958
%
Sentient plasmoids are a gas.
%
Sentimentality -- that's what we call the sentiment we don't share.
-- Graham Greene
%
SERENDIPITY:
The process by which human knowledge is advanced.
%
Serenity through viciousness.
%
Serfs up!
-- Spartacus
%
Serocki's Stricture:
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%
Serving coffee on an aircraft causes turbulence.
%
Set the cart before the horse.
-- John Heywood
%
Several years ago, an international chess tournament was being held in a
swank hotel in New York. Most of the major stars of the chess world were
there, and after a grueling day of chess, the players and their entourages
retired to the lobby of the hotel for a little refreshment. In the lobby,
some players got into a heated argument about who was the brightest, the
fastest, and the best chess player in the world. The argument got quite
loud, as various players claimed that honor. At that point, a security
guard in the lobby turned to another guard and commented, "If there's
anything I just can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."
%
Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's
build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up
like crabgrass all over the United States.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Sex and drugs and rock and roll,
Is all my brain and body need.
Sex and drugs and rock and roll,
Are very good indeed.
Take your silly ways,
Throw them out the window,
The wisdom of your ways,
I've been there and I know,
Lots of other ways...
-- Ian Drury, "New Boots and Panties"
%
Sex discriminates against the shy and ugly.
%
Sex hasn't been the same since women started enjoying it.
-- Lewis Grizzard
%
Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke.
%
Sex is about as important as a cheese sandwich. But a cheese sandwich,
if you ain't got one to put in your belly, is extremely important.
-- Ian Dury
%
Sex is an emotion in motion.
-- Mae West
%
Sex is as honest a product benefit for fragrance [perfume] as taste is
for diet Coke.
-- Malcolm DacDougall
%
Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn.
-- Garrison Keillor
%
Sex is like pizza -- when it's good, it's great; and when it's bad,
it's still darn tasty!
%
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
-- Swami X
%
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... The other eight are
unimportant.
-- Henry Miller
%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
-- M. C. Reed
%
Sex: the thing that takes up the least amount of time and causes the
most amount of trouble.
-- John Barrymore
%
Sex without class consciousness cannot give satisfaction, even if it is
repeated until infinity.
-- Aldo Brandirali (Secretary of the Italian Marxist-Leninist
Party), in a manual of the party's official sex guidelines,
1973.
%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but,
as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
-- Woody Allen
%
Sexual enlightenment is justified insofar as girls cannot learn too soon
how children do not come into the world.
-- Karl Kraus
%
Shah, shah! Ayatulla you so!
%
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight:
always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?
-- J. M. Barrie
%
Shame is an improper emotion invented by
pietists to oppress the human race.
-- Robert Preston, Toddy, "Victor/Victoria"
%
Shannon's Observation
Nothing is so frustrating as a bad situation
that is beginning to improve.
%
share, n:
To give in, endure humiliation.
%
Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
want to use it.
%
She always believed in the old adage -- leave them while you're looking
good.
-- Anita Loos, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes"
%
She applies her lipstick in spite of its contents: "greasy rouge,
containing crushed and dried insect corpses for coloring, beeswax
for stiffness, and olive oil to help it flow - the latter having
the unfortunate tendency to go rancid several hours after use.
In 1924 the New York Board of Health considered banning lipstick,
not because it was hazardous to the wearers but because of "the
worry that it might poison the men who kissed the women who wore it."
-- David Bodanis, "The Secret House"
%
She asked me, "What's your sign?"
I blinked and answered "Neon,"
I thought I'd blow her mind...
%
She been married so many times
she got rice marks all over her face.
-- Tom Waits
%
She blinded me with science!
%
She can kill all your files;
She can freeze with a frown.
And a wave of her hand brings the whole system down.
And she works on her code until ten after three.
She lives like a bat but she's always a hacker to me.
-- Apologies to Billy Joel
%
She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.
-- Tommy Manville
%
She has an alarm clock and a phone that don't ring - they applaud.
%
She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%
She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
-- Mark Twain
%
She just came in, pounced around this thing with me for a few
years, enjoyed herself, gave it a sort of beautiful quality and
left. Excited a few men in the meantime.
-- Patrick Macnee, reminiscing on Diana Rigg's
involvement in "The Avengers".
%
She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them
were bad.
%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him
a look that you could have poured on a waffle.
%
She often gave herself very good advice
(though she very seldom followed it).
-- Lewis Carroll
%
She ran the gamut of emotions from 'A' to 'B'.
-- Dorothy Parker, on a Kate Hepburn performance
%
She say, Miss Colie, You better hush. God might hear you.
Let 'im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored
women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.
-- Alice Walker, "The Color Purple"
%
She sells cshs by the cshore.
%
She stood on the tracks
Waving her arms
Leading me to that third rail shock
Quick as a wink
She changed her mind
She gave me a night
That's all it was
What will it take until I stop
Kidding myself
Wasting my time
There's nothing else I can do
'Cause I'm doing it all for Leyna
I don't want anyone new
'Cause I'm living it all for Leyna
There's nothing in it for you
'Cause I'm giving it all to Leyna
-- Billy Joel, "All for Leyna" (Glass Houses)
%
She was bred in ol' Kentucky
But she's just a crumb up here
She was knock-knee'd and double-jointed
With a cauliflower ear
Someday we will be married
And if vegetables become too dear
I'll just cut me a slice of
Her cauliflower ear!
-- Curly Howard, "The Three Stooges"
%
She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way a midget is
good at being short.
-- Clive James, on Marilyn Monroe
%
She was only a moonshiner's daughter, but I love her still.
%
She was only a mortician's daughter but anyone cadaver.
%
She won' go Warp 7, Cap'n! The batteries are dead!
%
Shedenhelm's Law:
All trails have more uphill sections
than they have downhill sections.
%
"Shelter", what a nice name for a place where you polish your cat.
%
Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then
turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a
bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last
night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British
aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.'
-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton
bad fiction contest.
%
Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken
him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess
of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
She's genuinely bogus.
%
She's learned to say things with her eyes
that others waste time putting into words.
%
She's so tough she won't take 'yes' for an answer.
%
She's such a kinky girl,
The kind you don't take home to mother.
She will never let your spirits down
Once you get her off the street.
%
She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
-- Mae West
%
Shhh... be vewy, vewy, quiet! I'm hunting wabbits...
%
Shick's Law:
There is no problem a good miracle can't solve.
%
Shift to the left,
Shift to the right,
Mask in, mask out,
BYTE, BYTE, BYTE !!!
%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT!
SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN,
BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%
Ships are safe in harbor, but they were never meant to stay there.
%
Shirley MacLaine died today in a freak psychic collision today. Two freaks
in a van [Oh no!! It's the Copyright Police!!] Her aura-charred body was
laid to rest after a eulogy by Jackie Collins, fellow member of SAFE [Society
of Asinine Flake Entertainers]. Excerpted from some of his more quotable
comments:
"Truly a woman of the times. These times, those times..."
"A Renaissance woman. Why in 1432..."
"A man for all seasons. Really..."
After the ceremony, Shirley thanked her mourners and explained how delightful
it was to "get it together" again, presumably referring to having her now dead
body join her long dead brain.
%
Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high,
they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee.
-- Terry Southern
%
Short people get rained on last.
%
Show business is just like high school, except you get paid.
-- Martin Mull
%
Show me a good loser in professional sports and I'll show you an idiot.
Show me a good sportsman and I'll show you a player I'm looking to trade.
-- Leo Durocher
%
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%
Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
%
Show your affection, which will probably meet with pleasant response.
%
Showing up is 80% of life.
-- Woody Allen
%
Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer.
-- Voltaire
%
Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait.
[If youth but knew, if old age but could.]
-- Henri Estienne
%
Sic transit gloria Monday!
%
Sic transit gloria mundi.
[So passes away the glory of this world.]
-- Thomas a Kempis
%
Sic Transit Gloria Thursdi.
%
Sight is a faculty; seeing is an art.
%
Sigmund's wife wore Freudian slips.
%
Signals don't kill programs. Programs kill programs.
%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
-- The Brown University Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%
Silence can be the biggest lie of all. We have a responsibility to speak
up; and whenever the occasion calls for it, we have a responsibility to
raise bloody hell.
-- Herbert Block
%
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%
Silence is the only virtue you have left.
%
sillema sillema nika su
[translation: look it up...hint-fin]
%
Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
%
Silly Sally was baby sitting. But Silly Sally was getting bored. Thinking
a walk would help, she put the baby in his carriage. Silly Sally pushed the
carriage and pushed the carriage up this hill and down that one. She pushed
the carriage up the highest hill in town, and ALL OF A SUDDEN! It slipped out
of her hands (OH! NO!) and it was headed at high speed for the busiest
intersection in town. BUT!
Silly Sally just laughed and la.....ug.......h....e....d...........
BECAUSE! SHE KNEW THERE WAS A STOP SIGN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE HILL!
Silly Sally was playing in the garage. And she was being disobedient.
She was playing with matches... AND... She burned down the garage.
(OHHHHHH) Silly Sally's mother said, "Silly Sally! You have been naughty!
And when your father gets home, you are going to get a good licking!" BUT!
Silly Sally just laughed and la.....ug.......h....e....d...........
BECAUSE! SHE KNEW HER FATHER WAS IN THE GARAGE WHEN SHE BURNED IT DOWN!
%
Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%
Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.
%
Simulated fortune:
The head and in frontal attack on an english writer that the
character of this point is therefore another method for the
letters that the time of who ever told the problem for an
unexpected.
-- by Claude E. Shannon
%
Simulations are like miniskirts, they show a lot and hide the essentials.
-- Hubert Kirrman
%
Sin boldly.
-- Martin Luther
%
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
%
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.
All other "sins" are invented nonsense.
(Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid).
-- Lazarus Long
%
Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised
when others believe him.
-- Charles DeGaulle
%
Since aerosols are forbidden, the police are using roll-on Mace!
%
Since before the Earth was formed and before the sun burned hot in space,
cosmic forces of inexorable power have been working relentlessly toward
this moment in space-time -- your receiving this fortune.
%
Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is,
having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well
burst out in laughter.
-- Long Chen Pa
%
Since I hurt my pendulum
My life is all erratic.
My parrot who was cordial
Is now transmitting static.
The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
The cat keeps doing poo.
The only thing that keeps me sane
Is talking to my shoe.
-- My Shoe
%
Since we cannot hope for order, let us withdraw with style from the chaos.
-- Tom Stoppard
%
Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
alive.
-- John Sloan
%
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
-- Bob "Mountain" Beck
%
Sink or Swim with Teddy!
%
Sinners can repent, but stupid is forever.
%
Sir, it's very possible this asteroid is not stable.
-- CP30
%
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues
I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Six days after the Creation, Adam was still alone in the Garden of
Eden, and getting pretty desperate. "God!" he cried, "rescue me from
loneliness and despair! Send some company for Your sake!"
God replied "OK, I have just the thing. Keep you warm and relaxed all
the days of your life. Never complains. Looks up to you in every way.
It'll cost you though".
"Sounds ideal" said Adam. "The society of the beasts of the field and
the birds of the air palls after a while. What's the price?"
"An arm and a leg", said God.
Adam thought about it for a bit and finally sighed. "So, what can I get
for a rib?"
%
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful
objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill
gives us modern art.
-- Tom Stoppard
%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
or subtracted from the answer you got, gives you the answer you
should have gotten.
%
skldfjkljklsR%^&(IXDRTYju187pkasdjbasdfbuil
h;asvgy8p 23r1vyui135 2
kmxsij90TYDFS$$b jkzxdjkl bjnk ;j nk;<[][;-==-<<<<<';[,
[hjioasdvbnuio;buip^&(FTSD$%*VYUI:buio;sdf}[asdf']
sdoihjfh(_YU*G&F^*CTY98y
Now look what you've gone and done! You've broken it!
%
Slang is language that takes off its coat,
spits on its hands, and goes to work.
%
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when
a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent
songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as
those without might see and hear. They told a tale which was then altogether
beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep,
breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest
anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God
for deliverance from chains.
-- Frederick Douglass
%
Sleep -- the most beautiful experience in life -- except drink.
-- W.C. Fields
%
Sleep is for the weak and sickly.
%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.
2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.
%
Slous' Contention:
If you do a job too well, you'll get stuck with it.
%
Slow day.
Practice crawling.
%
Slowly and surely the Unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...
%
Slurm, n.:
The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
it sits in the dish too long.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Small change can often be found under seat cushions.
%
Small is beautiful.
-- Schumacher's Dictum
%
Small things make base men proud.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my
teacher was in my class for five years.
-- George Burns
%
Smear the road with a runner!!
%
Smile! You're on Candid Camera.
%
Smile, Cthulhu Loathes You.
%
Smoking is, as far as I'm concerned, the entire point of being an adult.
-- Fran Lebowitz
%
SMOKING IS NOW ALLOWED !!!
Anyone wishing to smoke, however, must file, in triplicate, the
U.S. government Environmental Impact Narrative Statement (EINS),
describing in detail the type of combustion proposed, impact on
the environment, and anticipated opposition. Statements must be
filed 30 days in advance.
%
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
-- Fletcher Knebel
%
Smoking Prohibited. Absolutely no ifs, ands, or butts.
%
Smuggling... It's not just a job, it's an adventure!
-- paid for by your local Colombian recruiting office
%
Snacktrek, n.:
The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will
have materialized.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?
%
SNAPPY REPARTEE:
What you'd say if you had another chance.
%
Snoopy: No problem is so big that it can't be run away from.
%
Snow and adolescence are the only problems
that disappear if you ignore them long enough.
%
Snow Day -- stay home.
%
Snow White has become a camera buff. She spends hours and hours
shooting pictures of the seven dwarfs and their antics. Then she
mails the exposed film to a cut rate photo service. It takes weeks
for the developed film to arrive in the mail, but that is all right
with Snow White. She clears the table, washes the dishes and sweeps
the floor, all the while singing "Someday my prints will come."
%
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
-- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
Revolution"
%
So... did you ever wonder, do garbage men take showers before they
go to work?
%
So do the noble fall. For they are ever caught in a trap of their own making.
A trap -- walled by duty, and locked by reality. Against the greater force
they must fall -- for, against that force they fight because of duty, because
of obligations. And when the noble fall, the base remain. The base -- whose
only purpose is the corruption of what the noble did protect. Whose only
purpose is to destroy. The noble: who, even when fallen, retain a vestige of
strength. For theirs is a strength born of things other than mere force.
Theirs is a strength supreme... theirs is the strength -- to restore.
-- Gerry Conway, "Thor", #193
%
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far
as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical
way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
-- T. S. Eliot, essay on Baudelaire
%
So from the depths of its enchantment, Terra was able to calculate a course
of action. Here at last was an opportunity to consort with Dirbanu on a
friendly basis -- great Dirbanu which, since it had force fields which Earth
could not duplicate, must of necessity have many other things Earth could
use; mighty Dirbanu before whom we would kneel in supplication (with purely-
for-defense bombs hidden in our pockets) with lowered heads (making invisible
the knife in our teeth) and ask for crumbs from their table (in order to
extrapolate the location of their kitchens).
-- T. Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost"
%
So... how come the Corinthians never wrote back?
%
So, if there's no God, who changes the water?
-- New Yorker cartoon of two goldfish in a bowl
%
So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.
-- Yogi Berra
%
So, is the glass half empty, half full, or just twice as
large as it needs to be?
%
So little time, so little to do.
-- Oscar Levant
%
So live that you wouldn't be ashamed
to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.
%
So many beautiful women and so little time.
-- John Barrymore
%
So many men and so little time.
%
So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way.
-- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
%
So many women, and so little time!
%
So many women, so little nerve.
%
So much food, and so little time!
%
So much
depends
upon
a red
wheel
barrow
glazed with
rain
water
beside
the white
chickens.
-- William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheel Barrow"
%
So now
that you have-
you know, whoever
you're trying
to do
a favor
for
-you've done it-
and I'm sure
you had
a smirk
on your mouth
as you got me
into this.
-- "To Linda", from The Poetry Of H. Ross Perot,
composed for Linda Wertheimer of National Public
Radio. From SPY Magazine, November 1992
%
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and
at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into
the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married
the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum
himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing
the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of
their boots.
-- Samuel Foote
%
So so is good, very good, very excellent good:
and yet it is not; it is but so so.
-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
%
So... so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell?
Blue skies from pain? Did they get you to trade
Can you tell a green field Your heroes for ghosts?
From a cold steel rail? Hot ashes for trees?
A smile from a veil? Hot air for a cool breeze?
Do you think you can tell? Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange
A walk on part in a war
For the lead role in a cage?
-- Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"
%
So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway?
And why can't he ever remember his Bible?
%
So, you better watch out!
You better not cry!
You better not pout!
I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming, to town.
He knows when you've been sleeping,
He know when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
He has ties with the CIA.
So...
%
So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh? In reality
all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have
tomorrow, why, it already happened. You see, it's just a little universal
recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of
the instant. So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment
and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of
eternity, the anti-time. So go to sleep...
%
So you think that money is the root of all evil.
Have you ever asked what is the root of money?
-- Ayn Rand
%
So you're back... about time...
%
Soap and education are not as sudden as a
massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.
-- Mark Twain
%
SOCIALISM:
You have two cows. Give one to your neighbour.
COMMUNISM:
You have two cows.
Give both to the government. The government gives you milk.
CAPITALISM:
You sell one cow and buy a bull.
FACISM:
You have two cows. Give milk to the government.
The government sells it.
NAZISM:
The government shoots you and takes the cows.
NEW DEALISM:
The government shoots one cow,
milks the other, and pours the milk down the sink.
ANARCHISM:
Keep the cows. Steal another one. Shoot the government.
CONSERVATISM:
Freeze the milk. Embalm the cows.
%
Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
bound to occur.
%
Software, n.:
Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
%
Software production is assumed to be a line function, but it is run
like a staff function."
-- Paul Licker
%
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
"user-friendly". ... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
-- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
%
Soldiers who wish to be a hero
Are practically zero,
But those who wish to be civilians,
They run into the millions.
%
Solipsists of the World... you are already united.
-- Kayvan Sylvan
%
Solutions are obvious if one only has the
optical power to observe them over the horizon.
-- K. A. Arsdall
%
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed,
and some few to be chewed and digested.
-- Francis Bacon
[As anyone who has ever owned a puppy already knows. Ed.]
%
Some changes are so slow, you don't notice them.
Others are so fast, they don't notice you.
%
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong,
as when you find a trout in the milk.
-- Thoreau
%
Some days you are the bug; some days you are the windshield.
%
Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
%
Some husbands are living proof that a woman can take a joke.
%
Some marriages are made in heaven -- but so are thunder and lightning.
%
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
-- Ed Howe
%
Some men are all right in their place -- if they only the knew the right
places!
-- Mae West
%
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity,
and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
Some men are discovered; others are found out.
%
Some men are heterosexual, and some are bisexual, and some men don't think
about sex at all... they become lawyers.
-- Woody Allen
%
Some men are so interested in their wives continued happiness
that they hire detectives to find out the reason for it.
%
Some men are so macho they'll get you pregnant just to kill a rabbit.
-- Maureen Murphy
%
Some men feel that the only thing they owe
the woman who marries them is a grudge.
-- Helen Rowland
%
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear
lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
-- Samuel Butler
%
Some men rob you with a six-gun -- others with a fountain pen.
-- Woodie Guthrie
%
Some men who fear that they are playing
second fiddle aren't in the band at all.
%
Some of my readers ask me what a "Serial Port" is.
The answer is: I don't know.
Is it some kind of wine you have with breakfast?
%
Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the
old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent
I can find for "landskap"). These laws were written down sometime in the
13th century, but date back even down into Viking times. The oldest one is
the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some
Christian stuff. In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the
Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc. Here is
an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of
"lekare".
"If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it. If an artist
is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with
fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring
it out on the hillside. Then they shall shave off all hair from the
heifer's tail, and grease the tail. Then the artist shall be given
newly greased shoes. Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,
and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip. If he can hold her, he
shall have the animal. If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what
he received, shame and wounds."
%
Some of the things that live the longest
in peoples' memories never really happened.
%
Some of them want to use you,
Some of them want to be used by you,
...Everybody's looking for something.
-- Eurythmics
%
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
"The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
and go to a mall.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Some parts of the past must be preserved,
and some of the future prevented at all costs.
%
Some people call them "cars" or "trucks"; I call them "dimensional
transmogrifiers" because they change three-dimensional cats into
two-dimensional ones.
-- F. Frederick Skitty
%
Some people carve careers, others chisel them.
%
Some people cause happiness wherever
they go; others, whenever they go.
%
Some people claim that the UNIX learning curve is steep,
but at least you only have to climb it once.
%
Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have
only one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
%
Some people have no respect for age unless it's bottled.
%
Some people have parts that are so private
they themselves have no knowledge of them.
%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%
Some people live life in the fast lane.
You're in oncoming traffic.
%
Some people manage by the book, even though they
don't know who wrote the book or even what book.
%
Some people need a good imaginary cure
for their painful imaginary ailment.
%
Some people only open up to tell you that they're closed.
%
Some people pray for more than they are willing to work for.
%
Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a
rear-engine car handles best. I say a rented car handles best.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
Some peoples mouths work faster than their brains.
They say things they haven't even thought of yet.
%
Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
worse.
-- Avery
%
Some points to remember [about animals]:
(1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
hippopotamuses;
(2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
front of your clothes;
(3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
you have just kicked.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Some primal termite knocked on wood.
And tasted it, and found it good.
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
progress.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.
%
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction, ice
Is also great
And would suffice
-- Robert Frost, "Fire and Ice"
%
Some scholars are like donkeys, they merely carry a lot of books.
-- Folk saying
%
Some things have to be believed to be seen.
%
Somebody left the cork out of my lunch.
-- W.C. Fields
%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers
so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%
Somebody's moggy, by the side of the road,
Somebody's pussy, who forgot his highway code,
Somebody's favourite feline, who ran clean out of luck,
When he ran onto the road, and tried to argue with a truck.
Yesterday he purred and played, in his pussy paradise,
Decapitating tweety birds, and masticating mice.
Now he's just six pounds of raw mince meat,
That don't smell very nice --
He's nobody's moggy now.
Oh you who love your pussy,
Be sure to keep him in.
Don't let him argue with a truck, If he tries to play
The truck is bound to win. On the road way
And upon the busy road, I'm afraid that will be that,
Don't let him play or frolic. There will be one last despairing
If you do, I'm warning you, "Meow!"
It could be cat-astrophic! And a sort of squelchy Splat!
And your pussy will be slightly dead,
He's nobody's moggy -- And very, very flat!
Just red and squashed and soggy --
He's nobody's moggy now.
-- Eric Bogle, "Scraps of Paper"
%
Somebody's terminal is dropping bits.
I found a pile of them over in the corner.
%
Someday somebody has got to decide whether the
typewriter is the machine, or the person who operates it.
%
Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will
probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a
blood-curdling maniacal scream... but still it will be a laugh.
-- Mister Boffo
%
Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car.
-- Evan Davis
%
Someday you'll get your big chance -- or have you already had it?
%
Someday your prints will come.
-- Kodak
%
Somehow I reached excess without ever noticing
when I was passing through satisfaction.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Somehow, the world always affects you more than you affect it.
%
Someone did a study of the three most-often-heard phrases in New York
City. One is "Hey, taxi." Two is, "What train do I take to get to
Bloomingdale's?" And three is, "Don't worry. It's just a flesh wound."
-- David Letterman
%
Someone is speaking well of you.
How unusual!
%
Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.
%
Someone whom you reject today, will reject you tomorrow.
%
Someone will try to honk your nose today.
%
Something better...
1 (obvious): Excuse me. Is that your nose or did a bus park on your face?
2 (meteorological): Everybody take cover. She's going to blow.
3 (fashionable): You know, you could de-emphasize your nose if you wore
something larger. Like ... Wyoming.
4 (personal): Well, here we are. Just the three of us.
5 (punctual): Alright gentlemen. Your nose was on time but you were fifteen
minutes late.
6 (envious): Oooo, I wish I were you. Gosh. To be able to smell your
own ear.
7 (naughty): Pardon me, Sir. Some of the ladies have asked if you wouldn't
mind putting that thing away.
8 (philosophical): You know. It's not the size of a nose that's important.
It's what's in it that matters.
9 (humorous): Laugh and the world laughs with you. Sneeze and its goodbye
Seattle.
10 (commercial): Hi, I'm Earl Schibe and I can paint that nose for $39.95.
11 (polite): Ah. Would you mind not bobbing your head. The orchestra keeps
changing tempo.
12 (melodic): Everybody! "He's got the whole world in his nose."
-- Steve Martin, "Roxanne"
%
Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.
-- Shakespeare
%
Sometime when you least expect it, Love will tap you on the shoulder...
and ask you to move out of the way because it still isn't your turn.
-- N. V. Plyter
%
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
-- Sigmund Freud
%
Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a
fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
-- Montesquieu
%
Sometimes, at the end of the day, when I'm
smiling and shaking their hands, I want to kick them.
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.
-- Seneca
%
Sometimes I feel like I'm fading away,
Looking at me, I got nothin' to say.
Don't make me angry with the things games that you play,
Either light up or leave me alone.
%
Sometimes I get the feeling that I went to a party on Perry Lane in 1962, and
the party spilled out of the house, and came down the street, and covered the
world.
-- Robert Stone
%
Sometimes I live in the country,
And sometimes I live in town.
And sometimes I have a great notion,
To jump in the river and drown.
%
Sometimes I simply feel that the whole
world is a cigarette and I'm the only ashtray.
%
Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind.
Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever.
-- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame"
%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Sometimes it happens. People just explode. Natural causes.
-- Repo Man
%
Sometimes love ain't nothing but a misunderstanding between two fools.
%
SOMETIMES THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD is so overwhelming, I just want to throw
back my head and gargle. Just gargle and gargle and I don't care who hears
me because I am beautiful.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
Sometimes the best medicine is to stop taking something.
%
Sometimes the light is all shining on me,
Other times I can hardly see.
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been.
-- The Grateful Dead, "American Beauty"
%
Sometimes, too long is too long.
-- Joe Crowe
%
Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel very peculiar. I feel
like I've just got to bite a cat! I feel like if I don't bite a cat
before sundown, I'll go crazy! But then I just take a deep breath and
forget about it. That's what is known as real maturity.
-- Snoopy
%
Sometimes, when I think of what that girl means
to me, it's all I can do to keep from telling her.
-- Andy Capp
%
Sometimes when you look into his eyes you get the feeling that someone
else is driving.
-- David Letterman
%
Sometimes you get an almost irresistible urge to go on living.
%
Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
%
Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a
woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
-- Sam Levenson
%
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
-- Carl Sagan
%
Son, someday a man is going to walk up to you with a deck of cards on which
the seal is not yet broken. And he is going to offer to bet you that he can
make the Ace of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ears.
But son, do not bet this man, for you will end up with an ear full of cider.
-- Sky Masterson's Father
%
Song Title of the Week:
"They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
in me."
%
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already
paid may disregard this fortune).
%
Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
%
Sorry. Nice try.
%
Sorry never means having you're say to love.
%
Sorry, no fortune this time.
%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly
big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the
drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Space is to place as eternity is to time.
-- Joseph Joubert
%
Space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to curve.
-- Wheeler
%
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life
and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.
-- Captain James T. Kirk
%
Spagmumps, n.:
Any of the millions of Styrofoam wads that accompany mail-order
items.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Spare no expense to save money on this one.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question
back at him.
%
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.
Wow! wow! wow!
I speak severely to my boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! wow! wow!
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
Because the paging thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
I speak severely to my VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
My jobs it always thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
%
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
%
Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
-- Dave Millman
%
"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though
ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers,
thou has dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has
moved amid the world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust,
and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate
earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful
water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or
diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers
would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when
leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting
wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the
murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell
into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed
on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would
have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has
seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
syllable is thine!"
-- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"
%
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure
that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing,
all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third?
Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the
result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure
parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different
types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a
recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language
so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
%
Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
Helpless users with projects due
Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
* VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
* DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
-- Curtis Jackson
%
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these
days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate
with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children
who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in
these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours
bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't
communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up!
-- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
%
Speaking of purchasing a dog, never buy a watchdog that's
on sale. After all, everyone knows a bargain dog never bites!
%
Special tonight, the best toot in town at prices you won't believe!!
Also, the finest dope, brought all the way from Columbia by spirited
young adventurers. All available tonight, as usual, in the graduate
students bullpen from 11: pm on, usual terms and conditions.
Faculty members especially welcome.
%
Speed is subsittute fo accurancy.
%
Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour unless the
motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a drink in 30 days,
when the driver will be permitted to make what he can.
-- Proposed legislation, Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907
%
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
number of times you have looked at it.
%
Spelling is a lossed art.
%
Spence's Admonition:
Never stow away on a kamikaze plane.
%
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
%
SPINSTER:
A bachelor's wife.
%
Spirtle, n.:
The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
your eye.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Spock: The odds of surviving another
attack are 13562190123 to 1, Captain.
%
Spock: We suffered 23 casualties in that attack, Captain.
%
Spouse, n.:
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
%
Spring is here, spring is here,
Life is skittles and life is beer.
%
Squatcho, n.:
The button at the top of a baseball cap.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Squirrels eating squirrels, my God, that's sick.
%
St. Patrick was a gentleman
who through strategy and stealth
drove all the snakes from Ireland.
Here's a toasting to his health --
but not too many toastings
lest you lose yourself and then
forget the good St. Patrick
and see all those snakes again.
%
Stability itself is nothing else than a more sluggish motion.
%
Staff meeting in the conference room in 3 minutes.
%
Stalin was dying, and summoned Khruschev to his bedside. Wheezing his last
words with difficulty, Stalin tells Khruschev, "The reins of the country are
now in your hands. But before I go, I want to give you some advice."
"Yes, yes, what is it?" says Khruschev, impatiently. Reaching under
his pillow, Stalin produced two envelopes labeled #1 and #2.
"Take these letters," he tells Khruschev. "Keep them safely -- don't
open them. Only if the country is in turmoil and things aren't going well,
open the first one. That'll give you some advice on what to do. And, if
after that, if things start getting REALLY bad, open the second one." And
with a gasp Stalin breathed his last.
Well, within a few years Khruschev started having problems --
unemployment increased, crops failed, people became restless. He decided it
was time to open the first letter. All it said was: "Blame everything on me!"
So Khruschev launched a massive deStalinization campaign, and blamed Stalin
for all the excesses and purges and ills of the present system.
But things continued on the downslide, and, finally, after much
deliberation, Khruschev opened the second letter.
All it said was: "Write two letters."
%
Stamp out organized crime!! Abolish the IRS.
%
Stamp out philately.
%
STANDARDS:
The principles we use to reject other people's code.
%
Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by
no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for
something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
-- Chuang Tzu
%
Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
%
Stanford women are responsible for the success of many Stanford men:
they give them "just one more reason" to stay in and study every night.
%
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest
science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all
on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
-- Harlan Ellison
%
Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.
-- W.C. Fields
%
Start the day with a smile.
After that you can be your nasty old self again.
%
State license plates we'd like to see:
NEVADA MASSACHUSETTS
LVME 10DR OW-A CAH
LAND OF 10,00 ELVIS IMPERSONATORS THE GOOFY ACCENT STATE
HAWAII WISCONSIN
L-O HA CHEDDAR
FRUITY UMBRELLA COCKTAIL WONDERLAND EAT CHEESE OR DIE
%
State license plates we'd like to see:
ALABAMA ARIZONA
IC1 NOW 120 F
THE UFO SIGHTING STATE THE HEAT PROSTRATION STATE
CONNECTICUT MISSISSIPPI
5:36 EXP 4I4S2PS
WHERE THE SMART NY WORK FORCE LIVES THE MOST OFTEN MISSPELLED STATE
TEXAS FLORIDA
1-2-3 HIKE ZON KED
PLAY FOOTBALL OR DIE AMERICA'S DRUG DEALER
%
State license plates we'd like to see:
MICHIGAN CALIFORNIA
4-GET 74-77 EGO-MN-E-X
EMBARRASSED HOME STATE OF GERALD FORD THE SERIAL KILLER STATE
NORTH CAROLINA NEW JERSEY
WL-GOLLY ARG GGH
HOME OF GOMER, GOOBER AND JESSE HELMS FIRST IN TOXIC WASTE
KANSAS WASHINGTON DC
TOTO -2 $10000000 ETC
THE NOT MUCH SINCE THE WIZARD OF OZ WASTING YOUR MONEY SINCE 1810
MOVIE STATE
%
STATISTICS:
A system for expressing your political
prejudices in convincing scientific guise.
%
Statistics are no substitute for judgment.
-- Henry Clay
%
Statistics means never having to say you're certain.
%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%
Stay the curse.
%
Stay together, drag each other down.
%
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time,
There's something wrong here, there can be no more denying,
One of us is changing, or maybe we just stopped trying,
And it's too late, baby, now, it's too late,
Though we really did try to make it,
Something inside has died and I can't hide and I just can't fake it...
It used to be so easy living here with you,
You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do
Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool.
There'll be good times again for me and you,
But we just can't stay together, don't you feel it too?
But I'm glad for what we had and that I once loved you...
But it's too late baby...
It's too late, now darling, it's too late...
-- Carol King, "Tapestry"
%
Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So
long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental
hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins,
its rate is a matter of discretion.
-- Corwin, "Prince of Amber"
%
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
%
Steckel's Rule to Success:
Good enough is never good enough.
%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something --
I believe I'll have another drink.
%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.
%
Stellar rays prove fibbing never pays.
Embezzlement is another matter.
%
Stenderup's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to catch up.
%
Step back, unbelievers!
Or the rain will never come.
Somebody keep the fire burning, someone come and beat the drum.
You may think I'm crazy, you may think that I'm insane,
But I swear to you, before this day is out,
you folks are gonna see some rain!
%
Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle
Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad
so he could breed boneless shad. His experiment backfired too, and he
wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble. There's
very little call for those up there.
-- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone
%
Still looking for the glorious results of my misspent youth.
Say, do you have a map to the next joint?
%
Stinginess with privileges is kindness in disguise.
-- Guide to VAX/VMS Security, Sep. 1984
%
Stock's Observation:
You no sooner get your head above water
but what someone pulls your flippers off.
%
Stone's Law:
One man's "simple" is another man's "huh?"
%
Stop! There was first a game of blindman's buff. Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The
way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
on the credulity of human nature.
%
Stop me, before I kill again!
%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
Now, if they'd only take a bath...
%
Stop searching forever. Happiness is unattainable.
%
Strange things are done to be number one
In selling the computer The Druids were entrepreneurs,
IBM has their strategem And they built a granite box
Which steadily grows acuter, It tracked the moon, warned of monsoons,
And Honeywell competes like Hell, And forecast the equinox
But the story's missing link Their price was right, their future
Is the system old at Stonemenge sold bright,
By the firm of Druids, Inc. The prototype was sold;
From Stonehenge site their bits and byte
Would ship for Celtic gold.
The movers came to crate the frame;
It weighed a million ton!
The traffic folk thought it a joke The man spoke true, and thus to you
(the wagon wheels just spun); A warning from the ages;
"They'll nay sell that," the foreman Your stock will slip if you can't ship
spat, What's in your brochure's pages.
"Just leave the wild weeds grow; See if it sells without the bells
"It's Druid-kind, over-designed, And strings that ring and quiver;
"And belly up they'll go." Druid repute went down the chute
Because they couldn't deliver.
-- Edward C. McManus, "The Computer at Stonehenge"
%
STRATEGY:
A comprehensive plan of inaction.
%
Strategy:
A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime
after those creating it have left the organization.
%
Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
%
Stress has been pinpointed as a major cause of illness. To avoid overload
and burnout, keep stress out of your life. Give it to others instead. Learn
the "Gaslight" treatment, the "Are you talking to me?" technique, and the
"Do you feel okay? You look pale." approach. Start with negotiation and
implication. Advance to manipulation and humiliation. Above all, relax
and have a nice day.
%
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided. It's the psychic predecessor of all
real understanding. An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
Stult's Report:
Our problems are mostly behind us.
What we have to do now is fight the solutions.
%
Stupid, n.:
Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
%
Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
%
Stupidity is its own reward.
%
Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.
%
Style may not be the answer, but at least it's a workable alternative.
%
Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re.
Se non e vero, e ben trovato.
%
Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain
%
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the
way before it is understood.
%
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names
the streets after them.
-- Bill Vaughn
%
Success is a journey, not a destination.
%
Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.
%
Success is in the minds of Fools.
-- William Wrenshaw, 1578
%
Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have
made of things.
-- T. S. Eliot, "The Family Reunion"
%
Success is something I will dress for when I get there, and not until.
%
Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.
-- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%
Such a fine first dream!
But they laughed at me; they said
I had made it up.
%
Such a foolish notion, that war is called devotion,
when the greatest warriors are the ones who stand for peace.
%
Such efforts are almost always slow, laborious, political,
petty, boring, ponderous, thankless, and of the utmost criticality.
-- Leonard Kleinrock, on standards efforts
%
Such evil deeds could religion prompt.
-- Titus Lucretius Carus
%
Sudden Death Dating:
Quote, female:
Am I worried about taking his last name? Forget it,
at this point I'll take his first name, too.
%
Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
without his duck ...
%
Suffering alone exists, none who suffer;
The deed there is, but no doer thereof;
Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it;
The Path there is, but none who travel it.
-- "Buddhist Symbolism", Symbols and Values
%
Suggest you just sit there and wait till life gets easier.
%
Suicide is simply a case of mistaken identity.
%
Suicide is the sincerest form of self-criticism.
-- Donald Kaul
%
Sum quod eris.
%
Sun in the night, everyone is together,
Ascending into the heavens, life is forever.
-- Brand X, "Moroccan Roll/Sun in the Night"
%
SUN Microsystems:
The Network IS the Load Average.
%
(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
To code the impossible code,
To bring up a virgin machine,
To pop out of endless recursion,
To grok what appears on the screen,
To right the unrightable bug,
To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
To mount the unmountable magtape,
To stop the unstoppable crash!
%
SUNSET:
Pronounced atmospheric scattering of shorter wavelengths,
resulting in selective transmission below 650 nanometers with
progressively reducing solar elevation.
%
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy
have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.
-- Martin Luther
%
Superstitions typically involve seeing order where in fact there is
none, and denial amounts to rejecting evidence of regularities,
sometimes even ones that are staring us in the face.
-- Murray Gell-Mann, "Quark and the Jaguar"
%
Supervisor: Do you think you understand the basic ideas of Quantum Mechanics?
Supervisee: Ah! Well, what do we mean by "to understand" in the context of
Quantum Mechanics?
Supervisor: You mean "No", don't you?
Supervisee: Yes.
-- Overheard at a supervision
%
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
%
Support Bingo, keep Grandma off the streets.
%
Support mental health or I'LL KILL YOU!!!!
%
Support the American Kidney Foundation.
Don't wear your motorcycle helmet.
%
Support the Girl Scouts!
(Today's Brownie is tomorrow's Cookie!)
%
Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
%
Support your local church or synagogue.
Worship at Bank of America.
%
Support your local police force -- steal!!
%
Support your local Search and Rescue unit -- get lost.
%
Support your right to arm bears!!
%
Support your right to bare arms!
-- A message from the National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association
%
Suppose for a moment that the automobile industry had developed at the same
rate as computers and over the same period: how much cheaper and more
efficient would the current models be? If you have not already heard the
analogy, the answer is shattering. Today you would be able to buy a
Rolls-Royce for $2.75, it would do three million miles to the gallon, and
it would deliver enough power to drive the Queen Elizabeth II. And if you
were interested in miniaturization, you could place half a dozen of them on
a pinhead.
-- Christopher Evans
%
Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
%
Sure, Reagan has promised to take senility tests.
But what if he forgets?
%
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest
men in national government too.
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
Surly to bed, surly to rise, makes you about average.
%
Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S Audit!
Just type in your name and social security number.
Please remember that leaving the room is punishable under law:
Name #
%
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
%
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
%
sushi, n:
When that-which-may-still-be-alive is put on top of rice and
strapped on with electrical tape.
%
Sushido, n:
The way of the tuna.
%
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
-- William Shakespeare
%
Swahili, n.:
The language used by the National Enquirer to print their
retractions.
-- Johnny Hart
%
Swap read error. You lose your mind.
%
SWEATER:
A garment worn by a child when their mother feels chilly.
%
Sweater, n.:
A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
%
Sweet April showers do spring May flowers.
-- Thomas Tusser
%
Sweet sixteen is beautiful Bess,
And her voice is changing -- from "No" to "Yes".
%
Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails,
whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through
the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly
I rush!
-- Captain Ahab, "Moby Dick"
%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%
Symbolic representation of quantitative entities is doomed to its rightful
place of minor importance in a world where flowers and beautiful women abound.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction, beer is
unusually pale and clear.
Problem: Glass empty.
Action Required: Find someone who will buy you another beer.
Symptom: Drinking fails to give taste and satisfaction,
and the front of your shirt is wet.
Fault: Mouth not open when drinking or glass applied to
wrong part of face.
Action Required: Buy another beer and practice in front of mirror.
Drink as many as needed to perfect drinking technique.
-- Bar Troubleshooting
%
Symptom: Everything has gone dark.
Fault: The Bar is closing.
Action Required: Panic.
Symptom: You awaken to find your bed hard, cold and wet.
You cannot see the bathroom light.
Fault: You have spent the night in the gutter.
Action Required: Check your watch to see if bars are open yet. If not,
treat yourself to a lie-in.
-- Bar Troubleshooting
%
Symptom: Feet cold and wet, glass empty.
Fault: Glass being held at incorrect angle.
Action Required: Turn glass other way up so that open end points
toward ceiling.
Symptom: Feet warm and wet.
Fault: Improper bladder control.
Action Required: Go stand next to nearest dog. After a while complain
to the owner about its lack of house training and
demand a beer as compensation.
-- Bar Troubleshooting
%
Symptom: Floor blurred.
Fault: You are looking through bottom of empty glass.
Action Required: Find someone who will buy you another beer.
Symptom: Floor moving.
Fault: You are being carried out.
Action Required: Find out if you are taken to another bar. If not,
complain loudly that you are being kidnaped.
-- Bar Troubleshooting
%
Symptom: Floor swaying.
Fault: Excessive air turbulence, perhaps due to air-hockey
game in progress.
Action Required: Insert broom handle down back of jacket.
Symptom: Everything has gone dim, strange taste of peanuts
and pretzels or cigarette butts in mouth.
Fault: You have fallen forward.
Action Required: See above.
Symptom: Opposite wall covered with acoustic tile and several
flourescent light strips.
Fault: You have fallen over backward.
Action Required: If your glass is full and no one is standing on your
drinking arm, stay put. If not, get someone to help
you get up, lash yourself to bar.
-- Bar Troubleshooting
%
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
System checkpoint complete.
%
System going down at 1:45 this afternoon for disk crashing.
%
System going down at 5 this afternoon to install scheduler bug.
%
System going down in 5 minutes.
%
System restarting, wait...
%
System/3! System/3!
See how it runs! See how it runs!
Its monitor loses so totally!
It runs all its programs in RPG!
It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
%
SYSTEM-INDEPENDENT:
Works equally poorly on all systems.
%
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Systems programmer:
A person in sandals who has been in the elevator with the senior
vice president and is ultimately responsible for a phone call you
are to receive from your boss.
%
Systems programmers are the high priests of a low cult.
-- R. S. Barton
%
T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
He don't rock, and he don't roll;
Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
TACKY:
Serving grape Kool-Aid at religious functions.
%
Tact consists in knowing how far to go in going too far.
-- Jean Cocteau
%
Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far.
-- Jean Cocteau
%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has
an open mind when he has a hole in his head.
%
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
%
Tact, n.:
The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
%
Take a lesson from the whale; the only time
he gets speared is when he raises to spout.
%
Take an astronaut to launch.
%
Take care of the luxuries and the
necessities will take care of themselves.
-- L. Long
%
Take Care of the Molehills, and the Mountains Will Take Care of Themselves.
-- Motto of the Federal Civil Service
%
Take everything in stride.
Trample anyone who gets in your way.
%
TAKE FORCEFUL ACTION:
Do something that should have been done a long time ago.
%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
%
Take me drunk,
I'm home again!
%
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man,
but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
-- Kipling
%
Take time to reflect on all the things you have, not as a result of your
merit or hard work or because God or chance or the efforts of other people
have given them to you.
%
Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
-- Ken Kesey
%
Take your dying with some seriousness, however.
Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood
by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
Take your Senator to lunch this week.
%
Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not
take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously.
-- Booth Tarkington
%
Taking drugs in the 60's, I tried to reach Nirvana, but all I ever
got were re-runs of The Mickey Mouse Club.
-- Rev. Jim
%
Talk is cheap because supply always exceeds demand.
%
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
-- Euripides
%
Talkers are no good doers.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.
-- Laurie Anderson
%
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
Tallulah Bankhead barged down the
Nile last night as Cleopatra and sank.
-- John Mason Brown, drama critic
%
Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred,
Tan me hide when I'm dead.
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde,
It's hanging there on the shed.
All together now...
Tie me kangaroo down, sport,
Tie me kangaroo down.
Tie me kangaroo down, sport,
Tie me kangaroo down.
%
Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey
will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.
-- Ben Franklin
%
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination
and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bull
headed. You are a Communist.
%
TAURUS (Apr. 20 to May 20)
Let your self-confidence and determination shine, and people will
find you boorish and headstrong. Travel, promotion, and romance
highlighted, if you live long enough. Don't take any wooden nickels.
%
TAURUS (Apr.20 - May 20)
Take advantage of this opportunity to get a little extra sleep,
because you're going to miss the bus again today anyway. You will
decide to lose weight today, just like yesterday.
%
TAX OFFICE:
Den of inequity.
%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't
tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree."
-- Russell Long
%
Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
out of the market.
%
Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
%
Taxes, n.:
Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
an extension.
%
TCP/IP Slang Glossary, #1:
Gong, n: Medieval term for privvy, or what passed for them in that era.
Today used whimsically to describe the aftermath of a bogon attack. Think
of our community as the Galapagos of the English language.
Vogons may read you bad poetry, but bogons make you study obsolete RFCs.
-- Dave Mills
%
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and,
when they grow up, they won't be able to edge a car onto a freeway.
%
Teachers have class.
%
TEAMWORK:
Having someone to blame.
%
Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
%
Technicality, n.:
In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in
having accused a neighbor of murder. His exact words were: "Sir
Thomas Holt hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the
head, so that one side of his head fell on one shoulder and the
other side upon the other shoulder." The defendant was
acquitted by instruction of the court, the learned judges
holding that the words did not charge murder, for they did not
affirm the death of the cook, that being only an inference.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Technique?" said the programmer turning from his terminal, "What I follow
is Tao -- beyond all technique! When I first began to program I would see
before me the whole problem in one mass. After three years I no longer saw
this mass. Instead, I used subroutines. But now I see nothing. My whole
being exists in a formless void. My senses are idle. My spirit, free to
work without plan, follows its own instinct. In short, my program writes
itself. True, sometimes there are difficult problems. I see them coming, I
slow down, I watch silently. Then I change a single line of code and the
difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke. I then compile the program.
I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being. I close my eyes for
a moment and then log off.
%
Technological progress has merely provided us
with more efficient means for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Teeth for meat are in the mouth --
Teeth for humans are in the soul.
A strong body defeats one,
A strong soul conquers many.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
Tehee quod she, and clapte the wyndow to.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer
%
Telephone books are like dictionaries -- if you know the answer before
you look it up, you can eventually reaffirm what you thought you knew
but weren't sure. But if you're searching for something you don't
already know, your fingers could walk themselves to death.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
Telephone, n.:
An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of
making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Telepression, n.:
The deep-seated guilt which stems from knowing that you did not
try hard enough to look up the number on your own and instead
put the burden on the directory assistant.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Television -- a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.
-- Ernie Kovacs
%
Television -- the longest amateur night in history.
-- Robert Carson
%
Television has brought back murder into the home -- where it belongs.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
%
Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than
each other.
-- Ann Landers
%
Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.
-- attributed to both Fred Allen and Ernie Kovacs
%
Television is now so desperately hungry for material
that it is scraping the top of the barrel.
-- Gore Vidal
%
Television only proves that people will look at anything --
rather than each other.
%
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll
believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have
to touch to be sure.
%
Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I'd call me us.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Tell me what to think!!!
%
Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky's so blue,
And I will tell you just why I love you.
Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
Phototropism makes ivy twine,
Rayleigh scattering makes sky so blue,
Sexual hormones are why I love you.
%
Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally
promoting a falsehood, isn't it?
-- A. Hope
%
Tempt me with a spoon!
%
Tempt not a desperate man.
-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
%
Ten of the meanest cons in the state pen met in the corner of the yard to
shoot some craps. The stakes were enormous, the tension palpable.
When his turn came to shoot, Dutsky nervously plunked down his
entire wad, shook the dice and rolled. A smile crossed his face as a
seven showed up, but it quickly changed to horror as third die slipped out
of his sleeve and fell to the ground with the two others. No one said a
word. Finally, Killer Lucci picked up the third die, put it in his pocket
and handed the others to Dutsky.
"Roll 'em," Lucci said. "Your point is thirteen."
%
Ten persons who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
-- Napoleon I
%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's
way of telling you to stop writing.
-- R. Geis
%
Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.
-- A. E. Housman
%
Term, holidays, term, holidays, till we leave
school, and then work, work, work till we die.
-- C.S. Lewis
%
Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a surprising
amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one hand considered
the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other hand were unwilling
to risk offending God's grandmother.
-- Len Cool, "American Pie"
%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until
about his 35th year, when he became a Christian. [...] To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said: "And the Son of God died, which is immediately
credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is
certain because it is impossible." Thanks to the acuteness of his mind,
he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and
contemptuously rejected it.
-- Carl G. Jung, "Psychological Types"
[Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic
Church. Ed.]
%
Test for paraquat:
Take amount of grass used in one joint, and wash in 5 cc's
of water, agitating gently for 15 minutes. Strain out leaves,
leaving a brownish-yellow solution. Add 100 mg each of sodium
bicarbonate and sodium dithionite. If paraquat is present,
the solution will turn blue-green.
%
Testing can show the presense of bugs, but not their absence.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
%
TEUTONIC:
Not enough gin.
%
TEX is potentially the most significant invention in typesetting in this
century. It introduces a standard language for computer typography, and in
terms of importance could rank near the introduction of the Gutenberg press.
-- Gordon Bell
%
Texas A&M football coach Jackie Sherrill went to the office of the Dean
of Academics because he was concerned about his players' mental abilities.
"My players are just too stupid for me to deal with them", he told the
unbelieving dean. At this point, one of his players happened to enter
the dean's office. "Let me show you what I mean", said Sherrill, and he
told the player to run over to his office to see if he was in. "OK, Coach",
the player replied, and was off. "See what I mean?" Sherrill asked.
"Yeah", replied the dean. "He could have just picked up this phone and
called you from here."
%
Texas is Hell on woman and horses.
-- Wayne Oakes
%
Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
%
Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
-- J. Finnegan, USC
%
Thank God I've always avoided persecuting my enemies.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
-- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
%
Thank you for observing all safety precautions.
%
That all men should be brothers is the dream of people who have no brothers.
-- Charles Chincholles, "Pensees de tout le monde"
%
That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
That does not compute.
%
...that FC loop thing sucks.
So I decided to stick to my good old philosophy: "if it has tits,
wheels or FC loops it will give you problem!"
-- storage engineer on the virtues of FC-AL
%
That feeling just came over me.
-- Albert DeSalvo, the "Boston Strangler"
%
That government is best which governs least.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
%
That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love,
that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love
in the same way as us.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
That money talks,
I'll not deny,
I heard it once,
It said "Good-bye.
-- Richard Armour
%
That must be wonderful: I don't understand it at all.
-- Moliere
%
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
%
That segment of the community with which one has the greatest
sympathy as a liberal, inevitably turns out to be one of the most
narrow-minded and bigoted segments of the community.
%
That, that is, is.
That, that is not, is not.
That, that is, is not that, that is not.
That, that is not, is not that, that is.
%
...that the notions of "hardware", and "software" should be extended by
the notion of LIVEWARE - being that which produces software for use on
hardware. This produces an obvious extension to the concept of MONITORS.
A liveware monitor is a person dedicated to the task of ensuring that the
liveware does not interfere with the real-time processes, invoking the
REAL-TIME EXECUTIONER to delete liveware that adversely affects ...
-- Linden and Wihelminalaan
%
That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee.
%
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
That Xanthippe's husband should have become so great a philosopher is
remarkable. Amid all the scolding, to be able to think! But he could not
write: that was impossible. Socrates has not left us a single book.
-- Heine
%
That's always the way when you discover
something new; everyone thinks you're crazy.
-- Evelyn E. Smith
%
That's life.
What's life?
A magazine.
How much does it cost?
Two-fifty.
I only have a dollar.
That's life.
%
That's life for you, said McDunn. Someone always waiting for someone
who never comes home. Always someone loving something more than that
thing loves them. And after awhile you want to destroy whatever that
thing is, so it can't hurt you no more.
-- R. Bradbury, "The Fog Horn"
%
"That's no answer," Job said, "And for someone who's supposed to be
omnipotent, let me tell you 'tabernacle' has only one l."
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
That's no moon...
-- Obi-wan Kenobi
%
That's odd. That's very odd.
Wouldn't you say that's very odd?
%
That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.
-- Neil Armstrong
%
That's the most fun I've had without laughing.
-- Woody Allen, on sex
%
That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they
really hate is lousy programmers.
-- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
%
That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows
returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball.
-- Bill Veeck
%
That's what she said.
%
That's where the money was.
-- Willie Sutton, on being asked why he robbed a bank
It's a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night.
-- Willie Sutton
%
The 11 is for people with the pride of a 10 and the pocketbook of an 8.
-- R. B. Greenberg
%
The 357.73 Theory --
Auditors always reject expense accounts
with a bottom line divisible by 5.
%
The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
%
The 'A' is for content, the 'minus' is for not typing it.
Don't ever do this to my eyes again.
-- Professor Ronald Brady, Philosophy, Ramapo State College
%
The Abrams' Principle:
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%
The absence of labels [in ECL] is probably a good thing.
-- T. Cheatham
%
The absent ones are always at fault.
%
The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.
-- A. Camus
%
The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.
-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
%
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
-- Clifton Fadiman
%
The adjuration to be "normal" seems shockingly repellent to me; I see neither
hope nor comfort in sinking to that low level. I think it is ignorance that
makes people think of abnormality only with horror and allows them to remain
undismayed at the proximity of "normal" to average and mediocre. For surely
anyone who achieves anything is, essentially, abnormal.
-- Dr. Karl Menninger, "The Human Mind", 1930
%
The advantage of being celibate is that when one sees a pretty girl one
does not need to grieve over having an ugly one back home.
-- Paul Leautaud, "Propos dun jour"
%
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
The Advertising Agency Song:
When your client's hopping mad,
Put his picture in the ad.
If he still should prove refractory,
Add a picture of his factory.
%
The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that
he is already degraded.
-- George Orwell
%
The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex
facts. Seek simplicity and distrust it.
-- Whitehead
%
The alarm clock that is louder than God's own
belongs to the roommate with the earliest class.
%
The algorithm for finding the longest path in a graph is NP-complete.
For you systems people, that means it's *real slow*.
-- Bart Miller
%
The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
someone with it.
-- M. Devine, Computer Science 340
%
The all-softening overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul, -- the dinner bell.
-- Lord Byron
%
The Almighty in His infinite wisdom did not see
fit to create Frenchmen in the image of Englishmen.
-- Winston Churchill, 1942
%
The American Dental Association announced today that most plaque tends
to form on teeth around 4:00 PM in the afternoon.
Film at 11:00.
%
The American nation in the sixth ward is a fine people; they love the
eagle -- on the back of a dollar.
-- Finley Peter Dunne
%
The American system of ours, call it Americanism, call it Capitalism,
call it what you like, gives each and every one of us a great
opportunity if we only seize it with both hands and make the most of it.
-- Al Capone
%
The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the
pavement is precisely 1 bananosecond.
%
The amount of weight an evangelist carries with the almighty is measured
in billigrahams.
%
The Analytical Engine weaves Algebraical patterns
just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.
-- Ada Augusta, Countess of Lovelace, the first programmer
%
The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that consists
of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune of "Camptown
Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and,
even better, nobody has to play it.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The Ancient Doctrine of Mind Over Matter:
I don't mind... and you don't matter.
-- As revealed to reporter G. Rivera by Swami Havabanana
%
The Angels want to wear my red shoes.
-- E. Costello
%
The anger of a woman is the greatest evil
with which you can threaten your enemies.
-- Bonnard
%
The Anglo-Saxon conscience does not prevent the Anglo-Saxon from
sinning, it merely prevents him from enjoying his sin.
--Salvador De Madariaga
%
The angry man always thinks he can do more than he can.
-- Albertano of Brescia
%
The animals are not as stupid as one thinks -- they have neither
doctors nor lawyers.
-- L. Docquier
%
The annual meeting of the "You Have To Listen To Experience" Club is now in
session. Our Achievement Awards this year are in the fields of publishing,
advertising and industry. For best consistent contribution in the field of
publishing our award goes to editor, R.L.K., [...] for his unrivaled alle-
giance without variation to the statement: "Personally I'd love to do it,
we'd ALL love to do it. But we're not going to do it. It's not the kind of
book our house knows how to handle." Our superior performance award in the
field of advertising goes to media executive, E.L.M., [...] for the continu-
ally creative use of the old favorite: "I think what you've got here could be
very exciting. Why not give it one more try based on the approach I've out-
lined and see if you can come up with something fresh." Our final award for
courageous holding action in the field of industry goes to supervisor, R.S.,
[...] for her unyielding grip on "I don't care if they fire me, I've been
arguing for a new approach for YEARS but are we SURE that this is the right
time--" I would like to conclude this meeting with a verse written specially
for our prospectus by our founding president fifty years ago -- and now, as
then, fully expressive of the emotion most close to all our hearts --
Treat freshness as a youthful quirk,
And dare not stray to ideas new,
For if t'were tried they might e'en work
And for a living what woulds't we do?
%
The answer is that libdialog, the library on which sysinstall depends
for these menus, is genuinely evil. It is the unloved, satanic
bastard child of multiple parents and torturing users like yourself
constitutes the only joy in life it has left. Its source files are
all chmod'd 0666 and dire README files warn against trespass by
neophyte programmers. It is the 7th gate of Hell. It makes the baby
Jesus cry. Were libdialog given anthropomorphic representation, it
would be promptly burnt at the stake and its ashes scattered in the
desert, to be then doused with holy water from altitude by
fire-fighting aircraft.
-- Jordan K. Hubbard on the evils of libdialog
%
The answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is...
Four day work week,
Two ply toilet paper!
%
The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything was
released with the kind permission of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers,
Sages, Luminaries, and Other Professional Thinking Persons.
%
The ark lands after The Flood. Noah lets all the animals out. Says he, "Go
and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals.
All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" says Noah.
"Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes. Noah follows
their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again.
Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy. Noah asks, "Want to tell me how
the trees helped?" "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need
logs to multiply."
%
The arms business is founded on human folly, that is why its depths will
never be plumbed and why it will go on forever. All weapons are defensive
and all spare parts are non-lethal. The plainest print cannot be read
through a solid gold sovereign, or a ruble or a golden eagle.
-- Sam Cummings, American arms dealer
%
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
-- T. Lehrer
%
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
-- Bill Murray
%
The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
Declaration not for that, but for future use.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
The astronomer Francesco Sizi, a contemporary of Galileo, argues that
Jupiter can have no satellites:
There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two
eyes, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent.
From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven
metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number
of planets is necessarily seven. [...]
Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and
therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless
and therefore do not exist.
%
The attacker must vanquish; the defender need only survive.
%
The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she
knows that the average man can see much better than he can think.
-- Ladies' Home Journal
%
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in
the morning feeling just terrible.
-- Jean Kerr
%
The average income of the modern teenager is about 2AM.
%
The average individual's position in any hierarchy is a lot like pulling
a dogsled -- there's no real change of scenery except for the lead dog.
%
The average nutritional value of promises is roughly zero.
%
The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from
one graveyard to another.
-- J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England"
%
The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain
disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help
feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is
their father.
-- Mencken
%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%
The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned
into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
-- Nelson Algren, "Writers at Work"
%
The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that
carries any reward.
-- John Maynard Keynes
%
The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried
anything.
-- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
%
The bank called to tell me that I'm overdrawn,
Some freaks are burning crosses out on my front lawn,
And I *can't*believe* it, all the Cheetos are gone,
It's just ONE OF THOSE DAYS!
-- Weird Al Yankovic, "One of Those Days"
%
The bank sent our statement this morning,
The red ink was a sight of great awe!
Their figures and mine might have balanced,
But my wife was too quick on the draw.
%
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you
want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking
lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
lots.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit
called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in
writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would
be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices
immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a
bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special
Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of
paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty
would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.
The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to
emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood
Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
%
THE BEATLES:
Paul McCartney's old back-up band.
%
The beer-cooled computer does not harm the ozone layer.
-- John M. Ford, a.k.a. Dr. Mike
[If I can read my notes from the Ask Dr. Mike session at Baycon, I
believe he added that the beer-cooled computer uses "Forget Only
Memory". Ed.]
%
The best audience is intelligent, well-educated and a little drunk.
-- Maurice Baring
%
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
%
The best case: Get salary from America, build a house in England,
live with a Japanese wife, and eat Chinese food.
Pretty good case: Get salary from England, build a house in America,
live with a Chinese wife, and eat Japanese food.
The worst case: Get salary from China, build a house in Japan,
live with a British wife, and eat American food.
--Bungei Shunju, a popular Japanese magazine
%
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
-- W.C. Fields
%
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
%
The best definition of a gentleman is a man who can play the accordion --
but doesn't.
-- Tom Crichton
%
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty
%
The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most expensive.
However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be yours
by judging things by their price.
%
The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do
what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with
them while they do it.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
%
The best laid plans of mice and men are held up in the legal department.
%
The best laid plans of mice and men are usually about equal.
-- Blair
%
The best man for the job is often a woman.
%
The best number for a dinner party is two -- myself and a damn good
head waiter.
-- Nubar Gulbenkian
%
The best portion of a good man's life, his little,
nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.
-- Wordsworth
%
The best prophet of the future is the past.
%
The best rebuttal to this kind of statistical argument came from the
redoubtable John W. Campbell:
The laws of population growth tell us that approximately half the
people who were ever born in the history of the world are now
dead. There is therefore a 0.5 probability that this message is
being read by a corpse.
%
The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and
fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are
drifting side by side to our common doom.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
The best thing about being bald is, that, when unexpected
company arrives, all you have to do is straighten your tie.
%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%
The best thing that comes out of Iowa is I-80.
%
The best things in life are for a fee.
%
The best things in life go on sale sooner or later.
%
The best way to accelerate a Macintoy is at 9.8 meters per second, squared.
%
The best way to avoid responsibility is to say, "I've got responsibilities."
%
The best way to get rid of worries is to let them die of neglect.
%
The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away.
%
The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
is a match.
-- Will Rogers
%
The best way to preserve a right is to exercise it, and the right to
smoke is a right worth dying for.
%
The best ways are the most straightforward ways. When you're sitting around
scamming these things out, all kinds of James Bondian ideas come forth, but
when it gets down to the reality of it, the simplest and most straightforward
way is usually the best, and the way that attracts the least attention.
Also, pouring gasoline on the water and lighting it like James Bond doesn't
work either.... They tried it during Prohibition.
-- Thomas King Forcade, marijuana smuggler
%
The best you get is an even break.
-- Franklin Adams
%
The better part of valor is discretion.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
%
The better the state is established, the fainter is humanity.
To make the individual uncomfortable, that is my task.
-- Nietzsche
%
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments
to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals.
It's just that they need more supervision.
%
The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could
never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
The Bible on letters of reference:
Are we beginning all over again to produce our credentials? Do
we, like some people, need letters of introduction to you, or from you?
No, you are all the letter we need, a letter written on your heart; any
man can see it for what it is and read it for himself.
-- 2 Corinthians 3:1-2, New English translation
%
The big cities of America are becoming Third World countries.
-- Nora Ephron
%
The big question is why in the course of evolution the males permitted
themselves to be so totally eclipsed by the females. Why do they tolerate
this total subservience, this wretched existence as outcasts who are
hungry all the time?
%
The bigger the theory the better.
%
The bigger they are, the harder they hit.
%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time.
-- Merrick Furst
%
The biggest mistake you can make is to believe that you are
working for someone else.
%
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has
occurred.
%
The Bird of Time has but a little way to fly ...
and the bird is on the wing.
-- Omar Khayyam
%
The black bear used to be one of the most commonly seen large animals
because in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks they lived off of garbage
and tourist handouts. This bear has learned to open car doors in
Yosemite, where damage to automobiles caused by bears runs into the tens
of thousands of dollars a year. Campaigns to bearproof all garbage
containers in wild areas have been difficult, because as one biologist
put it, "There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels
of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
%
The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch.
%
The bogosity meter just pegged.
%
The bold youth of today is very lonely.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.
-- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
%
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
-- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest
%
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Eating peanuts by the peck.
His father called him, but he could not go,
For he loved those peanuts so.
%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment
you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to work.
%
The Briggs - Chase Law of Program Development:
To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
one, and convert to the next higher units.
%
The British are coming! The British are coming!
%
The broad mass of a nation... will more easily
fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
-- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
%
The brotherhood of man is not a mere poet's dream; it is a most depressing
and humiliating reality.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a
digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top
of a mountain or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean
the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself.
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be.
Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in
automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
-- Art Buchwald
%
The bugs you have to avoid are the ones that give the user not only
the inclination to get on a plane, but also the time.
-- Kay Bostic
%
The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
Univ. by Professor Scott Rice. It is held in memory of Edward George
Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
time) novelist. He is best known today for having written "The Last
Days of Pompeii."
Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
Bulwer-Lytton. This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
written in 1830. The full line reveals why it is so bad:
It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
%
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
bureaucracy.
%
The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language.
%
The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better
people, and don't come in clearly enough.
-- Bill Maher
%
The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted
sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first
time since the journey began -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve
into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent
with Basil.
-- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest
%
The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary two;
Or else the other way around.
I'm never sure. Are you?
-- Ogden Nash
%
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The carbonyl is polarized,
The delta end is plus.
The nucleophile will thus attack,
The carbon nucleus.
Addition makes an alcohol,
Of types there are but three.
It makes a bond, to correspond,
From C to shining C.
-- Prof. Frank Westheimer, to "America the Beautiful"
%
The cart has no place where a fifth wheel could be used.
-- Herbert von Fritzlar
%
The Celts invented two things, Whiskey and self-destruction.
%
The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.
-- G. Fitch
%
The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to carry them, and
sometimes three.
-- Alexandre Dumas
%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters picnic.
%
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
-- Eric Sevareid
%
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.
-- Alfred Adler
%
The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense.
-- Picasso
%
The church is near but the road is icy,
the bar is far away but I will walk carefully.
-- Russian Proverb
%
The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
The City of Palo Alto, in its official description of parking lot standards,
specifies the grade of wheelchair access ramps in terms of centimeters of
rise per foot of run. A compromise, I imagine...
%
The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom.
%
The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.
-- John Muir
%
The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity;
the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of a
military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and
private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion;
and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes
who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity.
-- Edward Gibbons, "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
%
The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
%
The closest to perfection a person ever comes
is when he fills out a job application form.
-- Stanley J. Randall
%
The clothes have no emperor.
-- C. A. R. Hoare, commenting on ADA
%
The coast was clear.
-- Lope de Vega
%
The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his
intellectual nakedness.
-- Robert M. Hutchins
%
The Commandments of the EE:
1: Beware of lightning that lurketh in an uncharged condenser
lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
embarrassing manner.
2: Cause thou the switch that supplieth large quantities of juice to
be opened and thusly tagged, that thy days may be long in this
earthly vale of tears.
3: Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth, and upon
which the worketh, are grounded and thusly tagged lest they lift
thee to a radio frequency potential and causeth thee to make like
a radiator too.
4: Tarry thou not amongst these fools that engage in intentional
shocks for they are not long for this world and are surely
unbelievers.
%
The Commandments of the EE:
5: Take care that thou useth the proper method when thou takest the
measures of high-voltage circuits too, that thou dost not incinerate
both thee and thy test meter, for verily, though thou has no company
property number and can be easily surveyed, the test meter has
one and, as a consequence, bringeth much woe unto a purchasing agent.
6: Take care that thou tamperest not with interlocks and safety devices,
for this incurreth the wrath of the chief electrician and bring
the fury of the engineers on his head.
7: Work thou not on energized equipment for if thou doest so, thy
friends will surely be buying beers for thy widow and consoling
her in certain ways not generally acceptable to thee.
8: Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service equipment alone,
for electrical cooking is a slow process and thou might sizzle in
thy own fat upon a hot circuit for hours on end before thy maker
sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into his fold.
%
The Commandments of the EE:
9: Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages.
10: Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician.
11: When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket. Better
that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
innocent-seeming device.
%
The common cormorant, or shag, lays eggs inside a paper bag.
%
The computer gets faster! --Moore--
%
The computer industry is journalists in their 20's standing in awe of
entrepreneurs in their 30's who are hiring salesmen in their 40's and
50's and paying them in the 60's and 70's to bring their marketing into
the 80's.
-- Marty Winston
%
The computer is to the information industry roughly what the
central power station is to the electrical industry.
-- Peter Drucker
%
The Computer made me do it.
%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis
%
The concept seems to be clear by now. It has been
defined several times by examples of what it is not.
%
The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his
memos.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
The connection between the language in which we think/program and the problems
and solutions we can imagine is very close. For this reason restricting
language features with the intent of eliminating programmer errors is at best
dangerous.
-- Bjarne Stroustrup
%
The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other
subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up
every bird watcher in the country.
-- John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972
%
The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's a lot better
than what we've got!
%
The Consultant's Curse:
When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him
what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong
medicine, and is normally only required once.
%
The control of the production of wealth
is the control of human life itself.
-- Hilaire Belloc
%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
The cost of feathers has risen, even down is up!
%
The cost of living has just gone up another dollar a quart.
-- W.C. Fields
%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
%
The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first
female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick,
rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what
would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my
career.
-- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest
%
The course of true anything never does run smooth.
-- Samuel Butler
%
The courtroom was pregnant (pun intended) with anxious silence as the
judge solemnly considered his verdict in the paternity suit before him.
Suddenly, he reached into the folds of his robes, drew out a cigar and
ceremoniously handed it to the defendant.
"Congratulations!" declaimed the jurist. "You have just become a
father!"
%
The covers of this book are too far apart.
-- Book review by Ambrose Bierce
%
The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to eat.
-- John McNulty
%
The Creation of the Universe was made possible by a grant from Texas
Instruments.
-- Credits from the PBS program ``The Creation of the Universe''
%
The Crown is full of it!
-- Nate Harris, 1775
%
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore
be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be
propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war
and they are screened at once from scrutiny. ... In war, then, as in peace,
assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this as the bulwark
of all our rights and privileges.
-- William Ellery Channing
%
The curse of the Irish is not that they don't know the
words to a song -- it's that they know them *all*.
-- Susan Dooley
%
The "cutting edge" is getting rather dull.
-- Andy Purshottam
%
The Czechs announced after Sputnik that they, too, would launch
a satellite. Of course, it would orbit Sputnik, not Earth!
%
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern.
Every class is unfit to govern.
-- Lord Acton
%
The dangerous Lego Bomb, which targets shag rugs and scatters pieces of
plastic that hurt like hell when you step on them is banned entirely....
Hiring David Copperfield to pretend to saw the missiles in half will not
be permitted... In order to reduce risk of accidental war, both sides
agree to ban the popular but dangerous 'Simon Says' training drill at
nuclear launch sites... Under no circumstances will either side reveal
that it hammered out the treaty in one afternoon, but spent the last nine
years arguing the Monty Hall and the three doors problem.
-- Little known provisions of the START treaty by James Lileks
%
The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning,
and lo! now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
%
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being
as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with
this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
The days are all empty and the nights are unreal.
%
The days just prior to marriage are like a snappy introduction
to a tedious book.
%
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of us
who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching Charlie
Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
%
The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
%
The deceased was killed by 1207.3557298 Volts AC RMS applied by
accident when he brushed against the output terminal of a John B.
Fluke Company High Voltage Calibrator.
-- fictitious coroner's report by Mike Andrews
%
The decision doesn't have to be logical; it was unanimous.
%
The default Magic Word, "Abracadabra", actually is a corruption of the
Hebrew phrase "ha-Bracha dab'ra" which means "pronounce the blessing".
%
The degree of civilization in a society
can be judged by entering its prisons.
-- F. Dostoyevski
%
The degree of technical confidence is inversely
proportional to the level of management.
%
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older
people, and greatly assists in the circulation of the blood.
-- Logan Pearsall Smith
%
The departing division general manager met a last time with his young
successor and gave him three envelopes. "My predecessor did this for me,
and I'll pass the tradition along to you," he said. "At the first sign
of trouble, open the first envelope. Any further difficulties, open the
second envelope. Then, if problems continue, open the third envelope.
Good luck." The new manager returned to his office and tossed the envelopes
into a drawer.
Six months later, costs soared and earnings plummeted. Shaken, the
young man opened the first envelope, which said, "Blame it all on me."
The next day, he held a press conference and did just that. The
crisis passed.
Six months later, sales dropped precipitously. The beleaguered
manager opened the second envelope. It said, "Reorganize."
He held another press conference, announcing that the division
would be restructured. The crisis passed.
A year later, everything went wrong at once and the manager was
blamed for all of it. The harried executive closed his office door, sank
into his chair, and opened the third envelope.
"Prepare three envelopes..." it said.
%
The descent to Hades is the same from every place.
-- Anaxagoras
%
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%
The devil finds work for idle glands.
%
The die is cast.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar
%
The difference between a career and a job is about 20 hours a week.
%
The difference between a good haircut and a bad one is seven days.
%
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is
exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.
-- Mark Twain
%
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell into
the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again,
it would be a calamity.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
The difference between America and England is, the English think 100
miles is a long distance and the Americans think 100 years is a long time.
%
The difference between art and science is that science is what we
understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else.
-- Donald Knuth, "Discover"
%
The difference between common-sense and paranoia is that common-sense is
thinking everyone is out to get you. That's normal -- they are. Paranoia
is thinking that they're conspiring.
-- J. Kegler
%
The difference between dogs and cats is that dogs come when they're
called. Cats take a message and get back to you.
%
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
%
The difference between legal separation and divorce is
that legal separation gives the man time to hide his money.
%
The difference between reality and unreality
is that reality has so little to recommend it.
-- Allan Sherman
%
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
The difference between sentiment and being sentimental is the following:
Sentiment is when a driver swerves out of the way to avoid hitting a
rabbit on the road. Being sentimental is when the same driver, when
swerving away from the rabbit hits a pedestrian.
-- Frank Herbert, "The White Plague"
%
The difference between sentiment and sentimentality is easy to see. When
you avoid killing somebody's pet on the glazeway, that's sentiment. If you
swerve to avoid the pet and that causes you to kill pedestrians, THAT is
sentimentality.
-- Frank Herbert, "Chapterhouse: Dune"
%
The difference between the right word and the almost right word
is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
-- Mark Twain
%
The difference between this place and yogurt
is that yogurt has a live culture.
%
The difference between us is not very far,
cruising for burgers in daddy's new car.
%
The difference between waltzes and disco is mostly one of volume.
-- T. K.
%
The difficult we do today; the impossible takes a little longer.
%
The dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in
the grim hours between midnight and dawn. Hangmen and politicians
work best when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.
-- Russell Baker
%
The discerning person is always at a disadvantage.
%
The disks are getting full; purge a file today.
%
The distinction between Freedom and Liberty is not accurately known;
naturalists have been unable to find a living specimen of either.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
"I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
"Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are _v_e_r_y Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
goyish. Lime soda is _v_e_r_y goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
The distinction between true and false appears to become
increasingly blurred by... the pollution of the language.
-- Arne Tiselius
%
The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
%
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in
the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines,
and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.
-- John Adams
%
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterson
%
The door is the key.
%
The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show off
this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his next
hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the duck fell,
the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the duck and returned
it to his master.
"Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
"Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."
%
The duration of passion is proportionate with the original resistance
of the woman.
-- Honore DeBalzac
%
The eagle may soar, but the weasel never gets sucked into a jet engine.
%
The early bird gets the coffee left over from the night before.
%
The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
and owns the worm farm.
-- Travis McGee
%
The early worm gets the bird.
%
The early worm gets the late bird.
%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%
The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
add ten percent.
%
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly
teaches me to suspect that my own is also.
I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it
or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his
hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be.
But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life -- hence it is a
valuable possession to him.
I do not see how eternal punishment hereafter could accomplish any good
end, therefore I am not able to believe in it. To chasten a man in order
to perfect him might be reasonable enough; to annihilate him when he shall
have proved himself incapable of reaching perfection might be reasonable
enough; but to roast him forever for the mere satisfaction of seeing him
roast would not be reasonable -- even the atrocious God imagined by the Jews
would tire of the spectacle eventually.
-- Mark Twain
%
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
%
The egg cream is psychologically the opposite of circumcision -- it
*pleasurably* reaffirms your Jewishness.
-- Mel Brooks
%
The elder gods went to Yuggoth, and all you got was this lousy fortune.
%
"The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
Compute' -- I forget which."
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
The Encyclopaedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed
to do the work of a man. The marketing division of Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation defines a robot as 'Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With'.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing division of the
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the
first against the wall when the revolution comes', with a footnote to effect
that the editors would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking
over the post of robotics correspondent.
Curiously enough, an edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that
had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in
the future defined the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics
Corporation as 'a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the
wall when the revolution came'.
%
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
-- Buckminster Fuller
%
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
%
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
civilization.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
symposium to follow.
%
The ends justify the means.
-- after Matthew Prior
%
The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind
of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation
of these atoms is talking moonshine.
-- Ernest Rutherford, after he had split the atom for
the first time
%
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox -- the unspeakable
in full pursuit of the uneatable.
-- Oscar Wilde, "A Woman of No Importance"
%
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
their children to speak it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The English instinctively admire any man
who has no talent and is modest about it.
-- James Agate, British film and drama critic
%
The entire work force of the Communist countries is subjected to periodic
purges (called verifications in Newspeak). One of the most severe took
place in 1957 when Novotny, rattled by the Hungarian Revolution the year
before, tried hard to weed out "radishes" (red outside, white inside) from
all but insignificant positions. Any one of the following would often
result in the loss of one's job: Bourgeois or Jewish family background,
relatives abroad, contacts with former capitalists, having lived in a
Western country, insufficient knowledge of Communist literature, and others.
A man is interviewed by a "Verification Committee."
"What kind of family do you come from?"
"A rich, Jewish family."
"And your wife?"
"A German aristocrat."
"Have you ever been to the West?"
"I spent most of my life in England."
"How did you make a living there?"
"A friend supported me."
"Where did you get the money from?"
"He owned a textile factory."
"Who was Lenin?"
"Never heard of him."
"What is your name?"
"Karl Marx."
%
The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute
for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is
a substitute for intelligence.
-- Lyman Bryson
%
The eternal feminine draws us upward.
-- Goethe
%
The executioner is, I hear, very expert, and my neck is very slender.
-- Anne Boleyn
%
The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions
is the most likely to be correct.
-- William of Occam
%
The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing,
the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its
own capacity. ... Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god
of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god
of the center. Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together
what they could do to repay his kindness. They had noticed that, whereas
everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and
so on, Chaos had none. So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes
in him. Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died.
-- Chuang Tzu
%
The eyes of taxes are upon you.
%
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the livelong day;
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away;
Do not think you can escape them
From night 'til early in the morn;
The eyes of Texas are upon you
'Til Gabriel blows his horn.
-- University of Texas' school song
%
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not
utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind,
a widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.
-- Bertrand Russell, in "Marriage and Morals", 1929
%
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a
remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
The fact that Hitler was a political genius unmasks the nature of politics
in general as no other can.
-- Wilhelm Reich
%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
-- L. Ogborn
%
The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn't necessarily
endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or
compassion.
-- Saul Alinsky
%
The fall of the USSR proves you wrong.
-- Aryeh M. Friedman
%
The famous politician was trying to save both his faces.
%
The farther you go, the less you know.
-- Lao Tsu, "Tao Te Ching"
%
The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
%
The fashionable drawing rooms of London have always been happy to accept
outsiders -- if only on their own, albeit undemanding terms. That is to
say, artists, so long as they are not too talented, men of humble birth,
so long as they have since amassed several million pounds, and socialists
so long as they are Tories.
-- Christopher Booker
%
The faster I go, the behinder I get.
-- Lewis Carroll
%
The faster we go, the rounder we get.
-- The Grateful Dead
%
The Fastest Defeat In Chess
The big name for us in the world of chess is Gibaud, a French chess
master.
In Paris during 1924 he was beaten after only four moves by a
Monsieur Lazard. Happily for posterity, the moves are recorded and so
chess enthusiasts may reconstruct this magnificent collapse in the comfort
of their own homes.
Lazard was black and Gibaud white:
1: P-Q4, Kt-KB3
2: Kt-Q2, P-K4
3: PxP, Kt-Kt5
4: P-K6, Kt-K6/
White then resigns on realizing that a fifth move would involve
either a Q-KR5 check or the loss of his queen.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The father, passing through his son's college town late one evening on a
business trip, thought he would pay his boy a surprise visit. Arriving at the
lad's fraternity house, dad rapped loudly on the door. After several minutes
of knocking, a sleepy voice drifted down from a second-floor window,
"Whaddaya want?"
"Does Ramsey Duncan live here?" asked the father.
"Yeah," replied the voice. "Dump him on the front porch."
%
The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer
and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown
suit in the city. Colleges may be to blame. English majors are encouraged,
I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not
dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the
quad. And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors,
and they are squeamish about technology to this very day. So it is natural
for them to despise science fiction.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"
%
The fellow sat down at a bar, ordered a drink and asked the bartender if he
wanted to hear a dumb-jock joke.
"Hey, buddy," the bartender replied, "you see those two guys next to
you? They used to be with the Chicago Bears. The two dudes behind you made
the U.S. Olympic wrestling team. And for you information, I used to play
center at Notre Dame."
"Forget it," the customer said. "I don't want to explain it five
times."
%
"The feminist agenda," Pat Robertson observed in a recent letter to his
supporters, "is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist,
anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their
husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism
and become lesbians."
%
The Feynman Problem-Solving Algorithm:
(1) write down the problem.
(2) think very hard.
(3) write down the answer.
-- Murray Gell-Mann
%
The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%
The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
-- Maurice Chapelain, "Main courante"
%
The final screw holding up a rackmount server is always possessed by demons.
%
The finest eloquence is that which gets things done.
%
The first 90% of a project takes 90% of the time,
the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
%
The first and almost the only Book deserving of universal attention is
the Bible.
-- John Quincy Adams
All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated through this Book;
but for the Book we could not know right from wrong. All the things desirable
to man are contained in it.
-- Abraham Lincoln
... the Bible ... is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of
life, the nature of God and spiritual nature and need of men. It is the only
guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation.
-- Woodrow Wilson
%
The First Commandment for Technicians:
Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
untechnician-like manner.
%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
-- Abbie Hoffman
%
The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked
suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with
dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found
drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have
thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left
in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave
Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
The first guy that rats gets a bellyful of slugs in the head. Understand?
-- Joey Glimco, trade unionist
%
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents,
and the second half by our children.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
The first marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence,
and the second the triumph of hope over experience.
%
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
management is that success equals skill.
-- Robert Heller
%
The first requisite for immortality is death.
-- Stanislaw Lem
%
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
"What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
whistles?"
I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
gave up.
"A herring," said my father.
"A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
"So hang it there."
"But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
"Paint it."
"But a herring isn't wet."
"If it's just painted it's still wet."
"But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
doesn't whistle!!"
"Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
hard."
-- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
%
The first Rotarian was the first man to call John the Baptist "Jack."
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Paul Erlich
%
The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do.
-- McCloctnik the Lucid
%
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
Don't do it.
The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
Don't do it yet.
-- Michael Jackson
%
The first thing I do in the morning
is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV
%
The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
The second, a trick.
Later, it's a well-established technique!
-- Mike Broido, Intermetrics
%
The first version always gets thrown away.
%
The five rules of Socialism:
1. Don't think.
2. If you do think, don't speak.
3. If you think and speak, don't write.
4. If you think, speak and write, don't sign.
5. If you think, speak, write and sign, don't be surprised.
-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
...the flaw that makes perfection perfect.
%
The flow chart is a most thoroughly oversold piece of program documentation.
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%
The flush toilet is the basis of Western civilization.
-- Alan Coult
%
The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
. . .
Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
of the hyper-cube.
%
The following statement is not true.
The previous statement is true.
%
The Following Subsume All Physical and Human Laws:
1. You can't push on a string.
2. Ain't no free lunches.
3. Them as has, gets.
4. You can't win them all, but you sure as hell can lose them all.
%
The Force is what holds everything together.
It has its dark side, and it has its light side.
It's sort of like cosmic duct tape.
%
The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money
completely surrounded by people who want some.
-- Dwight MacDonald
%
The forest is safe because a lion lives therein and the lion is safe
because it lives in a forest. Likewise the friendship of persons
rests on mutual help.
-- Laukikanyay
%
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions
and by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%
The founding fathers tried to set up a judicial system where the accused
received a fair trial, not a system to insure an acquittal on technicalities.
%
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip
objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air
due to levitation.
Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur
if the character does not have fire resistance.
-- README file from the NetHack game
%
The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and
vinyl.
-- Dave Barry
%
[The French Riviera is] a sunny place for shady people.
-- Somerset Maugham
%
The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
number of your kids by thirty-two teeth.
%
The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend
of both parties tactfully interferes.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
The function of the expert is not to be more right than other people,
but to be wrong for more sophisticated reasons.
-- Dr. David Butler, British psephologist
%
The future is a myth created by insurance
salesmen and high school counselors.
%
The future is a race between education and catastrophe.
-- H. G. Wells
%
The future is going to be boring.
-- J. G. Ballard
%
The future isn't what it used to be. (It never was.)
%
The future lies ahead.
%
The future not being born, my friend,
we will abstain from baptizing it.
-- George Meredith
%
The garden is in mourning;
The rain falls cool among the flowers.
Summer shivers quietly
On its way towards its end.
Golden leaf after leaf
Falls from the tall acacia.
Summer smiles, astonished, feeble,
In this dying dream of a garden.
For a long while, yet, in the roses,
She will linger on, yearning for peace,
And slowly
Close her weary eyes.
-- Hermann Hesse, "September"
%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
%
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the
people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people
drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
-- Gore Vidal
%
The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn't been asleep.
%
The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
%
The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled
today.
%
The girl who remembers her first kiss now has a daughter who can't even
remember her first husband.
%
The girl who stoops to conquer usually wears a low-cut dress.
%
The girl who swears no one has ever made love to her has a right to swear.
-- Sophia Loren
%
The glances over cocktails
That seemed to be so sweet
Don't seem quite so amorous
Over Shredded Wheat
%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines.
They gave him love and he invented marriage.
%
The Golden Rule is of no use to you whatever unless you realize it
is your move.
-- Frank Crane
%
The Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences:
He who has the gold makes the rules.
%
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
man in the bonds of Hell.
-- St. Augustine
%
The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
to be good.
-- John Barrymore
%
The good (I am convinced, for one)
Is but the bad one leaves undone.
Once your reputation's done
You can live a life of fun.
-- Wilhelm Busch
%
The good life was so elusive
It really got me down
I had to regain some confidence
So I got into camaflouge
%
The good time is approaching,
The season is at hand.
When the merry click of the two-base lick
Will be heard throughout the land.
The frost still lingers on the earth, and
Budless are the trees.
But the merry ring of the voice of spring
Is borne upon the breeze.
-- Ode to Opening Day, "The Sporting News", 1886
%
The Gordian Maxim:
If a string has one end, it has another.
%
The government has just completed work on a missile that turned out
to be a bit of a boondoggle; nicknamed "Civil Servant", it won't work
and they can't fire it.
%
The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
statistics. These are raised to the _nth degree, the cube roots are
extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
down anything he damn well pleases.
-- Sir Josiah Stamp
%
The Government just announced today the creation of the Neutron Bomb II.
Similar to the Neutron Bomb, the Neutron Bomb II not only kills people
and leaves buildings standing, but also does a little light housekeeping.
%
The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the
Christian Religion
-- George Washington
%
The government was contemplating the dispatch of an expedition to Burma,
with a view to taking Rangoon, and a question arose as to who would be the
fittest general to be sent in command of the expedition. The Cabinet sent
for the Duke of Wellington, and asked his advice. He instantly replied,
"Send Lord Combermere."
"But we have always understood that your Grace thought Lord
Combermere a fool."
"So he is a fool, and a damned fool; but he can take Rangoon."
-- G. W. E. Russell
%
The goys have proven the following theorem...
-- Physicist John von Neumann, at the start of a classroom
lecture.
%
The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
The grass is always greener on the other side of your sunglasses.
%
The grave's a fine and private place,
but none, I think, do there embrace.
-- Andrew Marvell
%
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
-- Charles de Gaulle
%
The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk
clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods
of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
Hedgehog Eater.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The great merit of society is to make one appreciate solitude.
-- Charles Chincholles, "Reflections on the Art of Life"
%
The Great Movie Posters:
*A Giggle Gurgling Gulp of Glee*
With Pretty Girls, Peppy Scenes, and Gorgeous Revues -- plus a good story.
-- Tea with a Kick (1924)
Whoopie! Let's go!... Hand-picked Beauties doing cute tricks!
GET IN THE KNOW FOR THE HEY-HEY WHOOPIE!
-- The Wild Party (1929)
YOU HEAR HIM MAKE LOVE!
DIX -- the dashing soldier!
DIX -- the bold adventurer!
DIX -- the throbbing lover!
-- The Wheel of Life (1929)
SEE CHARLES BUTTERWORTH DRIVE A STREETCAR AND SING LOVE
SONGS TO HIS MARE "MITZIE"!
-- The Night is Young (1934)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
A mis-spawned murderous abomination from the nether reaches of an
unimaginable hell.
-- The Killer of Castle Brood (1967)
NEW -- SICKENING HORROR to make your STOMACH TURN and FLESH CRAWL!
-- Frankenstein's Bloody Terror (1968)
LUST-MAD MEN AND LAWLESS WOMEN IN A VICIOUS AND SENSUOUS ORGY OF
SLAUGHTER!
-- Five Bloody Graves (1969)
The family that slays together stays together.
-- Bloody Mama (1970)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
An AVALANCHE of KILLER WORMS!
-- Squirm (1976)
Most Movies Live Less Than Two Hours.
This Is One of Everlasting Torment!
-- The New House on the Left (1977)
WE ARE GOING TO EAT YOU!
-- Zombie (1980)
It's not human and it's got an axe.
-- The Prey (1981)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
Different! Daring! Dynamic! Defying! Dumbfounding!
SEE Uncle Tom lead the Negroes to FREEDOM!
... Now, all the SENSUAL and VIOLENT passions Roots couldn't show on TV!
-- Uncle Tom's Cabin (1972)
An appalling amalgam of carnage and carnality!
-- Flesh and Blood Show (1973)
WHEN THE CATS ARE HUNGRY...
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
Alone, only a harmless pet...
One Thousand Strong, They Become a Man-Eating Machine!
-- The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972)
They're Over-Exposed
But Not Under-Developed!
-- Cover Girl Models (1976)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
HOODLUMS FROM ANOTHER WORLD ON A RAY-GUN RAMPAGE!
-- Teenagers from Outher Space (1959)
Which will be Her Mate... MAN OR BEAST?
Meet Velda -- the Kind of Woman -- Man or Gorilla would kill... to Keep.
-- Untamed Mistress (1960)
NOW AN ALL-MIGHTY ALL-NEW MOTION PICTURE BRINGS THEM TOGETHER FOR THE
FIRST TIME... HISTORY'S MOST GIGANTIC MONSTERS IN COMBAT ATOP MOUNT FUJI!
-- King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
HOT STEEL BETWEEN THEIR LEGS!
-- The Cycle Savages (1969)
The Hand that Rocks the Cradle... Has no Flesh on It!
-- Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1971)
TWO GREAT BLOOD HORRORS TO RIP OUT YOUR GUTS!
-- I Eat Your Skin & I Drink Your Blood (1971 double-bill)
They Went In People and Came Out Hamburger!
-- The Corpse Grinders (1971)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
KATHERINE HEPBURN as the lying, stealing, singing, preying witch girl
of the Ozarks... "Low down white trash"? Maybe so -- but let her hear
you say it and she'll break your head to prove herself a lady!
-- Spitfire (1934)
Do Native Women Live With Apes?
-- Love Life of a Gorilla (1937)
JUNGLE KISS!!
When she looked into his eyes, felt his arms around her -- she
was no longer Tura, mysterious white goddess of the jungle tribes --
she was no longer the frozen-hearted high priestess under whose hypnotic
spell the worshipers of the great crocodile god meekly bowed -- she
was a girl in love!
SEE the ravening charge of the hundred scared CROCODILES!
-- Her Jungle Love (1938)
LOVE! HATE! JOY! FEAR! TORMENT! PANIC! SHAME! RAGE!
-- Intermezzo (1939)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
POWERFUL! SHOCKING! RAW! ROUGH! CHALLENGING! SEE A LITTLE GIRL MOLESTED!
-- Never Take Candy from a Stranger (1963)
She Sins in Mobile --
Marries in Houston --
Loses Her Baby in Dallas --
Leaves Her Husband in Tucson --
MEETS HARRU IN SAN DIEGO!...
FIRST -- HARLOW!
THEN -- MONROE!
NOW -- McCLANAHAN!!!
-- The Rotten Apple (1963), Rue McClanahan
*NOT FOR SISSIES! DON'T COME IF YOU'RE CHICKEN!
A Horrifying Movie of Weird Beauties and Shocking Monsters...
1001 WIERDEST SCENES EVER!! MOST SHOCKING THRILLER OF THE CENTURY!
-- Teenage Psycho meets Bloody Mary (1964) (Alternate Title:
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and
Became Mixed Up Zombies)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
SCENES THAT WILL STAGGER YOUR SIGHT!
-- DANCING CALLED GO-GO
-- MUSIC CALLED JU-JU
-- NARCOTICS CALLED BANGI!
-- FIRES OF PUBERTY!
SEE the burning of a virgin!
SEE power of witch doctor over women!
SEE pygmies with fantastic Physical Endowments!!!
-- Kwaheri (1965)
The Big Comedy of Nineteen-Sexty-Sex!
-- Boeing-Boeing (1965)
AN ASTRONAUT WENT UP-
A "GUESS WHAT" CAME DOWN!
The picture that comes complete with a 10-foot tall monster to
give you the wim-wams!
-- Monster a Go-Go (1965)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
SEE rebel guerrillas torn apart by trucks!
SEE corpses cut to pieces and fed to dogs and vultures!
SEE the monkey trained to perform nursing duties for her paralyzed owner!
-- Sweet and Savage (1983)
What a Guy! What a Gal! What a Pair!
-- Stroker Ace (1983)
It's always better when you come again!
-- Porky's II: The Next Day (1983)
You Don't Have to Go to Texas for a Chainsaw Massacre!
-- Pieces (1983)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
SHE TOOK ON A WHOLE GANG! A howling hellcat humping a hot steel hog
on a roaring rampage of revenge!
-- Bury Me an Angel (1972)
WHAT'S THE SECRET INGREDIENT USED BY THE MAD BUTCHER FOR HIS SUPERB
SAUSAGES?
-- Meat is Meat (1972)
TODAY the Pond!
TOMORROW the World!
-- Frogs (1972)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
She's got the biggest six-shooters in the West!
-- The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend (1949)
CAST OF 3,000!
4 WRITERS,
2 DIRECTORS,
3 CAMERAMEN,
3 PRODUCERS!
1 YEAR TO MAKE THIS FILM --
24 YEARS TO REHEARSE --
20 YEARS TO DISTRIBUTE!
BEAUTIFUL BEYOND WORDS!
AWE-INSPIRING! VITAL!
THE PRINCE OF PEACE PROVIDES THE ANSWER TO EVERY PROBLEM!
Be Brave-bring your troubles and your family to:
HISTORY'S MOST SUBLIME EVENT! YOU'LL FIND GOD RIGHT IN THERE!
-- The Prince of Peace (1948). Starring members of the
Wichita Mountain Pageant featuring Millard Coody as Jesus.
%
The Great Movie Posters:
The Miracle of the Age!!! A LION in your lap! A LOVER in your arms!
-- Bwana Devil (1952)
OVERWHELMING! ELECTRIFYING! BAFFLING!
Fire Can't Burn Them! Bullets Can't Kill Them! See the Unfolding of
the Mysteries of the Moon as Murderous Robot Monsters Descend Upon the
Earth! You've Never Seen Anything Like It! Neither Has the World!
SEE... Robots from Space in All Their Glory!!!
-- Robot Monster (1953)
1,965 pyramids, 5,337 dancing girls, one million swaying bullrushes,
802 scared bulls!
-- The Egyptian (1954)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
The nightmare terror of the slithering eye that unleashed agonizing
horror on a screaming world!
-- The Crawling Eye (1958)
SEE a female colossus... her mountainous torso, skyscraper limbs,
giant desires!
-- Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman (1958)
Here Is Your Chance To Know More About Sex.
What Should a Movie Do? Hide It's Head in the Sand Like an Ostrich?
Or Face the JOLTING TRUTH as does...
-- The Desperate Women (1958)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
They hungered for her treasure! And died for her pleasure!
SEE Man-Fish Battle Shark-Man-Killer!
-- The Golden Mistress (1954)
See Jane Russell in 3-D; She'll Knock Both Your Eyes Out!
-- The French Line (1954)
See Jane Russell Shake Her Tamborines... and Drive Cornel WILDE!
-- Hot Blood (1956)
%
The Great Movie Posters:
When You're Six Tons -- And They Call You Killer -- It's Hard To Make
Friends...
-- Namu, the Killer Whale (1966)
Meet the Girls with the Thermo-Nuclear Navels!
-- Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs (1966)
A GHASTLY TALE DRENCHED WITH GOUTS OF BLOOD SPURTING FROM THE VICTIMS
OF A CRAZED MADMAN'S LUST.
-- A Taste of Blood (1967)
%
The great nations have always acted like gangsters and the small nations
like prostitutes.
-- Stanley Kubrick
%
The great question that has never been answered and which I have not
yet been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the
feminine soul is: WHAT DOES A WOMAN WANT?
-- Sigmund Freud
%
The great secret in life ... [is] not to open your letters for a fortnight.
At the expiration of that period you will find that nearly all of them have
answered themselves.
-- Arthur Binstead
%
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
%
The greatest disloyalty one can offer to great pioneers
is to refuse to move an inch from where they stood.
%
The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.
-- Sophocles
%
The greatest joy a man can know is to conquer his enemies and drive them
before him. To ride their horses and take away their possessions. To see
the faces of those who were dear to them bedewed with tears, and to clasp
their wives and daughters to his arms.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
The greatest love is a mother's, then a dog's, then a sweetheart's.
-- Polish proverb
%
The Greatest Mathematical Error
The Mariner I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral on 28
July 1962 towards Venus. After 13 minutes' flight a booster engine would
give acceleration up to 25,820 mph; after 44 minutes 9,800 solar cells
would unfold; after 80 days a computer would calculate the final course
corrections and after 100 days the craft would circle the unknown planet,
scanning the mysterious cloud in which it is bathed.
However, with an efficiency that is truly heartening, Mariner I
plunged into the Atlantic Ocean only four minutes after takeoff.
Inquiries later revealed that a minus sign had been omitted from
the instructions fed into the computer. "It was human error", a launch
spokesman said.
This minus sign cost L4,280,000.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.
%
The greatest productive force is human selfishness.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
The greatest remedy for anger is delay.
%
The groundhog is like most other prophets;
it delivers its message and then disappears.
%
The hand that feeds the chicken every day finally wrings its neck instead,
thus proving that more sophisticated views about the uniformity of nature
would have been useful to the chicken.
-- Bertrand Russell, "On Induction"
%
The happiest time in any man's life is just after the first divorce.
-- J. K. Galbraith
%
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of
success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.
%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The hardest thing is to disguise your feelings when
you put a lot of relatives on the train for home.
%
The hater of property and of government takes care to have his warranty
deed recorded, and the book written against fame and learning has the
author's name on the title page.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1831
%
The hatred of relatives is the most violent.
-- Tacitus (c.55 - c.117)
%
The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality
of functions performed by private citizens.
-- Alexis de Tocqueville
%
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom
whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary, nohow.
%
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
The heart is wiser than the intellect.
%
...the heat come 'round and busted me for smiling on a cloudy day.
%
The heaviest object in the world is the
body of the woman you have ceased to love.
-- Marquis de Lac de Clapiers Vauvenargues
%
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
%
The help people need most urgently is
help in admitting that they need help.
%
The herd instinct among economists
makes sheep look like independent thinkers.
%
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet,
challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that
keeps the blood at heat. Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents
itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb
of innocence. To yield to its blandishments is so easy. The wrong, it seems,
is venial... Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of
adventurous youth.
-- Benjamin Cardozo
%
The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
least 5000 years old."
%
The higher you climb, the more you show your ass.
-- Alexander Pope, "The Dunciad"
%
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through
three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry, and
Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For
instance, the first phase is characterized by the question "How can we
eat?" the second by "Why do we eat?" and the third by "Where shall we
have lunch?".
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, although here the phases
are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy. Thus:
Retribution:
I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother.
Anticipation:
I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother.
Diplomacy:
I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the
pretext that your brother did it.
%
The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."
-- Johnny Carson
%
The honeymoon is not actually over until we cease
to stifle our sighs and begin to stifle our yawns.
-- Helen Rowland
%
The honeymoon is over when he phones to say he'll be late for supper and
she's already left a note that it's in the refrigerator.
-- Bill Lawrence
%
The horror... the horror!
%
The human animal differs from the lesser
primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smith
%
The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment
you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
-- Sir George Jessel
%
The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
has gills through which it can see.
-- Monty Python
%
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of
its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
%
The human mind treats a new idea the way the
body treats a strange protein: it rejects it.
-- P. Medawar
%
The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can remember.
Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider struggling to weave
its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in spring, the shark reveals to
us yet another of the infinite and wonderful facets of nature, namely the
facet that it can bite your head off. This causes us humans to feel a
certain degree of awe.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain
%
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain
%
The human race never solves any of its problems. It merely outlives them.
-- David Gerrold
%
The husband who doesn't tell his wife everything probably reasons
that what she doesn't know won't hurt him.
-- Leo J. Burke
%
The IBM 2250 is impressive ...
if you compare it with a system selling for a tenth its price.
-- D. Cohen
%
The IBM purchase of ROLM gives new meaning to the term "twisted pair".
-- Howard Anderson, "Yankee Group"
%
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
-- Ashley Montague
%
The idea that an arbitrary naive human should be able to properly use a given
tool without training or understanding is even more wrong for computing than
it is for other tools (e.g. automobiles, airplanes, guns, power saws).
-- Doug Gwyn
%
The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with
sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,
consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than
have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones
repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist
of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic
devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
The ideal voice for radio may be defined as showing no substance,
no sex, no owner, and a message of importance for every housewife.
-- Harry V. Wade
%
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they
are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally
understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
-- John Maynard Keyes
%
The identical is equal to itself, since it is different.
-- Franco Spisani
%
The idle man does not know what it is to enjoy rest.
%
The idle mind knows not what it is it wants.
-- Quintus Ennius
%
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
longer.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The Illiterati Programus Canto 1:
A program is a lot like a nose:
Sometimes it runs, and sometimes it blows.
%
The important thing is not to stop questioning.
%
The important thing to remember about walking on eggs is not to hop.
%
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
-- Will Rogers
%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is
a delight to moralists. That is why they invented hell.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings;
the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-- Churchill
%
The instruments of science do not in themselves discover truth. And
there are searchings that are not concluded by the coincidence of a
pointer and a mark.
-- Fred Saberhagen, "The Berserker Wars"
%
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
number of participants.
-- Adam Walinsky
%
The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling
the whole state, for styles of music are never disturbed without
affecting the most important political institutions. ... The new
style, gradually gaining a lodgement, quietly insinuates itself into
manners and customs, and from it ... goes on to attack laws and
constitutions, displaying the utmost impudence, until it ends by
overturning everything.
-- Plato, "Republic", 370 B.C.
%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of
the group divided by the number of people in the group.
%
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
The Israelis are the Doberman pinschers of the Middle East. They
treat the Arabs like postmen.
-- Franklyn Ajaye
%
The Israelites were all waiting anxiously at the foot of the mountain,
knowing that Moses had had a tough day negotiating with God over the
Commandments. Finally a tired Moses came into sight.
"I've got some good news and some bad news, folks," he said. "The
good news is that I got Him down to ten. The bad news is that adultery's
still in."
%
The Junior God now heads the roll
In the list of heaven's peers;
He sits in the House of High Control,
And he regulates the spheres.
Yet does he wonder, do you suppose,
If, even in gods divine,
The best and wisest may not be those
Who have wallowed awhile with the swine?
-- R. W. Service
%
The justifications for drug testing are part of the presently fashionable
debate concerning restoring America's "competitiveness." Drugs, it has been
revealed, are responsible for rampant absenteeism, reduced output, and poor
quality work. But is drug testing in fact rationally related to the
resurrection of competitiveness? Will charging the atmosphere of the
workplace with the fear of excretory betrayal honestly spur productivity?
Much noise has been made about rehabilitating the worker using drugs, but
to date the vast majority of programs end with the simple firing or the not
hiring of the abuser. This practice may exacerbate, not alleviate, the
nation's productivity problem. If economic rehabilitation is the ultimate
goal of drug testing, then criteria abandoning the rehabilitation of the
drug-using worker is the purest of hypocrisy and the worst of rationalization.
-- The concluding paragraph of "Constitutional Law: The
Fourth Amendment and Drug Testing in the Workplace,"
Tim Moore, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol.
10, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 762-768.
%
The Ken Thompson school of thought on expert systems:
there's table lookup, fraud, and grand fraud.
-- Andrew Hume
%
The Kennedy Constant:
Don't get mad -- get even.
%
The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets.
-- L. Zadeh
%
The key to building a superstar is to keep their mouth shut. To reveal
an artist to the people can be to destroy him. It isn't to anyone's
advantage to see the truth.
-- Bob Ezrin, rock music producer
%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%
The kind of danger people most enjoy is
the kind they can watch from a safe place.
%
The King and his advisor are overlooking the battle field:
King: "How goes the battle plan?"
Advisor: "See those little black specks running to the right?"
K: "Yes."
A: "Those are their guys. And all those little red specks running
to the left are our guys. Then when they collide we wait till
the dust clears."
K: "And?"
A: "If there are more red specks left than black specks, we win."
K: "But what about the ^#!!$% battle plan?"
A: "So far, it seems to be going according to specks."
%
The knowledge that makes us cherish
innocence makes innocence unattainable.
-- Irving Howe
%
The Kosher Dill was invented in 1723 by Joe Kosher and Sam Dill. It is
the single most popular pickle variety today, enjoyed throughout the free
world by man, woman and child alike. An astounding 350 billion kosher
dills are eaten each year, averaging out to almost 1/4 pickle per person
per day. New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton says "The kosher dill
really changed my life. I used to enjoy eating McDonald's hamburgers and
drinking Iron City Lite, and then I encountered the kosher dill pickle.
I realized that there was far more to haute cuisine then I'd ever imagined.
And now, just look at me."
%
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
The language of politics is poetry, not prose. Jackson is poetry.
Cuomo is poetry. Dukakis is a word processor.
-- Richard M. Nixon, on Meet the Press, April, 1988
%
The last good thing written in C was Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 9.
-- Werner Trobin
%
The last person that quit or was fired will be held responsible for
everything that goes wrong -- until the next person quits or is fired.
%
The last person who said that (God rest his soul) lived to regret it.
%
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own
hand.
-- Fred Allen
%
The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a word
processor.", I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs."
-- Roy Blount, Jr.
%
The last vestiges of the old Republic have been swept away.
-- Governor Tarkin
%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor,
to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France
%
The Law of the Letter:
The best way to inspire fresh thoughts is to seal the envelope.
%
The Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
%
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
law free.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men
should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal
weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine
we own.
-- H. G. Wells
%
The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A
most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
give a public reading of his latest poem.
Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark
the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better
turn."
After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the
lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him
much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
Pope took his advice, called on Lord Hallifax and read the poem
exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of
their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can
be better."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Least Successful Animal Rescue
The firemen's strike of 1978 made possible one of the great animal
rescue attempts of all time. Valiantly, the British Army had taken over
emergency firefighting and on 14 January they were called out by an elderly
lady in South London to retrieve her cat which had become trapped up a
tree. They arrived with impressive haste and soon discharged their duty.
So grateful was the lady that she invited them all in for tea. Driving off
later, with fond farewells completed, they ran over the cat and killed it.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Least Successful Collector
Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting. She
was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had
amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the
works of Shakespeare.
One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond
legibility. Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The
remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.
The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned
the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The History of the
French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Least Successful Defrosting Device
The all-time record here is held by Mr. Peter Rowlands of Lancaster
whose lips became frozen to his lock in 1979 while blowing warm air on it.
"I got down on my knees to breathe into the lock. Somehow my lips
got stuck fast."
While he was in the posture, an old lady passed an inquired if he
was all right. "Alra? Igmmlptk", he replied at which point she ran away.
"I tried to tell her what had happened, but it came out sort of...
muffled," explained Mr. Rowlands, a pottery designer.
He was trapped for twenty minutes ("I felt a bit foolish") until
constant hot breathing brought freedom. He was subsequently nicknamed "Hot
Lips".
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Least Successful Equal Pay Advertisement
In 1976 the European Economic Community pointed out to the Irish
Government that it had not yet implemented the agreed sex equality
legislation. The Dublin Government immediately advertised for an equal pay
enforcement officer. The advertisement offered different salary scales for
men and women.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Least Successful Executions
History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention.
The first performed in Sydney in Australia. In 1803 three attempts were
made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels. On the first two of these the rope
snapped, while on the third Mr. Samuels just hung there peacefully until he
and everyone else got bored. Since he had proved unsusceptible to capital
punishment, he was reprieved.
The most important British executioner was Mr. James Berry who
tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr. John Lee at Exeter Jail, but on each
occasion failed to get the trap door open.
In recognition of this achievement, the Home Secretary commuted
Lee's sentence to "life" imprisonment. He was released in 1917, emigrated
to America and lived until 1933.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Least Successful Police Dogs
America has a very strong candidate in "La Dur", a fearsome looking
schnauzer hound, who was retired from the Orlando police force in Florida
in 1978. He consistently refused to do anything which might ruffle or
offend the criminal classes.
His handling officer, Rick Grim, had to admit: "He just won't go up
and bite them. I got sick and tired of doing that dog's work for him."
The British contenders in this category, however, took things a
stage further. "Laddie" and "Boy" were trained as detector dogs for drug
raids. Their employment was terminated following a raid in the Midlands in
1967.
While the investigating officer questioned two suspects, they
patted and stroked the dogs who eventually fell asleep in front of the
fire. When the officer moved to arrest the suspects, one dog growled at
him while the other leapt up and bit his thigh.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
-- Kin Hubbard
%
The less time planning, the more time programming.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10 -- SIMPLE
SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming
Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College
for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write
code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a
syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful, thus achieving
the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious,
frustrating process of testing and debugging.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12 -- LITHP
This otherwise unremarkable language, originally developed in San
Francisco, is distinguished by the absence of an "S" in its character set;
users must substitute "TH". LITHP is thaid to be utheful in protheththing
lithtth.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13 -- SLOBOL
SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile,
SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the beans. Forty-
three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals
while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers
often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #14 -- VALGOL
VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the
industry. VALGOL commands include REALLY, LIKE, WELL, and Y*KNOW.
Variables are assigned with the =LIKE and =TOTALLY operators. Other
operators include the "California booleans", AX and NOWAY. Loops are
accomplished with the FOR SURE construct. A simple example:
LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
IF PIZZA =LIKE BITCHEN AND
GUY =LIKE TUBULAR AND
VALLEY GIRL =LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2
THEN
FOR I =LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
DO*WAH - (DITTY**2); BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
SURE
LIKE, BAG THIS PROGRAM; REALLY; LIKE TOTALLY(Y*KNOW); IM*SURE
GOTO THE MALL
VALGOL is also characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For
example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the
message GAG ME WITH A SPOON! A successful compile may be termed MAXIMALLY
AWESOME!
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17 -- DOGO
Developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Obedience Training, DOGO
DOGO heralds a new era of computer-literate pets. DOGO commands include
SIT, STAY, HEEL, and ROLL OVER. An innovative feature of DOGO is "puppy
graphics", a small cocker spaniel that occasionally leaves a deposit as
it travels across the screen.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17 -- SARTRE
Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just are.
Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions. SARTRE
programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at parties.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18 -- C-
This language was named for the grade received by its creator when
he submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is
best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the language
generally requires more C- statements than machine-code statements to execute
a given task. In this respect, it is very similar to COBOL.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18 -- FIFTH
FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and JIGGER to
FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and BLOTTO. Commands
refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH,
VODKA, SCOTCH, BOURBON, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and
LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH, THUNDERBIRD,
RIPPLE and HOUSERED. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers
who end up using this language.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5 -- LAIDBACK
LAIDBACK was developed at the (now defunct) Marin County Center for
T'ai Chi, Mellowness and Computer Programming, as an alternative to the more
intense languages of nearby Silicon Valley.
The Center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
while they worked. Unfortunately, few programmers could survive there long,
since the Center outlawed pizza and RC Cola in favor of bean curd and Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a
gentle and nonthreatening language. For example, LAIDBACK responded to
syntax errors with the message SORRY MAN, I JUST CAN'T DEAL BEHIND THAT.
%
The liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
-- Plato
%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train.
%
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
%
The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the moon.
%
The Linimon's Rule About PRs: The More You Close, The More Will Come
%
The lion and the calf shall lie down
together but the calf won't get much sleep.
-- Woody Allen
%
The little girl expects no declaration of tenderness from her doll.
She loves it -- and that's all. It is thus that we should love.
-- DeGourmont
%
The little pieces of my life I give to you,
with love, to make a quilt to keep away the cold.
%
The little town that time forgot,
Where all the women are strong,
The men are good-looking,
And the children above-average.
-- Prairie Home Companion
%
The local minister noticed a little girl standing outside of his
door with a basket of kittens.
"Hello, little girl, what do you have there?"
"These are my Democratic kittens," she replied.
Amused, the pastor said nothing. Two weeks later he saw the same little
girl with (apparently) the same basket of kittens.
"My, I see you still have your Democratic kittens.", he said.
"No, you see, these are Republican kittens," she answered.
"Two weeks ago they were Democratic kittens," he replied, puzzled.
"Two weeks ago they had their eyes closed."
%
The `loner' may be respected, but he is always resented by his colleagues,
for he seems to be passing a critical judgment on them, when he may be
simply making a limiting statement about himself.
-- Sidney Harris
%
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The longer the title, the less important the job.
%
The longest part of the journey is said to be the passing of the gate.
-- Marcus Terentius Varro
%
The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.
Indian Giver be the name of the Lord.
%
The Lord prefers common-looking people. That is the reason that He makes
so many of them.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of
the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at
her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic
Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my
steel through your last meal!'
-- Winning sentence, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest
%
The luck that is ordained for you will be coveted by others.
%
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact...
-- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
%
The Macintosh is Xerox technology at its best.
%
The magic of our first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
The main problem I have with cats is, they're not dogs.
-- Kevin Cowherd
%
The major advances in civilization are processes
that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
-- A. N. Whitehead
%
The major difference between bonds and bond traders is that the
bonds will eventually mature.
%
The major sin is the sin of being born.
-- Samuel Beckett
%
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play
the violin.
-- Honore DeBalzac
%
The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time.
The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of
consistency.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The makers may make,
And the users may use,
But the fixers must fix
With but minimal clues.
%
The man she had was kind and clean
And well enough for every day,
But oh, dear friends, you should have seen
The one that got away.
-- Dorothy Parker, "The Fisherwoman"
%
The Man Who Almost Invented The Vacuum Cleaner
The man officially credited with inventing the vacuum cleaner is
Hubert Cecil Booth. However, he got the idea from a man who almost
invented it.
In 1901 Booth visited a London music-hall. On the bill was an
American inventor with his wonder machine for removing dust from carpets.
The machine comprised a box about one foot square with a bag on top.
After watching the act -- which made everyone in the front six rows sneeze
-- Booth went round to the inventor's dressing room.
"It should suck not blow," said Booth, coming straight to the
point. "Suck?", exclaimed the enraged inventor. "Your machine just moves
the dust around the room," Booth informed him. "Suck? Suck? Sucking is
not possible," was the inventor's reply and he stormed out. Booth proved
that it was by the simple expedient of kneeling down, pursing his lips and
sucking the back of an armchair. "I almost choked," he said afterwards.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd.
The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever
been.
-- Alan Ashley-Pitt
%
The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.
-- Menander
%
The man who laughs has not yet been told the terrible news.
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
The man who raises a fist has run out of ideas.
-- H. G. Wells, "Time After Time"
%
The man who runs may fight again.
-- Menander
%
The man who sees, on New Year's day, Mount
Fuji, a hawk, and an eggplant is forever blessed.
-- Old Japanese proverb
%
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
-- Mark Twain
%
The man who understands one woman is
qualified to understand pretty well everything.
-- Yeats
%
The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has
to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"
-- Will Rogers
The vice-presidency ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit.
-- Vice President John Nance Garner
%
The Marines:
The few, the proud, the dead on the beach.
%
The Marines:
The few, the proud, the not very bright.
%
The mark of a good party is that you wake up the next morning
wanting to change your name and start a new life in different city.
-- Vance Bourjaily, "Esquire"
%
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause,
while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
-- Wilhelm Stekel
%
The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice
and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the
master calls a butterfly.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
The marriage of Marxism and feminism has been like the marriage of
husband and wife depicted in English common law: Marxism and feminism
are one, and that one is Marxism.
-- Heidi Hartmann,
"The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism"
%
The Martian Canals were clearly the Martian's last ditch effort!
%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, which, when discarded will last forever -- and a $7,000 car
which, when properly cared for, will rust out in two or three years.
%
The mate for beauty should be a man and not a money chest.
-- Bulwer
%
The mature bohemian is one whose woman works full time.
%
The means-and-ends moralists, or non-doers,
always end up on their ends without any means.
-- Saul Alinsky
%
The meat is rotten, but the booze is holding out.
Computer translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."
%
The meek don't want it.
%
The meek inherit the earth -- usually in small sections... about 6 by 3.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth; but by that
time there won't be anything left worth inheriting.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth, but *not* its mineral rights.
-- J. P. Getty
%
The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us, the Universe.
%
The meek shall inherit the earth; the rest of us will go to the stars.
%
The meek shall inherit the Earth.
(But they're gonna have to fight for it.)
%
The meek will inherit the earth -- if that's OK with you.
%
The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two
chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.
-- Carl Jung
%
[The members of the Chamberlain government] are decided only to be
undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, all-powerful
for impotency.
-- Winston Churchill
%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the klutz said,
"Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
%
The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.
%
The Microsoft Exchange MTA Stacks service depends on the Microsoft Exchange
System Attendant service which failed to start because of the following
error:
The operation completed successfully.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
%
The minute a man is convinced that he is interesting, he isn't.
%
The mirror sees the man as beautiful, the mirror loves the man; another
mirror sees the man as frightful and hates him; and it is always the same
being who produces the impressions.
-- Marquis D. A. F. de Sade
%
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be
general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that
any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby
not to be a science. He would cite as examples Military Science, Library
Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer
Science. Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its
predictive power.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
Thinking"
%
The Modelski Chain Rule:
1: Look intently at the problem for several minutes. Scratch your
head at 20-30 second intervals. Try solving the problem on your
Hewlett-Packard.
2: Failing this, look around at the class. Select a particularly
bright-looking individual.
3: Procure a large chain.
4: Walk over to the selected student and threaten to beat him severely
with the chain unless he gives you the answer to the problem.
Generally, he will. It may also be a good idea to give him a sound
thrashing anyway, just to show you mean business.
%
The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
"The molars, I'm sure, will be all right, the molars can take care of
themselves," the old man said, no longer to me. "But what will become
of the bicuspids?"
-- The Old Man and his Bridge
%
The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
-- Nicol Williamson
%
The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
%
The moon is made of green cheese.
-- John Heywood
%
The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%
The Moral Majority is neither.
%
The more control, the more that requires control.
%
The more cordial the buyers secretary, the greater
the odds that the competition already has the order.
%
The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get.
%
The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
lower the mailing cost.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
The more I know men the more I like my horse.
%
The more I see of men the more I admire dogs.
-- Mme De Sevigne, 1626-1696
%
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
-- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
%
The more laws and order are made prominent,
the more thieves and robbers there will be.
-- Lao Tsu
%
The more the merrier.
-- John Heywood
%
The more they over-think the plumbing
the easier it is to stop up the drain.
%
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
-- Alphonse Karr
%
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
%
The more things change, the more they'll never be the same again.
%
The more we disagree, the more chance
there is that at least one of us is right.
%
The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.
%
The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
%
The Moscow Evening News advertised a contest for the best political joke.
First prize was ten years in prison; second prize, five years; third prize,
three years; and there were six honorable mentions of one year each.
%
The mosquito exists to keep the mighty humble.
%
The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
-- Andy Warhol
%
The moss on the tree does not fear the talons of the hawk.
%
The most advantageous, pre-eminent thing thou canst do is not to
exhibit nor display thyself within the limits of our galaxy, but
rather depart instantaneously whence thou even now standest and
flee to yet another rotten planet in the universe, if thou canst
have the good fortune to find one.
-- Carlyle
%
The most common given name in the world is Mohammad; the most common
family name in the world is Chang. Can you imagine the enormous number
of people in the world named Mohammad Chang?
-- Derek Wills
%
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately
in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
-- American proverb
%
The most dangerous organization in America today is:
a) The KKK
b) The American Nazi Party
c) The Delta Frequent Flyer Club
%
The most delightful day after the one on which you buy a cottage in
the country is the one on which you resell it.
-- J. Brecheux
%
The most difficult thing about surviving AIDS
is trying to convince your parents that you're Haitian.
%
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
-- Theodore H. White
%
The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding.
%
The most disagreeable thing that your worst enemy says to your face does
not approach what your best friends say behind your back.
-- Alfred De Musset
%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov
%
The most exquisite peak in culinary art is conquered when you do right by a
ham, for a ham, in the very nature of the process it has undergone since last
it walked on its own feet, combines in its flavor the tang of smoky autumnal
woods, the maternal softness of earthy fields delivered of their crop children,
the wineyness of a late sun, the intimate kiss of fertilizing rain, and the
bite of fire. You must slice it thin, almost as thin as this page you hold
in your hands. The making of a ham dinner, like the making of a gentleman,
starts a long, long time before the event.
-- W.B. Courtney, "Reflections of Maryland Country Ham",
from "Congress Eate It Up"
%
...the most exquisitely squalid hells known to middle-class man:
freshman English at a Midwestern university.
-- Tom Wolfe
%
The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union
of a deaf man to a blind woman.
-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
%
The most hopelessly stupid man is he who is not aware that he is wise.
%
The most important early product on the way
to developing a good product is an imperfect version.
%
The most important service rendered by the press is that of educating
people to approach printed matter with distrust.
%
The most important thing in a relationship between a man and a woman
is that one of them be good at taking orders.
-- Linda Festa
%
The most important things, each person must do for himself.
%
The most popular labor-saving device today is still a husband with money.
-- Joey Adams, "Cindy and I"
%
The most recent attempt to revive the moribund campus left, a national
conference held at Rutgers University February 5-7, ended when the
participants decided that they were too racist to found a new national
organization.
The stated goal of the conference was the formation of a national
organization that would "give expression to a shared consciousness." The
orientation materials declared that this was "a historic moment" -- you
know, like Port Huron and the Sixties -- and the Rutgers host committee had
every reason to expect their goal would be accomplished.
But it was not to be. Given that this was a conference of *New*
New Leftists, reason had nothing to do with it.
A revealing article by Vania del Borgo and Maria Margaronis in "The
Nation", ["Beyond the Fragments," 3/26/88] says "The defining moment of the
weekend came when the conference was almost at its end. On Sunday morning,
a twenty-five-member students of color caucus confronted the assembled body
with its overwhelming whiteness..." Joined by the Gay & Bisexual Caucus, the
Students of Color Caucus declared that the founding of such an overwhelmingly
white organization would itself constitute a racist act. The four hundred or
so leftist activists were told that they had no right to ratify a constitution
or elect any officers. While recognizing "the need to examine the real
possibilities of a broad-based, racially diverse student movement" and paying
lip service to the need for "dialogue," they threatened to walk out if their
demands were not met. As *The Nation* article describes the scene: "To their
astonishment, their intervention was greeted with a standing ovation." Handed
an ultimatum which demanded that they disband, this would-be successor to the
radical student movements of the Sixties promptly voted itself out of
existence. As del Borgo and Margaronis put it, "After much chaotic discussion
and a confused voice vote, the convention suspended all its other work and
broke into regional groups to discuss 'outreach.'"
-- Libertarian Agenda, May 1988
%
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she
served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never
been found.
-- Calvin Trillin
%
The most serious doubt that has been thrown on the authenticity of the
biblical miracles is the fact that most of the witnesses in regard to
them were fishermen.
-- Arthur Binstead
%
The Most Unsuccessful Version Of The Bible
The most exciting version of the Bible was printed in 1631 by Robert
Barker and Martin Lucas, the King's printers at London. It contained
several mistakes, but one was inspired -- the word "not" was omitted from
the Seventh Commandment and enjoined its readers, on the highest authority,
to commit adultery.
Fearing the popularity with which this might be received in remote
country districts, King Charles I called all 1,000 copies back in and fined
the printers L3,000.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little
children for their insurance money.
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
%
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all they Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
%
The myth of romantic love holds that once you've fallen in love with the
perfect partner, you're home free. Unfortunately, falling out of love
seems to be just as involuntary as falling into it.
%
The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
%
The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe.
-- Chester Gould/Dick Tracy
%
The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert.
-- David Letterman
%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
Support your right to bare arms!
%
The nearer to the church, the further from God.
-- John Heywood
%
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.
-- John Gilmore
%
The net is like a vast sea of lutefisk with tiny dinosaur brains embedded
in it here and there. Any given spoonful will likely have an IQ of 1, but
occasional spoonfuls may have an IQ more than six times that!
-- James 'Kibo' Parry
%
The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong,
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery!
Big fish alone escape from thee!
-- James Jeffrey Roche
%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around.
I hope I don't get run over again.
%
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10
doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.
%
THE NEW RIGHT:
A javelin team that elects to receive.
%
The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay:
for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
-- Matthew 5:37
%
The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country.
The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive
and running the country ...
-- Robert J Woodhead
%
The next person to mention spaghetti stacks
to me is going to have his head knocked off.
-- Bill Conrad
%
The next thing I say to you will be true.
The last thing I said was false.
%
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
-- Lucille S. Harper
%
The nice thing about standards
is that there are so many of them to choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%
The nicest thing about the Alto is that it doesn't run faster at night.
%
The night passes quickly when you're asleep
But I'm out shufflin' for something to eat
...
Breakfast at the Egg House,
Like the waffle on the griddle,
I'm burnt around the edges,
But I'm tender in the middle.
-- Adrian Belew
%
The notes blatted skyward as the rose over the Canada geese, feathered
rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen
bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim,
'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh.
-- Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest
%
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete
remnant of the days of the 80-column card.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should
serve the state is essentially a Communist notion ... In a free society
these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their
function is to serve as checks upon the state.
-- Alan Barth
%
The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are
correct.
-- Ralph Hartley
%
The number of computer scientists in a room is inversely
proportional to the number of bugs in their code.
%
The number of feet in a yard is directly proportional to the success
of the barbecue.
%
The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine
increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice.
%
The number of UNIX installations has grown to 10, with more expected.
-- The Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd Edition, June 1972
%
The NY Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post
is read by the people who think they run the country. The National Enquirer
is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country.
-- Robert Woodhead
%
The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly analyze
all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their occurrence, have
answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve these problems
when called upon.
However...
When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remind
yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
%
The odds are a million to one against your being one in a million.
%
The Official Colorado State Vegetable is now the "state legislator".
%
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the
Realm, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director
of Corporate Planning."
%
The Official MBA Handbook on doing company business on an airplane:
Do not work openly on top-secret company cost documents unless
you have previously ascertained that the passenger next to you
is blind, a rock musician on mood-ameliorating drugs, or the
unfortunate possessor of a forty-seventh chromosome.
%
The Official MBA Handbook on the use of sunlamps:
Use a sunlamp only on weekends. That way, if the office wise guy
remarks on the sudden appearance of your tan, you can fabricate
some story about a sun-stroked weekend at some island Shangri-La
like Caneel Bay. Nothing is more transparent than leaving the
office at 11:45 on a Tuesday night, only to return an Aztec sun
god at 8:15 the next morning.
%
The old complaint that mass culture is designed for eleven-year-olds
is of course a shameful canard. The key age has traditionally been
more like fourteen.
-- Robert Christgau, "Esquire"
%
The old man had lived all his life in a little house on the Vermont side of the
New Hampshire-Vermont border. One day, the surveyors came to inform him that
they had just discovered that he lived in New Hampshire, not Vermont.
"Thank heavens!" was his heartfelt reply. "I don't think I could have
taken another one of those damned Vermont winters!"
%
THE OLD POOL SHOOTER had won many a game in his life. But now it was time
to hang up the cue. When he did, all the other cues came crashing go the
floor.
"Sorry," he said with a smile.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes.
Let the reader catch his own breath.
-- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
%
The older I grow, the more I distrust the
familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a necessity.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The one good thing about repeating your
mistakes is that you know when to cringe.
%
The one L lama, he's a priest
The two L llama, he's a beast
And I will bet my silk pyjama
There isn't any three L lllama.
-- O. Nash, to which a fire chief replied that occasionally
his department responded to something like a "three L lllama."
%
The One Page Principle:
A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper
cannot be understood.
-- Mark Ardis
%
The one sure way to make a lazy man look
respectable is to put a fishing rod in his hand.
%
The only alliance I would make with the Women's Liberation Movement is in bed.
-- Abbey Hoffman
%
The only certainty is that nothing is certain.
-- Pliny the Elder
%
The only constant is change.
%
The only cultural advantage LA has over NY is that you can make a
right turn on a red light.
-- Woody Allen
%
The only difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman is
that the car salesman knows he's lying.
%
The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions.
%
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that
every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The only difference in the game of love over the last few
thousand years is that they've changed trumps from clubs to diamonds.
-- The Indianapolis Star
%
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look
respectable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal.
The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may
experience it as such. Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and
thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid. Whoever
could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very
swift. Thinking of oneself gives little happiness. If, however, one feels
much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of
oneself but of one's ideal. This is far, and only the swift shall reach
it and are delighted.
-- Nietzsche
%
The only "ism" Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
The only justification for our concepts and systems of concepts is
that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences;
beyond this they have not legitimacy.
-- Einstein
%
The only one of your children who does not grow up and move away
is your husband.
%
The only people for me are the mad ones -- the ones who are mad to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn
like fabulous yellow Roman candles.
-- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"
%
The only people who make love all the time are liars.
-- Louis Jordan
%
The only perfect science is hind-sight.
%
The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.
%
The only possible interpretation of any research
whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
The only problem with being a man of leisure
is that you can never stop and take a rest.
%
The only problem with seeing too much is that it makes you insane.
-- Phaedrus
%
The only promotion rules I can think of are that a sense of shame is to
be avoided at all costs and there is never any reason for a hustler to
be less cunning than more virtuous men. Oh yes ... whenever you think
you've got something really great, add ten per cent more.
-- Bill Veeck
%
The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a
plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal
other people's ideas and phrases ... is also invaluable.
-- Nicolas Tomalin, "Stop the Press, I Want to Get On"
%
The only real advantage to punk music is that nobody can whistle it.
%
The only real argument for marriage is that it remains the best method
for getting acquainted.
-- Heywood Broun
%
The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon.
-- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
Over and Over"
%
The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it.
%
The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber
has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,
finished, and put inside boxes.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
The only really masterful noise a man makes in a house is the noise
of his key, when he is still on the landing, fumbling for the lock.
-- Colette
%
The only reward of virtue is virtue.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
The only rose without thorns is friendship.
%
The only thing better than love is milk.
%
The only thing cheaper than hardware is talk.
%
The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches
us nothing.
-- Andre Maurois (Emile Herzog)
%
The only thing that stops God from sending a second Flood is that
the first one was useless.
-- Nicolas Chamfort
%
The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn.
-- Earl Warren
That men do not learn very much from history is the most important of all
the lessons that history has to teach.
-- Aldous Huxley
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
-- Georg Hegel
HISTORY: Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn
nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened
this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.
-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
%
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from
history.
-- Hegel
I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
long view.
-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
%
The only thing which separates man from child is all the values
he has lost over the years.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
The only time a dog gets complimented is when he doesn't do anything.
-- C. Schultz
%
The only two things that motivate me and that matter to me are revenge
and guilt.
-- Elvis Costello
%
The only way to amuse some people
is to slip and fall on an icy pavement.
%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want,
drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
-- Mark Twain
%
The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
-- David Gerrold
%
The onset and the waning of love make themselves felt
in the uneasiness experienced at being alone together.
-- Jean de la Bruyere
%
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 PM.
%
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite
of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr
%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Bohr
%
The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is
waiting.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds,
and the pessimist knows it.
-- J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists"
Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking
almost gently. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
-- James Cabell, "The Silver Stallion"
%
The optimum committee has no members.
-- Norman Augustine
%
The opulence of the front office door varies
inversely with the fundamental solvency of the firm.
%
The orders come down and they march us away.
There's a battle outside and we join in the fray.
God, it's hell when you know this could be your last day,
But it's better than working for Xerox.
-- Frank Hayes, "Don't Ask"
%
The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
went back in time.
-- Steven Wright
%
The other day I... uh, no, that wasn't me.
-- Steven Wright
%
The other line moves faster.
%
The owner of a large furniture store in the mid-west arrived in France on
a buying trip. As he was checking into a hotel he struck up an acquaintance
with a beautiful young lady. However, she only spoke French and he only spoke
English, so each couldn't understand a word the other spoke. He took out a
pencil and a notebook and drew a picture of a coach. She smiled, nodded her
head and they went for a ride in the park. Later, he drew a picture of a
table in a restaurant with a question mark and she nodded, so they went to
dinner. After dinner he sketched two dancers and she was delighted. They
went to several nightclubs, drank champagne, danced and had a glorious
evening. It had gotten quite late when she motioned for the pencil and drew
a picture of a four-poster bed. He was dumbfounded, and to this day has
never been able to understand how she knew he was in the furniture business.
%
The part of the world that people find most puzzling is the part called "Me".
%
The party adjourned to a hot tub, yes. Fully clothed, I might add.
-- IBM employee, testifying in California State Supreme Court
%
The passionate young thing was having a difficult time getting across what
she wanted from her rather dense boyfriend. Finally she asked,
"Would you like to see where I was operated on for appendicitis?"
"Gosh, no!" he replied. "I hate hospitals."
%
The past always looks better than it was.
It's only pleasant because it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The people sensible enough to give
good advice are usually sensible enough to give none.
%
The perfect friend sees the best in you -- sees it constantly --
not just when you occasionally are that way, but also when you
waver, when you forget yourself, act like less than you are.
In time, you become more like his vision of you -- which is the
person you have always wanted to be.
-- Nancy Friday
%
The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 A.M.
-- Charles Pierce
%
The perfect man is the true partner. Not a bed partner nor a fun partner,
but a man who will shoulder burdens equally with [you] and possess that
quality of joy.
-- Erica Jong
%
The person who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
%
The person who marries for money usually earns every penny of it.
%
The person who's taking you to lunch has no intention of paying.
%
The person you rejected yesterday could make you happy, if you say yes.
%
The personal computer market is about the same size as the total potato chip
market. Next year it will be about half the size of the pet food market and
is fast approaching the total worldwide sales of pantyhose"
-- James Finke, Commodore Int'l Ltd., 1982
%
The philosopher's treatment of a question
is like the treatment of an illness.
-- Wittgenstein
%
The Phone Booth Rule:
A lone dime always gets the number nearly right.
%
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
Let others think his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
-- Ogden Nash
%
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang
and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter
connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center
fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were
blound by the sun and he dropped it.
-- Dizzy Dean
%
The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
-- David Lardner
%
The plural of spouse is spice.
%
The Poems, all three hundred of them,
may be summed up in one of their phrases:
"Let our thoughts be correct".
-- Confucius
%
The Poet Whose Badness Saved His Life
The most important poet in the seventeenth century was George
Wither. Alexander Pope called him "wretched Wither" and Dryden said of his
verse that "if they rhymed and rattled all was well".
In our own time, "The Dictionary of National Biography" notes that his
work "is mainly remarkable for its mass, fluidity and flatness. It usually
lacks any genuine literary quality and often sinks into imbecile doggerel".
High praise, indeed, and it may tempt you to savour a typically
rewarding stanza: It is taken from "I loved a lass" and is concerned with
the higher emotions.
She would me "Honey" call,
She'd -- O she'd kiss me too.
But now alas! She's left me
Falero, lero, loo.
Among other details of his mistress which he chose to immortalize
was her prudent choice of footwear.
The fives did fit her shoe.
In 1639 the great poet's life was endangered after his capture by
the Royalists during the English Civil War. When Sir John Denham, the
Royalist poet, heard of Wither's imminent execution, he went to the King and
begged that his life be spared. When asked his reason, Sir John replied,
"Because that so long as Wither lived, Denham would not be accounted the
worst poet in England."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war,
and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy."
-- Celine
%
The point is, you see, that there is no point in driving yourself mad
trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and
save your sanity for later.
%
The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish to be
addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it is equally
important to accept and tolerate different standards of courtesy, not
expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own preferences. Only then can
we hope to restore the insult to its proper social function of expressing
true distaste.
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly
Correct Behavior"
%
The politician is someone who deals in man's problems of adjustment.
To ask a politician to lead us is to ask the tail of a dog to lead the dog.
-- Buckminster Fuller
%
The pollution's at that awkward stage.
Too thick to navigate and too thin to cultivate.
-- Doug Sneyd
%
The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more
often.
%
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
-- Anthony Burgess
%
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people.
-- U.S. Constitution, Amendment 10. (Bill of Rights)
%
The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
-- Ogden Nash
%
The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his
brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is
Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
-- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
%
The prettiest women are almost always the most
boring, and that is why some people feel there is no God.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
The price of greatness is responsibility.
%
The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
they might force their beliefs on us.
-- Mario Cuomo
%
The price of success in philosophy is triviality.
-- C. Glymour
%
The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate
knowledge of its ugly side.
-- James Baldwin
%
The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by
changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped
marker.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
The primary function of the design engineer is to make things
difficult for the fabricator and impossible for the serviceman.
%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants;
instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the
variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead
of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the
program, should the value of pi change.
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%
The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
voters to win the next election.
%
The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO"
represents the secondary theme:
Law Enforcement Officials
The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
-- M. Gallaher
%
The probability of someone watching you is directly
proportional to the stupidity of your action.
%
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
developed cancer.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
The problem that we thought was a problem was, indeed,
a problem, but not the problem we thought was the problem.
-- Mike Smith
%
The problem with any unwritten law is that
you don't know where to go to erase it.
-- Glaser and Way
%
The problem with graduate students, in general, is that they have
to sleep every few days.
%
The problem with me is that I am fifty or one hundred years ahead of my
time. My speed is very fast. Some ministers have had to drop out of my
government because they could not keep up.
-- Idi Amin Dada
%
The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they seem to believe that
for a group of people to behave in a way detrimental to the common good
requires intent.
%
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can
be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
-- Elizabeth Taylor
%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
%
The problem with this country is that there is no death penalty
for incompetence.
%
The problems of business administration in general, and database management in
particular are much too difficult for people that think in IBMese, compounded
with sloppy English.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid,
stable business.
-- John Steinbeck
%
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
%
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
The proof that IBM didn't invent the car is that it has a steering wheel
and an accelerator instead of spurs and ropes, to be compatible with a
horse.
-- Jac Goudsmit
%
The propriety of some persons seems to consist in having improper
thoughts about their neighbours.
-- F. H. Bradley
%
The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by mistake
since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once tied around its
victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims the insurance before
running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The public demands certainties; it must be told definitely and a bit
raucously that this is true and that is false. But there are no
certainties.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Prejudice"
%
The Public is merely a multiplied "me."
-- Mark Twain
%
The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but
because it gave pleasure to the spectators.
-- Thomas Macaulay, "History of England"
%
The purpose of Physics 7A is to make the engineers realize that they're
not perfect, and to make the rest of the people realize that they're not
engineers.
%
The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
"My brain is paged out to my liver"
%
The quality of a pun is in the "Oy!" of the beholder.
%
The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak or write to
join in checking this mad, wicked folly of "Woman's Rights", with all its
attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every
sense of womanly feeling and propriety. Lady-- ought to get a good
whipping. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot
contain herself. God created men and women different -- then let them
remain each in their own position.
-- Letter to Sir Theodore Martin, 29 May 1870, from
Queen Victoria
%
The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is
it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of
industrial waste?
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
%
The questions remain the same.
The answers are eternally variable.
%
The Rabbits The Cow
Here is a verse about rabbits The cow is of the bovine ilk;
That doesn't mention their habits. One end is moo, the other, milk.
-- Ogden Nash
%
The race is not always to the swift, nor the
battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyon
%
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella:
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
-- Lord Bowen
%
The Ranger isn't gonna like it, Yogi.
%
The rate at which a disease spreads through a corn field is a precise
measurement of the speed of blight.
%
The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is a constant, but nowadays the
illiterates can read.
-- Alberto Moravia
%
The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
cursed.
%
The real man's Bloody Mary:
Ingredients: vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco, Worcestershire
sauce, A-1 steak sauce, ice, salt, pepper, celery.
Fill a large tumbler with vodka.
Throw all the other ingredients away.
%
The real problem with hunting elephants carrying the decoys.
%
The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.
-- Christopher Morley
%
The real reason large families benefit society is because at least
a few of the children in the world shouldn't be raised by beginners.
%
The real reason psychology is hard is that
psychologists are trying to do the impossible.
%
The real trouble with reality is that there's no background music.
%
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
%
The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",
which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape
Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil
Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
The reason people sweat is so they won't catch fire when making love.
-- Don Rose
%
The reason that every major university maintains a department of
mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those
people.
%
The reason they're called wisdom teeth
is that the experience makes you wise.
%
The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's
absolutely not.
-- Bill Gates
%
The reason why worry kills more people
than work is that more people worry than work.
%
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The reasons that each of these countries has had to renege on its
financial commitments were all somewhat different: Argentina because of
a war, Poland because of its vast misguided overinvestment in heavy
industry, Honduras because the coffee price went sour, Zaire because
nobody in the government there has a clue as to how to run a country.
-- Paul Erdman's Money Book
%
The relative importance of files depends on their cost
in terms of the human effort needed to regenerate them.
-- T. A. Dolotta
%
The requirements of romantic love are difficult to satisfy in the trunk
of a Dodge Dart.
-- Lisa Alther
%
The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher
Called a hen a most elegant creature.
The hen, pleased with that,
Laid an egg in his hat --
And thus did the hen reward Beecher.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
%
The reverse side also has a reverse side.
-- Japanese proverb
%
The revolution will not be televised.
%
The reward for working hard is more hard work.
%
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
-- Emerson
%
The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
-- Ogden Nash
%
The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer.
The haves get more, the have-nots die.
%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%
The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
and to his imagination for his facts.
-- Sheridan
%
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be
taken seriously.
-- Hubert Humphrey
%
The right to be let alone is indeed the beginning of all freedom.
-- Justice Douglas
%
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
%
The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared
for not by our labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his
infinite wisdom has given control of property interests of the country, and
upon the successful management of which so much remains.
-- George F. Baer, railroad industrialist
%
The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
you have and what rights you have not got.
-- J. Parnell Thomas
%
The ripest fruit falls first.
-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
%
The road to Hades is easy to travel.
-- Bion
%
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
sloppy analysis!
%
The road to hell is paved with NAND gates.
-- J. Gooding
%
The road to ruin is always in good repair,
and the travelers pay the expense of it.
-- Josh Billings
%
The Roman Rule
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
one who is doing it.
%
The root of all superstition is that men
observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.
-- Francis Bacon
%
The rose of yore is but a name, mere names are left to us.
%
The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
take it too seriously.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.
-- Lewis Carroll
%
The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
-- Jane Bryant Quinn
%
The rules are rather simple to understand: Under democracy you
can defend any view, but only defend it. You can not try to realize
it through power, violence or weapons.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
The rules:
1: Thou shalt not worship other computer systems.
2: Thou shalt not impersonate Liberace or eat watermelon while sitting at
the console keyboard.
3: Thou shalt not slap users on the face, nor staple their silly little
card decks together.
4: Thou shalt not get physically involved with the computer system,
especially if you're already married.
5: Thou shalt not use magnetic tapes as Frisbees, nor use a disk pack as
a stool to reach another disk pack.
6: Thou shalt not stare at the blinking lights for more than one 8 hour
shift.
7: Thou shalt not tell users that you accidentally destroyed their
files/backup just to see the look on their little faces.
8: Thou shalt not enjoy canceling a job.
9: Thou shalt not display firearms in the computer room.
10: Thou shalt not push buttons "just to see what happens".
%
The Russians have put a small ball up in the air.
That does not raise my apprehensions one iota.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market
award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal
gesture by the individual to himself.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith, "Annals of an Abiding Liberal"
%
The San Diego Freeway. Official Parking Lot of the 1984 Olympics!
%
The savior becomes the victim.
%
The scene: in a vast, painted desert, a cowboy faces his horse.
Cowboy: "Well, you've been a pretty good hoss, I guess. Hardworkin'.
Not the fastest critter I ever come acrost, but..."
Horse: "No, stupid, not feed*back*. I said I wanted a feed*bag*.
%
"The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
%
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:
1) They all had moderate appetites.
2) They all came from middle class homes.
3) All but two of them were dead.
%
The scum also rises.
-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
The sealed-paper-in-a-safe thing is only your last resort if all your
password-knowers get hit by a redundant array of inexperienced busdrivers.
-- jpd on comp.unix.freebsd.bsd.misc
%
The search for the perfect martini is a fraud. The perfect martini is
a belt of gin from the bottle; anything else is the decadent trappings
of civilization.
-- T. K.
%
The second best policy is dishonesty.
%
The Second Law of Thermodynamics:
If you think things are in a mess now, just wait!
-- Jim Warner
%
The secret of happiness is total disregard of everybody.
%
The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.
%
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that,
you've got it made.
-- Jean Giraudoux
%
The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow;
there is no humor in Heaven.
-- Mark Twain
%
The sendmail configuration file is one of those files that looks like someone
beat their head on the keyboard. After working with it... I can see why!
-- Harry Skelton
%
The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones
from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
millstones are lifted.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he
reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray
Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace
of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of
him are dead, he is alive.
Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce
host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one -- and
equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd.
Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
-- Fritz Leiber, "The Swords of Lankhmar"
%
The seven year itch comes from fooling around during the fourth, fifth,
and sixth years.
%
The sheep died in the wool.
%
The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land.
%
The shifts of Fortune test the reliability of friends.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero
%
The shortest distance between any two puns is a straight line.
%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-- Noelie Alito
%
The Shuttle is now going five times the sound of speed.
-- Dan Rather, first landing of Columbia
%
The six great gifts of an Irish girl are beauty, soft
voice, sweet speech, wisdom, needlework, and chastity.
-- Theodore Roosevelt, 1907
%
The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:
The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going
in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long
way.)
-- Dan Roddick
%
The sixth shiek's sixth sheep's sick.
-- [just say that five times...]
%
The sky is blue so we know where to stop mowing.
-- Judge Harold T. Stone
%
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
The smiling Spring comes in rejoicing,
And surly Winter grimly flies.
Now crystal clear are the falling waters,
And bonnie blue are the sunny skies.
Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning,
The ev'ning gilds the oceans's swell:
All creatures joy in the sun's returning,
And I rejoice in my bonnie Bell.
The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer,
The yellow Autumn presses near;
Then in his turn come gloomy Winter,
Till smiling Spring again appear.
Thus seasons dancing, life advancing,
Old Time and Nature their changes tell;
But never ranging, still unchanging,
I adore my bonnie Bell.
-- Robert Burns, "My Bonnie Bell"
%
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor. Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers
while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference --
one can see only a very few things at once.
-- Fred Brooks
%
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the
rationalizations of the victors. History is written by the survivors.
-- Max Lerner
%
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor
its theories will hold water.
%
The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door
He said, "I am not fighting for you anymore"
The queen knew she had seen his face someplace before
And slowly she let him inside.
He said, "I see you now, and you're so very young
But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won
And I have this intuition that it's all for your fun
And now will you tell me why?"
-- Suzanne Vega, "The Queen and The Soldier"
%
The solution of problems is the most characteristic
and peculiar sort of voluntary thinking.
-- William James
%
The solution of this problem is trivial
and is left as an exercise for the reader.
%
The solution to a problem changes the nature of the problem.
-- Peer
%
The somewhat old and crusty vicar was taking a well-earned retirement from
his rather old and crusty parish. As is usual in these cases, a locum was
sent to cover the transition period. This particular man was young and
active, and had the strange notion that church should also be active and
exciting. As a consequence he was more than a little disappointed with the
dull and tradition-bound church. He decided to do something about it.
For his first Sunday, he didn't wear the traditional robes and
vestments, but lead the service wearing a nice 2-piece suit. The congregation
was horrified! He changed the order of the service. The congregation was
horrified! Then came the children's lesson.
For this he came out of the pulpit, and sat on the communion table.
The congregation was mortified! He sat there swinging his legs against
the table as the children gathered around him.
He asked the children, "What's small, brown, furry and eats nuts?"
There was total silence.
He asked again, "What's small, brown, furry and eats nuts?"
Total silence.
Eventually, one timid youngster put up his hand and said, "Please,
sir, I know the answer is Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel to me."
%
The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their money.
-- Ed Bluestone, The National Lampoon
%
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!
%
The sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you will be
able to correct them.
-- Nicolaides
%
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
%
The sounds of the nouns are mostly unbound.
In town a noun might wear a gown,
or further down, might dress a clown.
A noun that's sound would never clown,
but unsound nouns jump up and down.
The sound of a noun could disturb the plowing,
and then, my dear, you'd be put in the pound.
But please don't let that get you down,
the renown of your gown is the talk of the town.
-- A. Nonnie Mouse
%
The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
the Russians.
-- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
%
The Soviet Union, which has complained recently about alleged anti-Soviet
themes in American advertising, lodged an official protest this week
against the Ford Motor Company's new campaign: "Hey you stinking, fat
Russian, get off my Ford Escort."
-- Dennis Miller
%
The speed of anything depends on the flow of everything.
%
The spirit of Plato dies hard. We have been unable to escape the
philosophical tradition that what we can see and measure in the world
is merely the superficial and imperfect representation of an underlying
reality.
-- S. J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
%
The star of riches is shining upon you.
%
The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers
written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not
follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single statement took
the scientific world by storm. So many mathematical conferences got held
in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation
died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put
back by years.
-- Douglas Adams, "Life, The Universe and Everything"
%
The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
%
The state of innocence contains the germs of all future sin.
-- Alexandre Arnoux, "Etudes et caprices"
%
The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its
thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools.
-- Thucydides
%
The steady state of disks is full.
-- Ken Thompson
%
The story of the butterfly:
"I was in Bogota and waiting for a lady friend. I was in love,
a long time ago. I waited three days. I was hungry but could not go
out for food, lest she come and I not be there to greet her. Then, on
the third day, I heard a knock."
"I hurried along the old passage and there, in the sunlight,
there was nothing."
"Just," Vance Joy said, "a butterfly, flying away."
-- Peter Carey, BLISS
%
The story you are about to hear is true.
Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
%
The street preacher looked so baffled
When I asked him why he dressed
With forty pounds of headlines
Stapled to his chest.
But he cursed me when I proved to him
I said, "Not even you can hide.
You see, you're just like me.
I hope you're satisfied."
-- Bob Dylan
%
The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make
them unsafe.
-- Mayor Frank Rizzo
%
The streets were dark with something more than night.
-- Raymond Chandler
%
The strong give up and move on, while the weak give up and stay.
%
The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence. He
can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless
existence recurring eternally. The second characteristic of such a man is
that he has the strength to recognize -- and to live with the recognition --
that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones.
He creates himself by fashioning his own values; he has the pride to live
by the values he wills.
-- Nietzsche
%
The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
is an emerging underachiever.
%
The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant
biology.
%
"The subspace _W inherits the other 8 properties of _V. And there aren't
even any property taxes."
-- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
%
The sudden sight of me causes panic in the streets. They have
yet to learn - only the savage fears what he does not understand.
-- The Silver Surfer
%
The sum of the intelligence of the world is constant.
The population is, of course, growing.
%
The sum of the Universe is zero.
%
The sun never sets on those who ride into it.
-- RKO
%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
%
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire
%
The superior man understands what is right;
the inferior man understands what will sell.
-- Confucius
%
The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their
way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other,
whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other
side a consistency, foresight and coherence that its own experience belies.
Of course, even two blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to
speak of the room.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The Supreme Court does it with all deliberate speed.
%
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
-- Mark Twain
%
The surest sign that a man is in love is when he divorces his wife.
%
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher
esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.
-- Nietzsche
%
The surest way to remain a winner is to
win once, and then not play any more.
%
The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core --
Scratch a lover and find a foe!
-- Dorothy Parker, "Ballad of a Great Weariness"
%
The system was down for backups from 5am to 10am last Saturday.
%
The system will be down for 10 days for preventative maintenance.
%
The Tao doesn't take sides;
it gives birth to both wins and losses.
The Guru doesn't take sides;
she welcomes both hackers and lusers.
The Tao is like a stack:
the data changes but not the structure.
the more you use it, the deeper it becomes;
the more you talk of it, the less you understand.
Hold on to the root.
%
The Tao is like a glob pattern:
used but never used up.
It is like the extern void:
filled with infinite possibilities.
It is masked but always present.
I don't know who built to it.
It came before the first kernel.
%
The tao that can be tar(1)ed
is not the entire Tao.
The path that can be specified
is not the Full Path.
We declare the names
of all variables and functions.
Yet the Tao has no type specifier.
Dynamically binding, you realize the magic.
Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.
Yet magic and hierarchy
arise from the same source,
and this source has a null pointer.
Reference the NULL within NULL,
it is the gateway to all wizardry.
%
The technician should never forget that he is an artist, the
artist never that he is a technician.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
The telephone is a good way to talk to people without having to offer
them a drink.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Interview"
%
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data. Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that. With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven. The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C). The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.) We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
-- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972
%
The temperature of the aqueous content of an unremittingly ogled
culinary vessel will not achieve 100 degrees on the Celsius scale.
%
The Ten Commandments for Technicians:
1: Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a
most untechnician-like manner.
7: Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console
her in other ways.
%
The term "fire" brings up visions of violence and mayhem and the ugly scene
of shooting employees who make mistakes. We will now refer to this process
as "deleting" an employee (much as a file is deleted from a disk). The
employee is simply there one instant, and gone the next. All the terrible
temper tantrums, crying, and threats are eliminated.
-- Kenny's Korner
%
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
%
The test of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Aldo Leopold
%
The thing that takes up the least amount of time
and causes the most amount of trouble is sex.
%
The things that interest people most are usually none of their business.
%
The Third Law of Photography:
If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of
the dark leaks out.
%
The thought of being President frightens me and I do not think I
want the job.
-- Ronald Reagan in 1973
Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. Had he run unopposed he
would have lost.
-- Mort Sahl
Ronald Reagan is a triumph of the embalmer's art.
-- Gore Vidal
Ronald Reagan's platform seems to be: Hey, I'm a big good-looking guy and
I need a lot of sleep.
-- Roy G. Blount, Jr.
You've got to be careful quoting Ronald Reagan, because when you quote him
accurately it's called mudslinging.
-- Walter Mondale
%
The Thought Police are here. They've come
To put you under cardiac arrest.
And as they drag you through the door
They tell you that you've failed the test.
-- Buggles, "Living in the Plastic Age"
%
The three best things about going to school are June, July, and August.
%
The three biggest software lies:
1: *Of course* we'll give you a copy of the source.
2: *Of course* the third party vendor we bought that from
will fix the microcode.
3: Beta test site? No, *of course* you're not a beta test site.
%
The three laws of thermodynamics:
(1) You can't get anything without working for it.
(2) The most you can accomplish by working is to break even.
(3) You can only break even at absolute zero.
%
THE THREE MOST COMMONLY-ASKED QUESTIONS AT DISNEYLAND:
1) Where's the bathroom?
2) What time does the parade start?
3) Do you sell anything without that damn mouse on it?
%
The three most dangerous things in the world are a programmer with a
soldering iron, a hardware type with a program patch and a user with
an idea.
-- The Wizardry Compiled by Rick Cook
%
The three questions of greatest concern are -- 1. Is it attractive?
2. Is it amusing? 3. Does it know its place?
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
%
The three rules of international air travel:
(1) Never fly on Aeroflot if you can possibly avoid it (this used
to be Braniff or Aeroflot).
(2) Never bet a whole lot of money on two little pairs unless you
know *exactly* what you're doing.
(3) Never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.
%
The thrill is here, but it won't last long
You'd better have your fun before it moves along...
%
The time for action is past!
Now is the time for senseless bickering.
%
The time is right to make new friends.
%
The time spent on any item of the agenda [of a finance
committee] will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved.
-- C. N. Parkinson
%
The time was the 19th of May, 1780. The place was Hartford, Connecticut.
The day has gone down in New England history as a terrible foretaste of
Judgment Day. For at noon the skies turned from blue to grey and by
mid-afternoon had blackened over so densely that, in that religious age,
men fell on their knees and begged a final blessing before the end came.
The Connecticut House of Representatives was in session. And, as some of
the men fell down and others clamored for an immediate adjournment, the
Speaker of the House, one Col. Davenport, came to his feet. He silenced
them and said these words: "The day of judgment is either approaching or
it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I
choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be
brought."
-- Alistair Cooke
%
The tree in which the sap is stagnant remains fruitless.
-- Hosea Ballou
%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%
The tree of research must from time to time
be refreshed with the blood of bean counters.
-- Alan Kay
%
The trouble is, there is an endless supply of White Men,
but there has always been a limited number of Human Beings.
-- Little Big Man
%
The trouble with a kitten is that
When it grows up, it's always a cat
-- Ogden Nash
%
The trouble with a lot of self-made men is that they worship their creator.
%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%
The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
it.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
The trouble with being punctual is that people
think you have nothing more important to do.
%
The trouble with computers is that they do
what you tell them, not what you want.
-- D. Cohen
%
The trouble with doing something right the first
time is that nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
%
The trouble with eating Italian food is that
five or six days later you're hungry again.
-- George Miller
%
The trouble with heart disease is that the first
symptom is often hard to deal with: death.
-- Michael Phelps
%
The trouble with incest is that it gets you involved with relatives.
-- George S. Kaufman
%
The trouble with money is it costs too much!
%
The trouble with opportunity is that it
always comes disguised as hard work.
-- Herbert V. Prochnow
%
The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing --
and then marry him.
-- Cher
%
The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths.
-- Ken Kesey
%
The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds
the other fellow of a dull one.
-- Sid Caesar
%
The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians
who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool
all of the people all of the time.
-- Franklin Adams
%
The trouble with you
Is the trouble with me.
Got two good eyes
But we still don't see.
-- Robert Hunter, "Workingman's Dead"
%
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great
height but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make
people stumble than to be walked upon.
-- Franz Kafka
%
The truth about a man lies first and foremost in what he hides.
-- Andre Malraux
%
The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.
And vice versa.
%
The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it.
-- Stanley Kubrick
%
The Truth Shall Rape You Over.
-- Caltech
%
The truth you speak has no past and no future.
It is, and that's all it needs to be.
%
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
-- Ogden Nash
%
The two most beautiful words in the English language are "Cheque Enclosed."
-- Dorothy Parker
%
The two most common things in the Universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
-- Harlan Ellison
%
The two oldest professions in the world have been ruined by amateurs.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The two party system ... is a triumph of the dialectic. It showed that
two could be one and one could be two and had probably been fabricated
by Hegel for the American market on a subcontract from General Dynamics.
-- I. F. Stone
%
The two things that can get you into trouble
quicker than anything else are fast women and slow horses.
%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The, uh, snowy mountains are like really cold, eh?
And the, um, plains stretch out like my moms girdle, eh?
There's lotsa beers and doughnuts for everyone, eh?
So the last one to be peaceful and everything is a big idiot,
Eh?
So shut yer face up and dry yer mucklucks by the fire, eh?
And dream about girls with their high beams on, eh?
They may be cold, but that's okay! Beer's better that way!
Eh?
-- A, like, Tribute to the Great White North, eh?
Beauty!
%
The ultimate game show will be the one
where somebody gets killed at the end.
-- Chuck Barris, creator of "The Gong Show"
%
The unfacts, did we have them, are too
imprecisely few to warrant out certitude.
%
The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
"100 percent American"...
-- U.S. Army (1945)
%
The United States Army; 194 years of proud service, unhampered by progress.
%
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be
broken.
%
The universe is all a spin-off of the Big Bang.
%
The universe is an island,
surrounded by whatever it is that surrounds universes.
%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
combination is locked up in the safe.
-- Peter DeVries
Corollary: The combination is not a problem since we are locked in the
same safe.
%
The Universe is populated by stable things.
-- Richard Dawkins
%
The universe is ruled by letting things take their course.
It cannot be ruled by interfering.
-- Chinese proverb
%
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
-- Sagan
%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is
said to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of
his decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
%
The University of California Statistics Department; where mean is normal,
and deviation standard.
%
The UNIX philosophy basically involves giving you enough rope to
hang yourself. And then a couple of feet more, just to be sure.
%
The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable
that I assume it must be evil.
-- Heywood Broun
%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
world put together.
-- Sir Peter Medawar
%
The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with computing systems
is a symptom of professional immaturity.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offence.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money.
-- Ben Franklin
%
The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.
%
The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
the worst cigars.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The very first essential for success is a perpetually
constant and regular employment of violence.
-- Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
%
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
prejudice.
-- Mark Twain
%
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
be one of the facts that needs altering.
-- Dr. Who, "Face of Evil"
%
The very remembrance of my former misfortune proves a new one to me.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
The Vet Who Surprised A Cow
In the course of his duties in August 1977, a Dutch veterinary
surgeon was required to treat an ailing cow. To investigate its internal
gases he inserted a tube into that end of the animal not capable of facial
expression and struck a match. The jet of flame set fire first to some
bales of hay and then to the whole farm causing damage estimate at L45,000.
The vet was later fined L140 for starting a fire in a manner surprising to
the magistrates. The cow escaped with shock.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The VFW represents many who died to give this country a second chance
to make it what it is supposed to be -- God's guest house on earth.
-- John Wayne
%
The volume of paper expands to fill the available briefcases.
-- Jerry Brown
%
The voluptuous blond was chatting with her handsome escort in a posh
restaurant when their waiter, stumbling as he brought their drinks,
dumped a martini on the rocks down the back of the blonde's dress. She
sprang to her feet with a wild rebel yell, dashed wildly around the table,
then galloped wriggling from the room followed by her distraught boyfriend.
A man seated on the other side of the room with a date of his own beckoned
to the waiter and said, "We'll have two of whatever she was drinking."
%
The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
it's just a tired feeling.
%
The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
%
The wages of sin are unreported.
%
The War on Drugs is just a small part of the War on the United States
Constitution.
%
The warning message we sent the Russians was a
calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.
-- Alexander Haig
%
The water was not fit to drink.
To make it palatable, we had to add whiskey.
By diligent effort, I learned to like it.
-- Winston Churchill
%
The way I understand it, the Russians are sort of a combination of evil and
incompetence... sort of like the Post Office with tanks.
-- Emo Philips
%
The way of the world is to praise dead saints and prosecute live ones.
-- Nathaniel Howe
%
The way some people find fault, you'd think there was some kind of reward.
%
The way to a man's heart is through his
wife's belly, and don't you forget it.
-- Edward Albee, "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"
%
The way to a man's heart is through the left ventricle.
%
The way to a man's stomach is through his esophagus.
%
The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it and run.
%
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
%
The way to make a small fortune in the
commodities market is to start with a large fortune.
%
The weather is here, I wish you were beautiful.
My thoughts aren't too clear, but don't run away.
My girlfriend's a bore; my job is too dutiful.
Hell nobody's perfect, would you like to play?
I feel together today!
-- Jimmy Buffet, "Coconut Telegraph"
%
The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.
%
The weed of crime bears bitter fruit...
but the leaves are good to smoke!
-- The Shadow
%
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles.
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty ?" he asked.
"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely,
"and go on till you come to the end: then stop."
-- Lewis Carroll
%
The white race is the cancer of history.
-- Susan Sontag
%
The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.
-- Wavy Gravy
%
The whole of life is futile unless you
consider it as a sporting proposition.
%
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always
so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
The whole world is a scab. The point is to pick it constructively.
-- Peter Beard
%
The whole world is a tuxedo and you are a pair of brown shoes.
-- George Gobel
%
The whole world is about three drinks behind.
-- Humphrey Bogart
%
The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
It must have blown through someone's feet,
Like those of Caspar Weinberger.
-- P. Opus
%
The wise and intelligent are coming belatedly to realize that alcohol, and
not the dog, is man's best friend. Rover is taking a beating -- and he
should.
-- W.C. Fields
%
The wise man seeks everything in himself;
the ignorant man tries to get everything from somebody else.
%
The wise shepherd never trusts his flock to a smiling wolf.
%
The woman hurried home from her doctor's appointment, devastated by the
medical report she had just received. When her husband came in from work,
she told him, "Darling, the doctor said I have only twelve more hours to
live. So I've decided I want to go to bed and make passionate love to you
throughout the night. How does that sound, dearest?"
"Hey, that's fine for *you*," replied the husband. "You don't have
to get up in the morning!"
%
The wonderful thing about a dancing bear
is not how well he dances, but that he dances at all.
%
The work [of software development] is becoming far easier (i.e. the tools
we're using work at a higher level, more removed from machine, peripheral
and operating system imperatives) than it was twenty years ago, and because
of this, knowledge of the internals of a system may become less accessible.
We may be able to dig deeper holes, but unless we know how to build taller
ladders, we had best hope that it does not rain much.
-- Paul Licker
%
The world has many unintentionally cruel mechanisms that are not
designed for people who walk on their hands.
-- John Irving, "The World According to Garp"
%
The world is a comedy to those who think,
and a tragedy to those who feel.
-- Horace Walpole
%
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
%
The world is coming to an end... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!
%
The world is coming to an end!
Repent and return those library books!
%
The world is full of people who have never, since
childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
-- E. B. White
%
The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says
it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
-- E. Hubbard
%
The world is not octal despite DEC.
%
The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums.
It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish.
You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
The world needs more people like us and fewer like them.
%
The world really isn't any worse.
It's just that the news coverage is so much better.
%
The world wants to be deceived.
-- Sebastian Brant
%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%
The world's great men have not commonly been great scholars,
nor its great scholars great men.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
%
The Worst American Poet
Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that
Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years.
Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire
of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her
pen.
Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the
formula was the same:
Have you heard of the dreadful fate
Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife?
Of their death I will relate,
And also others lost their life
(in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster,
Where so many people died.
Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems,
the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a
river or struck by lightning. A critic of the day said she was "worse than
a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded.
Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even
suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate". Her reply was
forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went
beyond reason." She added that "literary work is very difficult to do".
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
THE WORST BANK ROBBERY
In August 1975 three men were on their way in to rob the Royal Bank of
Scotland at Rothesay, when they got stuck in the revolving doors. They
had to be helped free by the staff and, after thanking everyone,
sheepishly left the building.
A few minutes later they returned and announced their intention of
robbing the bank, but none of the staff believed them. When they demanded
5,000 pounds in cash, the head cashier laughed at them, convinced that it
was a practical joke.
Then one of the men jumped over the counter, but fell to the floor
clutching his ankle. The other two tried to make their getaway, but got
trapped in the revolving doors again.
%
The Worst Car Hire Service
When David Schwartz left university in 1972, he set up Rent-a-wreck
as a joke. Being a natural prankster, he acquired a fleet of beat-up
shabby, wreckages waiting for the scrap heap in California.
He put on a cap and looked forward to watching people's faces as he
conducted them round the choice of bumperless, dented junkmobiles.
To his lasting surprise there was an insatiable demand for them and
he now has 26 thriving branches all over America. "People like driving
round in the worst cars available," he said. Of course they do.
"If a driver damages the side of a car and is honest enough to
admit it, I tell him, `Forget it'. If they bring a car back late we
overlook it. If they've had a crash and it doesn't involve another vehicle
we might overlook that too."
"Where's the ashtray?" asked one Los Angeles wife, as she settled
into the ripped interior. "Honey," said her husband, "the whole car's the
ash tray."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The worst cliques are those which consist of one man.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
THE WORST HOMING PIGEON
This historic bird was released in Pembrokeshire in June 1953 and was
expected to reach its base that evening. It was returned by post, dead,
in a cardboard box eleven years later from Brazil.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The worst is enemy of the bad.
%
The worst is not so long as we can say "This is the worst."
-- King Lear
%
The Worst Jury
A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when
one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the
remotest clue what was happening.
The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any
evidence at all and, when there was no reply, dismissed him.
The excitement which this caused was only equaled when a second
juror revealed that he spoke not a word of English. A fluent French
speaker, he exhibited great surprised when told, after two days, that he
was hearing a murder trial.
The trial was abandoned when a third juror said that he suffered
from both conditions, being simultaneously unversed in the English language
and nearly as deaf as the first juror.
The judge ordered a retrial.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
"Come, muse, let us sing of rats."
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
"Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
And the grey roof reddened and rang;
Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
The tip of my ear. Flash! bang!"
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
"... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
"The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
"And I was ask'd and authorized to go
To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
"So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
While in this world, are liable to leak."
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
"I've measured it from side to side;
Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The Worst Musical Trio
There are few bad musicians who have a chance to give a recital at
a famous concert hall while still learning the rudiments of their
instrument. This happened about thirty years ago to the son of a Rumanian
gentleman who was owed a personal favour by Georges Enesco, the celebrated
violinist. Enesco agreed to give lessons to the son who was quite
unhampered by great musical talent.
Three years later the boy's father insisted that he give a public
concert. "His aunt said that nobody plays the violin better than he does.
A cousin heard him the other day and screamed with enthusiasm." Although
Enesco feared the consequences, he arranged a recital at the Salle Gaveau
in Paris. However, nobody bought a ticket since the soloist was unknown.
"Then you must accompany him on the piano," said the boy's father,
"and it will be a sell out."
Reluctantly, Enesco agreed and it was. On the night an excited
audience gathered. Before the concert began Enesco became nervous and
asked for someone to turn his pages.
In the audience was Alfred Cortot, the brilliant pianist, who
volunteered and made his way to the stage.
The soloist was of uniformly low standard and next morning the
music critic of Le Figaro wrote: "There was a strange concert at the Salle
Gaveau last night. The man whom we adore when he plays the violin played
the piano. Another whom we adore when he plays the piano turned the pages.
But the man who should have turned the pages played the violin."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The worst part of having success is trying
to find someone who is happy for you.
-- Bette Midler
%
The worst part of valor is indiscretion.
%
The Worst Prison Guards
The largest number of convicts ever to escape simultaneously from a
maximum security prison is 124. This record is held by Alcoente Prison,
near Lisbon in Portugal.
During the weeks leading up to the escape in July 1978 the prison
warders had noticed that attendances had fallen at film shows which
included "The Great Escape", and also that 220 knives and a huge quantity
of electric cable had disappeared. A guard explained, "Yes, we were
planning to look for them, but never got around to it." The warders had
not, however, noticed the gaping holes in the wall because they were
"covered with posters". Nor did they detect any of the spades, chisels,
water hoses and electric drills amassed by the inmates in large quantities.
The night before the breakout one guard had noticed that of the 36
prisoners in his block only 13 were present. He said this was "normal"
because inmates sometimes missed roll-call or hid, but usually came back
the next morning.
"We only found out about the escape at 6:30 the next morning when
one of the prisoners told us," a warder said later. [...] When they
eventually checked, the prison guards found that exactly half of the jail's
population was missing. By way of explanation the Justice Minister, Dr.
Santos Pais, claimed that the escape was "normal" and part of the
"legitimate desire of the prisoner to regain his liberty."
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them,
but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they
are sober.
-- William Butler Yeats
%
The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one
wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering
if something could have materialized -- and never knowing.
-- David Viscott
%
The Wright Bothers weren't the first to fly.
They were just the first not to crash.
%
The yankees, son, are up north.
The damnyankees are down here.
%
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
the answers.
%
The young Georgia miss came to the hospital for a checkup.
"Have you been X-rayed?" asked the doctor.
"Nope," she said, "but ah've been ultraviolated."
%
The young lady had an unusual list,
Linked in part to a structural weakness.
She set no preconditions.
%
The young man-about-town enjoyed luxury but didn't always have the means
to buy it, and so he huffily walked out of the Miami Beach hotel when he
found out the charges for room, meals and golf privileges were $300 a day.
He registered across the street at an equally elegant hotel, where the
rates were only $70. The following morning he went down to the hotel's
golf course and asked Scotty, the pro, to sell him a couple of golf balls.
"Sure," said Scotty. "That'll be $25 apiece."
"What?" screamed the bachelor. "In the hotel across the street
they only charge $1 a ball!"
"Naturally," replied the pro. "Over there they get you by the
rooms."
%
THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVALININTHENIGHTDUDE
%
Their idea of an offer you can't refuse is an offer...
and you'd better not refuse.
%
Them as has, gets.
%
Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
market.
If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment as her
incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy,
acceptance, and peace. "'Bye for now," she said warmly.
-- Thea Alexander, "2150 A.D."
%
Then here's to the City of Boston,
The town of the cries and the groans.
Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
-- Franklin Pierce Adams
%
Then there was LSD, which was supposed to make you think you could fly.
I remember it made you think you couldn't stand up, and mostly it was
right.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
Then there was the Formosan bartender named Taiwan-On.
%
Then there was the Scoutmaster who got a fantastic deal on this case of
Tates brand compasses for his troop; only $1.25 each! Only problem was,
when they got them out in the woods, the compasses were all stuck pointing
to the "W" on the dial.
Moral:
He who has a Tates is lost!
%
Theology is an attempt to explain a subject by men who do not understand
it. The intent is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Theorem: a cat has nine tails.
Proof:
No cat has eight tails. A cat has one tail more than no cat.
Therefore, a cat has nine tails.
%
Theorem: All positive integers are equal.
Proof: Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B.
Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B
(positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B.
Proceed by induction:
If N = 1, then A and B, being positive integers, must both be 1.
So A = B.
Assume that the theorem is true for some value k. Take A and B with
MAX(A, B) = k+1. Then MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k. And hence
(A-1) = (B-1). Consequently, A = B.
%
Theorem: All programs are dull.
Proof: Assume the contrary; i.e., the set of interesting programs is
nonempty. Arrange them (or it) in order of interest (note that all
sets can be well ordered, so do it properly). The minimal element is
the "least interesting program", the obvious dullness of which provides
the contradictory denouement we so devoutly seek.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
THEORY:
System of ideas meant to explain something, chosen with a view to
originality, controversialism, incomprehensibility, and how good
it will look in print.
%
Theory is gray, but the golden tree of life is green.
-- Goethe
%
Theory of Selective Supervision:
The one time in the day that you lean back and relax is
the one time the boss walks through the office.
%
There appears before you a threatening figure clad all over in heavy black
armor. His legs seem like the massive trunk of the oak tree. His broad
shoulders and helmeted head loom high over your own puny frame and you
realize that his powerful arms could easily crush the very life from your
body. There hangs from his belt a veritable arsenal of deadly weapons:
sword, mace, ball and chain, dagger, lance, and trident.
He speaks with a commanding voice:
"YOU SHALL NOT PASS"
As he grabs you by the neck all grows dim about you.
%
There appears to be irrefutable evidence that
the mere fact of overcrowding induces violence.
-- Harvey Wheeler
%
There are a few things that never go out of style,
and a feminine woman is one of them.
-- Ralston
%
There are a lot of lies going around.... and half of them are true.
-- Winston Churchill
%
There are bad times just around the corner,
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no good whining
About a silver lining
For we know from experience that they won't roll by...
-- Noel Coward
%
There are few people more often in the wrong
than those who cannot endure to be thought so.
%
There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess --
and there are few mistakes they have ever avoided.
-- Winston Churchill, Parliament, August, 1945
%
There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot,
jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
-- Ed Howdershelt
%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
There are four stages to a marriage. First there's the affair, then there's
the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you
cannot know a woman, the divorce.
-- Norman Mailer
%
There are many intelligent species in
the universe, and they all own cats.
%
There are many of us in this old world of ours who hold that things break
about even for all of us. I have observed, for example, that we all get
about the same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summer and the poor
get it in the winter.
-- Bat Masterson
%
There are many people today who literally do not have a close personal
friend. They may know something that we don't. They are probably
avoiding a great deal of pain.
%
There are more dead people than living, and their numbers are increasing.
-- Eugene Ionesco
%
There are more old drunkards than old doctors.
%
There are more things in heaven and earth than any place else.
%
There are more things in heaven and earth,
Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-- Hamlet
%
There are more ways of killing a cat than choking her with cream.
%
There are never any bugs you haven't found yet.
%
There are new messages.
%
There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe.
-- Baba Ram Dass
%
There are no answers, only cross-references.
-- Weiner
%
There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis
are chosen correctly.
%
There are no emotional victims, only volunteers.
%
There are no games on this system.
%
There are no great men, buster. There are only men.
-- Elaine Stewart, "The Bad and the Beautiful"
%
There are no great men, only great challenges that
ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.
-- Admiral William Halsey
%
There are no manifestos like cannon and musketry.
-- The Duke of Wellington
%
There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence
of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any marginally
competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make
some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible.
-- Richard Davisson
%
There are no rules for March. March is spring, sort
of, usually, March means maybe, but don't bet on it.
%
There are no winners in life, only survivors.
%
There are only two kinds of men -- the dead and the deadly.
-- Helen Rowland
%
There are only two kinds of tequila. Good and better.
%
There are only two things in this world that I am sure of, death and
taxes, and we just might do something about death one of these days.
-- shades
%
There are people so addicted to exaggeration
that they can't tell the truth without lying.
-- Josh Billings
%
There are people who find it odd to eat four or five Chinese meals
in a row; in China, I often remind them, there are a billion or so
people who find nothing odd about it.
-- Calvin Trillin
%
There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed.
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still recall.
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I've loved them all.
But of all these friends and lovers,
There is no one compared with you,
All these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I'll love you more.
-- Lennon/McCartney, "In My Life", 1965
%
There are running jobs.
Why don't you go chase them?
%
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
don't we all.
%
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
-- Robert W. Service
%
There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life
is the process of discovering them over and over and over.
-- David Nichols
%
There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells and
fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated pools here
and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving them parched for
wonder. There are also those who believe that if you stick your fingers up
your nose and blow, it will increase your intelligence.
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
%
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
There are three kinds of people: men, women, and unix.
%
There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
%
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
-- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
%
There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far
the more certain.
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
%
There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need
the money; the second that you have something to say that you think the
world should know; the third is that you can't think what to do with the
long winter evenings.
-- Quentin Crisp
%
There are three rules for writing a novel.
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
-- Maugham
%
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring the
changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many facts.
Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next fact; that's
science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent Universe controlled
by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's Factor; that's engineering.
%
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I
can't remember.
-- Italo Svevo
%
There are three things I have always loved
and never understood -- art, music, and women.
%
There are three things men can do with women:
love them, suffer for them, or turn them into literature.
-- Stephen Stills
%
There are three ways to get something done:
1: Do it yourself.
2: Hire someone to do it for you.
3: Forbid your kids to do it.
%
There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is
one of them.
%
There are twenty-five people left in the world,
and twenty-seven of them are hamburgers.
-- Ed Sanders
%
There are two jazz musicians who are great buddies. They hang out and play
together for years, virtually inseparable. Unfortunately, one of them is
struck by a truck and killed. About a week later his friend wakes up in
the middle of the night with a start because he can feel a presence in the
room. He calls out, "Who's there? Who's there? What's going on?"
"It's me -- Bob," replies a faraway voice.
Excitedly he sits up in bed. "Bob! Bob! Is that you? Where are
you?"
"Well," says the voice, "I'm in heaven now."
"Heaven! You're in heaven! That's wonderful! What's it like?"
"It's great, man. I gotta tell you, I'm jamming up here every day.
I'm playing with Bird, and 'Trane, and Count Basie drops in all the time!
Man it is smokin'!"
"Oh, wow!" says his friend. "That sounds fantastic, tell me more,
tell me more!"
"Let me put it this way," continues the voice. "There's good news
and bad news. The good news is that these guys are in top form. I mean
I have *never* heard them sound better. They are *wailing* up here."
"The bad news is that God has this girlfriend that sings..."
%
There are two kinds of fool. One says, "This is old, and therefore good."
And one says "This is new, and therefore better."
-- John Brunner, "The Shockwave Rider"
%
There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead.
-- Lord Thomas Rober Dewar
%
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
%
There are two problems with a major hangover. You feel
like you are going to die and you're afraid that you won't.
%
There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
%
There are two times when a man doesn't understand a woman -- before
marriage and after marriage.
%
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies.
-- C. A. R. Hoare
%
There are two ways of disliking art.
One is to dislike it.
The other is to like it rationally.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
There are two ways of disliking poetry;
one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
There are two ways to write error-free
programs; only the third one works.
%
There are very few personal problems that cannot be
solved through a suitable application of high explosives.
%
There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening
with an insurance salesman?
-- Woody Allen
%
There be sober men a'plenty, and drunkards barely twenty; there are men
of over ninety who have never yet kissed a girl. But give me the rambling
rover, from Orkney down to Dover, we will roam the whole world over, and
together we'll face the world.
-- Andy Stewart, "After the Hush"
%
There but for the grace of God, goes God.
-- Winston Churchill, speaking of Sir Stafford Cripps
%
There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
-- Ralph Nader
%
There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
-- R. W. Gerard
%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
There comes a time in the affairs of a man when he
has to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
-- W.C. Fields
%
There comes a time to stop being angry.
-- A Small Circle of Friends
%
There exist tasks which cannot be done
by more than 10 men or fewer than 100.
-- Steele's Law
%
There goes the good time that was had by all.
-- Bette Davis, remarking on a passing starlet
%
There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names.
For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read
permissions for everyone, you could say
#define creat(file, mode) creat(file, mode | 0444)
I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it
hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away
from its uses.
To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that
is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of
the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon. While a macro is
being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro
name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology
-- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded
recursively. (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it
was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.)
-- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review
%
There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange.
-- Thomas W. Lamont, October 29, 1929
%
There has been an alarming increase in the
number of things you know nothing about.
%
There is a 20% chance of tomorrow.
%
There is a building with four floors. On the first floor, there
is a convention of architects. On the second floor, there is a
vinyl manufacturing plant. On the third floor there is a fast food
stand, and on the fourth floor there is a library.
Q: What would happen if a librarian traveled down in a small
elevator with one other person from each floor?
A: The elevator would be full.
%
There is a certain frame of mind to which a cemetery
is, if not an antidote, at least an alleviation. If
you are in a fit of the blues, go nowhere else.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson: Immortelles
%
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an
opinion.
-- Anatole France
%
There is a fly on your nose.
%
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital
and labour. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting
each other's throat.
-- Brooks Atkinson, "Once Around the Sun"
%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature:
that of paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%
There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
%
There is a limit to the admiration we may hold for a man who spends
his waking hours poking the contents of chickens with a stick.
-- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"
%
There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
tied during the month of April.
%
There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
-- Walt Disney
%
There is a new anti-communist organization that advocates the use of
wooden toilet seats.
It's called the Birch John Society.
%
There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty,
Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the
Fatherland.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
There is a time in the tides of men,
Which, taken at its flood, leads on to success.
On the other hand, don't count on it.
-- T. K. Lawson
%
There is a vast difference between the savage and civilized man, but it
is never apparent to their wives until after breakfast.
-- Helen Rowland
%
There is always more hell that needs raising.
-- Lauren Leveut
%
There is always one thing to remember: writers are always selling
somebody out.
-- Joan Didion, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"
%
There is always someone worse off than yourself.
%
There is always something new out of Africa.
-- Gaius Plinius Secundus
%
There is an innocence in admiration; it is found in those to whom it
has not yet occurred that they, too, might be admired some day.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty.
"When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."
-- Mark Twain
%
There is brutality and there is honesty.
There is no such thing as brutal honesty.
%
There is Good Information and there is Bad Information and the
Internet is generally pretty neutral about the difference. If you're
a computer, it's all just 0s and 1s.
-- Joel Achenbach
%
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and
most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
-- Darwin
%
There is hardly a thing in the world that some man can
not make a little worse and sell a little cheaper.
%
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
There is in certain living souls
A quality of loneliness unspeakable,
So great it must be shared
As company is shared by lesser beings.
Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this
That in immensity
There is one lonelier than you.
%
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account. The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
-- H. L. Mencken, 1930
%
There *_i_s* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
%
There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die,
and we will conquer. Follow me.
-- General Barnard E. Bee (CSA)
%
There is more simplicity in a man who eats caviar on impulse than in a
man who eats Grapenuts on principle.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
-- Mahatma Mohandis K. Gandhi
%
There is much Obi-Wan did not tell you.
-- Darth Vader
%
There is never enough time to do it right the first time, but there is
always enough time to do it over.
%
There is never time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
%
There is no act of treachery or mean-ness of which a political party
is not capable; for in politics there is no honour.
-- Benjamin Disraeli, "Vivian Grey"
%
There is no bad taste. There is only good taste, and that is bad.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law.
No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.
-- Jean Giraudoux, "Tiger at the Gates"
%
There is no choice before us. Either we must Succeed in providing
the rational coordination of impulses and guts, or for centuries
civilization will sink into a mere welter of minor excitements.
We must provide a Great Age or see the collapse of the upward
striving of the human race.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
There is no comfort without pain; thus
we define salvation through suffering.
-- Cato
%
There is no cure for birth and death other than to enjoy the interval.
-- George Santayana
%
There is no delight the equal of dread.
As long as it is somebody else's.
--Clive Barker
%
There is no distinction between any AI program and some existent game.
%
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
-- Mark Twain
%
There is no doubt that my lawyer is honest. For example, when he
filed his income tax return last year, he declared half of his salary
as 'unearned income.'
-- Michael Lara
%
There is no education that is not political. An apolitical
education is also political because it is purposely isolating.
%
There is no Father Christmas. It's just a marketing ploy to make low income
parents' lives a misery. ... I want you to picture the trusting face of a
child, streaked with tears because of what you just said. I want you to
picture the face of its mother, because one week's dole won't pay for one
Master of the Universe Battlecruiser!
-- Filthy Rich and Catflap
%
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
%
There is no fool to the old fool.
-- John Heywood
%
There is no future in time travel.
%
There is no grief which time does not lessen and soften.
%
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted
armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
-- Ernest Hemingway
%
There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.
-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923
%
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years
the dirt doesn't get any worse.
-- Quentin Crisp
%
There is no ox so dumb as the orthodox.
-- George Francis Gillette
%
There is no point in waiting.
The train stopped running years ago.
All the schedules, the brochures,
The bright-colored posters full of lies,
Promise rides to a distant country
That no longer exists.
%
There is no proverb that is not true.
-- Cervantes
%
There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
of course.
-- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
%
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
-- Ken Olsen (President of Digital Equipment Corporation),
Convention of the World Future Society, in Boston, 1977
%
There is no royal road to geometry.
-- Euclid
%
There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
There is no security on this earth. There is only opportunity.
-- General Douglas MacArthur
%
There is no sin but ignorance.
-- Christopher Marlowe
%
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity.
%
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
%
There *is* no such thing as a civil engineer.
%
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
%
There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands.
%
There is no such thing as an ugly woman -- there are only
the ones who do not know how to make themselves attractive.
-- Christian Dior
%
There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
%
There is no such thing as inner peace. There is only nervousness or death.
Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behaviour.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
%
There is no such thing as pure pleasure;
some anxiety always goes with it.
%
There is no time like the pleasant.
%
There is no time like the present
for postponing what you ought to be doing.
%
There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY.
There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS. I'm very probably wrong.
%
There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and
family. But he can't make a living for them *and* his government, too,
the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is
live as cheap as the people.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
There is not much to choose between a woman who deceives
us for another, and a woman who deceives another for ourselves.
-- Augier
%
There is not opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"
%
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.
-- Churchill
%
There is nothing more silly than a silly laugh.
-- Gaius Valerius Catullus
%
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
-- Marie Antoinette
%
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult
when you do it reluctantly.
-- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
%
There is nothing stranger in a strange land than the stranger who
comes to visit.
%
There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine," said
a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat.
"And yet just a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with
an unanswerable question," said Nasrudin.
"I could have answered it if I had been there."
"Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
the middle of the night?'"
%
There is nothing wrong with abstinence, in moderation.
%
There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the
ocean level wouldn't cure.
-- Ross MacDonald
%
There is nothing wrong with writing ... as long as it
is done in private and you wash your hands afterward.
%
There is one difference between a tax collector and
a taxidermist -- the taxidermist leaves the hide.
-- Mortimer Caplan
%
There is one way to find out if a man is honest -- ask him. If he says
"Yes" you know he is crooked.
-- Groucho Marx
%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being
talked about, and that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
There is only one way to be happy by means of the heart -- to have none.
-- Paul Bourget
%
There is only one way to console a widow. But remember the risk.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
There is only one way to kill capitalism --
by taxes, taxes, and more taxes.
-- Karl Marx
%
There is only one word for aid that is genuinely without strings,
and that word is blackmail.
-- Colm Brogan
%
There is perhaps in every thing of any consequence, secret history, which
it would be amusing to know, could we have it authentically communicated.
-- James Boswell
%
There is plenty of time before progress goes too far.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
There is something in the pang of change
More than the heart can bear,
Unhappiness remembering happiness.
-- Euripides
%
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
%
There isn't room enough in this dress for both of us!
%
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who
constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those
who do not.
-- Robert Benchley
%
There must be at least 500,000,000 rats in the United
States; of course, I never heard the story before.
%
There must be more to life than having everything.
-- Maurice Sendak
%
There never was a good war or a bad peace.
-- Ben Franklin
%
There once was a king who ruled his country long, wisely, and well. The
king had a son whom he hoped would someday rule the land. He also wished
in his heart that the son would be wise and compassionate. One day he said
to the prince:
"If you promised that you would give a certain woman anything, even
half of your kingdom, and then she demanded the life of your best friend,
what would your decision be, my son?"
The young prince thought for a moment and then said, "I would tell
her that she was my best friend, and then cut off her head."
The king knew that his son would be a great king.
%
There once was a king who ruled his country long, wisely, and well. The
king had a son whom he hoped would someday rule the land. He also wished
in his heart that the son would be wise and compassionate. One day he said
to the prince:
"If you promised that you would give a certain woman anything, even
half of your kingdom, and then she demanded the life of your best friend,
what would your decision be, my son?"
The young prince thought for a moment and then said, "I would tell
her that the life of my best friend did not lie in the half of the kingdom
that I had promised."
The king knew that his son would be a great king.
%
There seems no plan because it is all plan.
-- C.S. Lewis
%
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
-- C.S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia"
%
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very, very good
And when she was bad, she was very, very popular.
-- Max Miller, "The Max Miller Blue Book"
%
There was a man who enjoyed playing golf, and could occasionally put up
with taking in a round with his wife. One time (with his wife along) he
was having an extremely bad round. On the 12th hole, he sliced a drive
over by a grounds-keepers' shack. Although he did not have a clear shot
to the green, his wife noticed that there were two doors on the shack,
and there was a possibility that, if both doors were opened, he might be
able to hit through. Without hesitation, he instructed his wife to go
around to the other side and open the far door. Sure enough, this gave
him a clear path to the green. He stepped up to his ball and prepared
to hit. His wife had been standing by the far door waiting for him to
hit through. After a moment, she became curious and stuck her head in
the doorway, to see what he was doing. At that exact moment, the husband
cracked a three-wood that hit his wife square on the forehead, killing
her instantly. A few weeks later, the man was playing a round at the same
course, this time with a friend of his. Once again on the 12th hole, he
sliced his drive to the shack. His friend suggested that he might be able
to hit through, if he was to open both doors.
"Nah", replied the man, "Last time I did that I took a 7".
%
There was a phone call for you.
%
There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so
they started debating who should be allowed to stay. The Pope pointed
out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all over the world,
the President explained that if he died then America would be stuck
with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley said, "Look!
We're not solving anything like this! The only fair thing to do is
to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97 votes.
%
There was a writer in 'Life' magazine ... who claimed that rabbits have
no memory, which is one of their defensive mechanisms. If they recalled
every close shave they had in the course of just an hour life would become
insupportable.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
%
There was a young man from LeDoux,
Whose limericks stopped at line two.
There was a young man from Verdunne.
[Actually, there are three limericks in this series, the third one
is about some guy named Nero. If anyone has a copy of it, please
mail it to "fortune". Ed.]
%
There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
during the trial.
-- David Letterman
%
There was an old Indian belief that by making love on the hide of
their favorite animal, one could guarantee the health and prosperity
of the offspring conceived thereupon. And so it goes that one Indian
couple made love on a buffalo hide. Nine months later, they were
blessed with a healthy baby son. Yet another couple huddled together
on the hide of a deer and they too were blessed with a very healthy
baby son. But a third couple, whose favorite animal was a hippopotamus,
were blessed with not one, but TWO very healthy baby sons at the conclusion
of the nine month interval. All of which proves the old theorem that:
The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of
the squaws of the other two hides.
%
There was, it appeared, a mysterious rite of initiation through which,
in one way or another, almost every member of the team passed. The term
that the old hands used for this rite -- West invented the term, not the
practice -- was `signing up.' By signing up for the project you agreed
to do whatever was necessary for success. You agreed to forsake, if
necessary, family, hobbies, and friends -- if you had any of these left
(and you might not, if you had signed up too many times before).
-- Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine"
%
There was this New Yorker that had a lifelong ambition to be a Texan.
Fortunately, he had a Texan friend and went to him for advice. "Mike,
you know I've always wanted to be a Texan. You're a *real* Texan, what
should I do?"
"Well," answered Mike, "The first thing you've got to do is look
like a Texan. That means you have to dress right. The second thing
you've got to do is speak in a southern drawl."
"Thanks, Mike, I'll give it a try," replied the New Yorker.
A few weeks passed and the New Yorker saunters into a store dressed
in a ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, Levi jeans and a bandanna. "Hey, there,
pardner, I'd like some beef, not too rare, and some of them fresh biscuits,"
he tells the counterman.
The guy behind the counter takes a long look at him and then says,
"You must be from New York."
The New Yorker blushes, and says, "Well, yes, I am. How did
you know?"
"Because this is a hardware store."
%
There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the
transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
telephone business?
%
There will always be beer cans rolling on the floor of your car when
the boss asks for a lift home from the office.
%
There will be big changes for you but you will be happy.
%
There will be sex after death, we just won't be able to feel it.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Therefore it is necessary to learn how not to be good, and to use
this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the cause.
-- Machiavelli
%
There's a couple of million dollars worth of baseball talent on the loose,
ready for the big leagues, yet unsigned by any major league. There are
pitchers who would win 20 games a season ... and outfielders [who] could
hit .350, infielders who could win recognition as stars, and there's at
least one catcher who at this writing is probably superior to Bill Dickey,
Josh Gibson. Only one thing is keeping them out of the big leagues, the
pigmentation of their skin. They happen to be colored.
-- Shirley Povich, 1941
%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not
a fence.
%
There's a lesson that I need to remember
When everything is falling apart
In life, just like in loving
There's such a thing as trying to hard
You've gotta sing
Like you don't need the money
Love like you'll never get hurt
You've gotta dance
Like nobody's watching
It's gotta come from the heart
If you want it to work.
-- Kathy Mattea
%
There's a long-standing bug relating to the x86 architecture that
allows you to install Windows.
-- Matthew D. Fuller
%
There's a lot to be said for not saying a lot.
%
There's a man deeply in debt, see, and he takes the money he has left
and goes to Monte Carlo to try to recoup at the roulette tables. Won a
little, lost a lot, and was down to his last franc. Prayed for help.
A voice whispered in his ear: "Le rouge..." Man looked around; nobody
there. What the hell -- he puts his last franc on the red, and it won.
The voice immediately said, "Encore le rouge..." Played red again, and
it won again. The voice said, "Impair..." Played odd, and it won. Voice
said, "Quinze..." so he put all the money on 15, and it won. This went
on for hours, the voice telling him what to bet, and the man putting all
his money on what the voice said, and winning. Finally when the voice
spoke, the man protested that he'd won millions of dollars and wanted to
quit. The voice was inexorable: "Douze..." The man put the money on 12,
and 11 came up -- he had lost everything -- the voice murmured "Merde!!"
%
There's a thrill in store for all for we're about to toast
The corporation that we represent.
We're here to cheer each pioneer and also proudly boast,
Of that man of men our sterling president
The name of T.J. Watson means
A courage none can stem
And we feel honored to be here to toast the IBM.
-- Ever Onward, from the 1940 IBM Songbook
%
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. It begins with the vision to
recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to
let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its validity
or its past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of future,
a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on,
rather than out. The trick of retiring well may be the trick of
living well. It's hard to recognize that life isn't a holding
action, but a process. It's hard to learn that we don't leave the
best parts of ourselves behind, back in the dugout or the office.
We own what we learned back there. The experiences and the growth
are grafted onto our lives. And when we exit, we can take ourselves
along -- quite gracefully.
-- Ellen Goodman
%
There's a whole WORLD in a mud puddle!
-- Doug Clifford
%
There's always free cheese in a mousetrap.
%
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
%
There's been no top authority saying what marijuana does to you. I really
don't know that much about it. I tried it once but it didn't do anything
to me.
-- John Wayne
%
There's got to be more to life than compile-and-go.
%
There's just something I don't like about Virginia; the state.
%
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
Would you kindly direct me to hell?
-- Dorothy Parker
%
There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our
whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
-- Walt Kelly
%
There's no justice in this world.
-- Frank Costello, on the prosecution of "Lucky" Luciano
by New York district attorney Thomas Dewey after
Luciano had saved Dewey from assassination by Dutch
Schultz (by ordering the assassination of Schultz
instead)
%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
%
There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
any worse.
%
There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
-- Raoul Duke
%
There's no saint like a reformed sinner.
%
There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know
what you're talking about.
-- John von Neumann
%
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
-- Milton Friendman
%
There's no such thing as an original sin.
-- Elvis Costello
%
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
-- Will Rodgers
%
There's no use in having a dog and doing your own barking.
%
There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead
armadillos.
-- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
%
There's nothing like a girl with a plunging
neckline to keep a man on his toes.
%
There's nothing like a good does of another woman to make a man appreciate
his wife.
-- Clare Booth Luce
%
There's nothing like good food, good wine, and a bad girl.
%
There's nothing like the face of a kid eating a Hershey bar.
%
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- J. S. Bach
%
There's nothing so precious as a cafe full of Gap kiddies trying to
work out whether you're really wearing rubber pants.
-- Mike Smith
%
There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter
and open a vein.
-- Red Smith
%
There's nothing very mysterious about you, except that
nobody really knows your origin, purpose, or destination.
%
There's nothing worse for your business than
extra Santa Clauses smoking in the men's room.
-- W. Bossert
%
There's nothing wrong with teenagers that
reasoning with them won't aggravate.
%
There's one consolation about matrimony. When you look around you can
always see somebody who did worse.
-- Warren H. Goldsmith
%
There's one fool at least in every married couple.
%
There's only one everything.
%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage
and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again.
-- Clint Eastwood
%
There's small choice in rotten apples.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
%
There's so much plastic in this culture that
vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me.
%
There's something different about us -- different from people of Europe,
Africa, Asia ... a deep and abiding belief in the Easter Bunny.
-- G. Gordon Liddy
%
There's something the technicians need to learn from the artists.
If it isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's probably wrong.
%
There's such a thing as too much point on a pencil.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%
There's too much beauty upon this earth for lonely men to bear.
-- Richard Le Gallienne
%
These activities have their own rules and methods
of concealment which seek to mislead and obscure.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1960
%
"These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
"These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
"These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
out of MEGATON MAN!"
%
These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what
they used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
%
They also serve who only stand and wait.
-- John Milton
%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%
They are called computers simply because computation is
the only significant job that has so far been given to them.
%
They are cold-blooded. They are completely ruthless about protecting
what they have. The only thing they connect to is the money aspect of
life. Let's face it: That's the American way.
-- Jeffery M. Johnson, regional chairman of the District
of Columbia United Way, speaking of drug dealers.
%
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land,
when they can see nothing but sea.
-- Francis Bacon
%
They are relatively good but absolutely terrible.
-- Alan Kay, commenting on Apollos
%
They call them "squares" because it's the
most complicated shape they can deal with.
%
They can't stop us... we're on a mission from God!
-- The Blues Brothers
%
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...
-- Civil War General John Sedgwick, his last words,
Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, 1864
%
They don't know how the world is shaped. And so they give it a shape, and
try to make everything fit it. They separate the right from the left, the
man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They
only want to count to two.
-- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
%
They don't suffer. They can't even speak English.
-- George F. Baer, answering a reporter's
question about the suffering of starving miners.
%
They finally got King Midas, I hear. Gild by association.
%
They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
%
They have their datasheets translated from Korean into English by
Russians with Greek->German dictionaries
-- Philip Paeps, on modern hardware documentation
%
They just buzzed and buzzed...buzzed.
%
They make a desert and call it peace.
-- Tacitus (55?-120?)
%
They say it's the responsibility of the media to look at government --
especially the president -- with a microscope. I don't argue with that,
but when they use a proctoscope, it's going too far.
-- Richard Nixon
%
They seem to have learned the habit of cowering before authority even when
not actually threatened. How very nice for authority. I decided not to
learn this particular lesson.
-- Richard Stallman
%
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the
system from within. I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them. First
we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.
I'm guided by a signal in the heavens. I'm guided by this birthmark on
my skin. I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons. First we take Manhattan,
then we take Berlin.
I'd really like to live beside you, baby. I love your body and your spirit
and your clothes. But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you I told you I told you I was one of those.
-- Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan"
%
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.
-- Mark Twain
%
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
%
They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!
%
They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results
About a month before. Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it
But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL.
He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this
To pass where they had failed For it must ever be
And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest
The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me.
My notion was to start again
Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
To see if it would run.
%
They took some of the Van Goghs, most
of the jewels, and all of the Chivas!
%
They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat
-- Book title by Lewis Grizzard
%
They use different words for things in America.
For instance they say elevator and we say lift.
They say drapes and we say curtains.
They say president and we say brain damaged git.
-- Alexie Sayle
%
They went rushing down that freeway,
Messed around and got lost.
They didn't care... they were just dying to get off,
And it was life in the fast lane.
-- Eagles, "Life in the Fast Lane"
%
They will only cause the lower classes to move about needlessly.
-- The Duke of Wellington, on early steam railroads
%
They wouldn't listen to the fact that I was a genius,
The man said "We got all that we can use",
So I've got those steadily-depressin', low-down, mind-messin',
Working-at-the-car-wash blues.
-- Jim Croce
%
They're an insidious bunch, your killer pianos. Had one get loose on me
back in '62. It slipped out of the cables while we were lowering it out
of its twelfth story apartment, and crushed six innocents in an insane bid
for freedom.
-- Stig's Inferno
%
They're giving bank robbing a bad name.
-- John Dillinger, on Bonnie and Clyde
%
They're just jealous because they don't have three
wise men and a virgin in the whole organization.
-- Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci, on the
ACLU's suit to have a city nativity scene removed.
%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%
They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult
to like.
-- Avon
%
Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become
their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
-- G. K. Chesterton, "The Man Who Was Thursday"
%
Things are more like they are today than they ever were before.
-- Dwight Eisenhower
%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%
Things are not always what they seem.
-- Phaedrus
%
Things Charles Darwin did not say:
Finches, eh ? Seen one, seem 'em all.
%
Things Charles Darwin did not say:
Nah, it's only a theory - I don't think it should be taught in schools.
%
Things equal to nothing else are equal to each other.
%
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.
%
Things past redress and now with me past care.
-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
%
Things will be bright in P.M.
A cop will shine a light in your face.
%
Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.
-- Will Rogers
%
Things worth having are worth cheating for.
%
Think big.
Pollute the Mississippi.
%
Think honk if you're a telepath.
%
Think lucky. If you fall in a pond, check your pockets for fish.
-- Darrell Royal
%
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%
Think of your family tonight.
Try to crawl home after the computer crashes.
%
Think sideways!
-- Ed De Bono
%
Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
%
Thinking you know something is a sure way to blind yourself.
-- Frank Herbert, "Chapterhouse: Dune"
%
Thinks't thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs; mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore,
Innumerable atoms; and one desert,
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.
%
Thirteen at a table is unlucky only
when the hostess has only twelve chops.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Thirty days hath Septober,
April, June, and no wonder.
all the rest have peanut butter
except my father who wears red suspenders.
%
Thirty white horses on a red hill,
First they champ,
Then they stamp,
Then they stand still.
-- Tolkien
%
This ae nighte, this ae nighte,
Everye nighte and alle,
Fire and sleet and candlelyte,
And Christe receive thy saule.
-- The Lykewake Dirge
%
This "brain-damaged" epithet is getting sorely overworked. When we can
speak of someone or something being flawed, impaired, marred, spoiled;
batty, bedlamite, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, demented,
deranged, loco, lunatic, mad, maniac, mindless, non compos mentis, nuts,
Reaganite, screwy, teched, unbalanced, unsound, witless, wrong; senseless,
spastic, spasmodic, convulsive; doped, spaced-out, stoned, zonked; {beef,
beetle,block,dung,thick}headed, dense, doltish, dull, duncical, numskulled,
pinhead; asinine, fatuous, foolish, silly, simple; brute, lumbering, oafish;
half-assed, incompetent; backward, retarded, imbecilic, moronic; when we have
a whole precisely nuanced vocabulary of intellectual abuse to draw upon,
individually and in combination, isn't it a little <fill in the blank> to be
limited to a single, now quite trite, adjective?
%
This door is baroquen, please wiggle Handel.
(If I wiggle Handel, will it wiggle Bach?)
-- Found on a door in the MSU music building
%
This dungeon is owned and operated by Frobazz Magic Co., Ltd.
%
This file will self-destruct in five minutes.
%
This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
%
This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate
need, please use the program "randchar". This program generates
random characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come
up with something profound. It will, however, take it no time at
all to be more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%
This fortune intentionally says nothing.
%
This fortune is dedicated to your mother, without whose
invaluable assistance last night would never have been possible.
%
This fortune is encrypted -- get your decoder rings ready!
%
This fortune is false.
%
This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
%
This fortune soaks up 47 times its own weight in excess memory.
%
This fortune was brought to you by the people at Hewlett-Packard.
%
This fortune would be seven words long if it were six words shorter.
%
This generation doesn't have emotional baggage.
We have emotional moving vans.
-- Bruce Feirstein
%
This guy runs into his house and yells to his wife, "Kathy, pack up your
bags! I just won the California lottery!"
"Honey!", Kathy exclaims, "Shall I pack for warm weather or cold?"
"I don't care," responds the husband. "just so long as you're out
of the house by dinner!"
%
This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
%
This is a good time to punt work.
%
This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT
DOG.
-- Bob Violence
%
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
%
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system.
Had there been an actual emergency, then you would no longer be here.
%
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has
"deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the
consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any
rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for
oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill
Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers
over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These
innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been
passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do
apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,
and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
-- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
%
This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
%
This is Betty Frenel. I don't know who to call but I can't reach my
Food-a-holics partner. I'm at Vido's on my second pizza with sausage
and mushroom. Jim, come and get me!
%
This is clearly another case of too many mad scientists,
and not enough hunchbacks.
%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.
-- A. E. Housman
%
This is Jim Rockford.
At the tone leave your name and message; I'll get back to you.
%
This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
to one.
-- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
%
This is Maria, Liberty Bail Bonds. Your client, Todd Lieman, skipped and
his bail is forfeit. That's the pink slip on your '74 Firebird, I believe.
Sorry, Jim, bring it on over.
%
This is Marilyn Reed, I wanta talk to you... Is this a machine?
I don't talk to machines! [Click]
%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%
This is NOT a repeat.
%
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The
spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men
who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
-- Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen, 1938
%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
"fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before
you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
%
This is supposed to be a happy occasion.
Let's not BICKER and ARGUE over who killed who!
%
This is the Baron. Angel Martin tells me you buy information. Ok,
meet me at one a.m. behind the bus depot, bring five-hundred dollars
and come alone. I'm serious!
%
This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future,
which is a little ironic since we may not have one.
-- Arthur Clarke
%
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
power of computers:
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct the
thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a minimum
level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The results are that
one should eat each day:
1/2 chicken
1 egg
1 glass of skim milk
27 heads of lettuce.
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
%
This is the _L_A_S_T time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
%
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
-- Winston Churchill
%
This is the story of the bee
Whose sex is very hard to see
You cannot tell the he from the she
But she can tell, and so can he
The little bee is never still
She has no time to take the pill
And that is why, in times like these
There are so many sons of bees.
%
This is the theory that Jack built.
This is the flaw that lay in the theory that Jack built.
This is the palpable verbal haze that hid the flaw that lay in...
%
This is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
And now you know why.
%
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
This is the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
-- T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men"
%
This is your fortune.
%
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
-- Wolfgang Pauli, on a colleague's paper
%
This isn't true in practice -- what we've missed out is Stradivarius's
constant. And then the aside: "For those of you who don't know, that's
been called by others the fiddle factor..."
-- From a 1B Electrical Engineering lecture
%
This land is full of trousers!
this land is full of mausers!
And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
-- Firesign Theater
%
This land is made of mountains,
This land is made of mud,
This land has lots of everything,
For me and Elmer Fudd.
This land has lots of trousers,
This land has lots of mousers,
And pussycats to eat them
When the sun goes down.
%
This land is my land, and only my land,
I've got a shotgun, and you ain't got one,
If you don't get off, I'll blow your head off,
This land is private property.
-- Apologies to Woody Guthrie
%
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an
actual life, you would have received further instructions as
to what to do and where to go.
%
This life is yours. Some of it was given
to you; the rest, you made yourself.
%
This login session: $13.99
%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
%
This must be morning. I never could get the hang of mornings.
%
This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
%
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
great force.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
This one is for all you military types. For those who don't know, Rangers
are *extremely* well trained members of the U.S. Army. Marines are people
who start out as normal soldiers and then are made to believe that bullets
don't actually hurt.
One day a platoon of Marines are on patrol when they come upon a
Ranger relaxing on top of a small hill. The Ranger puts his hands on his
hips and screams out, "Do any of you seaweed sucking jarheads think you're
man enough to take me on?"
The biggest Marine comes running up the hill, screaming back at the
Ranger. When he gets to the top he simply plows into his foe and the two
tumble down the other side of the hill, out of sight. There is the sound of
a horrendous fight for a moment or two, and then all is quiet. Soon, the
Ranger reappears, quite untouched. He puts his hands on his hips and sneers,
"Well, looks to me like one of you couldn't do it, how about the rest?"
The enraged Marine platoon leader sends his entire platoon (30+men)
charging after the Ranger. They all go tumbling down the far side of the hill.
After 15 minutes of screaming and yelling and cursing a lone, bloodied Marine
crawls over the top of the hill. The platoon leader yells up to his man,
"What's going on up there?" The wounded Marine, with his last bit of breath,
replies, "Sir, it's a... a trap, sir. They're two of them!"
%
This place just isn't big enough for all of us. We've
got to find a way off this planet.
%
This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
paper that were unhappy.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
something child-like.
-- Forbes Burkowski, CS, University of Washington
%
This product is meant for educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some
assembly may be required. Batteries not included. Contents may settle during
shipment. Use only as directed. May be too intense for some viewers. If
condition persists, consult your physician. No user-serviceable parts inside.
Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. Not responsible for direct,
indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error
or failure to perform. Slippery when wet. For office use only. Substantial
penalty for early withdrawal. Do not write below this line. Your canceled
check is your receipt. Avoid contact with skin. Employees and their families
are not eligible. Beware of dog. Driver does not carry cash. Limited time
offer, call now to insure prompt delivery. Use only in well-ventilated area.
Keep away from fire or flame. Some equipment shown is optional. Price does
not include taxes, dealer prep, or delivery. Penalty for private use. Call
toll free before digging. Some of the trademarks mentioned in this product
appear for identification purposes only. All models over 18 years of age. Do
not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Postage will be
paid by addressee. Apply only to affected area. One size fits all. Many
suitcases look alike. Edited for television. No solicitors. Reproduction
strictly prohibited. Restaurant package, not for resale. Objects in mirror
are closer than they appear. Decision of judges is final. This supersedes
all previous notices. No other warranty expressed or implied.
%
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
which identifies errors in the original program.
%
This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his
mother's side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry
often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and
adds happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply.
-- Lazarus Long
%
This screen intentionally left blank.
%
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
-- Hofstadter
%
This sentence does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
%
This sentence no verb.
%
This system will self-destruct in five minutes.
%
This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
%
This unit... must... survive.
%
This universe shipped by weight, not by volume. Some expansion of the
contents may have occurred during shipment.
%
This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard
dying... but nobody thought so. This was a future of fortune and theft,
pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
-- Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"
%
This was the most unkindest cut of all.
-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
%
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible.
This was terrible with raisins in it.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
This week only, all our fiber-fill jackets are marked down!
%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
%
This yuppie, see, was in a car wreck. His BMW was mangled, and so was he.
The paramedic was leaning over him getting his vitals, and all the yup
could groan was "My BMW! My BMW!"
The paramedic tried to quiet the man, pointing out that his car
wasn't his chief concern at the moment, especially as he'd been rearranged
pretty badly himself -- for example, his left arm was severed at the elbow
and was lying about twenty feet away.
There was a moment of stunned silence from the yup followed by
"Oh no! My Rolex! My Rolex!"
%
Those lovable Brits department:
They also have trouble pronouncing `vitamin'.
%
Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those
of us who do.
%
Those of you who think you know it all upset those of us who do.
%
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised)
are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse
at are called software.
-- Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological
Literacy for the 1990's.
%
Those who are mentally and emotionally healthy are those who have
learned when to say yes, when to say no and when to say whoopee.
-- W. S. Krabill
%
Those who believe in astrology are living in houses with foundations of
Silly Putty.
-- Dennis Rawlins
%
Those who can, do; those who can't, simulate.
%
Those who can, do; those who can't, write.
Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
%
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
-- Voltaire
%
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana
%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%
Those who claim the dead never return
to life haven't ever been around here at quitting time.
%
Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics.
-- French Proverb
%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer
%
Those who do things in a noble spirit of
self-sacrifice are to be avoided at all costs.
-- N. Alexander
%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than
parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
-- Aristotle
%
Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often
surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
-- Mark B. Cohen
%
Those who have had no share in the good fortunes of the mighty
Often have a share in their misfortunes.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle"
%
Those who have some means think that the most important thing in the
world is love. The poor know that it is money.
-- Gerald Brenan
%
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
%
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
%
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are
men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
without the roar of its many waters.
-- Frederick Douglass
%
Those who sweat in flames of hell, Leaden eared, some thought their bowels
Here's the reason that they fell: Lispeth forth the sweetest vowels.
While on earth they prayed in SAS, These they offered up in praise
PL/1, or other crass, Thinking all this fetid haze
Vulgar tongue. A rapsody sung.
Some the lord did sorely try Jabber of the mindless horde
Assembling all their pleas in hex. Sequel next did mock the lord
Speech as crabbed as devil's crable Slothful sequel so enfangled
Hex that marked on Tower Babel Its speaker's lips became entangled
The highest rung. In his bung.
Because in life they prayed so ill
And offered god such swinish swill
Now they sweat in flames of hell
Sweat from lack of APL
Sweat dung!
%
Those who talk don't know. Those who don't talk, know.
%
Thou hast seen nothing yet.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to
be maintained.
-- The Tao of Programming
%
Though I respect that a lot
I'd be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and
Countless screaming argonauts
Bluebird of friendliness
Like guardian angels it's
Always near
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
-- "Birdhouse in your Soul", They Might Be Giants
%
Thrashing is just virtual crashing.
%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Three hours a day will produce as much as a man ought to write.
-- Trollope
%
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
Three Midwesterners, a Kansan, a Missourian and an Iowan,
all appearing on a quiz program, were asked to complete this sentence:
"Old MacDonald had a . . ."
"Old MacDonald had a carburetor," answered the Kansan.
"Sorry, that's wrong," the game show host said.
"Old MacDonald had a free brake alignment down at the
service station," said the Missourian.
"Wrong."
"Old MacDonald had a farm," said the Iowan.
"CORRECT!" shouts the quizmaster. "Now for $100,000, spell 'farm.'"
"Easy," said the Iowan. "E-I-E-I-O."
%
Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought
is irksome and three minutes is a long time.
-- A. E. Houseman
%
Three o'clock in the afternoon is always just a little too
late or a little too early for anything you want to do.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
%
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings"
%
Three rules for sounding like an expert:
1. Oversimplify your explanations to the point of uselessness.
2. Always point out second-order effects,
but never point out when they can be ignored.
3. Come up with three rules of your own.
%
Throw away documentation and manuals,
and users will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away privileges and quotas,
and users will do the Right Thing.
Throw away proprietary and site licenses,
and there won't be any pirating.
If these three aren't enough,
just stay at your home directory
and let all processes take their course.
%
Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know
what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"A well-written program is its own heaven; a poorly-written program
is its own hell."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Let the programmer be many and the managers few -- then all will
be productive."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Though a program be but three lines long, someday it will have to
be maintained."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Time for you to leave."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"When program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"When you have learned to snatch the error code from
the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Without the wind, the grass does not move. Without software,
hardware is useless."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thus spake the master programmer:
"You can demonstrate a program for a corporate executive, but you
can't make him computer literate."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Thyme's Law:
Everything goes wrong at once.
%
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine And then one day you find
Staying home to watch the rain Ten years have got behind you
You are young and life is long No one told you when to run
And there is time to kill today You missed the starting gun
And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter Hanging on in quiet desperation
is the English way
Never seem to find the time The time is gone, the song is over
Plans that either come to nought Thought I'd something more to say...
Or half a page of scribbled lines
-- Pink Floyd, "Time"
%
Tiddely Quiddely
Edward M. Kennedy
Quite unaccountably
Drove in a stream.
Pleas of amnesia
Incomprehensible
Possibly shattered
Political dream.
%
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, "Why, why, why?"
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.
-- The Books of Bokonon
%
Time and tide wait for no man.
%
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
-- Aeschylus
%
Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
%
Time goes, you say?
Ah no!
Time stays, *we* go.
-- Austin Dobson
%
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Berlioz
%
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
%
Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
Time is nature's way of making sure that
everything doesn't happen at once.
Space is nature's way of making sure that
everything doesn't happen to you.
%
Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
-- Theophrastus
%
Time sharing: The use of many people by the computer.
%
Time sure flies when you don't know what you're doing.
%
Time to be aggressive. Go after a tattooed Virgo.
%
Time to take stock.
Go home with some office supplies.
%
Time washes clean
Love's wounds unseen.
That's what someone told me;
But I don't know what it means.
-- Linda Ronstadt, "Long Long Time"
%
Time will end all my troubles,
but I don't always approve of Time's methods.
%
Time-sharing is the junk-mail part of the computer business.
-- H. R. J. Grosch (attributed)
%
timesharing, n:
An access method whereby one computer abuses many people.
%
Timing must be perfect now.
Two-timing must be better than perfect.
%
Tip of the Day:
Never fry bacon in the nude.
%
Tip O'Neill is just like Congress; old, fat and out of control.
-- J. LeBoutillier
%
Tip the world over on its side and
everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%
TIPS FOR PERFORMERS:
Playing cards have the top half upside-down to help cheaters.
There are a finite number of jokes in the universe.
Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music longer than
they would ordinarily.
There is no music in space.
People will pay to watch people make sounds.
Everything on stage should be larger than in real life.
%
TIRED of calculating components of vectors? Displacements along direction of
force getting you down? Well, now there's help. Try amazing "Dot-Product",
the fast, easy way many professionals have used for years and is now available
to YOU through this special offer. Three out of five engineering consultants
recommend "Dot-Product" for their clients who use vector products. Mr.
Gumbinowitz, mechanical engineer, in a hidden-camera interview...
"Dot-Product really works! Calculating Z-axis force components has
never been easier."
Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product. Use
it to calculate forces, velocities, displacements, and virtually any vector
components. How much would you pay for it? But wait, it also calculates the
work done in Joules, Ergs, and, yes, even BTUs. Divide Dot-Product by the
magnitude of the vectors and it becomes an instant angle calculator! Now, how
much would you pay? All this can be yours for the low, low price of $19.95!!
But that's not all! If you order before midnight, you'll also get "Famous
Numbers of Famous People" as a bonus gift, absolutely free! Yes, you'll get
Avogadro's number, Planck's, Euler's, Boltzmann's, and many, many, more!!
Call 1-800-DOT-6000. Operators are standing by. That number again...
1-800-DOT-6000. Supplies are limited, so act now. This offer is not
available through stores and is void where prohibited by law.
%
Tis man's perdition to be safe, when for the truth he ought to die.
%
'Tis more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
To a Californian, a person must prove himself criminally insane before he
is allowed to drive a taxi in New York. For New York cabbies, honesty and
stopping at red lights are both optional.
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts"
%
To a Californian, all New Yorkers are cold; even in heat they rarely go
above fifty-eight degrees. If you collapse on a street in New York, plan
to spend a few days there.
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts"
%
To a Californian, the basic difference between the people and the pigeons
in New York is that the pigeons don't shit on each other.
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts"
%
To a New Yorker, all Californians are blond, even the blacks. There are,
in fact, whole neighborhoods that are zoned only for blond people. The
only way to tell the difference between California and Sweden is that the
Swedes speak better English.
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts"
%
To a New Yorker, the only California houses on the market for less than
a million dollars are those on fire. These generally go for six hundred
thousand.
-- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts"
%
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education.
To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither
oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
-- Epictetus
%
To add insult to injury.
-- Phaedrus
%
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are
to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and
servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
-- Theodore Roosevelt
%
To any truly impartial person, it would
be obvious that I am always right.
%
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
To be a kind of moral Unix, he touched the hem of Nature's shift.
-- Shelley
%
To be beautiful is enough! if a woman can do that well who
should demand more from her? You don't want a rose to sing.
-- Thackeray
%
To be considered successful, a woman must be much better at her job
than a man would have to be. Fortunately, this isn't difficult.
%
To be excellent when engaged in administration is to be like the North
Star. As it remains in its one position, all the other stars surround it.
-- Confucius
%
To be great is to be misunderstood.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
To be happy one must be a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in
Zion, b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's
fellow men, and c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste.
It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country
in the world wherein a man constituted as I am -- a man of my peculiar
weaknesses, vanities, appetites, and aversions -- can be so happy as he can
be in the United States. Going further, I lay down the doctrine that it is
a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in the United States
and not be happy.
-- H. L. Mencken, "On Being An American"
%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%
To be is to be related.
-- C. J. Keyser
%
To be is to do.
-- I. Kant
To do is to be.
-- A. Sartre
Do be a Do Bee!
-- Miss Connie, Romper Room
Do be do be do!
-- F. Sinatra
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
-- F. Flintstone
%
To be loved is very demoralizing.
-- Katharine Hepburn
%
To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best to,
night and day, to make you everybody else -- means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
-- E.E. Cummings, "A Miscellany"
%
To be or not to be.
-- Shakespeare
To do is to be.
-- Nietzsche
To be is to do.
-- Sartre
Do be do be do.
-- Sinatra
%
To be or not to be, that is the bottom line.
%
To be patriotic, hate all nations but your own; to be religious, all sects
but your own; to be moral, all pretences but your own.
-- Lionel Strachey
%
To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
offer in response is based on information available to make no such
statement.
%
To be successful, a woman has to be much better at her job than a man.
-- Golda Meir
%
To be successful, a woman must do her job ten times
as well as a man. Fortunately, this is not difficult.
%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first
and, whatever you hit, call it the target.
%
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
%
To be who one is, is not to be someone else.
%
To be wise, the only thing you really need
to know is when to say "I don't know."
%
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for
you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
To code the impossible code, This is my quest --
To bring up a virgin machine, To debug that code,
To pop out of endless recursion, No matter how hopeless,
To grok what appears on the screen, No matter the load,
To write those routines
To right the unrightable bug, Without question or pause,
To endlessly twiddle and thrash, To be willing to hack FORTRAN IV
To mount the unmountable magtape, For a heavenly cause.
To stop the unstoppable crash! And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest,
And the queue will be better for this, That my code will run CUSPy and calm,
That one man, scorned and When it's put to the test.
destined to lose,
Still strove with his last allocation
To scrap the unscrappable kludge!
-- To "The Impossible Dream", from Man of La Mancha
%
To communicate is the beginning of understanding.
-- AT&T
%
To converse at the distance of the Indes by means of sympathetic contrivances
may be as natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence.
-- Joseph Glanvill, 1661
%
To craunch a marmoset.
-- Pedro Carolino, "English as She is Spoke"
%
To create quality software, the ability to say no is usually far
more important than the ability to say yes.
-- Michi Henning
%
To criticize the incompetent is easy;
it is more difficult to criticize the competent.
%
To defend the Saigon regime is not worth one more human life.
-- Senator Edmund Muskie
%
To do nothing is to be nothing.
%
To do two things at once is to do neither.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally
convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.
-- H. Poincare
%
To envision how a 4-processor system running [SunOS] 4.1.x works, think
of four kids and one bathroom.
-- John DiMarco
%
To err is human -- but it feels divine.
-- Mae West
%
To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so.
%
To err is human, but I can REALLY foul things up.
%
To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.
%
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out
before the pencil, you're overdoing it a little.
%
To err is human; to admit it, a blunder.
%
To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System.
%
To err is human, to forgive, infrequent.
%
To err is human; to forgive is simply not our policy.
-- MIT Assassination Club
%
To err is human, to repent, divine, to persist, devilish.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
To err is human, two curs canine.
To err is human, to moo bovine.
%
To err is human.
To blame someone else for your mistakes is even more human.
%
To err is human,
To purr feline.
-- Robert Byrne
%
To err is humor.
%
To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
-- B. Duggan
%
To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-9
%
To fear love is to fear life, and those
who fear life are already three parts dead.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
To find a friend one must close one eye; to keep him -- two.
-- Norman Douglas
%
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
To generalize is to be an idiot.
-- William Blake
%
To get back on your feet, miss two car payments.
%
To get something clean, one has to get something dirty.
To get something dirty, one does not have to get anything clean.
%
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
persons, two of them absent.
%
To give happiness is to deserve happiness.
%
To give of yourself, you must first know yourself.
%
To have died once is enough.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
To hell with the Prime Directive;
Let's _K_I_L_L something!
%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
-- Thomas Edison
%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
-- Robert Heller
%
To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.
-- Winston Churchill, on Korean War negotiations
%
To keep your friends treat them kindly;
to kill them, treat them often.
%
To know Edina is to reject it.
-- Dudley Riggs, "The Year the Grinch Stole the Election"
%
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.
%
To lead people, you must follow behind.
-- Lao Tsu
%
To listen to some devout people,
one would imagine that God never laughs.
-- Sri Aurobindo
%
To love is good, love being difficult.
%
To make an enemy, do someone a favor.
%
To make tax forms true they should
read "Income Owed Us" and "Incommode You".
%
To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
-- St. Augustine
%
TO ME, CLOWNS AREN'T FUNNY. In fact, they're kinda scary. I've wondered
where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the
circus and a clown killed my dad.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
To one large turkey add one gallon of vermouth and a demijohn of Angostura
bitters. Shake.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, recipe for turkey cocktail
%
To our sweethearts and wives. May they never meet.
-- 19th century toast
%
To refuse praise is to seek praise twice.
%
To restore a sense of reality, I think
Walt Disney should have a Hardluckland.
-- Jack Paar
%
To save a single life is better than to build a seven story pagoda.
%
To say that UNIX is doomed is pretty rabid, OS/2 will certainly play a role,
but you don't build a hundred million instructions per second multiprocessor
micro and then try to run it on OS/2. I mean, get serious.
-- William Zachmann, International Data Corp
%
To say you got a vote of confidence
would be to say you needed a vote of confidence.
-- Andrew Young
%
To see a need and wait to be asked, is to already refuse.
%
To see the butcher slap the steak, before he laid it on the block,
and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. It was
agreeable, too -it really was- to see him cut it off, so smooth and juicy.
There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen;
it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of
tone, skillful handling of the subject, fine shading. It was the triumph of
mind over matter; quite.
-- Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"
%
To see you is to sympathize.
%
To spot the expert, pick the one who predicts
the job will take the longest and cost the most.
%
To stand and be still,
At the Birkenhead drill,
Is a damned tough bullet to chew.
-- Rudyard Kipling
%
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation
of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"
%
To stay youthful, stay useful.
%
To teach is to learn.
%
To teach is to learn twice.
-- Joseph Joubert
%
To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
%
To the landlord belongs the doorknobs.
%
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide
a test load.
%
To Theodore Roosevelt:
You are like the Wind and I like the Lion. You form the Tempest.
The sand stings my eyes and the Ground is parched. I roar in defiance but
you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion,
must remain in my place. While you, like the wind, will never know yours.
Mulay Hamid El Raisuli
Lord of the Riff
Sultan to the Berbers
Last of the Barbary Pirates
%
To thine own self be true.
(If not that, at least make some money.)
%
To think contrary to one's era is heroism. But to speak against it is
madness.
-- Eugene Ionesco
%
To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
precision and flexibility may be just as disfunctional in novel,
uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
secure ecological niche.
-- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
%
TO THOSE OF YOU WHO DESIRE IT, I GRANT YOU MADRAK'S BLESSING:
Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care
what I say, I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you
may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.
Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else be required
to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the
destruction of your body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted
or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your
receiving said benefit.
I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between
yourself and that which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving
as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may
in some way be influenced by this ceremony.
Amen.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Creatures of Light and Darkness"
%
To understand a program you must become both the machine and the program.
%
To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what
he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do.
%
To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
-- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
Phones?"
%
To use violence is to already be defeated.
-- Chinese proverb
%
To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?
%
To whom the mornings are like nights,
What must the midnights be!
-- Emily Dickinson (on hacking?)
%
To write a sonnet you must ruthlessly
strip down your words to naked, willing flesh.
Then bind them to a metaphor or three,
and take by force a satisfying mesh.
Arrange them to your will, each foot in place.
You are the master here, and they the slaves.
Now whip them to maintain a constant pace
and rhythm as they stand in even staves.
A word that strikes no pleasure? Cast it out!
What use are words that drive not to the heart?
A lazy phrase? Discard it, shrug off doubt,
and choose more docile words to take its part.
A well-trained sonnet lives to entertain,
by making love directly to the brain.
%
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the loyal opposition.
-- Woody Allen
%
Tobacco is a filthy weed,
That from the devil does proceed;
It drains your purse, it burns your clothes,
And makes a chimney of your nose.
-- B. Waterhouse
%
TODAY:
A nice place to visit, but you can't stay here for long.
%
Today is a good day for information-gathering.
Read someone else's mail file.
%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
%
Today is what happened to yesterday.
%
Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
except in major motion pictures.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%
Today when a man gets married he gets a home, a housekeeper, a cook, a
cheering squad and another paycheck. When a woman marries, she gets a
boarder.
%
Today you'll start getting heavy metal radio on your dentures.
%
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
spectacular adventure starring... Tippy, the Wonder Dog!
-- Bob & Ray
%
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
%
Toilet Toupee, n:
Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
creating endless annoyance to male users.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Tom Hayden is the kind of politician who gives opportunism a bad name.
-- Gore Vidal
%
Tomorrow, this will be part of the unchangeable past
but fortunately, it can still be changed today.
%
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
%
Tomorrow, you can be anywhere.
%
Tomorrow's computers some time next month.
-- DEC
%
Tom's hungry, time to eat lunch.
%
Tonight you will pay the wages of sin;
Don't forget to leave a tip.
%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Toni's Solution to a Guilt-Free Life:
If you have to lie to someone, it's their fault.
%
Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy
driving cabs and cutting hair.
-- George Burns
%
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
Too clever is dumb.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Too cool to calypso,
Too tough to tango,
Too weird to watusi
-- The Only Ones
%
Too Late
A large number of turkies [sic] went to San Francisco yesterday by
the two o'clock boats. If their object in going down was to participate in
the Thanksgiving festivities of that city, they would arrive "the day after
the affair," and of course be sadly disappointed thereby.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, November 29, 1861
%
Too many of his [Mozart's] works sound like interoffice memos.
-- Glenn Gould
%
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.
They seem more afraid of life than death.
-- James F. Byrnes
%
Too much is just enough.
-- Mark Twain, on whiskey
%
Too much is not enough.
%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
-- Mae West
%
Too much of everything is just enough.
-- Bob Wier
%
Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
briefcases.
-- Governor Jerry Brown
%
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for
anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations
in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
-- Instrument News
[Once is too often. Ed.]
%
Too ripped. Gotta go.
%
Toothpaste never hurts the taste of good scotch.
%
Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
assurance people in its wake.
6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
original Klingon.
1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship
it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
%
Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the
earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century.
As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help.
Please...
CONSERVE GRAVITY
Follow these simple suggestions:
(1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like
curling.
(4) Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
(5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big
pile.
(6) Stop flipping pancakes
%
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings:
10: Sorry, but that's too useful.
9: Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent!
8: I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell
#pragma is for.
7: Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too
hard to write.
6: Them bats is smart; they use radar.
5: All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?
4: How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!"
3: Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this sucker.
2: Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth.
1: Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
%
Topologists are just plane folks.
Pilots are just plane folks.
Carpenters are just plane folks.
Midwest farmers are just plain folks.
Musicians are just playin' folks.
Whodunit readers are just Spillaine folks.
Some Londoners are just P. Lane folks.
%
Torque is cheap.
%
Total strangers need love, too; and I'm stranger than most.
%
TOTD (T-shirt Of The Day):
I'm the person your mother warned you about.
%
Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.
-- Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
Tourists -- have some fun with New York's hard-boiled cabbies. When you
get to your destination, say to your driver, "Pay? I was hitch-hiking."
-- David Letterman
%
Tout choses sont dites deja, mais comme
personne n'ecoute, il faut toujours recommencer.
-- A. Gide
%
Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.
-- David Letterman
%
TRANSACTION CANCELED - FARECARD RETURNED
%
TRANSFER:
A promotion you receive on the condition that you leave town.
%
TRANSPARENT:
Being or pertaining to an existing, nontangible object.
"It's there, but you can't see it"
-- IBM System/360 announcement, 1964
VIRTUAL:
Being or pertaining to a tangible, nonexistent object.
"I can see it, but it's not there."
-- Lady Macbeth
%
TRANSVESTITE:
Someone who spends his junior year at college abroad.
%
Trap full -- please empty.
%
TRAVEL:
Something that makes you feel like you're getting somewhere.
%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%
Traveling through hyperspace isn't like dusting crops, boy.
-- Han Solo
%
Traveling through New England, a motorist stopped for gas in a tiny village.
"What's this place called?" he asked the station attendant.
"All depends," the native drawled. "Do you mean by them that has
to live in this dad-blamed, moth-eaten, dust-covered, one-hoss dump, or
by them that's merely enjoying its quaint and picturesque rustic charms
for a short spell?"
%
Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.
-- Publilius Syrus
%
Treaties are like roses and young girls -- they last while they last.
-- Charles DeGaulle
%
Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
-- Michelangelo
%
Troglodytism does not necessarily imply a low cultural level.
%
Trouble always comes at the wrong time.
%
Trouble strikes in series of threes, but when working around the house the
next job after a series of three is not the fourth job -- it's the start of
a brand new series of three.
%
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful, wealthy, and live
in eucalyptus trees.
%
Troubles are like babies; they only grow by nursing.
%
True happiness will be found only in true love.
%
True leadership is the art of changing
a group from what it is to what it ought to be.
-- Virginia Allan
%
True to our past we work with an inherited, observed, and accepted vision of
personal futility, and of the beauty of the world.
-- David Mamet
%
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
-- Henrik Tikkanen
%
Truly simple systems... require infinite testing.
-- Norman Augustine
%
Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
-- Finley Peter Dunne, "Mr. Dooley's Philosophy"
%
Trust in Allah, but tie your camel.
-- Arabian proverb
%
TRUST ME:
Get me, give me, buy me, do me.
%
TRUST ME:
Translation of the Latin "caveat emptor."
%
Trust your husband, adore your husband,
and get as much as you can in your own name.
-- Joan Rivers
%
Truth can wait; he's used to it.
%
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always.
-- Albert Schweitzer
%
Truth is free, but information costs.
%
Truth is hard to find and harder to obscure.
%
Truth is stranger than fiction, because fiction has to make sense.
%
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
-- Mark Twain
%
Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy
of him that brought her birth.
-- Milton
%
Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
%
Truthful, adj.:
Dumb and illiterate.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
try again
%
Try not to have a good time ...
This is supposed to be educational.
-- Charles Schulz
%
Try not.
Do.
Or do not.
There is no try.
%
Try `stty 0' -- it works much better.
%
Try the Moo Shu Pork. It is especially good today.
%
Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.
%
Try to divide your time evenly to keep others happy.
%
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is
it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four
tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for
novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer), defined by the imperfect past,
the insufficient present, and the absolutely perfect future.
-- Amrom Katz
%
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
%
Try to have as good a life as you can under the circumstances.
%
Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you.
%
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
specification is that it should run noiselessly.
%
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
-- Alan Watts
%
Trying to establish voice contact ... please _y_e_l_l into keyboard.
%
Trying to get an education here is like
trying to take a drink from a fire hose.
%
T-shirt:
Life is *not* a Cabaret, and stop calling me chum!
%
Tuesday After Lunch is the cosmic time of the week.
%
Tuesday is the Wednesday of the rest of your life.
%
Turn on, tune in, and take over.
-- Tim Leary
%
Turn the other cheek.
-- Jesus Christ
%
Turnaucka's Law:
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.
%
Tussman's Law:
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%
'Twas a woman who drove me to drink,
and I never even had the decency to thank her.
-- R. B. Gossling
%
"Twas bergen and the eirie road
Did mahwah into patterson: "Beware the Hopatcong, my son!
All jersey were the ocean groves, The teeth that bite, the nails
And the red bank bayonne. that claw!
Beware the bound brook bird, and shun
He took his belmar blade in hand: The kearney communipaw."
Long time the folsom foe he sought
Till rested he by a bayway tree And, as in nutley thought he stood,
And stood a while in thought. The Hopatcong with eyes of flame,
Came whippany through the englewood,
One, two, one, two, and through And garfield as it came.
and through
The belmar blade went hackensack! "And hast thou slain the Hopatcong?
He left it dead and with it's head Come to my arms, my perth amboy!
He went weehawken back. Hohokus day! Soho! Rahway!"
He caldwell in his joy.
Did mahwah into patterson:
All jersey were the ocean groves,
And the red bank bayonne.
-- Paul Kieffer
%
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe. "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
All mimsy were the borogroves The jaws that bite, the claws
And the mome raths outgrabe. that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird,
He took his vorpal sword in hand And shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
Long time the manxome foe he sought.
So rested he by the tumtum tree And as in uffish thought he stood
And stood awhile in thought. The Jabberwock, with eyes aflame
Came whuffling through the tulgey wood
One! Two! One! Two! And through and And burbled as it came!
through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack. "Hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
He left it dead, and took its head, Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
And went galumphing back. Oh frabjous day! Calooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky"
%
'Twas bullig, and the slithy brokers
Did buy and gamble in the craze "Beware the Jabberstock, my son!
All rosy were the Dow Jones stokers The cost that bites, the worth
By market's wrath unphased. that falls!
Beware the Econ'mist's word, and shun
He took his forecast sword in hand: The spurious Street o' Walls!"
Long time the Boesk'some foe he sought -
Sake's liquidity, so d'vested he, And as in bearish thought he stood
And stood awhile in thought. The Jabberstock, with clothes of tweed,
Came waffling with the truth too good,
Chip Black! Chip Blue! And through And yuppied great with greed!
and through
The forecast blade went snicker-snack! "And hast thou slain the Jabberstock?
It bit the dirt, and with its shirt, Come to my firm, V.P.ish boy!
He went rebounding back. O big bucks day! Moolah! Good Play!"
He bought him a Mercedes Toy.
'Twas panic, and the slithy brokers
Did gyre and tumble in the Crash
All flimsy were the Dow Jones stokers
And mammon's wrath them bash!
-- Peter Stucki, "Jabberstocky"
%
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrabe.
"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
%
'Twas midnight on the ocean, Her children all were orphans,
Not a streetcar was in sight, Except one a tiny tot,
So I stepped into a cigar store Who had a home across the way
To ask them for a light. Above a vacant lot.
The man behind the counter As I gazed through the oaken door
Was a woman, old and gray, A whale went drifting by,
Who used to peddle doughnuts Its six legs hanging in the air,
On the road to Mandalay. So I kissed her goodbye.
She said "Good morning, stranger", This story has a morale
Her eyes were dry with tears, As you can plainly see,
As she put her head between her feet Don't mix your gin with whiskey
And stood that way for years. On the deep and dark blue sea.
-- Midnight On The Ocean
%
'Twas the night before Christmas -- the very last one --
When the blazing of lasers destroyed all our fun.
Just as Santa had lifted off, driving his sleigh,
A satellite spotted him making his way.
The Star Wars Defense System -- Reagan's desire
Was ready for action, and started to fire!
The laser beams criss-crossed and lit up the sky
Like a fireworks show on the Fourth of July.
I'd just finished wrapping the last of the toys
When out of my chimney there came a great noise.
I looked to the fireplace, hoping to see
St. Nick bringing presents for missus and me.
But what I saw next was disturbing and shocking:
A flaming red jacket setting fire to my stocking!
Charred reindeer remains and a melted sleigh-bell;
Outside burning toys like confetti they fell.
So now you know, children, why Christmas is gone:
The Star Wars computer had got something wrong.
Only programmed for battle, it hadn't a heart;
'Twas hardly a chance it would work from the start.
It couldn't be tested, and no one could tell,
If the crazy contraption would work very well.
So after a trillion or two had been spent
The system thought Santa a Red missile sent.
So kids dry your tears now, and get off to bed,
There won't be a Christmas -- since Santa is dead.
%
'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
throughout our place of residence,
Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
possessors of this potential, including that
species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
imminent visitation from an eccentric
philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
%
Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Twenty two thousand days.
Twenty two thousand days.
It's not a lot.
It's all you've got.
Twenty two thousand days.
-- Moody Blues, "Twenty Two Thousand Days"
%
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers
in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and
was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy
fog, so the Captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported,
"Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
"Is it steady or moving astern?" the Captain called out.
Lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous
collision course with that ship.
The Captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on
a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees."
Back came a signal "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees."
In reply, the Captain said, "Send: I'm a Captain, change course 20
degrees!"
"I'm a seaman second class," came the reply, "You had better change
course 20 degrees."
By that time, the Captain was furious. He spit out, "Send: I'm a
battleship, change course 20 degrees."
Back came the flashing light: "I'm a lighthouse!"
We changed course.
-- The Naval Institute's "Proceedings"
%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
-- Howard Kandel
%
Two cars in every pot and a chicken in every garage.
%
Two Finns and a penguin are sitting on the front porch of a large house. The
penguin is dripping in sweat; his owner looks down and says to the other Finn,
"Hey Urho, I want that you should take the penguin to the zoo, okay?" The
owner then runs off to the sauna. When he gets out of the sauna, he looks
up at the porch, and sure enough, there is Urho and the penguin, sweating
away. So he yells out "Hey, Urho, I thought I told you to take the penguin to
the zoo, I did." And Urho yells back "Yup, and tomorrow we're going to
the movies!"
%
Two friends were out drinking when suddenly one lurched backward off his
barstool and lay motionless on the floor.
"One thing about Jim," the other said to the bartender, "he sure
knows when to stop."
%
Two heads are better than one.
-- John Heywood
%
Two heads are more numerous than one.
%
Two hundred years ago today, Irma Chine of White Plains, New York, was
performing her normal housekeeping routines. She was interrupted by
British soldiers who, rallying to the call of their supervisor, General
Hughes, sought to gain control of the voter registration lists kept in
her home. Masking her fear and thinking fast, Mrs. Chine quickly divided
a nearby apple in two and deftly stored the list in its center. Upon
entering, the British blatantly violated every conceivable convention,
and, though they went through the house virtually bit by bit, their
search was fruitless. They had to return empty handed. Word of the
incident propagated rapidly through the region. This historic event
became the first documented use of core storage for the saving of registers.
%
Two is company, three is an orgy.
%
Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
%
Two men are in a hot-air balloon. Soon, they find themselves lost in a
canyon somewhere. One of the three men says, "I've got an idea. We can
call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the
end of the canyon. Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo! Where
are we?" (They hear the echo several times).
Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
You're lost!"
The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
"For three reasons. First, he took a long time to answer, second,
he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
%
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man said,
"This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The second man said,
"He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his chambers, and spent an hour
trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded only in falling over and bruising
his forehead. Returning to the courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine
the man whose ear was bitten. If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself
and the case is dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man
did it and must pay three silver pieces."
%
Two men look out through the same bars; one sees mud, and one the stars.
%
Two men were sitting over coffee, contemplating the nature of things,
with all due respect for their breakfast. "I wonder why it is that
toast always falls on the buttered side," said one.
"Tell me," replied his friend, "why you say such a thing. Look
at this." And he dropped his toast on the floor, where it landed on the
dry side.
"So, what have you to say for your theory now?"
"What am I to say? You obviously buttered the wrong side."
%
Two peanuts were walking through the New York. One was assaulted.
%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%
Two rights don't make a wrong, they make an airplane.
%
Two Russian friends happen to meet in Red Square. One of them says, "By
the way, did you hear that Romanov died?"
"No," replied the other, "I didn't even know he'd been arrested!"
%
Two sure ways to tell a REALLY sexy man; the first is, he has a bad memory.
I forget the second.
%
Two Swedish guys get of a ship and head for the nearest bars. Each one
orders two vodkas and immediately downs them. They they order two more
and once again quickly throw them back. They then order two more. When
they arrive, one of them picks up his glass, and, turning to the other,
toasts him, "Skoal!"
The other turns to the first man and scolds, "Hey! Did you come
here to screw around, or did you come here to drink?"
%
Two wrongs are only the beginning.
-- Kohn
%
Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.
-- Thomas Szasz
%
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
%
Tyger, Tyger, burning bright Where the hammer? Where the chain?
In the forests of the night, In what furnace was thy brain?
What immortal hand or eye What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? Dare its deadly terrors clasp?
Burnt in distant deeps or skies When the stars threw down their spears
The cruel fire of thine eyes? And water'd heaven with their tears
On what wings dare he aspire? Dare he laugh his work to see?
What the hand dare seize the fire? Dare he who made the lamb make thee?
And what shoulder & what art Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
Could twist the sinews of they heart? In the forests of the night,
And when thy heart began to beat What immortal hand or eye
What dread hand & what dread feet Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
Could fetch it from the furnace deep
And in thy horrid ribs dare steep
In the well of sanguine woe?
In what clay & in what mould
Were thy eyes of fury roll'd?
-- William Blake, "The Tyger"
%
Type louder, please.
%
U: There's a U -- a Unicorn!
Run right up and rub its horn.
Look at all those points you're losing!
UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex.
(Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
-- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
%
Udall's Fourth Law:
Any change or reform you make
is going to have consequences you don't like.
%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%
Uh-oh -- I've let the cat out of the bag. Let me, then,
straightforwardly state the thesis I shall now elaborate:
Making variations on a theme is really the crux of creativity.
-- Douglas R. Hofstadter, "Metamagical Themas"
%
Ummm, well, OK. The network's the network, the computer's the computer.
Sorry for the confusion.
-- Sun Microsystems
%
Unbearably lovely music is heard as the curtain rises, and we see the
woods on a summer afternoon. A fawn dances on and nibbles at some
leaves. He drifts lazily through the soft foliage. Soon he starts
coughing and drops dead.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
Never use your thumb for a rule.
You'll either hit it with a hammer or get a splinter in it.
%
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
just man is also in prison.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
Under any conditions, anywhere, whatever you are doing, there is some
ordinance under which you can be booked.
-- Robert D. Sprecht, Rand Corp.
%
Under deadline pressure for the next week.
If you want something, it can wait.
Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic...
%
Under every stone lurks a politician.
-- Aristophanes
%
Under the wide and heavy VAX
Dig my grave and let me relax
Long have I lived, and many my hacks
And I lay me down with a will.
These be the words that tell the way:
"Here he lies who piped 64K,
Brought down the machine for nearly a day,
And Rogue playing to an awful standstill."
%
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig my grave and let me lie,
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And laid me down with a will,
And this be the verse that you grave for me,
Here he lies where he longed to be,
Home is the sailor home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
-- R. Kipling
%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
Superiority is recessive.
%
understand, v:
To reach a point, in your investigation of some subject, at which
you cease to examine what is really present, and operate on the
basis of your own internal model instead.
%
Understanding is always the understanding of a smaller problem
in relation to a bigger problem.
-- P. D. Ouspensky
%
Unfair animal names:
-- tsetse fly -- bullhead
-- booby -- duck-billed platypus
-- sapsucker -- Clarence
-- Gary Larson
%
UNFAIR COMPETITION:
Selling cheaper than we do.
%
Unfortunately, most programmers like to play with new toys. I have many
friends who, immediately upon buying a snakebite kit, would be tempted to
throw the first person they see to the ground, tie the tourniquet on him,
slash him with the knife, and apply suction to the wound.
-- Jon Bentley
%
UNION:
A dues-paying club workers wield to strike management.
%
United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the Christmas
season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military
forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of
every persuasion. Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time
low over the world.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
universe, n:
The problem.
%
Universities are places of knowledge. The freshman each bring a little
in with them, and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates.
%
UNIVERSITY:
Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell
you how to fix it, and...
[Okay, okay, I'll leave it in, but I think you're destroying
the credibility of the entire fortune program. Ed.]
%
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
UNIX enhancements aren't.
%
Unix gives you just enough rope to hang yourself -- and then a couple
of more feet, just to be sure.
-- Eric Allman
... We make rope.
-- Rob Gingell on Sun Microsystem's new virtual memory
%
Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix
hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week --
but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game.
People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the
world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers.
-- E. Post
"Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83
%
Unix is a Registered Bell of AT&T Trademark Laboratories.
-- Donn Seeley
%
UNIX is hot. It's more than hot. It's steaming. It's quicksilver
lightning with a laserbeam kicker.
-- Michael Jay Tucker
%
UNIX is many things to many people,
but it's never been everything to anybody.
%
Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others.
-- Berry Kercheval
%
Unix, n:
A computer operating system, once thought to be flabby and
impotent, that now shows a surprising interest in making off
with the workstation harem.
%
unix soit qui mal y pense
%
UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
-- Andy Tannenbaum
%
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that
would also stop you from doing clever things.
-- Doug Gwyn
%
Unix will self-destruct in five seconds... 4... 3... 2... 1...
%
Unknown person(s) stole the American flag from its pole in Etra Park sometime
between 3pm Jan 17 and 11:30 am Jan 20. The flag is described as red, white
and blue, having 50 stars and was valued at $40.
-- Windsor-Heights Herald "Police Blotter", Jan 28, 1987
%
Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues
of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself
a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst
be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. I wasted time and now doth
time waste me.
-- William Shakespeare
%
Unless you love someone, nothing else makes any sense.
-- E.E. Cummings
%
Unnamed Law:
If it happens, it must be possible.
%
Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking,
unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
-- Edward Gibbon
%
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now
pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Until Eve arrived, this was a man's world.
-- Richard Amour
%
UNTOLD WEALTH:
What you left out on April 15th.
%
Up against the net, redneck mother,
Mother who has raised your son so well;
He's seventeen and hackin' on a Macintosh,
Flaming spelling errors and raisin' hell...
%
Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
%
Use a pun, go to jail.
%
Use an accordion. Go to jail.
-- KFOG, San Francisco
%
Use what talents you possess: the woods would be very silent
if no birds sang there except those that sang best.
-- Henry Van Dyke
%
USENET would be a better laboratory is there were
more labor and less oratory.
-- Elizabeth Haley
%
User hostile.
%
User n.:
A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%
user, n:
The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
-- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
[I always thought "computer professional" was the phrase hackers used
when they meant "idiot." Ed.]
%
Using encryption on the Internet is the equivalent of arranging
an armoured car to deliver credit card information from someone
living in a cardboard box to someone living on a park bench.
-- Gene Spafford, Purdue University
%
Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
-- S. C. Johnson
%
Using [Windows] for any sort of serious work is like playing an old
text-based adventure game. You're five feet from making it to your
goal, when bup-POW! a ten ton rock falls on your head. Because you
didn't disarm the trap three hours before. [...]
I always hated those adventure games.
-- David Gerard
%
Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.
-- Tom Robbins
%
/usr/news/gotcha
%
Usually, when a lot of men get together, it's called a war.
-- Mel Brooks, "The Listener"
%
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
-- Doug Larson
%
VACATION:
A two-week binge of rest and relaxation so intense that
it takes another 50 weeks of your restrained workaday
life-style to recuperate.
%
Vail's Second Axiom:
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
amount of work already completed.
%
Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ...
Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ...
-- Tom Chapin
%
Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%
Van Roy's Law:
Honesty is the best policy - there's less competition.
Van Roy's Truism:
Life is a whole series of circumstances beyond your control.
%
Vanilla, adj.:
Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food,
very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply
"vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot
and sour won ton soup.
%
Variables don't; constants aren't.
%
Vax Vobiscum
%
Vegetables are what food eats.
Fruit are vegetables that fool you by tasting good.
Fish are fast moving vegetables.
Mushrooms are what grows on vegetables when food's done with them.
-- Meat Eater's Credo, according to Jim Williams
%
Vegetarians beware! You are what you eat.
%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once.
2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points.
%
Veni, Vidi, VISA:
I came, I saw, I did a little shopping.
%
Verba volant, scripta manent!
%
Vermouth always makes me brilliant unless it makes me idiotic.
-- E. F. Benson
%
Very few people do anything creative after the age of thirty-five. The
reason is that very few people do anything creative before the age of
thirty-five.
-- Joel Hildebrand
%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere. A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit. The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
%
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen
at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
-- Herodotus
%
Vests are to suits as seat-belts are to cars.
%
VI:
A hungry dog hunts best.
A hungrier dog hunts even better.
VII:
Decreased business base increases overhead.
So does increased business base.
VIII:
The most unsuccessful four years in the education of a cost-estimator
is fifth grade arithmetic.
IX:
Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent
possible to make trivial ideas profound. Q.E.D.
X:
Bulls do not win bull fights; people do.
People do not win people fights; lawyers do.
-- Norman Augustine
%
Victory uber allies!
%
Viking, n:
1. Daring Scandinavian seafarers, explorers, adventurers,
entrepreneurs world-famous for their aggressive, nautical import
business, highly leveraged takeovers and blue eyes.
2. Bloodthirsty sea pirates who ravaged northern Europe beginning
in the 9th century.
Hagar's note: The first definition is much preferred; the second is used
only by malcontents, the envious, and disgruntled owners of waterfront
property.
%
Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
%
Vini, vidi, vici.
[I came, I saw, I conquered].
-- Gaius Julius Caesar
%
"Violence accomplishes nothing." What a contemptible lie! Raw, naked
violence has settled more issues throughout history than any other method
ever employed. Perhaps the city fathers of Carthage could debate the
issue, with Hitler and Alexander as judges?
%
Violence is a sword that has no handle -- you have to hold the blade.
%
Violence is molding.
%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvador Hardin
%
Violence stinks, no matter which end of it you're on. But now and then
there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a
frying pan. Sometimes people are just begging for that frypan, and if we
weaken for a moment and honor their request, we should regard it as
impulsive philanthropy, which we aren't in any position to afford, but
shouldn't regret it too loudly lest we spoil the purity of the deed.
-- Tom Robbins
%
VIRGINIA:
A group of beautifully mounted hunters galloping behind
baying hounds in pursuit of a union organizer.
%
Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the
yard.
%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and sometimes
fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus drivers.
%
VIRGO (Aug.23 - Sept.22)
Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count
to ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
that old underwear you own.
%
"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
%
Virtue does not always demand a heavy sacrifice --
only the willingness to make it when necessary.
-- Frederick Dunn
%
Virtue is its own punishment.
-- Denniston
Righteous people terrify me ... virtue is its own punishment.
-- Aneurin Bevan
%
Virtue is not left to stand alone.
He who practices it will have neighbors.
-- Confucius
%
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Visit beautiful Vergas Minnesota.
%
Visit beautiful Wisconsin Dells.
%
Visits always give pleasure: if not on arrival, then on the departure.
-- Edouard Le Berquier, "Pensees des Autres"
%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%
VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.
%
VMS, n:
The world's foremost multi-user adventure game.
%
VMS version 2.0 ==>
%
Voiceless it cries,
Wingless flutters,
Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.
What am I?
%
VOLCANO:
A mountain with hiccups.
%
Volcanoes have a grandeur that is grim
And earthquakes only terrify the dolts,
And to him who's scientific
There is nothing that's terrific
In the pattern of a flight of thunderbolts!
-- W. S. Gilbert, "The Mikado"
%
Volley Theory:
It is better to have lobbed and lost
than never to have lobbed at all.
%
Von Neumann was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Von Neumann
supposedly had the habit of simply writing answers to homework assignments on
the board (the method of solution being, of course, obvious) when he was asked
how to solve problems. One time one of his students tried to get more helpful
information by asking if there was another way to solve the problem. Von
Neumann looked blank for a moment, thought, and then answered, "Yes.".
%
Vote anarchist.
%
Vote early and vote often.
-- Al Capone's slogan for Big Bill Thompson's anti-reform
campaign for Mayor of Chicago, 1926. Big Bill won.
%
Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
TAX-DEFERRED!
%
VUJA DE:
The feeling that you've *never*, *ever* been in this situation before.
%
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain
%
Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time.
-- Pericles
%
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
(Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
%
Wake up all you citizens, hear your country's call,
Not to arms and violence, But peace for one and all.
Crush out hate and prejudice, fear and greed and sin,
Help bring back her dignity, restore her faith again.
Work hard for a common cause, don't let our country fall.
Make her proud and strong again, democracy for all.
Yes, make our country strong again, keep our flag unfurled.
Make our country well again, respected by the world.
Make her whole and beautiful, work from sun to sun.
Stand tall and labor side by side, because there's so much to be done.
Yes, make her whole and beautiful, united strong and free,
Wake up, all you citizens, It's up to you and me.
-- Pansy Myers Schroeder
%
Wake up and smell the coffee.
-- Ann Landers
%
Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered
a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.
%
Walk softly and carry a big stick.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
%
Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
%
Walking on water wasn't built in a day.
-- Jack Kerouac
%
Wall Street indices predicted nine out of the last five recessions
-- Paul A. Samuelson, Nobel laureate in economics
(Newsweek, Science and Stocks, 19 Sep. 1966.)
%
Walt: Dad, what's gradual school?
Garp: Gradual school?
Walt: Yeah. Mom says her work's more fun now that she's teaching
gradual school.
Garp: Oh. Well, gradual school is someplace you go and gradually
find out that you don't want to go to school anymore.
-- The World According To Garp
%
Walters' Rule:
All airline flights depart from the gates most distant from
the center of the terminal. Nobody ever had a reservation
on a plane that left Gate 1.
%
Wanna buy a duck?
%
Wanna tell you all a story 'bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.
But then one day he was shootin' at some food,
When up through the ground come a bubblin' crude -- oil, that is;
black gold; 'Texas tea' ...
Well the next thing ya know, old Jed's a millionaire.
The kinfolk said, 'Jed, move away from there!'
They said, 'Californy is the place ya oughta be',
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly -- Hills, that is;
swimmin' pools; movie stars.
%
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
%
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
-- Charles Edward Montague
%
War is an equal opportunity destroyer.
%
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
-- Desiderius Erasmus
%
War is like love, it always finds a way.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Mother Courage"
%
War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.
-- Clemenceau
%
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
%
War spares not the brave, but the cowardly.
-- Anacreon
%
WARNING:
Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth
of hair on your palms, and make a difference in the outcome
of your favorite war.
%
WARNING!
This system is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need!
A special circuit in the computer called a "critical detector" senses the
user's emotional state in terms of how desperate they are to get their program
to run. The "critical detector" then creates a bug in the program proportional
to the desperation of the user. Threatening the terminal with violence only
aggravates the situation, causing the program to immediately crash or the
entire system to go down. Likewise, attempts to use another terminal may cause
it to core dump. (They all belong to the same LAN.) Keep cool and say nice
things to the terminal.
%
Warning: Do not look directly into laser with remaining eye.
%
Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking
up.
-- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
%
Warning: Trespassers will be shot.
Survivors will be shot again.
%
WARNING!!!
This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need.
A special circuit in the machine called "critical detector" senses the
operator's emotional state in terms of how desperate he/she is to use the
machine. The "critical detector" then creates a malfunction proportional
to the desperation of the operator. Threatening the machine with violence
only aggravates the situation. Likewise, attempts to use another machine
may cause it to malfunction. They belong to the same union. Keep cool
and say nice things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work.
See also: flog(1), tm(1)
%
Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.
%
Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.
-- Dylan Thomas, "Was There A Time"
%
Washington, D.C: Fifty square miles almost completely surrounded by reality.
%
Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
[Washington, D.C.] is the home of... taste for
the people -- the big, the bland and the banal.
-- Ada Louise Huxtable
%
Washington, D.C: Wasting your money since 1810.
%
Wasn't there something about a PASCAL programmer
knowing the value of everything and the Wirth of nothing?
%
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
-- Euripides
%
Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%
Watch all-night Donna Reed reruns until your mind resembles oatmeal.
%
Watch your mouth, kid, or you'll find yourself floating home.
-- Han Solo
%
Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.
-- Mark Twain
%
Watership Down:
You've read the book. You've seen the movie. Now eat the stew!
%
Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
number and significance of any persons watching it.
%
WE:
The single most important word in the world.
%
We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on
when it's necessary to compromise.
-- Larry Wall
%
We all declare for liberty, but in using the
same word we do not all mean the same thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
We all dream of being the darling of everybody's darling.
%
We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
%
We all like praise, but a hike in our pay is the best kind of ways.
%
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty.
-- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
%
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.
-- Dr. Konrad Adenauer
%
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which divides us is
whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct. My own feeling
is that it is not crazy enough.
-- Niels Bohr
%
We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized
before we are fit to participate in society.
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly
Correct Behaviour"
%
We are all born equal... just some of us are more equal than others.
%
We are all born mad. Some remain so.
-- Samuel Beckett
%
We are all dying -- and we're gonna be dead for a long time.
%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
We are all so much together and yet we are all dying of loneliness.
-- A. Schweitzer
%
We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
-- Winston Churchill
%
We are anthill men upon an anthill world.
-- Ray Bradbury
%
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
-- Whole Earth Catalog
%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%
We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.
-- John Naisbitt, Megatrends
%
We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his
own facts.
-- Patrick Moynihan
%
We are each only one drop in a great
ocean -- but some of the drops sparkle!
%
We are experiencing system trouble -- do not adjust your terminal.
%
We are giving instruction to FBI agents in the various Chinese
dialects ... to handle present and likely future contingencies.
-- J. Hoover
%
We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The bad
thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say socialism?
-- Fidel Castro
%
We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
We are Microsoft. Unix is irrelevant.
Openness is futile. Prepare to be assimilated.
%
We are not a clone.
%
We are not a loved organization, but we are a respected one.
-- John Fisher
%
We are not alone.
%
We are not loved by our friends for what we are;
rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.
-- Victor Hugo
%
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last
theorem.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
We are preparing to think about contemplating preliminary work on plans to
develop a schedule for producing the 10th Edition of the Unix Programmers
Manual.
-- Andrew Hume
%
We are simple killers of people and destroyers of property.
%
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.
-- Jonathon Swift
%
We are sorry. We cannot complete your call as dialed. Please check
the number and dial again or ask your operator for assistance.
This is a recording.
%
We are stronger than our skin of flesh and metal, for we carry and
share a spectrum of suns and lands that lends us legends as we craft
our immortality and interweave our destinies of water and air,
leaving shadows that gather color of their own, until they outshine
the substance that cast them.
%
We are the people our parents warned us about.
%
We are the unwilling... led by the unqualified...
to do the unnecessary... for the ungrateful...
-- GI in Vietnam, 1970
%
We are unavoidably drawn towards conservatism and death.
The order is not insignificant.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
We are upping our standards ... so up yours.
-- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988
%
We are what we are.
%
We are what we pretend to be.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%
We can embody the truth, but we cannot know it.
-- Yates
%
We can found no scientific discipline, nor a healthy profession on the
technical mistakes of the Department of Defense and IBM.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra
%
We cannot command nature except by obeying her.
-- Sir Francis Bacon
%
We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
-- James E. Day, Postmaster General
%
We could do that, but it would be wrong, that's for sure.
-- Richard Nixon
%
We could nuke Baghdad into glass, wipe it with Windex, tie fatback on our
feet and go skating.
-- Fred Reed, Air Force Times columnist.
%
We dedicate this book to our fellow citizens who, for love of truth,
take from their own wants by taxes and gifts, and now and then send
forth one of themselves as dedicated servant, to forward the search
into the mysteries and marvelous simplicities of this strange and
beautiful Universe, Our home.
-- "Gravitation", Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler
%
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
-- Vroomfondel
%
We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.
-- Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
%
We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
%
We don't care how they do it in New York.
%
We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand.
-- James Watt, noted theologian
%
We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
%
We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a fish.
%
We don't know who it was that discovered water, but we're pretty sure
that it wasn't a fish.
-- Marshall McLuhan
%
We don't like their sound. Groups of guitars are on the way out.
-- Decca Recording Company, turning down the Beatles, 1962
%
We don't need no education, we don't need no thought control.
-- Pink Floyd
%
We don't need no indirection We don't need no compilation
We don't need no flow control We don't need no load control
No data typing or declarations No link edit for external bindings
Hey! did you leave the lists alone? Hey! did you leave that source alone?
Chorus: (Chorus)
Oh No. It's just a pure LISP function call.
We don't need no side-effecting We don't need no allocation
We don't need no flow control We don't need no special-nodes
No global variables for execution No dark bit-flipping for debugging
Hey! did you leave the args alone? Hey! did you leave those bits alone?
(Chorus) (Chorus)
-- "Another Glitch in the Call", a la Pink Floyd
%
We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.
%
We don't smoke and we don't chew, and we don't go with girls that do.
-- Walter Summers
%
We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't
understand the hardware, but we can *see* the blinking lights!
%
We found on St. Paul's only two kinds of birds -- the booby and the noddy...
Both are of a tame and stupid disposition, and are so unaccustomed to
visitors, that I could have killed any number of them with my geological
hammer.
-- Charles Darwin
%
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
-- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
%
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
We gotta get out of this place,
If it's the last thing we ever do.
-- The Animals
%
We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
our grave singing Halleluja ...
-- Monty Python
%
We have an equal opportunity Calculus class -- it's fully integrated.
%
We have art that we do not die of the truth.
-- Nietzsche
%
We have ears, earther...FOUR OF THEM!
%
We have gone on piling weapon upon weapon, missile upon missile, new
levels of destructiveness upon old ones. We have done this helplessly,
almost involuntarily: like the victims of some sort of hypnotism, like
men in a dream, like lemmings heading for the sea, like the children of
Hamelin marching blindly along behind their Pied Piper. And the result
is that today we have achieved, we and the Russians together, in the
creation of these devices and their means of delivery, levels of
redundancy of such grotesque dimensions as to defy rational understanding.
-- George Kennan, May 19, 1981
%
We have lingered long enough on the shores of the Cosmic Ocean.
-- Carl Sagan
%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly
%
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent
than from the machinations of the wicked.
%
We have no scorched earth policy.
We have a policy of scorched Communists.
-- General Efrain Rios Montt, President of Guatemala, 1982
%
We have not inherited the earth from our parents, we've borrowed it from
our children.
%
We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.
-- Margaret Mead
%
We have only two things to worry about: That things will never get
back to normal, and that they already have.
%
We have reason to be afraid. This is a terrible place.
-- John Berryman
%
We have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's out.
%
We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death
Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish
you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that
said "ELECTROCUTION".
Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your
teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a
couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways
out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste
stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom
floor, which is how the police would find you.
You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
%
We interrupt this fortune for an important announcement...
%
"We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog,
star of "The Muppet Show." [3]
[3] Why? Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we
were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of
character. But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol
after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an
acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the
letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest. Later, while
looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed
that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs
should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our
source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky
instead). When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for
publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission
to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog. Permission
was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told. I resisted the
temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book."
-- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol"
%
We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary
to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know.
Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition
to crave knowledge.
-- George Will
%
We laugh at the Indian philosopher, who to account for the support
of the earth, contrived the hypothesis of a huge elephant, and to support
the elephant, a huge tortoise. If we will candidly confess the truth, we
know as little of the operation of the nerves, as he did of the manner in
which the earth is supported: and our hypothesis about animal spirits, or
about the tension and vibrations of the nerves, are as like to be true, as
his about the support of the earth. His elephant was a hypothesis, and our
hypotheses are elephants. Every theory in philosophy, which is built on
pure conjecture, is an elephant; and every theory that is supported partly
by fact, and partly by conjecture, is like Nebuchadnezzar's image, whose
feet were partly of iron, and partly of clay.
-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
%
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.
-- Eric Hoffer
%
We love our little Johnny
He's the best little boy in all the world
And we wouldn't trade him for anything
That's how much we love him.
No, we couldn't live without him
So that's why, since he died,
We keep him safe in our G.E. freezer.
He's so good, so well-behaved,
Even better than before;
Oh, such a wonderful kid he is.
Alice and me, we'll never be lonely,
Never miss our little Johnny,
He'll never grow up and leave us
That's why we love him like we do.
-- Mr. Mincemeat
%
"We maintain that the very foundation of our way of life is what we call
free enterprise," said Cash McCall, "but when one of our citizens
show enough free enterprise to pile up a little of that profit, we do
our best to make him feel that he ought to be ashamed of himself."
-- Cameron Hawley
%
We may eventually come to realize that chastity is no more a virtue
than malnutrition.
-- Alex Comfort
%
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely
intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people
think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be
best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with
the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand
and speak English.
-- Alan M. Turing
%
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should govern
their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the center of
their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major prophet, nor
Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual concerns, to say
nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get Christians to agree among
themselves about their relationship to God. But all will agree on a
proposition that they possess profound spiritual resources. If, in addition,
we can get them to accept the further proposition that whatever form the
Deity may have in their own theology, the Deity is not only external, but
internal and acts through them, and they themselves give proof or disproof
of the Deity in what they do and think; if this further proposition can be
accepted, then we come that much closer to a truly religious situation on
earth.
-- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
%
We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor. Bankers are not ever
popular but at least they bank. Policeman police and undertakers take
under. But lawyers do not give us law. We receive not the gladsome light
of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays,
filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour.
-- Nolo News, summer 1989
%
We may not return the affection of those who like us,
but we always respect their good judgment.
%
...we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection
by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized
brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as
an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting
functions). But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often
uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities
of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
-- S. J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
%
We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn
of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it.
-- Saul Alinsky
%
We must die because we have known them.
-- Ptah-hotep, 2000 B.C.
%
We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must
condemn once and for all the formula 'chess for the sake of chess,' like
the formula 'art for art's sake.' We must organize shock-brigades of
chess-players, and begin the immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan
for chess.
-- Nikolai V. Krylenko, People's Commissar for Justice
(of RFSFR, later of USSR), speaking at a 1932 Congress
of Chess Players, as quoted in Boris Souvarine's
"Stalin," published London, 1939
%
...we must not judge the society of the future by considering whether or not
we should like to live in it; the question is whether those who have grown up
in it will be happier than those who have grown up in our society or those of
the past.
-- Joseph Wood Krutch
%
We must remember that in time of war what is said on the enemy's side of
the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front
is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.
-- Walter Lippmann
%
We must remember the First Amendment which
protects any shrill jackass no matter how self-seeking.
-- F. G. Withington
%
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to
the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his
children smart.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Minority Report"
%
We only acknowledge small faults in order
to make it appear that we are free from great ones.
-- LaRouchefoucauld
%
We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago
people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.
For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had
to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare
fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with
primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how
ugly paneling is to begin with.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
We prefer to believe that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the
originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has
forgotten its source.
-- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play"
%
We prefer to speak evil of ourselves
rather than not speak of ourselves at all.
%
We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
%
We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who,
content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.
-- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
%
We read to say that we have read.
%
We really don't have any enemies.
It's just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us.
%
We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.
-- Thucydides
%
We seem to have forgotten the simple truth that reason is never perfect.
Only non-sense attains perfection.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
We seldom repent talking too little, but very often talking too much.
-- Jean de la Bruyere
%
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that
is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
-- Mark Twain
%
We should be glad we're living in the time that we are. If any of us had been
born into a more enlightened age, I'm sure we would have immediately been taken
out and shot.
-- Strange de Jim
%
We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if only words were
taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things
themselves.
-- John Locke
%
We should have a Vollyballocracy. We elect a six-pack of presidents.
Each one serves until they screw up, at which point they rotate.
-- Dennis Miller
%
We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square.
-- S. I. Hayakawa
%
We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they
remain fixed, then with good laws that are constantly being altered, that
the lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than
the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule,
states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals.
These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws, who
want to get their own way in every general discussion, because they feel that
they cannot show off their intelligence in matters of greater importance, and
who, as a result, very often bring ruin on their country.
-- Cleon, Thucydides, III, 37 translation by Rex Warner
%
We the unwilling, led by the ungrateful, are doing the impossible.
We've done so much, for so long, with so little,
that we are now qualified to do something with nothing.
%
We the Users, in order to form a more perfect system, establish priorities,
ensure connective tranquility, provide for common repairs, promote
preventive maintenance, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves
and our processes, do ordain and establish this Software of The Unixed States
of America.
%
We thrive on euphemism. We call multi-megaton bombs "Peace-keepers", closet
size apartments "efficient" and incomprehensible artworks "innovative". In
fact, "euphemism" has become a euphemism for "bald-faced lie". And now, here
are the euphemisms so colorfully employed in Personal Ads:
EUPHEMISM REALITY
------------------- -------------------------
Excited about life's journey No concept of reality
Spiritually evolved Oversensitive
Moody Manic-depressive
Soulful Quiet manic-depressive
Poet Boring manic-depressive
Sultry/Sensual Easy
Uninhibited Lacking basic social skills
Unaffected and earthy Slob and lacking basic social skills
Irreverent Nasty and lacking basic social skills
Very human Quasimodo's best friend
Swarthy Sweaty even when cold or standing still
Spontaneous/Eclectic Scatterbrained
Flexible Desperate
Aging child Self-centered adult
Youthful Over 40 and trying to deny it
Good sense of humor Watches a lot of television
%
We thrive on euphemism. We call multi-megaton bombs "Peace-keepers", closet
size apartments "efficient" and incomprehensible artworks "innovative". In
fact, "euphemism" has become a euphemism for "bald-faced lie". And now, here
are the euphemisms so colorfully employed in Personal Ads:
EUPHEMISM REALITY
------------------- -------------------------
Independent thinker Crazy
High spirited Crazy and hyperactive
Free spirited Crazy and irresponsible
Outrageous Crazy and obnoxious
Exotic Crazy with a pierced nose/nipple
Cuddly Overweight
Huggable/Zaftig/Rubenesque Fat (there's a lot to love)
Big and beautiful Really Fat
Fat 'n' sassy Really Fat and loud
Svelte/Slender Anorexic
Dynamic Pushy
Assertive Pushy with a mean streak
Feisty/Ambitious Would kill own mother for next corporate rung
Demanding Will make your life a living hell
Looking for Mr./Ms. Right Looking for Mr./Ms. Rich
%
We totally deny the allegations, and
we're trying to identify the allegators.
%
We tried to close Ohio's borders and ran into a Constitutional problem.
There's a provision in the Constitution that says you can't close your
borders to interstate commerce, and garbage is a form of interstate commerce.
-- Ohio Lt. Governor Paul Leonard
%
[We] use bad software and bad machines for the wrong things.
-- R. W. Hamming
%
We warn the reader in advance that the proof presented here
depends on a clever but highly unmotivated trick.
-- Howard Anton, "Elementary Linear Algebra"
%
We was playin' the Homestead Grays in the city of Pitchburgh. Josh
[Gibson] comes up in the last of the ninth with a man on and us a run
behind. Well, he hit one. The Grays waited around and waited around,
but finally the empire rules it ain't comin' down. So we win. The
next day, we was disputin' the Grays in Philadelphia when here come
a ball outta the sky right in the glove of the Grays' center fielder.
The empire made the only possible call. "You're out, boy!" he says
to Josh. "Yesterday, in Pitchburgh."
-- Satchel Paige
%
We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we
were married for four and a half years.
-- Nick Faldo
%
We were so poor that we thought new clothes meant someone had died.
%
We were so poor we couldn't afford a watchdog.
If we heard a noise at night, we'd bark ourselves.
-- Crazy Jimmy
%
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was
also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
French restaurant. [...]
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her
boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the
bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad
rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished
there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
"Stop the car," the girl said.
There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the
woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an
arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
onto my granola and faced a new day.
-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
Competition
%
We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal
tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous
extinction.
-- S. J. Gould
%
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve
one technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
%
we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentle
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
%
We will not be responsible for damage to equipment, your ego, county wide
power outages, spontaneously generated mini (or larger) black holes,
planetary disruptions, or personal injury or worse that may result from the
use of this material.
-- taken from Samuel M. Goldwasser's
Sam's Strobe FAQ Notes on the Troubleshooting
and Repair of Electronic Flash Units and Strobe Lights
%
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
-- Maxwell Smart
%
WEAPON:
An index of the lack of development of a culture.
%
Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise.
-- John Heywood
%
Wedding, n.:
A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one
undertakes to become nothing and nothing undertakes to become
supportable.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Wedding rings are the world's smallest handcuffs.
%
Weed's Axiom:
Never ask two questions in a business letter.
The reply will discuss the one in which you are
least interested and say nothing about the other.
%
Weekend, where are you?
%
Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
himself.
%
Weinberg, as a young grocery clerk, advised the grocery manager to get
rid of rutabagas which nobody every bought. He did so. "Well, kid, that
was a great idea," said the manager. Then he paused and asked the killer
question, "NOW what's the least popular vegetable?"
Law: Once you eliminate your #1 problem, #2 gets a promotion.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting"
%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is only made on alternate Fridays.
%
Weinberg's Principle:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping
on to the grand fallacy.
%
Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
-- Gerald Weinberg
%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross references.
%
Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter.
He'll come in handy if you run out of food.
-- Dean McLaughlin
%
Welcome to boggle - do you want instructions?
D G G O
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>
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Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the men are strong,
The women are pretty, and the children are above-average.
-- Garrison Keillor
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Welcome to the Zoo!
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Welcome to UNIX! Enjoy your session! Have a great time! Note the
use of exclamation points! They are a very effective method for
demonstrating excitement, and can also spice up an otherwise plain-looking
sentence! However, there are drawbacks! Too much unnecessary exclaiming
can lead to a reduction in the effect that an exclamation point has on
the reader! For example, the sentence
Jane went to the store to buy bread
should only be ended with an exclamation point if there is something
sensational about her going to the store, for example, if Jane is a
cocker spaniel or if Jane is on a diet that doesn't allow bread or if
Jane doesn't exist for some reason! See how easy it is?! Proper control
of exclamation points can add new meaning to your life! Call now to receive
my free pamphlet, "The Wonder and Mystery of the Exclamation Point!"!
Enclose fifteen(!) dollars for postage and handling! Operators are
standing by! (Which is pretty amazing, because they're all cocker spaniels!)
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Welcome to Utah.
If you think our liquor laws are funny, you should see our underwear!
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Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
I'm told that Dostoevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
-- Dave Barry
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We'll be recording at the Paradise Friday
night. Live, on the Death label.
-- Swan, "Phantom of the Paradise"
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Well begun is half done.
-- Aristotle
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"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is
no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five
hundred."
-- The Mahabharata
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We'll cross that bridge when we come back to it later.
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Well, didja wake up grouchy or did you let her sleep?
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Well, don't worry about it... It's nothing.
-- Lieutenant Kermit Tyler (Duty Officer of Shafter Information
Center, Hawaii), upon being informed that Private Joseph
Lockard had picked up a radar signal of what appeared to be
at least 50 planes soaring toward Oahu at almost 180 miles
per hour, December 7, 1941.
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Well, fancy giving money to the Government!
Might as well have put it down the drain.
Fancy giving money to the Government!
Nobody will see the stuff again.
Well, they've no idea what money's for --
Ten to one they'll start another war.
I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'!
Fancy giving money to the Government!
-- A. P. Herbert
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We'll have solar energy when the power companies develop a sunbeam meter.
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Well, he didn't know what to do, so he decided to look at the government,
to see what they did, and scale it down and run his life that way.
-- Laurie Anderson
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Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the
reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top
contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men
will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the
most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and
appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday
morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit
interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a
guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through
the entire show without answering a single question ...
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
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Well I looked at my watch and it said a quarter to five,
The headline screamed that I was still alive,
I couldn't understand it, I thought I died last night.
I dreamed I'd been in a border town,
In a little cantina that the boys had found,
I was desperate to dance, just to dig the local sounds.
When along came a senorita,
She looked so good that I had to meet her,
I was ready to approach her with my English charm,
When her brass knuckled boyfriend grabbed me by the arm,
And he said, grow some funk of your own, amigo,
Grow some funk of your own.
We no like to with the gringo fight,
But there might be a death in Mexico tonite.
...
Take my advice, take the next flight,
And grow some funk, grow your funk at home.
-- Elton John, "Grow Some Funk of Your Own"
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Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
-- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
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Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *_c_a_n*
you believe?!
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
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Well, I'm disenchanted too. We're all disenchanted.
-- James Thurber
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Well, it's hard for a mere man to believe that woman doesn't have equal
rights.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Well, Jim, I'm not much of an actor either.
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We'll know that rock is dead when you have to get a degree to work in it.
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WE'LL LOOK INTO IT:
By the time the wheels make a full turn, we
assume you will have forgotten about it,too.
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Well, my daddy left home when I was three,
And he didn't leave much for Ma and me,
Just and old guitar an'a empty bottle of booze.
Now I don't blame him 'cause he ran and hid,
But the meanest thing that he ever did,
Was before he left he went and named me Sue.
...
But I made me a vow to the moon and the stars,
I'd search the honkey tonks and the bars,
And kill the man that give me that awful name.
It was Gatlinburg in mid-July,
I'd just hit town and my throat was dry,
Thought I'd stop and have myself a brew,
At an old saloon on a street of mud,
Sitting at a table, dealing stud,
Sat that dirty (bleep) that named me Sue.
...
Now, I knew that snake was my own sweet Dad,
From a worn out picture that my Mother had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye...
-- Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue"
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Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
-- Core Dumped Blues
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Well, of course it worked. You made the ritual blood sacrifice. If you
bleed on a machine while working on it, it will work. Unless it
doesn't. In which case, you need someone else to bleed on it as well.
-- Wayne Pascoe
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We'll pivot at warp 2 and bring all tubes to bear, Mr. Sulu!
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Well, some take delight in the carriages a-rolling,
And some take delight in the hurling and the bowling,
But I take delight in the juice of the barley,
And courting pretty fair maids in the morning bright and early.
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Well thaaaaaaat's okay.
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Well, the handwriting is on the floor.
-- Joe E. Lewis
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We'll try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens,
we feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.
-- Dave Barry
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Well, we'll really have a party,
but we've gotta post a guard outside.
-- Eddie Cochran, "Come On Everybody"
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"Well, well, well! Well if it isn't fat stinking billy goat Billy Boy in
poison! How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip oil? Come
and get one in the yarbles, if ya have any yarble, ya eunuch jelly thou!"
-- Alex in "Clockwork Orange"
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Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers,
And we're loved everywhere we go.
We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth,
At ten thousand dollars a show.
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills,
But the thrill we've never known,
Is the thrill that'll get'cha, when you get your picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.
I got a freaky old lady, name of Cole King Katie,
Who embroiders on my jeans.
I got my poor old gray-haired daddy,
Drivin' my limousine.
Now it's all designed, to blow our minds,
But our minds won't be really be blown;
Like the blow that'll get'cha, when you get your picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.
We got a lot of little, teen-aged, blue-eyed groupies,
Who'll do anything we say.
We got a genuine Indian guru, that's teachin' us a better way.
We got all the friends that money can buy,
So we never have to be alone.
And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.
-- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
[They eventually DID make the cover of RS. Ed.]
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Well, we've come full circle, Lord; I'd like to think there's some
higher meaning to all this. It would certainly reflect well on you.
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WELL-ADJUSTED:
The ability to play bridge or golf as if they were games.
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We
own
this land.
I don't spend
any time
on this land.
This
is a tiny
little piece
of my
business
interests.
It's like
a grain
of sand.
-- "Alliance Airport, from The Poetry Of H. Ross Perot,
recited on ABC's Town Meeting, June 29, 1992.
From SPY Magazine, November 1992
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We're all in this alone.
-- Lily Tomlin
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We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which
people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products.
Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spiritual
and emotional feelings. It might taste good or clever, but in the long run,
it's not going to do anything for you.
-- Bob Dylan, "LA Times", September 5, 1984
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We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
in his bowl full of jelly.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
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We're fantastically incredibly sorry for all these extremely unreasonable
things we did. I can only plead that my simple, barely-sentient friend
and myself are underprivileged, deprived and also college students.
-- Waldo D. R. Dobbs
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We're happy little Vegemites,
As bright as bright can be.
We all enjoy our Vegemite
For breakfast, lunch and tea.
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Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the
formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite
shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide
a grin.
-- F. M. Colby, "Imaginary Obligations"
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We're Knights of the Round Table
We dance whene'er we're able
We do routines and chorus scenes We're knights of the Round Table
With footwork impeccable Our shows are formidable
We dine well here in Camelot But many times
We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot. We're given rhymes
That are quite unsingable
In war we're tough and able, We're opera mad in Camelot
Quite indefatigable We sing from the diaphragm a lot.
Between our quests
We sequin vests
And impersonate Clark Gable
It's a busy life in Camelot.
I have to push the pram a lot.
-- Monty Python
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We're living in a golden age. All you need is gold.
-- D. W. Robertson
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We're mortal -- which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful --
but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and
then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?
-- Ensign Flandry
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"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is
weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me
the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious,
unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must accept
responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous
desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must
learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a
short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."
-- Don Juan
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We're only in it for the volume.
-- Black Sabbath
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Were there no women, men might live like gods.
-- Thomas Dekker
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Wernher von Braun settled for a V-2 when he coulda had a V-8.
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Westheimer's Discovery:
A couple of months in the laboratory can
frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
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Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
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We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
-- Andy Rooney
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We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.
The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands! Standby! Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet--
We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, 1941
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Wharbat darbid yarbou sarbay?
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What!? Me worry?
-- A. E. Neuman
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What a bonanza! An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script
by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary
Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them!
-- David Niven, "Bring On the Empty Horses"
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What a misfortune to be a woman! And yet, the worst misfortune is not to
understand what a misfortune it is.
-- Kierkegaard, 1813-1855
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What a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
-- WOP, "War Games"
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What, after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean.
-- Christopher Fry
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What an artist dies with me!
-- Nero
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What an author likes to write most is his signature on the
back of a cheque.
-- Brendan Francis
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What awful irony is this?
We are as gods, but know it not.
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What causes the mysterious death of everyone?
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What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
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What did ya do with your burden and your cross?
Did you carry it yourself or did you cry?
You and I know that a burden and a cross,
Can only be carried on one man's back.
-- Louden Wainwright III
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What did you bring that book I didn't want
to be read to out of about Down Under up for?
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What did you do when the ship sank?
I grabbed a cake of soap and washed myself ashore.
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What do I consider a reasonable person to be? I'd say a reasonable person
is one who accepts that we are all human and therefore fallible, and takes
that into account when dealing with others. Implicit in this definition is
the belief that it is the right and the responsibility of each person to
live his or her own life as he or she sees fit, to respect this right in
others, and to demand the assumption of this responsibility by others.
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What do you give a man who has everything? Penicillin.
-- Jerry Lester
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What do you have when you have six lawyers buried up to their necks in sand?
Not enough sand.
%
What does education often do?
It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.
-- Henry David Thoreau
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What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
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What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to
win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent?
In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded
that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the
simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life. First, a
base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done. Second,
a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human
activities must exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally, an articulate
and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with
words and action the great thing to be accomplished. The motivation of young
Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of
conditions. ... The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John
Kennedys appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they,
and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward.
-- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
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What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
-- Nietzsche
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What ever happened to happily ever after?
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What excuses stand in your way? How can you eliminate them?
-- Roger von Oech
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What foods these morsels be!
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What fools these morals be!
%
What fools these mortals be.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
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What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
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What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our
country. Nice try anyway, George.
-- D.J. on KSFO/KYA
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What goes up must come down. But don't expect it to come down
where you can find it. Murphy's Law applied to Newton's.
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What good is a ticket to the good life,
if you can't find the entrance?
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What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?
-- Nero Wolfe, "The League of Frightened Men"
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What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
in his footsteps?
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What good is it if you talk in flowers, and they think in pastry?
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
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What happened last night can happen again.
%
What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic simulations
involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will
be pretty bad.
-- Dave Barry
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What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore --
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over --
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
Like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
-- Langston Hughes
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What happens when you cut back the jungle? It recedes.
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What has roots as nobody sees,
Is taller than trees,
Up, up it goes,
And yet never grows?
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What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower
stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed
barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character
from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of
while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our
dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up
powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the
bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any
one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact
lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where
you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",
if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with
that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;
they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to
flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
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What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word QUALITY cannot be
broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality
is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate, and direct.
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
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What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
parties.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
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What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
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What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists?
In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
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What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?
Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
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What if there had been room at the inn?
-- Linda Festa on the origins of Christianity
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What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
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What is actually happening, I am afraid, is that we all tell each
other and ourselves that software engineering techniques should be
improved considerably, because there is a crisis. But there are a few
boundary conditions which apparently have to be satisfied:
1. We may not change our thinking habits.
2. We may not change our programming tools.
3. We may not change our hardware.
4. We may not change our tasks.
5. We may not change the organizational set-up
in which the work has to be done.
Now under these five immutable boundary conditions, we have to try to
improve matters. This is utterly ridiculous.
Edsger W. Dijkstra, on receiving the ACM Turing Award in 1972
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What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things?
-- J. M. Barrie
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What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making
them puke.
-- Steve Martin
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What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
-- Titus Lucretius Carus
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What is good? Everything that heightens the feeling of power in man, the
will to power, power itself. What is bad? Everything that is born of
weakness. Not contentedness but more power; not peace but war; not virtue
but fitness. The weak and the failures shall perish: first principle of
our love of man. And they shall even be given every possible assistance.
What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all the failures and
all the weak: Christianity.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
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What is important is food, money and opportunities for scoring off one's
enemies. Give a man these three things and you won't hear much squawking
out of him.
-- Brian O'Nolan, "The Best of Myles"
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What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires
an accomplice.
-- Charles Baudelaire
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What is love but a second-hand emotion?
-- Tina Turner
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What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
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What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
-- William Blake
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What is research but a blind date with knowledge?
-- Will Harvey
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What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?
-- Bertolt Brecht, "The Threepenny Opera"
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What is status?
Status is when the President calls you for your opinion.
Uh, no...
Status is when the President calls you in to discuss a
problem with him.
Uh, that still ain't right...
STATUS is when you're in the Oval Office talking to the President,
and the phone rings. The President picks it up, listens for a
minute, and hands it to you, saying, "It's for you."
%
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern computer?
It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest and the
establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
%
"What is the Nature of God?"
CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
1 QT. SOUR CREAM
1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT
1/2 CUT CHIVES.
STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.
"I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
-- Bloom County
%
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
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What is this line of duty, and suffering? You are not supposed to suffer
if you are an assassin. The other person is supposed to suffer.
-- Chiun, glory of the name of Sinanju, teacher of the youth
from outside Sinanju named Remo.
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What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that
is the first law of nature.
-- Voltaire
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What is truth? We must adopt a pragmatic definition: it is what is believed
to be the truth. A lie that is put across therefore becomes the truth and
may, therefore, be justified. The difficulty is to keep up lying... it is
simpler to tell the truth and if a sufficient emergency arises, to tell one,
big thumping lie that will then be believed.
-- Ministry of Information, memo on the maintenance of
British civilian morale, 1939
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What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
which is the exact opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
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What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it.
%
What I've done, of course, is total garbage.
-- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
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What kind of sordid business are you on now? I mean, man, whither
goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
-- Jack Kerouac
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What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
-- Adolf Hitler
%
What makes the Universe so hard to comprehend
is that there's nothing to compare it with.
%
What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us
is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.
%
What makes you think graduate school
is supposed to be satisfying?
-- Erica Jong, "Fear of Flying"
%
What most people want is all of the power but none of the responsibility.
%
What no spouse of a writer can ever understand
is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window.
%
What nonsense people talk about happy marriages!
A man can be happy with any woman so long as he doesn't love her.
-- Wilde
%
What on earth would a man do with himself
if something did not stand in his way?
-- H. G. Wells
%
What one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.
-- John Lilly
%
What one fool can do, another can.
-- Ancient Simian Proverb
%
What orators lack in depth they make up in length.
%
What pains others pleasures me,
At home am I in Lisp or C;
There i couch in ecstasy,
'Til debugger's poke i flee,
Into kernel memory.
In system space, system space, there shall i fare--
Inside of a VAX on a silicon square.
%
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
-- Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals"
%
What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing
more than man's transparency.
-- George Nathan
%
What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: Yes,
women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort.
-- Susan Gordon
%
What really shapes and conditions and makes us is somebody only a few
of us ever have the courage to face: and that is the child you once
were, long before formal education ever got its claws into you -- that
impatient, all-demanding child who wants love and power and can't get
enough of either and who goes on raging and weeping in your spirit
till at last your eyes are closed and all the fools say, "Doesn't he
look peaceful?" It is those pent-up, craving children who make all
the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and
discovery in life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond
their grasp before they were five years old.
-- Robertson Davies, "The Rebel Angels"
%
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
%
What scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch?
-- J. D. Farley
%
What segment's this, that, laid to rest
On FHA0, is sleeping?
What system file, lay here a while This, this is "acct.run,"
While hackers around it were weeping? Accounting file for everyone.
Dump, dump it and type it out,
The file, the highseg of login.
Why lies it here, on public disk
And why is it now unprotected?
A bug in incant, made it thus. Mount, mount all your DECtapes now
And copy the file somehow, somehow. The problem has not been corrected.
Dump, dump it and type it out,
The file, the highseg of login.
-- to Greensleeves
%
What sin has not been committed in the name of efficiency?
%
What soon grows old? Gratitude.
-- Aristotle
%
What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Sure, if your throat 'tis hard to slit,
Slit your girl's, and swing for it.
Like enough, you won't be glad,
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon's not the only thing
That's cured by hanging from a string.
So, when the spilt ink of the night
Spreads o'er the blotting pad of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives, and think of you.
-- Hugh Kingsmill
%
What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go around the sun. If we went
around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work.
-- Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet"
%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%
What the hell is it good for?
-- Robert Lloyd (engineer of the Advanced Computing Systems
Division of IBM), to colleagues who insisted that the
microprocessor was the wave of the future, c. 1968
%
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
%
What the scientists have in their briefcases is terrifying.
-- Nikita Khruschev
%
What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
%
What they said:
What they meant:
"I recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever."
(Yes, that about sums it up.)
"The amount of mathematics she knows will surprise you."
(And I recommend not giving that school a dime...)
"I simply can't say enough good things about him."
(What a screw-up.)
"I am pleased to say that this candidate is a former colleague of mine."
(I can't tell you how happy I am that she left our firm.)
"When this person left our employ, we were quite hopeful he would go
a long way with his skills."
(We hoped he'd go as far as possible.)
"You won't find many people like her."
(In fact, most people can't stand being around her.)
"I cannot recommend him too highly."
(However, to the best of my knowledge, he has never committed a
felony in my presence.)
%
What they said:
What they meant:
"If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much
of him as I do."
(Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.)
"Her input was always critical."
(She never had a good word to say.)
"I have no doubt about his capability to do good work."
(And it's nonexistent.)
"This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which
already has so many outstanding members."
(Unless you already have a moron.)
"His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable:
one unbelievable result after another."
(And we didn't believe them, either.)
"She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her."
(In fact, to life in general...)
%
What they said:
What they meant:
"You will be fortunate if you can get him to work for you."
(We certainly never succeeded.)
There is no other employee with whom I can adequately compare him.
(Well, our rats aren't really employees...)
"Success will never spoil him."
(Well, at least not MUCH more.)
"One usually comes away from him with a good feeling."
(And such a sigh of relief.)
"His dissertation is the sort of work you don't expect to see these days;
in it he has definitely demonstrated his complete capabilities."
(And his IQ, as well.)
"He should go far."
(The farther the better.)
"He will take full advantage of his staff."
(He even has one of them mowing his lawn after work.)
%
What they say: What they mean:
A major technological breakthrough... Back to the drawing board.
Developed after years of research Discovered by pure accident.
Project behind original schedule due We're working on something else.
to unforeseen difficulties
Designs are within allowable limits We made it, stretching a point or two.
Customer satisfaction is believed So far behind schedule that they'll be
assured grateful for anything at all.
Close project coordination We're gonna spread the blame, campers!
Test results were extremely gratifying It works, and boy, were we surprised!
The design will be finalized... We haven't started yet, but we've got
to say something.
The entire concept has been rejected The guy who designed it quit.
We're moving forward with a fresh We hired three new guys, and they're
approach kicking it around.
A number of different approaches... We don't know where we're going, but
we're moving.
Preliminary operational tests are Blew up when we turned it on.
inconclusive
Modifications are underway We're starting over.
%
What they say: What they mean:
New Different colors from previous version.
All New Not compatible with previous version.
Exclusive Nobody else has documentation.
Unmatched Almost as good as the competition.
Design Simplicity The company wouldn't give us any money.
Fool-proof Operation All parameters are hard-coded.
Advanced Design Nobody really understands it.
Here At Last Didn't get it done on time.
Field Tested We don't have any simulators.
Years of Development Finally got one to work.
Unprecedented Performance Nothing ever ran this slow before.
Revolutionary Disk drives go 'round and 'round.
Futuristic Only runs on a next generation supercomputer.
No Maintenance Impossible to fix.
Performance Proven Worked through Beta test.
Meets Tough Quality Standards It compiles without errors.
Satisfaction Guaranteed We'll send you another pack if it fails.
Stock Item We shipped it before and can do it again.
%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%
What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%
What time is it?
I don't know, it keeps changing.
%
What upsets me is not that you lied to me,
but that from now on I can no longer believe you.
-- Nietzsche
%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
What we Are is God's give to us.
What we Become is our gift to God.
%
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
-- Wittgenstein
%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
-- Goethe
%
What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which
nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday
Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-
launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just
remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual
process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still
be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%
What we need is either less corruption,
or more chance to participate in it.
%
What we see depends on mainly what we look for.
-- John Lubbock
%
What we wish, that we readily believe.
-- Demosthenes
%
What will happen when the 32-bit Unix date goes negative in mid-January
2038 does not bear thinking about.
-- Henry Spencer
%
What will you do if all your problems aren't solved by the time you die?
%
What would you do with a brain if you had one?
-- Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale, "The Wizard of Oz"
%
What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
%
What you don't know won't help you much either.
-- D. Bennett
%
What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond
your control. But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or
your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control. If you feel
powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do
with as you will.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley, "Stormqueen"
%
What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for
something to occur to you.
-- Robert Frost
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to AST's.]
%
Whatever became of eternal truth?
%
Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your
nostrils as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while
shredding hundred dollar bills."
-- Herb Caen
%
Whatever doesn't succeed in two months and a half in California will
never succeed.
-- Rev. Henry Durant, founder of the University of California
%
Whatever else can be said about sex, it cannot be called a dignified
performance.
-- Helen Lawrenson
%
Whatever happened to the good old days
when sex was dirty and the air was clean?
%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon
%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine.
Whatever I can pry up is not nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon, railroad tycoon
%
Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
Whatever occurs from love is always beyond good and evil.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not
cockroaches!
-- Mom
%
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half
as good. Luckily this is not difficult.
-- Charlotte Whitton
%
Whatever you do will be insignificant,
but it is very important that you do it.
-- Gandhi
%
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this: that you are dreadfully like
other people.
-- James Russell Lowell, "My Study Windows"
%
Whatever you want to do, you have to do something else first.
%
What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority.
-- Robert Altman
%
What's all this bru-ha-ha?
%
What's another word for "thesaurus"?
-- Steven Wright
%
What's done to children, they will do to society.
%
What's page one, a preemptive strike?
-- Professor Freund, Communication, Ramapo State College
%
What's so funny?
%
What's the matter with the world? Why, there ain't but one thing wrong
with every one of us - and that's "selfishness."
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
What's the ugliest part of your body?
What's the ugliest part of your body?
Some say your nose,
Some say your toes,
But I think it's your mind.
-- Frank Zappa, 1965
%
What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
-- Dr. Who
%
What's this stuff about people being "released on their
own recognizance"? Aren't we all out on own recognizance?
%
When a Banker jumps out of a window,
jump after him -- that's where the money is.
-- Robespierre
%
When a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far!
%
When a cow laughs, does milk come out of its nose?
%
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but
the principle of the thing," it's the money.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
loop?
%
When a girl can read the handwriting on
the wall, she may be in the wrong rest room.
%
When a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the
inattentions of one.
-- Helen Rowland
%
When a lion meets another with a louder roar,
the first lion thinks the last a bore.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
When a lot of remedies are suggested for
a disease, that means it can't be cured.
-- Chekhov, "The Cherry Orchard"
%
When a man assumes a public trust, he
should consider himself as public property.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight,
it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him
keep her.
-- Sacha Guitry
%
When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years
ago, he is a broad-minded man who has courage enough to change his mind
with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a
liar who has broken his promises.
-- Franklin Adams
%
When a person goes on a diet, the first thing he loses is his temper.
%
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not
far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel
is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
-- Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see
the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
When a woman gives me a present I have always two surprises:
first is the present, and afterward, having to pay for it.
-- Donnay
%
When a woman marries again it is because she detested her first husband.
When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife.
-- Wilde
%
When alerted to an intrusion by tinkling glass or otherwise, 1) Calm
yourself 2) Identify the intruder 3) If hostile, kill him.
Step number 3 is of particular importance. If you leave the guy alive
out of misguided softheartedness, he will repay your generosity of spirit
by suing you for causing his subsequent paraplegia and seek to force you
to support him for the rest of his rotten life. In court he will plead
that he was depressed because society had failed him, and that he was
looking for Mother Teresa for comfort and to offer his services to the
poor. In that lawsuit, you will lose. If, on the other hand, you kill
him, the most that you can expect is that a relative will bring a wrongful
death action. You will have two advantages: first, there be only your
story; forget Mother Teresa. Second, even if you lose, how much could
the bum's life be worth anyway? A Lot less than 50 years worth of
paralysis. Don't play George Bush and Saddam Hussein. Finish the job.
-- G. Gordon Liddy's Forbes column on personal security
%
When Alexander Graham Bell died in 1922, the telephone people
interrupted service for one minute in his honor. They've been
honoring him intermittently ever since, I believe.
-- The Grab Bag
%
When all else fails, EAT!!!
%
When all else fails, pour a pint of Guinness in the gas tank, advance
the spark 20 degrees, cry "God Save the Queen!", and pull the starter
knob.
-- MG "Series MGA" Workshop Manual
%
When all else fails, try Kate Smith.
%
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
%
When among apes, one must play the ape.
%
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
-- Mark Twain
%
When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?
-- Reuben Flagg
%
When arguments fail, use a blackjack.
-- Edward "Spike" O'Donnell, Al Capone associate
%
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
-- Vine Deloria, Jr.
%
When asked the definition of "pi":
The Mathematician:
Pi is the number expressing the relationship between the
circumference of a circle and its diameter.
The Physicist:
Pi is 3.1415927, plus or minus 0.000000005.
The Engineer:
Pi is about 3.
%
When Boy Scouts do it, it's intense.
%
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.
-- Brian Aldiss
%
When choosing between two evils, I always
like to take the one I've never tried before.
-- Mae West, "Klondike Annie"
%
When confronted by a difficult problem, you can often solve it quite
easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger
handle this?"
%
When Cthulhu calls, He calls collect!
%
When democracy granted democratic methods to us in times of opposition, this
was bound to happen in a democratic system. However, we National Socialists
never asserted that we represented a democratic point of view, but we have
declared openly that we used the democratic methods only to gain power and
that, after assuming the power, we would deny to our adversaries without any
consideration the means which were granted to us in times of our opposition.
-- Josef Goebbels
%
When Dexter's on the Internet, can Hell be far behind?"
%
When does later become never?
%
When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask?
Well, last year, I think it was a Tuesday.
%
When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.
-- Gen. C. Abrams
%
When forecasting, give them a number
or give them a date, but never both.
%
When God endowed human beings with brains,
He did not intend to guarantee them.
%
When God saw how faulty was man He tried again and made woman. As to
why he then stopped there are two opinions. One of them is woman's.
-- DeGourmont
%
When he got in trouble in the ring, [Ali] imagined a door swung open and
inside he could see neon, orange, and green lights blinking, and bats
blowing trumpets and alligators blowing trombones, and he could hear snakes
screaming. Weird masks and actors' clothes hung on the wall, and if he
stepped across the sill and reached for them, he knew that he was committing
himself to destruction.
-- George Plimpton
%
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced
to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
-- Brendan Behan
%
When I demanded of my friend what viands he preferred,
He quoth: "A large cold bottle, and a small hot bird!"
-- Eugene Field, "The Bottle and the Bird"
%
when i die, i'd like to go peacefully.
in my sleep.
like my grandfather.
not screaming,
like the passengers in his car...
%
When I first arrived in this country I had only fifteen cents in my pocket
and a willingness to compromise.
-- Weber cartoon caption
%
When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot,
then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving.
-- Steven Wright
%
When I grow up, I want to be an honest
lawyer so things like that can't happen.
-- Richard Nixon, as a boy, on the Teapot Dome scandal
%
When I have one foot in the grave I will tell the truth about women. I
shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and say, "Do
what you like now."
-- Tolstoy
%
When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity
for him. All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Minority Report"
%
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire
winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
When I kill, the only thing I feel is recoil.
%
When I look at the horse heads and men's faces, the immense
live torrent once raised by my will and now whirling to
nowhere through the red sunset desert, I often wonder where
I am in this torrent.
-- Chinggis (Genghis) Khan
%
When I said "we", officer, I was referring to
myself, the four young ladies, and, of course, the goat.
%
When I saw a sign on the freeway that said, "Los Angeles 445 miles," I said
to myself, "I've got to get out of this lane."
-- Franklyn Ajaye
%
When I say the magic word to all these people, they will vanish forever.
I will then say the magic words to you, and you, too, will vanish -- never
to be seen again.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Between Time and Timbuktu"
%
When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve
it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
-- Al Capone
%
When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke, Sixty years in these folks' world
A dance that's walked The child I works for calls me girl
A song that's spoke, I say "Yes ma'am" for working's sake.
I laugh so hard I almost choke Too proud to bend
When I think about myself. Too poor to break,
I laugh until my stomach ache,
When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard I nearly died,
The tales they tell, sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit,
But eat the rind,
I laugh until I start to crying,
When I think about my folks.
-- Maya Angelou
%
When I was 16, I thought there was no hope for my father.
By the time I was 20, he had made great improvement.
%
When I was a boy I was told that anyone could become President.
Now I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
When I was a child... We had a quick-sand box in the backyard...
I was an only child... eventually.
-- Steven Wright
%
When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you
take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come
and get you."
-- Jerry Lewis
%
When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd
all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us.
It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.
-- Jack Handey
%
When I was a young man, I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal
woman. Well, I found her -- but alas, she was waiting for the ideal man.
-- Robert Schuman
%
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if
I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?"
-- Steven Wright
%
When I was growing up my mother kept telling me we're just friends.
I tell ya I was an ugly kid. I was so ugly that my Dad kept the kid's
picture that came with the wallet he bought.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
When I was in college, there were a lot of four-letter words you couldn't
say in front of girls. Now you can say them. But you can't say "girls".
%
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam:
I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
-- Woody Allen
%
When I was little, I went into a pet shop and they asked how big I'd get.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an act
of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A group of
seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a six-year-old. "It is
always so," my mother said. "You do things together which not one of you
would think of doing alone." ... Wherever one looks in the world of human
organization, collective responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards.
The military establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems
to have been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
-- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
%
When I was young we didn't have MTV; we
had to take drugs and go to concerts.
-- Steven Pearl
%
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot
remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to
pieces like this but we all have to do it.
-- Mark Twain
%
When I woke up this morning, my girlfriend asked if I had
slept well. I said, "No, I made a few mistakes."
-- Steven Wright
%
When I works, I works hard.
When I sits, I sits easy.
And when I thinks, I goes to sleep.
%
When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again. The fans with the cigars and
the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in
the street and foreign presidents. It's goin' to be back to the fighter who
comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says
he's in shape. Old hat. I was the onliest boxer in history people asked
questions like a senator.
-- Muhammad Ali
%
When I'm good, I'm great; but when I'm bad, I'm better.
-- Mae West
%
When in charge ponder,
When in doubt mumble,
When in trouble delegate.
%
When in doubt, do it. It's much easier
to apologize than to get permission.
-- Grace Murray Hopper
%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%
When in doubt, follow your heart.
%
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
-- Raymond Chandler
%
When in doubt, lead trump.
%
When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.
-- James H. Boren
%
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain
%
When in doubt, use brute force.
-- Ken Thompson
%
When in panic, fear and doubt,
Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
%
When in this world the headlines read
Of those whose hearts are filled with greed
Who rob and steal from those who need
The cry goes up with blinding speed for Underdog (UNDERDOG!)
Underdog (UNDERDOG!)
Speed of lightning, roar of thunder
Fighting all who rob or plunder
Underdog (ah-ah-ah-ah)
Underdog
UNDERDOG!
%
When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.
%
When it comes to broken marriages most husbands will split the blame --
half his wife's fault, and half her mother's.
%
When it comes to helping you, some people stop at nothing.
%
When it is not necessary to make a decision,
it is necessary not to make a decision.
%
When it's dark enough you can see the stars.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
When license fees are too high,
users do things by hand.
When the management is too intrusive,
users lose their spirit.
Hack for the user's benefit.
Trust them; leave them alone.
%
When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
-- Laurie Anderson
%
When man calls an animal "vicious", he usually means that it
will attempt to defend itself when he tries to kill it.
%
When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment results.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
When my brain begins to reel from my
literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
-- Ignatius Reilly
%
When my fist clenches crack it open,
Before I use it and lose my cool.
When I smile tell me some bad news,
Before I laugh and act like a fool.
And if I swallow anything evil,
Put you finger down my throat.
And if I shiver please give me a blanket,
Keep me warm let me wear your coat
No one knows what it's like to be the bad man,
to be the sad man.
Behind blue eyes.
No one knows what its like to be hated,
to be fated,
To telling only lies.
-- The Who
%
When my freshman roommate at Cornell found out I was Jewish, she was,
at her request, moved to a different room. She told me she didn't
think she had ever seen a Jew before. My only response was to begin
wearing a small Star of David on a chain around my neck. I had not
become a more observing Jew; rather, discovering that the label of
Jew was offensive to others made me want to let people know who I
was and what I believed in. Similarly, after talking to these young
women -- one of whom told me that she didn't think she had ever met
a feminist -- I've taken to identifying myself as a feminist in the
most unlikely of situations.
-- Susan Bolotin, "Voices From the Post-Feminist Generation"
%
When neither their poverty nor their honor is
touched, the majority of men live content.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
%
When nothing can possibly go wrong, it will.
%
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
-- Dylan Thomas
%
When one knows women one pities men,
but when one studies men, one excuses women.
-- Horne Tooke
%
When one wants to get rid of an unsupportable pressure, one needs hashish.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony concerts,
she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years -- and I find I mind
it less and less."
-- Louise Andrews Kent
%
When operating the diopter adjustment knob with your eye to the view-
finder, be careful not to put your fingers or fingernails in your eye.
-- found in the users manual of the Nikon D2x camera,
a camera for professional photographers
%
When Oxygen Tech played Hydrogen U.
The Game had just begun, when Hydrogen scored two fast points
And Oxygen still had none
Then Oxygen scored a single goal
And thus it did remain, At Hydrogen 2 and Oxygen 1
Called because of rain.
%
When people have trouble communicating,
the least they can do is to shut up.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
When people say nothing, they don't necessarily mean nothing.
%
When pleasure remains, does it remain a pleasure?
%
When President Paul Doumer of France was assassinated in Paris in 1932,
newspapers differed in their versions of the event. This is from "Paris
was Yesterday: 1925-1939" by Janet Flanner, edited by Irving Drutman.
Taste varied as to his cry when he was shot down, the more popular
papers preferring his despairing "Oh, la la!," the graver dailies
favoring "Is it possible?" What few reported were his dying words:
"But what kind of chauffeur was it?" Having been told by his aides
not that he had been shot but that he had been struck by a taxi, the
President spent the last conscious moments of his life wondering how
an automobile got into the charity book sale at the Maison
Rothschild, where his assassination occurred.
%
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for
every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss
is away and you get twice as much done.
-- Daniel B. Luten
%
When smashing monuments, save the pedestals -- they always come in handy.
-- Stanislaw J. Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
%
When some people decide it's time for everyone to make
big changes, it means that they want you to change first.
%
When some people discover the truth, they just
can't understand why everybody isn't eager to hear it.
%
When someone makes a move We'll send them all we've got,
Of which we don't approve, John Wayne and Randolph Scott,
Who is it that always intervenes? Remember those exciting fighting scenes?
U.N. and O.A.S., To the shores of Tripoli,
They have their place, I guess, But not to Mississippoli,
But first, send the Marines! What do we do? We send the Marines!
For might makes right, Members of the corps
And till they've seen the light, All hate the thought of war:
They've got to be protected, They'd rather kill them off by
peaceful means.
All their rights respected, Stop calling it aggression--
Till somebody we like can be elected. We hate that expression!
We only want the world to know
That we support the status quo;
They love us everywhere we go,
So when in doubt, send the Marines!
-- Tom Lehrer, "Send The Marines"
%
When someone says "I want a programming language in
which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%
When speculation has done its worst, two plus two still equals four.
-- S. Johnson
%
When taxes are due, Americans tend to feel quite bled-white and blue.
%
When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple
of asterisked sentences:
It weighs less than 8 pounds.*
And costs less than $1,300.**
In tiny type were these "fuller explanations":
* Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out? Well, all
this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power
pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks
will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you
might not be able to figure this out for yourself.
** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if
you really want to. Or less.
-- Forbes
%
When the ax entered the forest, the trees said, "The handle is one of us!"
-- Turkish proverb
%
When the blind lead the blind they will both fall over the cliff.
-- Chinese proverb
%
When the bosses talk about improving productivity, they are never talking
about themselves.
%
When the candles are out all women are fair.
-- Plutarch
%
When the cup is full, carry it level.
%
When the doubt vanishes and the issue becomes evident, stupidity reigns.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
When the English language gets in my way, I walk over it.
-- Billy Sunday
%
When the fog came in on little cat feet last night, it left these little
muddy paw prints on the hood of my car.
%
When the going gets tough, everyone leaves.
-- Lynch
%
When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
-- Jon Carroll
%
When the going gets tough, the tough go grab a beer.
%
When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
%
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match
your problem, you modify the problem, not the remedy.
%
When the Guru administers, the users
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a sysop who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
And worst, one who is despised.
If you don't trust the users,
you make them untrustworthy.
The Guru doesn't talk, he hacks.
When his work is done,
the users say, "Amazing:
we implemented it, all by ourselves!"
%
When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.
Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take my place among the sellers.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Hollywood"
%
When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
nose bleed, which usually cures them of _t_h_a_t.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look
like a nail.
%
When the President does it, that means it is not illegal.
-- Richard Nixon
%
When the revolution comes, count your change.
%
When the salesman's car broke down, he walked to the nearest farmhouse to ask
if he could stay the night. The farmer agreed to put him up. "I live alone,"
he continued, "you can have the bedroom at the top of the stairs, to the
right."
"Oh, never mind," the disappointed salesman said. "I think I'm in
the wrong joke."
%
When the speaker and he to whom he is speaking do not understand, that is
metaphysics.
-- Voltaire
%
When the sun shineth, make hay.
-- John Heywood
%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
When the usher noticed a man stretched across three seats in a movie theatre,
he walked over and whispered, "I'm sorry, sir, but you're allowed only a single
seat." The man moaned, but did not budge. "Sir," the user said more loudly,
"if you don't move, I'll have to call a manager." The man moaned again but
stayed where he was. The usher left, and returned with the manager, who, after
several more attempts at dislodging the fellow, called the police.
The cop took a look at the reclining man and said, "All right, boyo,
what's your name?"
"Samuel," he mumbled.
"And where're you from, Sam?"
"The balcony."
%
When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
plane will fly.
-- Donald Douglas
%
When the wind is great, bow before it;
when the wind is heavy, yield to it.
%
When there are two conflicting versions of the story, the wise course
is to believe the one in which people appear at their worst.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%
When there is an old maid in the house, a watch dog is unnecessary.
-- Balzac
%
When things go well, expect something to
explode, erode, collapse or just disappear.
%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
When users see one GUI as beautiful,
other user interfaces become ugly.
When users see some programs as winners,
other programs become lossage.
Pointers and NULLs reference each other.
High level and assembler depend on each other.
Double and float cast to each other.
High-endian and low-endian define each other.
While and until follow each other.
Therefore the Guru
programs without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Warnings arise and he lets them come;
processes are swapped and he lets them go.
He has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When his work is done, he deletes it.
That is why it lasts forever.
%
When we are planning for posterity,
we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine
%
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone. Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge. Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
-- General James Gavin
%
When we talk of tomorrow, the gods laugh.
%
When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
except our fingertips will have been singed.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
When we write programs that "learn",
it turns out we do and they don't.
%
When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.
-- H. L. Mencken, "Sententiae"
%
When women love us, they forgive us everything, even our crimes;
when they do not love us, they give us credit for nothing, not
even our virtues.
-- Balzac
%
When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
-- Roger Zelazny, "Doorways in the Sand"
%
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation
of a topic, it is well to have the answer firmly in hand, so that you can
proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the
goal.
-- Amrom Katz
%
When you are at Rome live in the Roman style;
when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.
-- St. Ambrose
%
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
%
When you are working hard, get up and retch every so often.
%
When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later
something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend
your parents' limitations... At the same time, you feel sure that in all
the wilderness of possibility; in all the forests of opinion, there is a
vital something that can be known -- known and grasped. That we will
eventually know it, and convert the whole mystery into a coherent
narrative. So that then one's true life -- the point of everything --
will emerge from the mist into a pure light, into total comprehension.
But it isn't like that at all. But if it isn't, where did the idea come
from, to torture and unsettle us?
-- Brian Aldiss, "Helliconia Summer"
%
When you become used to never being alone,
you may consider yourself Americanized.
%
When you dial a wrong number you never get a busy signal.
%
When you die, you lose a very important part of your life.
-- Brooke Shields
%
When you dig another out of trouble,
you've got a place to bury your own.
%
When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.
%
When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%
When you find yourself in danger,
When you're threatened by a stranger,
When it looks like you will take a lickin'...
There is one thing you should learn,
When there is no one else to turn to,
Caaaall for Super Chicken!! (**bwuck-bwuck-bwuck-bwuck**)
Caaaall for Super Chicken!!
%
When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf,
And the world makes you King for a day,
Then go to the mirror and look at yourself,
And see what that guy has to say.
For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Who judgement upon you must pass.
The feller whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the guy staring back from the glass.
He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,
For he's with you clear up to the end,
And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may be like Jack Horner and "chisel" a plum,
And think you're a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
You can fool the whole world down the pathway of years,
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the guy in the glass.
-- "The Guy in the Glass"
Copyright 1934, Dale Wimbrow (1895-1954)
[Pelf is a Middle English word for wealth or riches,
especially when acquired dishonestly. Ed.]
%
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve
people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.
-- Norm Crosby
%
When you go out to buy, don't show your silver.
%
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever
remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Sign of Four"
%
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite
answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have
acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up to him.
-- R. A. Lafferty
%
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
-- Winston Churchill, on formal declarations of war
%
When you jump for joy, beware that no-one
moves the ground from beneath your feet.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
%
When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
know the answer either.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
When you live in a sick society,
just about everything you do is wrong.
%
When you make your mark in the world,
watch out for guys with erasers.
-- The Wall Street Journal
%
When you meet a master swordsman,
show him your sword.
When you meet a man who is not a poet,
do not show him your poem.
-- Rinzai, ninth century Zen master
%
When you overesteem great hackers,
more users become cretins.
When you develop encryption,
more users become crackers.
The Guru leads
by emptying user's minds
and increasing their quotas,
by weakening their ambition
and toughening their resolve.
When users lack knowledge and desire,
management will not try to interfere.
Practice not-looping,
and everything will fall into place.
%
When you say that you agree to a thing in principle, you mean that
you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.
-- Otto von Bismarck
%
When you speak to others for their own good it's advice;
when they speak to you for your own good it's interference.
%
When you try to make an impression, the
chances are that is the impression you will make.
%
When you were born, a big chance was taken for you.
%
When your conscious becomes unconscious, you are drunk.
When your unconscious becomes conscious, you are stoned.
%
When your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
-- Leonard Cohen, "Sisters of Mercy"
%
When your memory goes, forget it!
%
When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.
-- Henry J. Kaiser
%
When you're a Yup
You're a Yup all the way
From your first slice of Brie
To your last Cabernet.
When you're a Yup
You're not just a dreamer
You're making things happen
You're driving a Beamer.
%
When you're away, I'm restless, lonely
Wretched, bored, dejected, only
Here's the rub, my darling dear,
I feel the same when you are hear.
-- Samuel Hoffenstein, "Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing"
%
When you're bored with yourself, marry, and be bored with someone else.
-- David Pryce-Jones
%
When you're dining out and you suspect
something's wrong, you're probably right.
%
When you're down and out, lift up your
voice and shout, "I'M DOWN AND OUT"!
%
When you're in command, command.
-- Admiral Nimitz
%
When you're married to someone, they take you for granted ... when
you're living with someone it's fantastic ... they're so frightened
of losing you they've got to keep you satisfied all the time.
-- Nell Dunn, "Poor Cow"
%
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
%
When you're ready to give up the struggle, who can you surrender to?
%
WHEN YOU'RE RIDING IN A TIME MACHINE way far into the future, don't stick
your elbow out the window or it'll turn into a fossil.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
WHENEVER ANYBODY SAYS he's struggling to become a human being I have to
laugh because the apes beat him to it by about a million years. Struggle
to become a parrot or something.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988
%
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean "not really".
-- Dave Parnas
%
Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children
to spend their weekends with?
-- Rita Rudner
%
Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.
%
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel
a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct
is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me.
Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.
-- Jack Handey
%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean-favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king --
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.
-- E. A. Robinson, "Richard Cory"
%
Whenever someone tells you to take their advice,
you can be pretty sure that they're not using it.
%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-- Mark Twain
"Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
%
Whenever you find that you are on the
side of the majority, it is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain
%
Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and
weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes
and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons.
-- Popular Mechanics, March 1949
%
Where am I? Who am I? Am I? I
%
Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?
-- Mark A. Matthews, to Wes Peters, circa 1996
%
Where are the calculations that go with a calculated risk?
%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
Oh, dear, where can the matter be
When it's converted to energy?
There is a slight loss of parity.
Johnny's so long at the fair.
%
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
-- Karl Kraus
%
Where do you go to get anorexia?
-- Shelley Winters
%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Where is John Carson now that we need him?
-- RLG
%
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat.
-- Christopher Morley
%
Where, oh, where, are you tonight?
Why did you leave me here all alone?
I searched the world over, and I thought I'd found true love.
You met another, and *PPHHHLLLBBBBTTT*, you wuz gone.
Gloom, despair and agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive misery.
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.
Oh, gloom, despair and agony on me.
-- Hee Haw
%
Where the hell is Wall Drug?
%
Where the system is concerned, you're not allowed to ask "Why?".
%
Where there are visible vapors, having their prevenance
in ignited carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
%
Where there is much light there is also much shadow.
-- Goethe
%
Where there's a whip there's a way.
%
Where there's a will, there's a relative.
%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%
Where will it all end?
Probably somewhere near where it all began.
%
Where you stand depends on where you sit.
-- Rufus Miles, HEW
%
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
-- Wittgenstein
%
Where's the man could ease a heart
Like a satin gown?
-- Dorothy Parker, "The Satin Dress"
%
...whether it is better to spend a life not knowing what you want or to
spend a life knowing exactly what you want and that you will never have it.
-- Richard Shelton
%
Whether weary or unweary, O man, do not rest,
Do not cease your single-handed struggle.
Go on, do not rest.
-- An old Gujarati hymn
%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
%
Which would you rather have, a bursting
planet or an earthquake here and there?
-- John Joseph Lynch
%
While anyone can admit to themselves they were
wrong, the true test is admission to someone else.
%
While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
-- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
November 26, 1792
%
While having never invented a sin,
I'm trying to perfect several.
%
While he was in New York on location for _Bronco Billy_ (1980), Clint
Eastwood agreed to a television interview. His host, somewhat hostile,
began by defining a Clint Eastwood picture as a violent, ruthless,
lawless, and bloody piece of mayhem, and then asked Eastwood himself to
define a Clint Eastwood picture. "To me," said Eastwood calmly, "what
a Clint Eastwood picture is, is one that I'm in."
-- Boller and Davis, "Hollywood Anecdotes"
%
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
-- Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to hardware interrupts.]
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine.
-- William Wordsworth, "She Was a Phantom of Delight"
[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
referring to software interrupts.]
%
While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
-- Edward Stevenson
%
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly
lets you choose your own form of misery.
%
While most peoples' opinions change,
the conviction of their correctness never does.
%
While passing a vacant lot late one night, a jogger was stopped by a man who
held a gun to his head.
"Who are you for," the gunman snarled, "Bush or Dukakis?"
The runner thought for a moment, shifting nervously from foot to foot,
as the muzzle pressed harder into his temple.
"Bush or Dukakis?" the mugger insisted.
Finally, the jogger shrugged his shoulders, closed his eyes and bowed
his head. "Go ahead and shoot."
%
While there's life, there's hope.
-- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
%
While walking down a crowded
City street the other day,
I heard a little urchin
To a comrade turn and say,
"Say, Chimmey, lemme tell youse,
I'd be happy as a clam
If only I was de feller dat
Me mudder t'inks I am.
"She t'inks I am a wonder, My friends, be yours a life of toil
An' she knows her little lad Or undiluted joy,
Could never mix wit' nuttin' You can learn a wholesome lesson
Dat was ugly, mean or bad. From that small, untutored boy.
Oh, lot o' times I sit and t'ink Don't aim to be an earthly saint
How nice, 'twould be, gee whiz! With eyes fixed on a star:
If a feller was de feller Just try to be the fellow that
Dat his mudder t'inks he is." Your mother thinks you are.
-- Will S. Adkin, "If I Only Was the Fellow"
%
While we are sleeping, two-thirds of the world is plotting to do us in.
-- Dean Rusk
%
While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's
still very reassuring to know that it's still there.
%
While you recently had your problems on the run,
they've regrouped and are making another attack.
%
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Whip it, whip it good!
%
Whistler's Law:
You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.
%
Whistler's mother is off her rocker.
%
White dwarf seeks red giant for binary relationship.
%
White House carpenters have reworked the master bedroom, remodeling it
so that Ronnie can sleep with his head in the hall. That way, by the
time he wakes up, somebody will have already shined his hair.
%
Whitehead's Law:
The obvious answer is always overlooked.
%
White's Statement:
Don't lose heart!
Owen's Commentary on White's Statement:
...they might want to cut it out...
Byrd's Addition to Owen's Commentary:
...and they want to avoid a lengthy search.
%
Who are you?
%
Who can take the demands of the SDS seriously?
-- Nathan Pusey
%
Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with
our new Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process...
%
Who dat who say "who dat" when I say "who dat"?
-- Hattie McDaniel
%
Who does not love wine, women, and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long.
-- Johann Heinrich Voss
%
Who does not trust enough will not be trusted.
-- Lao Tsu
%
Who goeth a-borrowing goeth a-sorrowing.
-- Thomas Tusser
%
Who is D.B. Cooper, and where is he now?
%
Who is John Galt?
%
Who is W.O. Baker, and why is he saying those terrible things about me?
%
Who loves me will also love my dog.
-- John Donne
%
Who loves not wisely but too well
Will look on Helen's face in hell,
But he whose love is thin and wise
Will view John Knox in Paradise.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
-- A. E. Housman
%
Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?
%
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%
Who on earth would eat a charred caterpillar!?
No, no, you SINGE 'em! You SINGE 'em and eat 'em!
%
Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
-- Harry Warner, Warner Bros. Pictures, c. 1927
%
Who to himself is law no law doth need,
offends no law, and is a king indeed.
-- George Chapman
%
Who took the MMMMMM out of MURINE?
%
Who was that masked man?
%
Who will take care of the world after you're gone?
%
Whoever dies with the most toys wins.
%
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not
become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks
into you.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
Whoever named it "necking" was a poor judge of anatomy.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Whoever tells a lie cannot be pure in heart -- and only the
pure in heart can make a good soup.
-- Ludwig Van Beethoven
%
Whoever would lie usefully should lie seldom.
%
"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
-- George Ade
%
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive insane.
%
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
%
Whom the mad would destroy, first they make Gods.
-- Bernard Levin
%
Who's on first?
%
Who's scruffy-looking?
-- Han Solo
%
Why a man would want a wife is a big mystery to some people.
Why a man would want *two* wives is a bigamystery.
%
Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
-- Paul Simon
%
Why are programmers non-productive?
Because their time is wasted in meetings.
Why are programmers rebellious?
Because the management interferes too much.
Why are the programmers resigning one by one?
Because they are burnt out.
Having worked for poor management, they no longer value their jobs.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
%
Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like "Amadeus?" I could
have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing.
-- Ian Shoales
%
Why are you so hard to ignore?
%
Why are you watching
The washing machine?
I love entertainment
So long as it's clean.
Professor Doberman:
While the preceding poem is unarguably a change from the guarded
pessimism of "The Hound of Heaven," it cannot be regarded as an unqualified
improvement. Obscurity is of value only when it tends to clarify the poetic
experience. As much as one is compelled to admire the poem's technique, one
must question whether its byplay of complex literary allusions does not in
fact distract from the unity of the whole. In the final analysis, one
receives the distinct impression that the poem's length could safely have
been reduced by a factor of eight or ten without sacrificing any of its
meaning. It is to be hoped that further publication of this poem can be
suspended pending a thorough investigation of its potential subversive
implications.
%
Why attack God? He may be as miserable as we are.
-- Erik Satie
%
Why be a man when you can be a success?
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
Why be difficult, when, with just a
little more effort, you can be impossible?
%
Why bother building anymore nuclear
warheads until we use the ones we have?
%
Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of
movement unless it was to avoid responsibility with?
%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
automation?
%
Why do mathematicians insist on using words that already have another
meaning? "It is the complex case that is easier to deal with." "If it
doesn't happen at a corner, but at an edge, it nonetheless happens at a
corner."
%
Why do seagulls live near the sea?
'Cause if they lived near the bay, they'd be called baygulls.
%
Why do so many foods come packaged in plastic?
It's quite uncanny.
%
Why do they call a fast a fast, when it goes so slow?
%
Why do they call it baby-SITTING when all you do is run after them?
%
Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
%
Why do we want intelligent terminals
when there are so many stupid users?
%
Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away?
-- Carl Sandburg
%
Why does a ship carry cargo and a truck carry shipments?
%
Why does man kill? He kills for food.
And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps and California have
more lawyers?
New Jersey had first choice.
%
Why doesn't everybody leave everybody else the hell alone?
-- Jimmy Durante
%
Why don't elephants eat penguins ?
Because they can't get the wrappers off ...
%
Why don't somebody print the truth about our present economic condition?
We spent years of wild buying on credit, everything under the sun, whether
we needed it or not, and now we are having to pay for it, howling like a
pet coon. This would be a great world to dance in if we didn't have to
pay the fiddler.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
%
Why don't you fix your little problem... and light this candle?
-- Alan Shepard, the first American into space, Gemini program
%
Why, every one as they like; as the good woman said when she
kissed her cow.
-- Rabelais
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I have to answer all of my "occupant" letters.
-- None of my socks match.
-- I'm having all my plants neutered.
-- I changed the lock on my door and now I can't get out.
-- My yucca plant is feeling yucky.
-- I'm touring China with a wok band.
-- My chocolate-appreciation class meets that night.
-- I'm running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student
named Basil Metabolism.
-- There are important world issues that need worrying about.
-- I'm going to count the bristles in my toothbrush.
-- I prefer to remain an enigma.
-- I think you want the OTHER Peggy/Cathy/Mike/whomever.
-- I feel a song coming on.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I have to draw "Cubby" for an art scholarship.
-- I have to sit up with a sick ant.
-- I'm trying to be less popular.
-- My bathroom tiles need grouting.
-- I'm waiting to see if I'm already a winner.
-- My subconscious says no.
-- I just picked up a book called "Glue in Many Lands" and I
can't seem to put it down.
-- My favorite commercial is on TV.
-- I have to study for my blood test.
-- I've been traded to Cincinnati.
-- I'm having my baby shoes bronzed.
-- I have to go to court for kitty littering.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I have to floss my cat.
-- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
-- I need to spend more time with my blender.
-- It wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
-- It's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish/radio.
-- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
-- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
-- I'm due at the bakery to watch the buns rise.
-- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
-- I have some really hard words to look up.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I'm trying to see how long I can go without saying yes.
-- I'm attending the opening of my garage door.
-- The monsters haven't turned blue yet, and I have to eat more dots.
-- I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian.
-- I have to fulfill my potential.
-- I don't want to leave my comfort zone.
-- It's too close to the turn of the century.
-- I have to bleach my hare.
-- I'm worried about my vertical hold knob.
-- I left my body in my other clothes.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
-- I've been scheduled for a karma transplant.
-- I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture.
-- It's my parakeet's bowling night.
-- I'm building a plant from a kit.
-- There's a disturbance in the Force.
-- I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling.
-- I'm teaching my ferret to yodel.
-- My crayons all melted together.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but ...
-- I have to floss my cat.
-- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
-- I need to spend more time with my blender.
-- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
-- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
-- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
-- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
-- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
-- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
-- I have some really hard words to look up.
-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
%
Why is it called a funny bone when it hurts so much?
%
Why is it taking so long for her to bring out all the good in you?
%
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?
It is because we are not the person involved.
-- Mark Twain
%
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
-- Steven Wright
%
Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Why isn't there some cheap and easy
way to prove how much she means to me?
%
Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
you knowing nothing?
-- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
%
Why my thoughts are my own, when they are in, but when they are out they
are another's.
-- Susanna Martin, executed for witchcraft, 1681
%
Why not? -- What? -- Why not? -- Why should I not send it? -- Why should I
not dispatch it? -- Why not? -- Strange! I don't know why I shouldn't --
Well, then -- You will do me this favor. -- Why not? -- Why should you not
do it? -- Why not? -- Strange! I shall do the same for you, when you want
me to. Why not? Why should I not do it for you? Strange! Why not? --
I can't think why not.
-- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, from a letter to his cousin Maria,
"The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele
%
Why not go out on a limb?
Isn't that where the fruit is?
%
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
children open their old-fashioned presents.
Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
and I get this cretin TOP?"
Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
Why on earth do people buy old bottles of wine when they can get a
fresh one for a quarter of the price?
%
Why was I born with such contemporaries?
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits that
unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant? Is it
not a spectacle to make the angels laugh? We are a company of ignorant
beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only be
incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by falling
into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for our daily
needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe the ultimate
origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures to declare that
we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map of our infinitesimal
parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that he will be damned to all
eternity for his faithlessness.
-- Leslie Stephen, "An Agnostic's Apology",
Fortnightly Review, 1876
%
Why won't you let me kiss you goodnight? Is it something I said?
-- Tom Ryan
%
Why would anyone want to be called "Later"?
%
Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
-- John L. Shelton
%
Why you say you no bunny rabbit when you have little powder-puff tail?
-- The Tasmanian Devil
%
Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb all
available revenue and then some.
%
Wilcox's Law:
A pat on the back is only a few
centimeters from a kick in the pants.
%
Will Rogers never met you.
%
Will you loan me $20.00 and only give me ten of it?
That way, you will owe me ten, and I'll owe you ten, and we'll be even!
%
Will your long-winded speeches never end?
What ails you that you keep on arguing?
-- Job 16:3
%
Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected,
anything may be proven by statistical methods.
%
Willie in the cauldron fell; Willie saw some dynamite,
See the grief on mother's brow; Couldn't understand it quite;
Mother loved her darling well -- Curiosity never pays:
Willie's quite hard-boiled by now. It rained Willie seven days.
Little Willie with a shout, William in a nice new sash,
Gouged the baby's eyeballs out; Fell in the fire and burned to an ash.
Stamped on them to make them pop. Now, although the room grows chilly,
Mother cried, "Now, William, stop!" I haven't the heart to poke poor Billy.
William with a thirst for gore, Little Willie mean as hell,
Nailed the baby to the door. Threw his sister in the well!
Mother said, with humor quaint: Said his mother when drawing water,
"Careful, Will, don't mar the paint." 'sure is hard to raise a daughter.'
-- Harry Graham, "Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes", 1899
%
Wilner's Observation:
All conversations with a potato should be conducted in private.
%
Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.
-- Vince Lombardi
%
Winning isn't everything, but losing isn't anything.
%
Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity...
If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your
head... if you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick...
-- Steven Wright
%
Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours."
-- Robert Byrne
%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house
as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%
[Wisdom] is a tree of life to those laying
hold of her, making happy each one holding her fast.
-- Proverbs 3:18, NSV
%
Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.
-- J. Winter Smith
%
Wisdom is rarely found on the best-seller list.
%
Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.
-- Frank Tyger
%
Wit, n.:
The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery...
by leaving it out.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
try to be a fraud and a half.
-- Otto von Bismarck
%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
With all the fancy scientists in the world,
why can't they just once build a nuclear balm.
%
With all the talent around, it's sort of
amazing that a woman could be up here with us.
-- Ralph Kiner, on introducing an award winner
%
With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.
%
With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time
they make a law it's a joke.
-- W. Rogers
%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules,
and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there
is no such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
%
With her body, woman is more sincere than man; but with her mind
she lies. And when she lies, she does not believe herself.
-- Tolstoy
%
With listening comes wisdom, with speaking repentance.
%
With reasonable men I will reason;
with humane men I will plead;
but to tyrants I will give no quarter.
-- William Lloyd Garrison
%
With the end of the football season, a star player for the college team
celebrated the relaxation of team curfew by attending a late-night campus
party. Soon after arriving, he became captivated by a beautiful coed and
eased into a conversation with her by asking if she met many dates at
parties.
"Oh, I have a three point eight, so I'm much more attracted to the
strong academic types than to the dumb party animals," she said. "What's
your G.P.A.?"
Grinning ear to ear, the jock boasted, "I get about twenty-five in
the city and forty on the highway."
%
With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end of
it. I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too
close. Like catching snakes.
-- Marlon Brando
%
Within a computer, natural language is unnatural.
%
Within a month [in 1969] I had met the first of a small but not uninfluential
community of people who violently opposed SALT for a simple reason: It might
keep America from developing a first-strike capability against the Soviet
Union. I'll never forget being lectured by an Air Force colonel about how
we should have "nuked" the Soviets in late 1940s before they got The Bomb.
I was told that if SALT would go away, we'd soon have the capability to nuke
them again -- and this time we'd use it.
-- Roger Molander, former nuclear strategist for the
White House's National Security Council, Washington
Post, 21 March, 1982
%
Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the
way he did. In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an
indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less
important to him than his table or his white robe.
-- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%
Without fools there would be no wisdom.
%
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
%
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
%
Without love intelligence is dangerous;
without intelligence love is not enough.
-- Ashley Montagu
%
With/Without - and who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about?
-- Pink Floyd
%
Woke up this mornin' an' I had myself a beer,
Yeah, Ah woke up this mornin' an' I had myself a beer
The future's uncertain and the end is always near.
-- Jim Morrison, "Roadhouse Blues"
%
Woke up this morning, don't believe what I saw. Hundred billion
bottles washed up on the shore. Seems I never noted being alone.
Hundred billion castaways looking for a call.
%
WOLF:
A man who knows all the ankles.
%
Woman: "Is Yoo-Hoo hyphenated?"
Yogi Berra: "No, ma'am, its not even carbonated."
%
Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them.
-- Dumas
%
Woman is generally so bad that the difference
between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.
-- Tolstoy
%
Woman, n.:
An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and
having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Woman on Street: Sir, you are drunk; very, very drunk.
Winston Churchill: Madame, you are ugly; very, very ugly.
I shall be sober in the morning.
%
Woman was taken out of man -- not out of his head, to rule over him; nor
out of his feet, to be trampled under by him; but out of his side, to be
equal to him -- under his arm, that he might protect her, and near his heart
that he might love her.
-- Henry
%
Woman would be more charming if one could
fall into her arms without falling into her hands.
-- DeGourmont
%
Woman's advice has little value, but he who won't take it is a fool.
-- Cervantes
%
Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
(1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
(2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
(3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
(4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
(5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
-- Rich Kulawiec
%
Women are a problem, but if you haven't already guessed,
they're the kind of problem I enjoy wrestling with.
-- Warren Beatty
%
Women are all alike. When they're maids they're mild as milk:
once make 'em wives, and they lean their backs against their
marriage certificates, and defy you.
-- Jerrold
%
Women are always anxious to urge bachelors to matrimony; is it
from charity, or revenge?
-- Gustave Vapereau
%
Women are just like men, only different.
%
Women are like elephants to me: I like to
look at them, but I wouldn't want to own one.
-- W.C. Fields
%
Women are not much, but they are the best other sex we have.
-- Herold
%
Women are nothing but machines for producing children.
-- Napoleon
%
Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
-- Stephens
%
Women aren't as mere as they used to be.
-- Pogo
%
Women can keep a secret just as well as men,
but it takes more of them to do it.
%
Women come and go, but BSD is forever.
-- Derek Young
%
Women complain about sex more than men. Their gripes fall into two
categories: (1) Not enough and (2) Too much.
-- Ann Landers
%
Women, deceived by men, want to marry them; it is a kind of revenge
as good as any other.
-- Philippe De Remi
%
Women give themselves to God when the
Devil wants nothing more to do with them.
-- Arnould
%
Women give to men the very gold of their lives. Possibly;
but they invariably want it back in such very small change.
-- Wilde
%
Women in love consist of a little sighing, a little
crying, a little dying -- and a good deal of lying.
-- Ansey
%
Women of genius commonly have masculine faces, figures and manners.
In transplanting brains to an alien soil God leaves a little of the
original earth clinging to the roots.
-- Bierce
%
Women reason with the heart and are much less often wrong
than men who reason with the head.
-- DeLescure
%
Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity,
but never a man who misses one.
-- Charles De Talleyrand-Perigord
%
Women treat us just as humanity treats its gods. They worship
us and are always bothering us to do something for them.
-- Wilde
%
Women want their men to be cops. They want you to punish them and tell
them what the limits are. The only thing that women hate worse from a man
than being slapped is when you get on your knees and say you're sorry.
-- Mort Sahl
%
Women waste men's lives and think they have
indemnified them by a few gracious words.
-- Balzac
%
Women, when they are not in love, have all
the cold blood of an experienced attorney.
-- Balzac
%
Women, when they have made a sheep of a man,
always tell him that he is a lion with a will of iron.
-- Balzac
%
Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination.
%
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore;
not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or
graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.
-- Amiel
%
Women's Libbers are OK, I just wouldn't want my sister to marry one.
%
Women's virtue is man's greatest invention.
-- Cornelia Otis Skinner
%
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher,
and philosophy begins in wonder.
Socrates, quoting Plato
%
Wonderful day.
Your hangover just makes it seem terrible.
%
Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
come back.
Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
although their insurance rates went way up.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
Woodward's Law:
A theory is better than its explanation.
%
Woody: What's the story, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: The Bobbsey twins go to the brewery.
Let's just cut to the happy ending.
-- Cheers, Airport V
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, there's a cold one waiting for you.
Norm: I know, and if she calls, I'm not here.
-- Cheers, Bar Wars II: The Woodman Strikes Back
Sam: Beer, Norm?
Norm: Have I gotten that predictable? Good.
-- Cheers, Don't Paint Your Chickens
%
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, Jack Frost nipping at your nose?
Norm: Yep, now let's get Joe Beer nipping at my liver, huh?
-- Cheers, Feeble Attraction
Sam: What are you up to Norm?
Norm: My ideal weight if I were eleven feet tall.
-- Cheers, Bar Wars III: The Return of Tecumseh
Woody: Nice cold beer coming up, Mr. Peterson.
Norm: You mean, `Nice cold beer going *down* Mr. Peterson.'
-- Cheers, Loverboyd
%
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, what do you say to a cold one?
Norm: See you later, Vera, I'll be at Cheers.
-- Cheers, Norm's Last Hurrah
Sam: Well, look at you. You look like the cat that
swallowed the canary.
Norm: And I need a beer to wash him down.
-- Cheers, Norm's Last Hurrah
Woody: Would you like a beer, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: No, I'd like a dead cat in a glass.
-- Cheers, Little Carla, Happy at Last, Part 2
%
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, what's up?
Norm: The warranty on my liver.
-- Cheers, Breaking In Is Hard to Do
Sam: What can I do for you, Norm?
Norm: Open up those beer taps and, oh, take the day off, Sam.
-- Cheers, Veggie-Boyd
Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Another layer for the winter, Wood.
-- Cheers, It's a Wonderful Wife
%
Woody: How are you feeling today, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Poor.
Woody: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
Norm: No, I meant `pour'.
-- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 3
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, what's the story?
Norm: Boy meets beer. Boy drinks beer. Boy gets another beer.
-- Cheers, The Proposal
Paul: Hey Norm, how's the world been treating you?
Norm: Like a baby treats a diaper.
-- Cheers, Tan 'n Wash
%
Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: Let's talk about what's going *in* Mr. Peterson. A beer, Woody.
-- Cheers, Paint Your Office
Sam: How's life treating you?
Norm: It's not, Sammy, but that doesn't mean you can't.
-- Cheers, A Kiss is Still a Kiss
Woody: Can I pour you a draft, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: A little early, isn't it Woody?
Woody: For a beer?
Norm: No, for stupid questions.
-- Cheers, Let Sleeping Drakes Lie
%
Woody: What's happening, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: The question is, Woody, why is it happening to me?
-- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 1
Woody: What's going down, Mr. Peterson?
Norm: My cheeks on this barstool.
-- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 2
Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, can I pour you a beer?
Norm: Well, okay, Woody, but be sure to stop me at one. ...
Eh, make that one-thirty.
-- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 2
%
Woolsey-Swanson Rule:
People would rather live with a problem they cannot
solve rather than accept a solution they cannot understand.
%
Words are the voice of the heart.
%
Words can never express what words can never express.
%
Words have a longer life than deeds.
-- Pindar
%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
%
WORK:
The blessed respite from screaming kids and
soap operas for which you actually get paid.
%
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do.
Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
-- Mark Twain
%
Work continues in this area.
-- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton
%
Work expands to fill the time available.
-- Cyril Northcote Parkinson, "The Economist", 1955
%
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near
the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people
to do so.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life.
-- Schulz
%
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
-- Mike Romanoff
%
Work like hell, tell everyone everything you know, close a deal with
a handshake, and have fun.
-- Harold "Doc" Edgerton, summing up his life's philosophy,
shortly before dying at the age of 86.
%
Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage
any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you
should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are,
and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
bargained for.
%
Work smarter, not harder, and be careful of your speling.
%
Work without a vision is slavery,
Vision without work is a pipe dream,
But vision with work is the hope of the world.
%
Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your
chairs.
%
Working with Julie Andrews is like getting hit over the head with
a valentine.
-- Christopher Plummer
%
World tensions have, if anything, increased in the quarter century
since H.G. Wells uttered his glum warning: "There is no more evil
thing on earth than race prejudice, none at all. I write deliberately
-- it is the worst single thing in life now. It justifies and holds
together more baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other sort of
error in the world."
-- Sydney Harris
%
World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
dress code!
%
Worrying is like rocking in a rocking chair--
It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.
%
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
August. The lift lines are the shortest, though.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Worst Month of the Year:
February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you
don't get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from
exploding bombs damage my videotapes?"
%
Worst Vegetable of the Year:
Brussel sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next year.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Worth seeing?
Yes, but not worth going to see.
%
Worthless.
-- Sir George Bidell Airy, KCB, MA, LLD, DCL, FRS, FRAS
(Astronomer Royal of Great Britain), estimating for the
Chancellor of the Exchequer the potential value of the
"analytical engine" invented by Charles Babbage, September
15, 1842.
%
Would it help if I got out and pushed?
-- Princess Leia Organa
%
Would that my hand were as swift as my tongue.
-- Alfieri
%
Would the last person to leave Michigan please turn out the lights?
%
Would ye both eat your cake and have your cake?
-- John Heywood
%
Would you care to drift aimlessly in my direction?
%
Would you care to view the ruins of my good intentions?
%
Would you people stop playing these stupid games?!?!?!!!!
%
Would you please have another look at my nose and put in that cocaine
stuff ...
-- Adolf Hitler, quoted by Dr. Giesing in Nuremberg
trial testimony, 1947
%
Would you *really* want to get on a non-stop flight?
-- George Carlin
%
Wouldn't this be a great world if being insecure and desperate were
a turn-on?
-- "Broadcast News"
%
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
-- Mark Twain
%
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
-- Anonymous
%
Write yourself a threatening letter and pen a defiant reply.
%
write-protect tab, n:
A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly left
by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error message
once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the momentary
inconvenience.
-- Robb Russon
%
Writers who use a computer swear to its liberating power in tones that bear
witness to the apocalyptic power of a new divinity. Their conviction results
from something deeper than mere gratitude for the computer's conveniences.
Every new medium of writing brings about new intensities of religious belief
and new schisms among believers. In the 16th century the printed book helped
make possible the split between Catholics and Protestants. In the 20th
century this history of tragedy and triumph is repeating itself as a farce.
Those who worship the Apple computer and those who put their faith in the IBM
PC are equally convinced that the other camp is damned or deluded. Each cult
holds in contempt the rituals and the laws of the other. Each thinks that it
is itself the one hope for salvation.
-- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
%
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
-- Frank Zappa
%
Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.
%
Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of
paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.
-- Gene Fowler
%
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
-- J. P. Donleavy
%
Writing software is more fun than working.
%
WRONG!
%
"Wrong," said Renner.
"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
%
WYSIWYG:
What You See Is What You Get.
%
X windows:
Accept any substitute.
If it's broke, don't fix it.
If it ain't broke, fix it.
Form follows malfunction.
The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
The trailing edge of software technology.
Armageddon never looked so good.
Japan's secret weapon.
You'll envy the dead.
Making the world safe for competing window systems.
Let it get in YOUR way.
The problem for your problem.
If it starts working, we'll fix it. Pronto.
It could be worse, but it'll take time.
Simplicity made complex.
The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
Flakey and built to stay that way.
One thousand monkeys. One thousand MicroVAXes. One thousand years.
X windows.
%
X windows:
It's not how slow you make it. It's how you make it slow.
The windowing system preferred by masochists 3 to 1.
Built to take on the world... and lose!
Don't try it 'til you've knocked it.
Power tools for Power Fools.
Putting new limits on productivity.
The closer you look, the cruftier we look.
Design by counterexample.
A new level of software disintegration.
No hardware is safe.
Do your time.
Rationalization, not realization.
Old-world software cruftsmanship at its finest.
Gratuitous incompatibility.
Your mother.
THE user interference management system.
You can't argue with failure.
You haven't died 'til you've used it.
The environment of today... tomorrow!
X windows.
%
X windows:
Something you can be ashamed of.
30%% more entropy than the leading window system.
The first fully modular software disaster.
Rome was destroyed in a day.
Warn your friends about it.
Climbing to new depths. Sinking to new heights.
An accident that couldn't wait to happen.
Don't wait for the movie.
Never use it after a big meal.
Need we say less?
Plumbing the depths of human incompetence.
It'll make your day.
Don't get frustrated without it.
Power tools for power losers.
A software disaster of Biblical proportions.
Never had it. Never will.
The software with no visible means of support.
More than just a generation behind.
Hindenburg. Titanic. Edsel.
X windows.
%
X windows:
The ultimate bottleneck.
Flawed beyond belief.
The only thing you have to fear.
Somewhere between chaos and insanity.
On autopilot to oblivion.
The joke that kills.
A disgrace you can be proud of.
A mistake carried out to perfection.
Belongs more to the problem set than the solution set.
To err is X windows.
Ignorance is our most important resource.
Complex nonsolutions to simple nonproblems.
Built to fall apart.
Nullifying centuries of progress.
Falling to new depths of inefficiency.
The last thing you need.
The de facto substandard.
Elevating brain damage to an art form.
X windows.
%
X windows:
We will dump no core before its time.
One good crash deserves another.
A bad idea whose time has come. And gone.
We make excuses.
It didn't even look good on paper.
You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later!
A new concept in abuser interfaces.
How can something get so bad, so quickly?
It could happen to you.
The art of incompetence.
You have nothing to lose but your lunch.
When uselessness just isn't enough.
More than a mere hindrance. It's a whole new barrier!
When you can't afford to be right.
And you thought we couldn't make it worse.
If it works, it isn't X windows.
%
X windows:
You'd better sit down.
Don't laugh. It could be YOUR thesis project.
Why do it right when you can do it wrong?
Live the nightmare.
Our bugs run faster.
When it absolutely, positively HAS to crash overnight.
There ARE no rules.
You'll wish we were kidding.
Everything you never wanted in a window system. And more.
Dissatisfaction guaranteed.
There's got to be a better way.
The next best thing to keypunching.
Leave the thrashing to us.
We wrote the book on core dumps.
Even your dog won't like it.
More than enough rope.
Garbage at your fingertips.
Incompatibility. Shoddiness. Uselessness.
X windows.
%
Xerox does it again and again and again and...
%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%
XEROX never does anything original.
%
XI:
If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would
get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty
times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all
the managers would fly off.
XII:
It costs a lot to build bad products.
XIII:
There are many highly successful businesses in the United States.
There are also many highly paid executives. The policy is not to
intermingle the two.
XIV:
After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes. There will
be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent
of every airplane's weight.
XV:
The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost
and two-thirds of the problems.
-- Norman Augustine
%
XIIdigitation, n.:
The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made
by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
XLI:
The more one produces, the less one gets.
XLII:
Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing.
XLIII:
Hardware works best when it matters the least.
XLIV:
Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a westerly
direction, preferably supersonic, crossing time zones to provide the
additional hours needed to fix the broken electronics.
XLV:
One should expect that the expected can be prevented, but the
unexpected should have been expected.
XLVI:
A billion saved is a billion earned.
-- Norman Augustine
%
XLVII:
Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water. The other
third is covered with auditors from headquarters.
XLVIII:
The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the
less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about.
Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less
until finally you spend all your time talking about nothing.
XLIX:
Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds.
L:
The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a
chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's -- but four times
as long as the official's who created it.
LI:
By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more
government workers than there are workers.
LII:
People working in the private sector should try to save money.
There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again.
-- Norman Augustine
%
XML is a giant step in no direction at all.
-- Erik Naggum
%
XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve your problem, you aren't using
enough of it.
-- XML guru Chris Maden
%
X-rated movies are all alike -- the only thing
they leave to the imagination is the plot.
%
XVI:
In the year 2054, the entire defense budget will purchase just one
aircraft. This aircraft will have to be shared by the Air Force and
Navy 3-1/2 days each per week except for leap year, when it will be
made available to the Marines for the extra day.
XVII:
Software is like entropy. It is difficult to grasp, weighs nothing,
and obeys the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e., it always increases.
XVIII:
It is very expensive to achieve high unreliability. It is not uncommon
to increase the cost of an item by a factor of ten for each factor of
ten degradation accomplished.
XIX:
Although most products will soon be too costly to purchase, there will
be a thriving market in the sale of books on how to fix them.
XX:
In any given year, Congress will appropriate the amount of funding
approved the prior year plus three-fourths of whatever change the
administration requests -- minus 4-percent tax.
-- Norman Augustine
%
XXI:
It's easy to get a loan unless you need it.
XXII:
If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock,
not selling advice.
XXIII:
Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is
currently estimated.
XXIV:
The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an
established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most
costly action known to man.
XXV:
A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an athlete
or a new canvas to an artist.
-- Norman Augustine
%
XXVI:
If a sufficient number of management layers are superimposed on each
other, it can be assured that disaster is not left to chance.
XXVII:
Rank does not intimidate hardware. Neither does the lack of rank.
XXVIII:
It is better to be the reorganizer than the reorganizee.
XXIX:
Executives who do not produce successful results hold on to their
jobs only about five years. Those who produce effective results
hang on about half a decade.
XXX:
By the time the people asking the questions are ready for the answers,
the people doing the work have lost track of the questions.
-- Norman Augustine
%
XXXI:
The optimum committee has no members.
XXXII:
Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of
turning problems into gold -- your problems into their gold.
XXXIII:
Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.
XXXIV:
The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work
is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed
randomly.
XXXV:
The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion,
the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give
the data authenticity.
-- Norman Augustine
%
XXXVI:
The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar
contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the
proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other
at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea.
XXXVII:
Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect.
The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.
XXXVIII:
The early bird gets the worm.
The early worm ... gets eaten.
XXXIX:
Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of
the year -- in either direction.
XL:
Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off.
-- Norman Augustine
%
Ya know, Quaker Oats make you feel good twice!
%
Yacc owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating
unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
-- Stephen C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgments"
%
Y'all hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some
rays and became a tangent ?
%
Yawd [noun, Bostonese]: the campus of Have Id.
-- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
%
Yea from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.
-- Hamlet
%
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic
operators together.
-- Steve Higgins
%
Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
%
Yeah, God is dead, he laughed himself to death.
%
Yeah, if it looks like a duck, and walks like
a duck, and quacks like a duck -- shoot it.
%
Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet. I've got eight slugs in me. One's lead,
the rest bourbon. The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver. I'm
a private eye.
-- Calvin
%
Yeah, there are more important things in life than money,
but they won't go out with you if you don't have any.
%
YEAR:
A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
%
Year Name James Bond Book
---- -------------------------------- -------------- ----
50's James Bond TV Series Barry Nelson
1962 Dr. No Sean Connery 1958
1963 From Russia With Love Sean Connery 1957
1964 Goldfinger Sean Connery 1959
1965 Thunderball Sean Connery 1961
1967* Casino Royale David Niven 1954
1967 You Only Live Twice Sean Connery 1964
1969 On Her Majesty's Secret Service George Lazenby 1963
1971 Diamonds Are Forever Sean Connery 1956
1973 Live And Let Die Roger Moore 1955
1974 The Man With The Golden Gun Roger Moore 1965
1977 The Spy Who Loved Me Roger Moore 1962 (novelette)
1979 Moonraker Roger Moore 1955
1981 For Your Eyes Only Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
1983 Octopussy Roger Moore 1965
1983* Never Say Never Again Sean Connery
1985 A View To A Kill Roger Moore 1960 (novelette)
1987 The Living Daylights Timothy Dalton 1965 (novelette)
* -- Not a Broccoli production
%
Year, n.:
A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
%
Yes, but which self do you want to be?
%
Yes, I was surprised how easy it was to cut the door off my cat.
-- James D. Nicoll
%
Yes, I've now got this nice little apartment in New York, one of those
L-shaped ones. Unfortunately, it's a lower case l.
-- Rita Rudner
%
Yes me, I got a bottle in front of me.
And Jimmy has a frontal lobotomy.
Just different ways to kill the pain the same.
But I'd rather have a bottle in front of me,
Than to have to have a frontal lobotomy.
I might be drunk but at least I'm not insane.
-- Randy Ansley M.D. (Dr. Rock)
%
Yes, we will be going to OSI, Mars and, Pluto, but not necessarily in
that order.
-- George Michaelson
%
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog.
Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog.
Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy
%
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today --
I think he's from the CIA.
%
Ye've also got to remember that ... respectable people do the most
astonishin' things to preserve their respectability. Thank God
I'm not respectable.
-- Ruthven Campbell Todd
%
Yevtushenko has... an ego that can crack crystal at a distance of twenty
feet.
-- John Cheever
%
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Yinkel, n.:
A person who combs his hair over his bald spot,
hoping no one will notice.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
You ain't learning nothing when you're talking.
%
You always have the option of pitching baseballs at empty
spray paint cans in a cul-de-sac in a Cleveland suburb.
%
You are a bundle of energy, always on the go.
%
You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
%
You are a taxi driver. Your cab is yellow and black, and has been in
use for only seven years. One of its windshield wipers is broken, and
the carburetor needs adjusting. The tank holds 20 gallons, but at the
moment is only three-quarters full. How old is the taxi driver?"
%
You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
%
You are a wish to be here wishing yourself.
-- Philip Whalen
%
You are absolute plate-glass. I see to the very back of your mind.
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
You are always busy.
%
You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.
%
You are an insult to my intelligence!
I demand that you log off immediately.
%
You are as I am with You.
%
You are capable of planning your future.
%
You are confused; but this is your normal state.
%
You are deeply attached to your friends and acquaintances.
%
You are destined to become the commandant of the
fighting men of the department of transportation.
%
You are dishonest, but never to the point of hurting a friend.
%
You are fairminded, just and loving.
%
You are false data.
%
You are farsighted, a good planner,
an ardent lover, and a faithful friend.
%
You are fighting for survival in your own sweet and gentle way.
%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%
You are here:
***
***
*********
*******
*****
***
*
But you're not all there.
%
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.
%
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
%
You are in the hall of the mountain king.
%
You are lost in the Swamps of Despair.
%
You are loved by the multitudes.
Have you been to the clinic lately?
%
You are magnetic in your bearing.
%
You are never given a wish without also being given the
power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
-- R. Bach,
"Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
%
You are not a fool just because you have done
something foolish -- only if the folly of it escapes you.
%
You are not dead yet.
But watch for further reports.
%
You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing
forbids you to reflect that she is growing older every minute. You are
avenged fourteen hundred and forty times a day.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
You are now in Atlanta, Georgia.
Please set your clocks back 200 years.
%
You are number 6! Who is number one?
%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
Made it pointless to think any more."
%
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
-- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."
-- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
Have you thought about taking a hike?"
"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
"Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
And don't realize that they've been had."
%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"
-- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
Do you really think this is quite fair?"
"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
"But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
And to stop me it's now far too late."
%
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
-- Lewis Carroll
%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%
You are scrupulously honest, frank, and straightforward.
Therefore you have few friends.
%
You are sick, twisted and perverted.
I like that in a person.
%
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
%
You are standing on my toes.
%
You are taking yourself far too seriously.
%
You are the only person to ever get this message.
%
You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who
points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get
attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra
chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a
gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a
rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy
trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a
vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyrannosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch
long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is
dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your
head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves
are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to
transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem
to have gotten yourself killed, as well.
You scored 0 out of 250 possible points.
That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer.
To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.
%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful,
but you spend too much time reading this sort of trash.
%
You ask what a nice girl will do?
She won't give an inch, but she won't say no.
-- Marcus Valerius Martialis
%
You attempt things that you do not even plan
because of your extreme stupidity.
%
You auto buy now.
%
You buttered your bread, now lie in it!
%
You buy a judge by weight, like iron in a junk yard. A justice of the
peace or a magistrate can be had for a five-dollar bill. In the
municipal courts, he will cost you ten. In the circuit or superior
courts, he wants fifteen. The state appellate courts or the state
supreme court is on a par with the Federal courts. By the time a judge
reaches such courts, he is middle-aged, thick around the middle, fat
between the ears. He's heavy. You can't buy a Federal judge for less
than a twenty-dollar bill.
-- Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik
%
You can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.
-- Tim Leary
%
You can always tell luck from ability by its duration.
%
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because
nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear
safety glasses.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
You can always tell the people that are forging the new frontier.
They're the ones with arrows sticking out of their backs.
%
You can approach truth, but never capture it.
Lies can be had 'round the corner.
-- Poul Henningsen [1894-1967]
%
You can be replaced by this computer.
%
You can bear anything if it isn't your own fault.
-- Katharine Fullerton Gerould
%
You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on.
-- Hepler, Systems Design 182, University of Washington
%
You can bring men from other parts of the world who are sane. And you
know what happens? At the very moment they cross those mountains...
they go mad. Instantaneously and automatically, at the very moment
they cross the mountains into California, they go insane.
-- Quentin Genter
%
You can build a throne out of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for very long.
-- Boris Yeltsin
%
You can cage a swallow, can't you,
but you can't swallow a cage, can you?
Girl, bathing on Bikini, eyeing boy,
finds boy eyeing bikini on bathing girl.
A man, a plan, a canal -- Panama!
-- The Palindromist
%
You can create your own opportunities this week.
Blackmail a senior executive.
%
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow.
-- Janis Joplin
%
You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
Why do you find that funny?
-- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350, University of Washington
%
You can do very well in speculation where
land or anything to do with dirt is concerned.
%
You can drive a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead.
%
You can fool all the people all of the time if the advertising is right
and the budget is big enough.
-- Joseph E. Levine
%
You can fool some of the people all of the time and all
of the people some of the time, but you can never fool your Mom.
%
You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can make a fool of yourself anytime.
%
You can fool some of the people some of the time,
and some of the people all of the time, and that is sufficient.
%
You can get *anywhere* in ten minutes if you drive fast enough.
%
You can get everything in life you want,
if you will help enough other people get what they want.
%
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
can with just a kind word.
-- Bumper Sticker
%
You can get much further with a kind word and a
gun than you can with a kind word alone.
-- Al Capone
[Also attributed to Johnny Carson. Ed.]
%
You can get there from here, but why on earth would you want to?
%
You can go anywhere you want if you look serious and carry a clipboard.
%
You can grovel with a lover, you can grovel with a friend,
You can grovel with your boss, and it never has to end.
(chorus) Grovel, grovel, grovel, every night and every day,
Grovel, grovel, grovel, in your own peculiar way.
You can grovel in a hallway, you can grovel in a park,
You can grovel in an alley with a mugger after dark.
(chorus)
You can grovel with your uncle, you can grovel with your aunt,
You can grovel with your Apple, even though you say you can't.
(chorus)
%
You can have a dog as a friend. You can have whiskey as a friend. But
if you have a woman as a friend, you're going to wind up drunk and kissing
your dog.
-- foolin' around
%
You can have peace. Or you can have freedom.
Don't ever count on having both at once.
-- Lazarus Long
%
You can imagine my embarrassment when I killed the wrong guy.
-- Joe Valachi
%
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have,
for instance.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
-- Alan Perlis
%
You can move the world with an idea,
but you have to think of it first.
%
You can never do just one thing.
-- Hardin
%
You can never trust a woman; she may be true to you.
%
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
-- Jeannette Rankin
%
You can not get anything worthwhile done without raising a sweat.
-- The First Law Of Thermodynamics
What ever you want is going to cost a little more than it is worth.
-- The Second Law Of Thermodynamics
You can not win the game, and you are not allowed to stop playing.
-- The Third Law Of Thermodynamics
%
You can now buy more gates with less
specifications than at any other time in history.
-- Kenneth Parker
%
You can observe a lot just by watching.
-- Yogi Berra
%
You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
%
You can rent this space for only $5 a week.
%
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
-- F. Allen
%
You can tell how far we have to go,
when Fortran is the language of supercomputers.
-- Steven Feiner
%
You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.
-- Norman Douglas
%
You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
%
You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename.
-- Forbes Burkowski, CS, University of Washington
%
You canna change the laws of physics, Captain;
I've got to have thirty minutes!
%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%
You cannot choose your battlefield, the gods do that for you.
But you can plant a standard where a standard never flew.
-- Nathalia Crane
%
You cannot have a science without measurement.
-- R. W. Hamming
%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
%
You cannot see the wood for the trees.
-- John Heywood
%
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.
-- Indira Gandhi
%
You cannot use your friends and have them too.
%
You can't break eggs without making an omelet.
%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%
You can't cheat an honest man, never give
a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.
-- W.C. Fields
%
You can't cheat the phone company.
%
You can't cross a large chasm in two small jumps.
%
You can't depend on the man who made the mess to clean it up.
-- Richard Nixon, 1952
%
You can't erase a dream, you can only wake me up.
-- Peter Frampton
%
You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.
-- H. H. Munro
%
"You can't expect a mother to be with a small child all the time",
Margaret Mead once remarked, with her usual good sense, but in 1978
she shocked feminists by snapping that women don't really have
children to put them in day care twelve hours a day, either.
-- Caroline Bird, "The Two Paycheck Marriage"
%
You can't fall off the floor.
%
You can't get there from here.
%
You can't go home again, unless you set $HOME.
%
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%
You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.
-- Ayn Rand
%
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
-- Booker T. Washington
%
You can't hug a child with nuclear arms.
%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%
You can't kiss a girl unexpectedly --
only sooner than she thought you would.
%
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle
is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
-- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Circle"
%
You can't make a program without broken egos.
%
You can't mend a wristwatch while falling from an airplane.
%
You can't play your friends like marks, kid.
-- Henry Gondorf, "The Sting"
%
You can't push on a string.
%
You can't run away forever,
But there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.
-- Jim Steinman, "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through"
%
You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you a
new way.
-- Will Rogers
%
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen.
You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.
-- Lauren Bacall
%
You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten.
-- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
Over and Over"
%
You can't take damsel here now.
%
You can't take it with you --
especially when crossing a state line.
%
You can't teach people to be lazy --
either they have it, or they don't.
-- Dagwood Bumstead
%
You climb to reach the summit, but once
there, discover that all roads lead down.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "The Cyberiad"
%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you
didn't need the first and last month in advance.
%
You could live a better life, if you
had a better mind and a better body.
%
You couldn't even prove the White House
staff sane beyond a reasonable doubt.
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%
You definitely intend to start living sometime soon.
%
You dialed 5483.
%
You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy.
%
You do not have mail.
%
You don't become a failure until you're satisfied with being one.
%
You don't have to be nice to people on the way up
if you're not planning on coming back down.
-- Oliver Warbucks, "Annie"
%
You don't have to explain something you never said.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
You don't have to know how the computer
works, just how to work the computer.
%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger
%
You don't move to Edina, you achieve Edina.
-- Guindon
%
You don't sew with a fork, so I see no
reason to eat with knitting needles.
-- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
%
You enjoy the company of other people.
%
You feel a whole lot more like you do
now than you did when you used to.
%
You fill a much-needed gap.
%
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
names. Here's the complete text:
"(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
"(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
"(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
form.
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
You first parent of the human race... who ruined yourself for an apple,
what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
-- Brillat-savarin, "Physiologie du Gout"
%
You get along very well with everyone except animals and people.
%
You get what you pay for.
-- Gabriel Biel
%
You give me space to belong to myself yet without separating me
from your own life. May it all turn out to your happiness.
-- Goethe
%
You go down to the pickup station,
craving warmth and beauty;
You settle for less than fascination --
a few drinks later you're not so choosy.
And the closing lights strip off the shadows
on this strange new flesh you've found --
Clutching the night to you like a fig leaf
you hurry to the blackness
and the blankets to lay down an impression
and your loneliness.
-- Joni Mitchell
%
You got to be very careful if you don't know
where you're going, because you might not get there.
-- Yogi Berra
%
You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues,
And you know it don't come easy ...
I don't ask for much, I only want trust,
And you know it don't come easy ...
%
You guys have been practicing discrimination for years.
Now it's our turn.
-- Thurgood Marshall, quoted by Justice Douglas
%
You had mail, but the super-user read it, and deleted it!
%
You had mail.
Paul read it, so ask him what it said.
%
You had some happiness once,
but your parents moved away, and you had to leave it behind.
%
You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music.
%
You have a deep interest in all that is artistic.
%
You have a massage (from the Swedish prime minister).
%
You have a message from the operator.
%
You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable and trustworthy.
A pity that it's totally undeserved.
%
You have a strong appeal for members of the opposite sex.
%
You have a strong appeal for members of your own sex.
%
You have a strong desire for a home
and your family interests come first.
%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%
You have a truly strong individuality.
%
You have a will that can be influenced
by all with whom you come in contact.
%
You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
You are permanently confused.
-- Dave Decot
%
You have all eternity to be cautious in when you're dead.
-- Lois Platford
%
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician:
a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
-- Aristophanes
%
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
%
You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.
%
You have an unusual equipment for success.
Be sure to use it properly.
%
You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
metal objects which are not fastened down.
%
You have an unusual understanding of
the problems of human relationships.
%
You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.
-- Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet"
%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%
You have Egyptian flu: you're going to be a mummy.
%
You have had a long-term stimulation relative to business.
%
You have junk mail.
%
You have literary talent that you should take pains to develop.
%
You have mail.
%
You have many friends and very few living enemies.
%
You have no real enemies.
%
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.
-- John Viscount Morley
%
You have only to mumble a few words in church to get married
and few words in your sleep to get divorced.
%
You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
wrinkled.
%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes.
You'll learn a lot today.
%
You have the power to influence all with whom you come in contact.
%
You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are.
If you want to get anywhere, you'll have to run much faster.
-- Lewis Carroll
%
You humans are all alike.
%
You just know when a relationship is about to end. My girlfriend called me
at work and asked me how you change a lightbulb in the bathroom. "It's very
simple," I said. "You start by filling up the bathtub with water..."
%
You just wait, I'll sin till I blow up!
-- Dylan Thomas
%
You k'n hide de fier, but w'at you gwine do wid de smoke?
-- Joel Chandler Harris, proverbs of Uncle Remus
%
You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.
-- Superchicken
%
You know, Callahan's is a peaceable bar, but if
you ask that dog what his favorite formatter is,
and he says "roff! roff!", well, I'll just have to...
%
You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but not how to use it.
-- Maharbal
%
You know if they ever find a way to harness sarcasm as an energy source,
you people are all going to owe me big.
-- Bill Paul
%
You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
%
You know it's going to be a long day when you get up, shave and shower,
start to get dressed and your shoes are still warm.
-- Dean Webber
%
You know it's Monday when you wake up and it's Tuesday.
-- Garfield
%
You know my heart keeps tellin' me,
You're not a kid at thirty-three,
You play around you lose your wife,
You play too long, you lose your life.
Some gotta win, some gotta lose,
Goodtime Charlie's got the blues.
%
You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery,
are now extinct.
-- M. Somerset Maugham
%
You know, the difference between this company and
the Titanic is that the Titanic had paying customers.
%
You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
you can always change the channel.
-- Jim Ignatowski
%
You know very well that whether you are on page one or page thirty depends
on whether [the press] fear you. It is just as simple as that.
-- Richard Nixon
%
You know what I wish? I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat
and I had my hands about it.
-- Rorschach, "Watchmen"
%
You know what they say -- the sweetest word in the English language
is revenge.
-- Peter Beard
%
You know what we can be like: See a guy and think he's cute one minute, the
next minute our brains have us married with kids, the following minute we see
him having an extramarital affair. By the time someone says "I'd like you to
meet Cecil," we shout, "You're late again with the child support!"
-- Cynthia Heimel, "A Girl's Guide to Chaos"
%
You know you are getting old when you think you should drive the speed limit.
-- E. A. Gilliam
%
You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
-- S. Rickly Christian
%
You know your apartment is small...
when you can't know its position and velocity at the same time.
you put your key in the lock and it breaks the window.
you have to go outside to change your mind.
you can vacuum the entire place using a single electrical outlet.
%
You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
-- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
%
You know you're getting old when you're Dad, and you're measuring your
daughter for camp clothes, and there are certain measurements only her
mother is allowed to take.
%
You know you're in a small town when...
You don't use turn signals because everybody knows where you're going.
You're born on June 13 and your family receives gifts from the local
merchants because you're the first baby of the year.
Everyone knows whose credit is good, and whose wife isn't.
You speak to each dog you pass, by name... and he wags his tail.
You dial the wrong number, and talk for 15 minutes anyway.
You write a check on the wrong bank and it covers you anyway.
%
You know you're in trouble when...
1) You wake up face down on the pavement.
2) Your wife wakes up feeling amorous and you have a headache.
3) You turn on the news and they're showing emergency routes
out of the city.
4) Your twin sister forgot your birthday.
5) You wake up and discover your waterbed broke and then
remember that you don't have a waterbed.
6) Your doctor tells you you're allergic to chocolate.
%
You know you're in trouble when...
1) Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you
follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.
2) You want to put on the clothes you wore home from the party
and there aren't any.
3) Your boss tells you not to bother to take off your coat.
4) The bird singing outside your window is a buzzard.
5) You wake up and your braces are locked together.
6) Your mother approves of the person you're dating.
%
You know you're in trouble when...
(1) Your only son tells you he wishes Anita Bryant would mind
her own business.
(2) You put your bra on backwards and it fits better.
(3) You call Suicide Prevention and they put you on hold.
(4) You see a `60 Minutes' news team waiting in your office.
(5) Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candles.
(6) Your 4-year old reveals that it's "almost impossible" to
flush a grapefruit down the toilet.
(7) You realize that you've memorized the back of the cereal box.
%
You know you're in trouble when...
(1) You've been at work for an hour before you notice that your
skirt is caught in your pantyhose.
(2) Your blind date turns out to be your ex-wife.
(3) Your income tax check bounces.
(4) You put both contact lenses in the same eye.
(5) Your wife says, "Good morning, Bill" and your name is George.
(6) You wake up to the soothing sound of flowing water... the day
after you bought a waterbed.
(7) You go on your honeymoon to a remote little hotel and the desk
clerk, bell hop, and manager have a "Welcome Back" party
for your spouse.
%
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long
when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to
make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie
chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.
%
You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
%
You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
%
You learn to write as if to someone else
because NEXT YEAR YOU WILL BE "SOMEONE ELSE".
%
You like to form new friendships and make new acquaintances.
%
You lived with a man who wore white belts?
Laura, I'm disappointed in you.
-- Remington Steele
%
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
%
You look tired.
%
You love peace.
%
You love your home and want it to be beautiful.
%
You may already be a loser.
-- Form letter received by Rodney Dangerfield
%
You may be gone tomorrow, but that
doesn't mean that you weren't here today.
%
You may be infinitely smaller than some things,
but you're infinitely larger than others.
%
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
%
You may be right, I may be crazy,
But maybe it's a lunatic you're looking for?
-- Billy Joel
%
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
-- Sydney Harris
%
You may carve it on his tombstone, you may cut it on his card
That a young man married is a young man marred.
-- Rudyard Kipling, "The Story of the Gadsbys"
%
You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with
him.
-- Ed Howe
%
You may get an opportunity for advancement today. Watch it!
%
You may have heard that a dean is
to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
-- Alfred Kahn
%
You may my glories and my state dispose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
%
You may not be able to judge a book by its cover, but
you sure as hell can tell how much it's going to cost.
%
You may worry about your hair-do today, but tomorrow much peanut butter will
be sold.
%
You mean you didn't *know* she was off
making lots of little phone companies?
%
You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
%
You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the
obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and
an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.
-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Norwood Builder"
%
You might have mail.
%
You might like to know that I looked at a detailed map of NT, and I'm
now able to confirm that in all probability Microsoft NT does not
exist. If it does, it's so small as to be completely insignificant.
-- Greg Lehey
%
You must dine in our cafeteria.
You can eat dirt cheap there!!!!
%
You must include all income you receive in the form of money, property
and services if it is not specifically exempt. Report property (goods)
and services at their fair market values. Examples include income from
bartering or swapping transactions, side commissions, kickbacks, rent
paid in services, illegal activities (such as stealing, drugs, etc.),
cash skimming by proprietors and tradesmen, "moonlighting" services,
gambling, prizes and awards. Not reporting such income can lead to
prosecution for perjury and fraud.
-- Excerpt from Taxachussettes income tax forms
%
You must know that a man can have only one invulnerable loyalty, loyalty
to his own concept of the obligations of manhood. All other loyalties
are merely deputies of that one.
-- Nero Wolfe
%
You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
%
You need more time; and you probably always will.
%
You need no longer worry about the future.
This time tomorrow you'll be dead.
%
You need not worry about your future.
%
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
-- Charles A. Beard
%
You never gain something but that you lose something.
-- Thoreau
%
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
%
You never go anywhere without your soul.
%
You never have to change anything you
got up in the middle of the night to write.
-- Saul Bellow
%
You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.
%
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
beach.
%
You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.
-- William Blake
%
You never learned anything by doing it right.
%
You notice that after Ginzburg admitted he had tried marijuana everyone
got in line to admit it, too. But you also notice they all said they
"experimented" with marijuana. The didn't "use" it; they "experimented"
with it. Let me tell you something -- Jonas Salk "experiments"; these
guys were getting stoned!
-- Johnny Carson
%
You now have Asian Flu.
%
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were
you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
%
You own a dog, but you can only feed a cat.
%
You plan things that you do not even
attempt because of your extreme caution.
%
You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
%
You prefer the company of the opposite
sex, but are well liked by your own.
%
You probably wouldn't worry about what people
think of you if you could know how seldom they do.
-- Olin Miller
%
You recoil from the crude; you tend naturally toward the exquisite.
%
You roll my log, and I will roll yours.
-- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
%
You say potatoe,
And I say potato.
You say tomatoe,
And I say tomato.
Potatoe, potato,
Tomatoe, tomato.
Let's go be the Vice President...
%
You scratch my tape, and I'll scratch yours.
%
You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of
the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
the useful ones.
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
You see things; and you say "Why?"
But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
-- George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah"
[No, it wasn't John F. Kennedy. Ed.]
%
You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull
his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you
understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send
signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that
there is no cat.
-- Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio
%
You seek to shield those you love
and you like the role of the provider.
%
You shall be rewarded for a dastardly deed.
%
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
-- Joseph Conrad
%
You should avoid hedging, at least that's what I think.
%
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.
%
You should go home.
%
You should make a point of trying every experience once -- except
incest and folk-dancing.
-- A. Bax, "Farewell My Youth"
%
You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
about 10^12 to 1.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
You should never ride in an airplane with a sports team,
because if the plane goes down, it's you they're gonna eat!
-- Gordon Downie, singer for Tragically Hip
%
You should never wear your best trousers
when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.
-- Henrik Ibsen
%
You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name,
another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and
another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his
hemorrhoids.
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture.
-- Business Professor, University of Georgia
%
You shouldn't have to pay for your love with your bones and your flesh.
-- Pat Benatar, "Hell is for Children"
%
You shouldn't wallow in self-pity. But it's OK to put
your feet in it and swish them around a little.
-- Guindon
%
You single-handedly fought your way into this hopeless mess.
%
You teach best what you most need to learn.
%
You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
%
YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF PAPER SHUFFLING!
Mr. Smith of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be
a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel really
important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."
Mr. Watkins had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
to was a dead-end job as an engineer. Now I have a promising future and
make really big Zorkmids."
MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.
SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
%
You too can wear a nose mitten.
%
You tread upon my patience.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
%
You two ought to be more careful--
your love could drag on for years and years.
%
You want to know why I kept getting promoted?
Because my mouth knows more than my brain.
-- W. G.
%
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
%
You will always have good luck in your personal affairs.
%
You will attract cultured and artistic people to your home.
%
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%
You will be advanced socially,
without any special effort on your part.
%
You will be aided greatly by a person
whom you thought to be unimportant.
%
You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
%
You will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
%
You will be awarded a medal for disregarding safety in saving someone.
%
You will be awarded some great honor.
%
You will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize... posthumously.
%
You will be called upon to help a friend in trouble.
%
You will be dead within a year.
%
You will be divorced within a year.
%
You will be given a post of trust and responsibility.
%
You will be held hostage by a radical group.
%
You will be honored for contributing
your time and skill to a worthy cause.
%
You will be imprisoned for contributing
your time and skill to a bank robbery.
%
You will be married within a year.
%
You will be married within a year, and divorced within two.
%
You will be misunderstood by everyone.
%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%
You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier.
%
You will be run over by a beer truck.
%
You will be run over by a bus.
%
You will be singled out for promotion in your work.
%
You will be successful in love.
%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%
You will be surrounded by luxury.
%
You will be the last person to buy a Chrysler.
%
You will be the victim of a bizarre joke.
%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%
You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.
%
You will be winged by an anti-aircraft battery.
%
You will become rich and famous unless you don't.
%
You will contract a rare disease.
%
You will engage in a profitable business activity.
%
You will experience a strong urge to do good; but it will pass.
%
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
%
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
You will forget that you ever knew me.
%
You will gain money by a fattening action.
%
You will gain money by a speculation or lottery.
%
You will gain money by an illegal action.
%
You will gain money by an immoral action.
%
You will get what you deserve.
%
You will give someone a piece of your mind, which you can ill afford.
%
You will have a head crash on your private pack.
%
You will have a long and boring life.
%
You will have a long and unpleasant discussion with your supervisor.
%
You will have domestic happiness and faithful friends.
%
You will have good luck and overcome many hardships.
%
You will have long and healthy life.
%
You will have many recoverable tape errors.
%
You will hear good news from one you thought unfriendly to you.
%
You will inherit millions of dollars.
%
You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.
%
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
%
You will live to see your grandchildren.
%
You will lose an important disk file.
%
You will lose an important tape file.
%
You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door
mayonnaise salesman.
%
You will meet an important person who will help you advance professionally.
%
You will never amount to much.
-- Munich Schoolmaster, to Albert Einstein, age 10
%
You will never know hunger.
%
You will not be elected to public office this year.
%
You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.
%
You will outgrow your usefulness.
%
You will overcome the attacks of jealous associates.
%
You will pass away very quickly.
%
You will pay for your sins.
If you have already paid, please disregard this message.
%
You will pioneer the first Martian colony.
%
You will probably marry after a very brief courtship.
%
You will reach the highest possible point in your business or profession.
%
You will receive a legacy which will place you above want.
%
You will remember something that you should not have forgotten.
%
You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the Abernetty family
was first brought to my notice by the depth which the parsley had sunk into
the butter upon a hot day.
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
You will soon forget this.
%
You will soon meet a person who will play an important role in your life.
%
You will step on the night soil of many countries.
%
You will stop at nothing to reach your objective,
but only because your brakes are defective.
%
You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
%
You will triumph over your enemy.
%
You will visit the Dung Pits of Glive soon.
%
You will win success in whatever calling you adopt.
%
You will wish you hadn't.
%
You won't skid if you stay in a rut.
-- Frank Hubbard
%
You work very hard. Don't try to think as well.
%
You worry too much about your job.
Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry.
%
"You would do well not to imagine profundity," he said. "Anything that seems
of momentous occasion should be dwelt upon as though it were of slight note.
Conversely, trivialities must be attended to with the greatest of care.
Because death is momentous, give it no thought; because victory is important,
give it no thought; because the method of achievement and discovery is less
momentous than the effect, dwell always upon the method. You will strengthen
yourself in this way."
-- Jessica Salmonson, "The Swordswoman"
%
You would if you could but you can't so you won't.
%
You'd best be snoozin', 'cause you don't
be gettin' no work done at 5 a.m. anyway.
-- From the wall of the Wurster Hall stairwell
%
You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
minute and a huff.
-- Groucho Marx
%
You'd better smile when they watch you, smile like you're in control.
-- Smile, "Was (Not Was)"
%
You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow.
%
You'll always be,
What you always were,
Which has nothing to do with,
All to do, with her.
-- Company
%
You'll be called to a post requiring
ability in handling groups of people.
%
You'll be sorry...
%
You'll feel devilish tonight.
Toss dynamite caps under a flamenco dancer's heel.
%
You'll feel much better once you've given up hope.
%
You'll never be the man your mother was!
%
You'll never see all the places, or read all the
books, but fortunately, they're not all recommended.
%
You'll wish that you had done some of the
hard things when they were easier to do.
%
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for
counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business. For the
experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth
them; but in new things, abuseth them. The errors of young men are the ruin
of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might
have been done, or sooner. Young men, in the conduct and management of
actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly
to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few
principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not how they innovate,
which draws unknown inconveniences; and, that which doubleth all errors, will
not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop
nor turn. Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little,
repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but
content themselves with a mediocrity of success. Certainly, it is good to
compound employments of both ... because the virtues of either age may correct
the defects of both.
-- Francis Bacon, "Essay on Youth and Age"
%
Young men, hear an old man to whom
old men hearkened when he was young.
-- Augustus Caesar
%
Young men think old men are fools;
but old men know young men are fools.
-- George Chapman
%
Your aim is high and to the right.
%
Your aims are high, and you are capable of much.
%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient.
Don't believe a thing he tells you.
%
Your best consolation is the hope that the things
you failed to get weren't really worth having.
%
Your boss climbed the corporate ladder, wrong by wrong.
%
Your boss is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
%
Your boyfriend takes chocolate from strangers.
%
Your business will assume vast proportions.
%
Your business will go through a period of considerable expansion.
%
Your code should be more efficient!
%
Your computer account is overdrawn. Please reauthorize.
%
Your computer account is overdrawn. Please see Big Brother.
%
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
from enjoying it.
%
Your Co-worker Could Be a Space Alien, Say Experts
...Here's How You Can Tell
Many Americans work side by side with space aliens who look human -- but you
can spot these visitors by looking for certain tip-offs, say experts. They
listed 10 signs to watch for:
#3. Bizarre sense of humor. Space aliens who don't understand
earthly humor may laugh during a company training film or tell
jokes that no one understands, said Steiger.
#6. Misuses everyday items. "A space alien may use correction
fluid to paint its nails," said Steiger.
#8. Secretive about personal life-style and home. "An alien won't
discuss details or talk about what it does at night or on weekends."
#10. Displays a change of mood or physical reaction when near certain
high-tech hardware. "An alien may experience a mood change when
a microwave oven is turned on," said Steiger.
The experts pointed out that a co-worker would have to display most if not
all of these traits before you can positively identify him as a space alien.
-- National Enquirer, Michael Cassels, August, 1984
[I thought everybody laughed at company training films. Ed.]
%
Your depth of comprehension may tend to make you lax in worldly ways.
%
Your digestive system is your body's Fun House, whereby food goes on a long,
dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being
attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last
minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the
Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter. We Americans live in a nation where the
medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe
25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in
seconds if we felt like it.
-- Dave Barry, "Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead"
%
Your domestic life may be harmonious.
%
Your education begins where what is called your education is over.
%
Your fault - core dumped
%
Your files are now being encrypted and thrown into the bit bucket.
EOF
%
Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
%
YOUR FOAMY FUTURE
by Miss Fortune
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20 - Feb. 18)
You have nothing better to think about than what to wear and what
type of champagne to take to the neighbors Halloween Party. Just take beer!
Don't try to copy the "Joneses", pull them up to your level and remember, in
California Halloween is redundant anyhow.
PISCES (Feb. 19 - March 20)
Focus on strengthening friendships this Fall. You find others are
fascinated by your intelligence, your wit, your drinking ability, and your
bank account. Just make sure you realize it's far more impressive when
other discover your good qualities without your help.
%
YOUR FOAMY FUTURE
by Miss Fortune
ARIES (March 21 - April 19)
Matters are not good, where you health is concerned. This Fall, be
sure to "walk groundly, talk profoundly, drink roundly, and sleep soundly"
and you will live all the days of your life.
TAURUS (April 20 - May 20)
You spent a fortune on beer this past summer and now find yourself
in a deep depression because you can't afford even one of your favorite
brewskis. Don't fret too much, Taurus. To get back on your feet simply
miss two car payments.
GEMINI (May 21 - June 21)
You think you're falling in love with a person who has a lot in
common with yourself. You both prefer ales, you've both tried your hand
at homebrewing, and you both want to visit every new brewpub that opens.
Sounds impressive but remember you really don't know your partner until
you meet in court.
%
YOUR FOAMY FUTURE
by Miss Fortune
CANCER (Jun 22 - July 22)
You've been awarded a clean bill of health this month and you feel
you owe it all to the excessive amount of Vitamin B, Iron, and Malt you get
in your beer. Being healthy is admirable but don't you think you're going
to feel stupid one day lying in a hospital dying of nothing?
LEO (July 23 - August 22)
You will soon acquire a large sum of money and will be in seventh
heaven as you head to the nearest Liquor Barn and buy all the beer they have
in stock. Whoever said money couldn't buy happiness didn't know where to
shop.
VIRGO (August 23 - September 22)
Your late night, beer drinking, "life in the fast lane" parties are
affecting your job production the next morning. You feel a nine to five job
is not for a "party animal" such as yourself and may feel the need for a
career change. Just remember, people who work sitting down get paid more
than people who work standing up.
%
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you
meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.
-- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
%
Your goose is cooked.
(Your current chick is burned up too!)
%
Your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.
%
Your heart is pure, and your mind clear, and your soul devout.
%
Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
%
Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
%
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
%
Your love life will be... interesting.
%
Your lover will never wish to leave you.
%
Your lucky color has faded.
%
Your lucky number has been disconnected.
%
Your lucky number is 3552664958674928.
Watch for it everywhere.
%
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not
original and the part that is original is not good.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
Your mind is the part of you that says,
"Why'n'tcha eat that piece of cake?"
... and then, twenty minutes later, says,
"Y'know, if I were you, I wouldn't have done that!"
-- Steven and Ondrea Levine
%
Your mind understands what you have been
taught; your heart, what is true.
%
Your mode of life will be changed for
the better because of good news soon.
%
Your mode of life will be changed for
the better because of new developments.
%
Your mode of life will be changed to ASCII.
%
Your mode of life will be changed to EBCDIC.
%
Your mothers ghost stands at your shoulder
Face like ice, a little bit colder
She says "You can't do that it breaks all the rules
You learned in school"
But I don't really see
Why can't we go on as three?
-- David Crosby, "Triad"
%
Your motives for doing whatever good deed you
may have in mind will be misinterpreted by somebody.
%
Your nature demands love and your happiness depends on it.
%
Your object is to save the world,
while still leading a pleasant life.
%
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being
true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the
mark of a fake messiah. The simplest questions are the most profound.
Where were you born? Where is your home? Where are you going? What
are you doing? Think about these once in awhile and watch your answers
change.
-- Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul
%
Your own qualities will help prevent your advancement in the world.
%
Your password is pitifully obvious.
%
Your picture of the world often changes just before you get it into focus.
%
Your present plans will be successful.
%
Your program is sick! Shoot it and put it out of its memory.
%
Your reasoning powers are good, and you are a fairly good planner.
%
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You
need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion
picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use
the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified
success.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
Your sister swims out to meet troop ships.
%
Your society will be sought by people of taste and refinement.
%
Your step will soil many countries.
%
Your supervisor is thinking about you.
%
Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.
%
Your temporary financial embarrassment will
be relieved in a surprising manner.
%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%
Your wig steers the gig.
-- Lord Buckley
%
Your wise men don't know how it feels
To be thick as a brick.
-- Jethro Tull, "Thick As A Brick"
%
Your worship is your furnaces
which, like old idols, lost obscenes,
have molten bowels; your vision is
machines for making more machines.
-- Gordon Bottomley, 1874
%
You're a card which will have to be dealt with.
%
You're a good example of why some animals eat their young.
-- Jim Samuels to a heckler
Ah, yes. I remember my first beer.
-- Steve Martin to a heckler
When your IQ rises to 28, sell.
-- Professor Irwin Corey to a heckler
%
You're all clear now, kid.
Now blow this thing so we can all go home.
-- Han Solo
%
You're almost as happy as you think you are.
%
You're already carrying the sphere!
%
You're always thinking you're gonna be
the one that makes 'em act different.
-- Woody Allen, "Manhattan"
%
You're at the end of the road again.
%
You're at Witt's End.
%
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%
You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life."
%
You're definitely on their list.
The question to ask next is what list it is.
%
You're either part of the solution or part of the problem.
-- Eldridge Cleaver
%
You're growing out of some of your problems,
but there are others that you're growing into.
%
You're just the sort of person I imagined marrying, when I was little...
except, y'know, not green... and without all the patches of fungus.
-- Swamp Thing
%
You're never too old to become younger.
-- Mae West
%
You're not Dave. Who are you?
%
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
-- Dean Martin
%
You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
%
You're reasoning is excellent -- it's
only your basic assumptions that are wrong.
%
You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny.
%
You're using a keyboard! How quaint!
%
You're working under a slight handicap.
You happen to be human.
%
Yours is not to reason why,
Just to Sail Away.
And when you find you have to throw
Your Legacy away;
Remember life as was it is,
And is as it were;
Chasing sounds across the galaxy
'Till silence is but a blur.
-- QYX
%
Youth. It's a wonder that anyone ever outgrows it.
%
Youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind... a predominance of
courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.
-- Robert F. Kennedy
%
Youth had been a habit of hers so long that she could not part with it.
%
Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.
-- Benjamin Disraeli, "Coningsby"
%
Youth is a disease from which we all recover.
-- Dorothy Fuldheim
%
Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Youth is the trustee of posterity.
%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%
You've always made the mistake of being yourself.
-- Eugene Ionesco
%
You've been Berkeley'ed!
%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%
You've been telling me to relax all the way here,
and now you're telling me just to be myself?
-- The Return of the Secaucus Seven
%
You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.
-- Gary Giddens
%
You've got to pity New Mexico... so far from heaven and so close to Texas.
%
You've got to think about tomorrow!
TOMORROW! I haven't even prepared for *_y_e_s_t_e_r_d_a_y* yet!
%
YO-YO:
Something that is occasionally up but normally down.
(see also Computer).
%
Zall's Laws:
1: Any time you get a mouthful of hot soup, the next thing you do
will be wrong.
2: How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom
door you're on.
%
zeal, n:
Quality seen in new graduates -- if you're quick.
%
Zero Defects, n.:
The result of shutting down a production line.
%
Zero Mostel: That's it baby! When you got it, flaunt it! Flaunt it!
-- Mel Brooks, "The Producers"
%
Zeus gave Leda the bird.
%
Zisla's Law:
If you're asked to join a parade, don't march behind the elephants.
%
Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
since I first called my brother's father dad.
-- William Shakespeare, "King John"
%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%
You've decked the halls with a dozen miles' length of electric lights.
Your front lawn is a gleaming testament of incandescent wonder. The neighbors
wear sunglasses 24/7, and orbiting satellites have officially picked up
and pinpointed your house as the brightest spot on earth.
You've finally put together the Christmas wonderland of your dreams... now
if only you could get a good picture of it.
Photographing holiday lights is no easy task.
-- from an email sent by photojojo.com
%
May all your Emus lay soft boiled eggs, and may all your
Kangaroos be born with iPods already fitted.
-- Aussie New Years wish, found on hasselbladinfo.com
%