fortunes revision 1.32 1 !07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
2 %
3 (1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
4 (2) Great generals are forewarned.
5 (3) Forewarned is forearmed.
6 (4) Four is an even number.
7 (5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
8 (6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
9
10 Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
11 %
12 (1) Everything depends.
13 (2) Nothing is always.
14 (3) Everything is sometimes.
15 %
16 1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
17 the law!
18 %
19 10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
20 %
21 100 buckets of bits on the bus
22 100 buckets of bits
23 Take one down, short it to ground
24 FF buckets of bits on the bus
25
26 FF buckets of bits on the bus
27 FF buckets of bits
28 Take one down, short it to ground
29 FE buckets of bits on the bus
30
31 ad infinitum...
32 %
33 $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
34 which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
35 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
36 %
37 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
38 (1) Scarecrow for centipedes
39 (2) Dead cat brush
40 (3) Hair barrettes
41 (4) Cleats
42 (5) Self-piercing earrings
43 (6) Fungus trellis
44 (7) False eyelashes
45 (8) Prosthetic dog claws
46 .
47 .
48 .
49 (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
50 (100) Killer velcro
51 (101) Currency
52 %
53 186,282 miles per second:
54
55 It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
56 %
57 2180, U.S. History question:
58 What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what
59 office did he later hold?
60 %
61 $3,000,000
62 %
63 355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
64 simulation!
65 %
66 3 syncs represent the trinity -- init, the child and the eternal zombie
67 process. In doing 3, you're paying homage to each and I think such
68 traditions are important in this shallow, mercurial business we find
69 ourselves in.
70 -- Jordan K. Hubbard
71 %
72 43rd Law of Computing:
73 Anything that can go wr
74 fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
75 %
76 77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
77
78 ------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
79 --- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
80 ------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
81 ---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop the
82 ---X--- (9) GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates to
83 --- --- (8) nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
84
85 Nine in the second place means:
86 The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
87
88 Six in the third place means:
89 In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue
90 Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
91 %
92 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
93 The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
94 Redwood Forest.
95 %
96 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
97 The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
98 Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
99 %
100 99 blocks of crud on the disk,
101 99 blocks of crud!
102 You patch a bug, and dump it again:
103 100 blocks of crud on the disk!
104
105 100 blocks of crud on the disk,
106 100 blocks of crud!
107 You patch a bug, and dump it again:
108 101 blocks of crud on the disk! ...
109 %
110 A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
111 "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
112 -- Mahatma Ghandi
113 %
114 A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
115 Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific
116 game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have
117 traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there,
118 preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
119 -- Donald A. Metz
120 %
121 A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and
122 placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or
123 rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results
124 from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball
125 and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the
126 ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical
127 phenomena.
128 -- Donald A. Metz
129 %
130 A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
131 responsibility at the other.
132 %
133 A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
134 -- Carl Sandburg
135 %
136 A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out
137 of a divorce.
138 -- Don Quinn
139 %
140 A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
141 and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
142 -- Mark Twain
143 %
144 A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it
145 adds up to be real money.
146 -- Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
147 %
148 A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
149 %
150 A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
151 %
152 A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
153 %
154 ... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you
155 have turned into a pile of dust.
156 %
157 A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
158 enlightened him with ours.
159 %
160 A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
161 as afterward.
162 %
163 A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
164 poor to protect them from each other.
165 %
166 A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
167 %
168 A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not
169 mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty
170 trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
171 -- Dave Barry
172 %
173 A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
174 %
175 A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
176 Avoid him. He's a Commie.
177 %
178 A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
179 won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
180 -- Bill Vaughan
181 %
182 A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
183 -- Herbert Prochnow
184 %
185 A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
186 wants to read.
187 -- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
188 %
189 A closed mouth gathers no foot.
190 %
191 A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
192 %
193 A CONS is an object which cares.
194 -- Bernie Greenberg.
195 %
196 A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it
197 is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
198 %
199 A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
200 -- Dyer
201 %
202 A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
203 damned things is ample.
204 -- Rebecca West
205 %
206 A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
207 -- Ben Franklin
208 %
209 A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen
210 lantern.
211 -- Edgar A. Shoaff
212 %
213 A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
214 %
215 A day without sunshine is like night.
216 %
217 A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur
218 coat.
219 %
220 A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
221 you will look forward to the trip.
222 %
223 A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
224 eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality
225 test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
226 Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
227 the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
228 %
229 A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
230 %
231 A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
232 about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their
233 arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
234 the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
235 Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
236 incredible surgical feat."
237 The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the
238 Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
239 that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an
240 architect."
241 The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
242 "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
243 %
244 A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
245 -- Ogden Nash
246 %
247 A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
248 Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
249 Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
250 with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the
251 Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly
252 pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while
253 simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick
254 Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
255 %
256 A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
257 subject.
258 -- Winston Churchill
259 %
260 A fool must now and then be right by chance.
261 %
262 A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
263 superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
264 -- G. B. Shaw
265 %
266 A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block
267 of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an
268 elephant.
269 %
270 A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
271 -- D. Gries
272 %
273 A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
274 dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension.
275 -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
276 %
277 A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
278 -- Adlai Stevenson
279 %
280 A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than
281 he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
282 favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
283 facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
284 -- H. L. Mencken
285 %
286 A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
287 ducks.
288 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
289 %
290 A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
291 A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
292 But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *____that ___had __to ____mean _________something*.
293 -- S. Morgenstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
294 %
295 A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
296 of).
297 %
298 A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
299 into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
300 hope of greening the landscape of idea.
301 -- John Ciardi
302 %
303 A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
304 rearranging their prejudices.
305 -- William James
306 %
307 A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
308 man a century.
309 %
310 A hypothetical paradox:
311 What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security
312 team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of
313 Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
314 -- Tom Galloway
315 %
316 A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
317 C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh.
318 E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.
319 G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
320 I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
321 K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
322 M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of ennui.
323 O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
324 Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
325 S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
326 U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
327 W is for Winnie, embedded in ice, X is for Xerxes, devoured by mice.
328 Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
329 -- Edward Gorey "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"
330 %
331 A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
332 %
333 A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
334 -- Robert Frost
335 %
336 A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
337 %
338 A lady with one of her ears applied
339 To an open keyhole heard, inside,
340 Two female gossips in converse free --
341 The subject engaging them was she.
342 "I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
343 That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
344 As soon as no more of it she could hear
345 The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
346 "I will not stay," she said with a pout,
347 "To hear my character lied about!"
348 -- Gopete Sherany
349 %
350 A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
351 not worth knowing.
352 %
353 A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
354 in than some that do.
355 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
356 %
357 A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work
358 by being declared to work.
359 -- Anatol Holt
360 %
361 A Law of Computer Programming:
362 Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
363 will find the programmers cannot write in English.
364 %
365 A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
366 nothing.
367 -- Alan Perlis
368 %
369 A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
370 -- H. H. Munroe, "Saki"
371 %
372 A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
373 %
374 A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any
375 price.
376 %
377 A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in
378 his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and
379 exceptional ability in that particular field."
380 %
381 A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
382 -- Steve Wright
383 %
384 A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
385 believe everything positively stinks.
386 -- Lew Col
387 %
388 A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
389 first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
390 "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
391 and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
392 "But the collar is up around my ears!"
393 "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
394 little more ... that's it."
395 "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
396 "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
397 go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
398 So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
399 street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
400 "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
401 "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
402 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
403 %
404 A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
405
406 "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
407 sense of obligation."
408 -- Stephen Crane
409 %
410 A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
411 %
412 A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his
413 novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how
414 insignificant," said the master.
415
416 "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
417
418 "It is," came the reply.
419
420 "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
421
422 "It is even in a video game," said the master.
423
424 "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
425
426 The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The
427 lesson is over for today," he said.
428 -- "The Tao of Programming"
429 %
430 A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
431 %
432 A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
433 on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
434 game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
435 pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
436 along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
437 heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
438 around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
439 direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
440 paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
441 colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
442 fall over gently onto their backs.
443
444 -- Audubon Society Magazine
445
446
447 [From the BBC, 2001-02-02:
448 For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
449 monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as Lynx
450 helicopters passed overhead.
451 "Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
452 said team leader Dr. Richard Stone.
453 "As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
454 calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
455 with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
456 really."
457 The conclusion, said Dr. Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
458 (1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects" on
459 king penguins.]
460 %
461 A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
462 the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
463 pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
464 nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
465 "If what?" asked the composer.
466 "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
467 %
468 A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out
469 on loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed
470 loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom
471 do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
472 %
473 A new koan:
474
475 If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
476
477 If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
478
479 It is an ice cream koan.
480 %
481 A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
482 Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a round tuit now
483 has no excuse for further procrastination.
484 %
485 A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies
486 insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the
487 right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
488 %
489 A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the
490 rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
491 %
492 A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
493 removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
494 doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
495 amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
496 limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
497 larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
498 power-down sequence.
499 An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
500 building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
501 bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
502 cool.
503 %
504 A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power
505 off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly:
506 "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
507 understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off
508 and on. The machine worked.
509 %
510 A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
511 %
512 A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
513 -- Gloria Steinem
514 %
515 A penny saved is ridiculous.
516 %
517 A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
518 %
519 A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
520 -- George Wald
521 %
522 A pig is a jolly companion,
523 Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
524 A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
525 Though mountains may topple and tilt.
526 When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
527 When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
528 Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
529 You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
530 You'll never go wrong with a pig!
531 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
532 %
533 A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
534 by Mark Twain
535
536 For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
537 to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
538 be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
539 would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
540 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
541 same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
542 "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
543 Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
544 with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
545 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
546 Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
547 ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
548 ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
549 Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
550 hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
551 %
552 A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
553 -- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Sumatra"
554 %
555 A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
556
557 And the Master answered:
558
559 It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
560
561 It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
562
563 It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
564 upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
565 to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
566
567 And that is Fate? said the priest.
568
569 Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
570
571 That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
572 too.
573 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
574 %
575 A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
576 upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
577 "That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
578 man".
579 As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
580 he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
581 %
582 A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
583 %
584 A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
585 of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
586 series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
587 precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
588 inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
589 accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
590 for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
591 defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
592 information in the first place.
593 -- IEEE Grid news magazine
594 %
595 A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
596 your wife will give you for free.
597 %
598 A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
599 too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
600 was intended for her preservation.
601 -- Colton
602 %
603 A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
604 "you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
605 the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
606 to make a travesty of the game.
607 -- Donald A. Metz
608 %
609 A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked
610 out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.
611 -- Steel City News
612 %
613 A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.
614 %
615 A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:
616
617 Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying,
618 "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny
619 bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the
620 lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and
621 breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the
622 Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of
623 the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt
624 thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then
625 proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being
626 the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand
627 Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight,
628 shall snuff it."
629 -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
630 %
631 A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
632 that the system works.
633 %
634 A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
635 the real reason.
636 %
637 A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
638 objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
639 scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
640 concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
641 dimensional objects ...
642 %
643 A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
644 not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized
645 rosewater.
646 %
647 A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
648 contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
649 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
650 %
651 A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will
652 keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those
653 that are worth committing.
654 -- Samuel Butler
655 %
656 A Severe Strain on the Credulity
657
658 As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
659 parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
660 is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one
661 considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
662 begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really
663 starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
664 maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
665 Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
666 of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
667 re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
668 against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the
669 knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
670 -- New York Times Editorial, 1920
671 %
672 A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard.
673 -- Prof. Steiner
674 %
675 ... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
676 was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
677 -- Mark Twain
678 %
679 A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
680 -- O'Henry
681 %
682 A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
683 bad measures.
684 -- Daniel Webster
685 %
686 A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
687 exam.
688 %
689 A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
690 Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
691 true," asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as
692 Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt
693 shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
694 %
695 A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
696 undreamed of by its author.
697 -- S. C. Johnson
698 %
699 A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
700 Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
701 other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
702 new versions of their own innards!
703 -- Michael O'Brien
704 %
705 A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
706 %
707 A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
708 and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
709 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
710 %
711 A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
712 blowing first.
713 %
714 A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
715 triangle.
716 %
717 A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
718 %
719 A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
720 in students.
721 -- John Ciardi
722 %
723 A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
724 -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
725 %
726 A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
727 replaces it with.
728 -- Tennessee Williams
729 %
730 A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
731 getting nervous.
732 %
733 A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets
734 people's attention.
735 %
736 A witty saying proves nothing.
737 -- Voltaire
738 %
739 A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to
740 admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact
741 remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one
742 reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It
743 is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of
744 using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these
745 matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times.
746 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
747 %
748 A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
749 %
750 A.A.A.A.A.:
751 An organization for drunks who drive
752 %
753 AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
754 You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
755 %
756 Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
757 %
758 About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
759 -- Herbert Hoover
760 %
761 Absence makes the heart go wander.
762 %
763 Absent, adj.:
764 Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
765 slandered.
766 %
767 Absentee, n.:
768 A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
769 himself from the sphere of exaction.
770 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
771 %
772 Abstainer, n.:
773 A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
774 pleasure.
775 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
776 %
777 Absurdity, n.:
778 A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
779 opinion.
780 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
781 %
782 Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
783 because the stakes are so low.
784 -- Wallace Sayre
785 %
786 Accident, n.:
787 A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
788 body is better.
789 -- Foolish Dictionary
790 %
791 Accidents cause History.
792
793 If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
794 Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
795 have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
796 could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
797 the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
798 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
799 %
800 According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person
801 shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
802 fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
803 of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
804 the returns."
805 %
806 According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least
807 once a year.
808 %
809 According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
810 -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
811 %
812 According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
813 totally worthless.
814 %
815 According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
816 dies.
817 %
818 According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to
819 live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came
820 in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much.
821 Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime.
822 -- David Letterman
823 %
824 Accordion, n.:
825 A bagpipe with pleats.
826 %
827 Accuracy, n.:
828 The vice of being right.
829 %
830 ACHTUNG!!!
831
832 Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
833 schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
834 spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
835 rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und
836 vatch das blinkenlights!!!
837 %
838 Acid -- better living through chemistry.
839 %
840 Acid absorbs 47 times its weight in excess Reality.
841 %
842 Acquaintance, n.:
843 A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well
844 enough to lend to.
845 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
846 %
847 Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
848 %
849 Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
850 everyone glued in their seats!"
851 Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
852 it!"
853 %
854 Actor: So what do you do for a living?
855 Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
856 dishes for Chinese restaurants.
857 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
858 %
859 Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
860 %
861 ADA, n.:
862 Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
863 Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
864 awareness."
865 -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
866 %
867 Admiration, n.:
868 Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
869 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
870 %
871 Adolescence, n.:
872 The stage between puberty and adultery.
873 %
874 Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
875 like you ...
876 -- Gilda Radner
877 %
878 Adore, v.:
879 To venerate expectantly.
880 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
881 %
882 Adult, n.:
883 One old enough to know better.
884 %
885 Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
886 way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
887 -- Sinclair Lewis
888 %
889 Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
890 then at least be aseptic.
891 %
892 After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
893 names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
894 Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted
895 many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi
896 Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
897 different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
898 developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
899 attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led
900 to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today,
901 skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
902 injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
903 hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
904 that it sinks like a stone.
905 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
906 %
907 After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
908 It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
909 more advanced than the lichen family.
910 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
911 %
912 After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
913 %
914 ... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
915 quotations.
916 -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
917 %
918 After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not
919 for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
920 simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
921 -- P. J. O'Rourke
922 %
923 After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
924 on the bench.
925 %
926 After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
927 Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
928 and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
929 to be created."
930 "This is true," He replied.
931 "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
932 "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
933 right to make his laws?"
934 "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
935 make his own."
936 It was so granted.
937 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
938 %
939 After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
940 the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
941 cost to others, to win advancement.
942 -- Norman Thomas
943 %
944 After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
945 %
946 After living in New York, you trust nobody, but you believe
947 everything. Just in case.
948 %
949 After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
950 cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
951 removed.
952 %
953 Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a
954 change.
955 %
956 Afternoon, n.:
957 That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
958 morning.
959 %
960 Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
961 -- Dorothy Parker
962 %
963 Age, n.:
964 That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
965 still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise
966 to commit.
967 -- Ambrose Bierce
968 %
969 Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
970 %
971 Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
972 there's the rub.
973
974 For all dreams are not equal,
975 some exit to nightmare
976 most end with the dreamer
977
978 But at least one must be lived ... and died.
979 %
980 Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
981 Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact
982 that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately
983 unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep
984 up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers.
985 -- A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
986 %
987 Air is water with holes in it.
988 %
989 Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
990 -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
991 %
992 Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
993 telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
994 York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
995 And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
996 receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
997 %
998 Alden's Laws:
999 (1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
1000 of pregnancy.
1001 (2) Always be backlit.
1002 (3) Sit down whenever possible.
1003 %
1004 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
1005 Aleph-null bottles of beer,
1006 You take one down, and pass it around,
1007 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
1008 %
1009 Alex Haley was adopted!
1010 %
1011 Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
1012 for a dial tone.
1013 %
1014 Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
1015 them keeps paying for it.
1016 -- Peggy Joyce
1017 %
1018 All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
1019 upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
1020 visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
1021 informing, stimulating and ennobling.
1022 -- H. L. Mencken
1023 %
1024 All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
1025 than others.
1026 -- Alan Truscott
1027 %
1028 All extremists should be taken out and shot.
1029 %
1030 All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
1031 without thinking.
1032 %
1033 "All flesh is grass"
1034 -- Isaiah
1035 Smoke a friend today.
1036 %
1037 All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
1038 %
1039 All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
1040 importance.
1041 %
1042 All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
1043 by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
1044 %
1045 All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
1046 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
1047 %
1048 All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
1049 Socrates.
1050 -- Woody Allen
1051 %
1052 All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane.
1053 %
1054 All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
1055 specific.
1056 -- Jane Wagner
1057 %
1058 All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
1059 -- The Book of Bokonon / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1060 %
1061 All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
1062 the United States.
1063 -- Vic Gold
1064 %
1065 All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
1066 %
1067 All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
1068 %
1069 All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
1070 every organism to live beyond its income.
1071 -- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
1072 %
1073 All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
1074 -- E. Rutherford
1075 %
1076 All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right
1077 hands.
1078 -- Saint Patrick
1079 %
1080 All syllogisms have three parts; therefore this is not a syllogism.
1081 %
1082 All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
1083 too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
1084 subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
1085 can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
1086 Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
1087 decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
1088 if it rains?"
1089 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
1090 %
1091 ... all the modern inconveniences ...
1092 -- Mark Twain
1093 %
1094 All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
1095 ridiculous ones.
1096 -- La Rochefoucauld
1097 %
1098 All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
1099 the government in less than a second.
1100 -- Jim Fiebig
1101 %
1102 All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
1103 -- Sean O'Casey
1104 %
1105 All the world's a VAX,
1106 And all the coders merely butchers;
1107 They have their exits and their entrails;
1108 And one int in his time plays many widths,
1109 His sizeof being _N bytes. At first the infant,
1110 Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
1111 And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
1112 And shining morning face, creeping like slug
1113 Unwillingly to school.
1114 -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
1115 %
1116 All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
1117 and all theoretical chemists know it.
1118 -- Richard P. Feynman
1119 %
1120 All things are possible, except skiing thru a revolving door.
1121 %
1122 All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for
1123 fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
1124 -- Henry Tyroon
1125 %
1126 All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
1127 %
1128 All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
1129 infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
1130 which he was born.
1131 -- Francois Fenelon
1132 %
1133 Alliance, n.:
1134 In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
1135 their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
1136 separately plunder a third.
1137 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1138 %
1139 Alone, adj.:
1140 In bad company.
1141 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1142 %
1143 Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
1144 Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
1145 -- Dave Barry
1146 %
1147 Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
1148 %
1149 Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
1150 mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
1151 any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
1152 to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
1153 Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
1154 serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
1155 same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
1156 that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
1157 penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
1158 running the post office.
1159 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
1160 %
1161 Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
1162 reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the
1163 day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable
1164 interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on
1165 pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin,
1166 and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
1167 Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous
1168 material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the
1169 management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion
1170 the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical
1171 Gamekeeping."
1172 -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
1173 %
1174 Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
1175 back.
1176 %
1177 Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
1178 %
1179 Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
1180 that way.
1181 %
1182 Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
1183 %
1184 AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
1185
1186 If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
1187 across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
1188 %
1189 AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
1190
1191 There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
1192 would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
1193 %
1194 Ambidextrous, adj.:
1195 Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
1196 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1197 %
1198 Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
1199 -- Charlie McCarthy
1200 %
1201 America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
1202 to decadence without touching civilization.
1203 -- John O'Hara
1204 %
1205 America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
1206 until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
1207 changed its name to "America".
1208 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1209 %
1210 American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective
1211 employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for
1212 employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference
1213 between the men's room and the women's room without having little
1214 pictures on the doors.
1215 -- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
1216 %
1217 Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
1218 %
1219 An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
1220 people refuse to see it.
1221 -- James Michener, "Space"
1222 %
1223 An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
1224 is always polite to traffic cops.
1225 %
1226 An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to
1227 New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but
1228 not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
1229 -- David Letterman
1230 %
1231 An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
1232 %
1233 An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He
1234 knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
1235 great restraint.
1236 As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
1237 embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away
1238 to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished,
1239 and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
1240 that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
1241 This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
1242 When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
1243 confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
1244 and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
1245 are particular and not generalizable.
1246 The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
1247 all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
1248 one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
1249 -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
1250 %
1251 An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
1252 %
1253 An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree
1254 murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's
1255 mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border.
1256 Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the
1257 suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a
1258 murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
1259 %
1260 An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
1261 really care to know.
1262 %
1263 An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
1264 %
1265 An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
1266 %
1267 An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded
1268 summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your
1269 arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey
1270 responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
1271 %
1272 An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
1273 -- A. P. Herbert
1274 %
1275 An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He
1276 wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is
1277 advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and
1278 Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in
1279 incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
1280 excellence:
1281
1282 The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
1283 discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
1284 to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
1285 things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
1286 parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
1287 timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
1288 doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
1289 Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
1290 school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
1291 successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
1292 they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha.
1293 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
1294 %
1295 An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
1296 %
1297 ... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
1298 picturesque liar.
1299 -- Mark Twain
1300 %
1301 An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
1302 eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
1303 possible.
1304 -- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
1305 %
1306 An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
1307 %
1308 An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
1309 in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
1310 "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
1311 you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
1312 an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
1313 hour seems like a minute."
1314 The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
1315 moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
1316 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
1317 %
1318 An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge.
1319 %
1320 Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
1321 government at all.
1322 %
1323 And as we stand on the edge of darkness
1324 Let our chant fill the void
1325 That others may know
1326
1327 In the land of the night
1328 The ship of the sun
1329 Is drawn by
1330 The grateful dead.
1331
1332 -- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
1333 %
1334 ... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
1335 %
1336 And I heard Jeff exclaim,
1337 As they strolled out of sight,
1338 "Merry Christmas to all --
1339 You take credit cards, right?"
1340 -- "Outsiders" comic
1341 %
1342 ... And malt does more than Milton can
1343 To justify God's ways to man
1344 -- A. E. Housman
1345 %
1346 And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
1347 %
1348 ... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
1349 your own.
1350 -- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
1351 Preposterous Words
1352 %
1353 And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
1354 fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
1355 looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One
1356 approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
1357 is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
1358 of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
1359 gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this
1360 procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
1361 youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
1362 Orson Welles.
1363 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
1364 %
1365 ...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
1366 courtesy detail.
1367 %
1368 And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a
1369 horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
1370 columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory,
1371 ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
1372 world.
1373 -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
1374 %
1375 "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
1376 asked the father of his little son.
1377 "Diet."
1378 %
1379 And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
1380 a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
1381 tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets
1382 tragedy face to face, we have politics.
1383 -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and
1384 Ground Cover"
1385 %
1386 Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
1387 Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _____needs heroes.
1388 -- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
1389 %
1390 Angels we have heard on High
1391 Tell us to go out and Buy.
1392 -- Tom Lehrer
1393 %
1394 Ankh if you love Isis.
1395 %
1396 Anoint, v.:
1397 To grease a king or other great functionary already
1398 sufficiently slippery.
1399 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1400 %
1401 Another Glitch in the Call
1402 ------- ------ -- --- ----
1403 (Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)
1404
1405 We don't need no indirection
1406 We don't need no flow control
1407 No data typing or declarations
1408 Did you leave the lists alone?
1409
1410 Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
1411
1412 Chorus:
1413 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
1414 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
1415 %
1416 Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
1417 %
1418 Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
1419 television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
1420 and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
1421 offers whiter teeth *___and* fresher breath.
1422 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
1423 %
1424 Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
1425
1426 (1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
1427 (2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
1428 (3) I don't know.
1429 (4) Who cares?
1430 (5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
1431 Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
1432 (6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
1433 book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
1434 bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
1435 Papyrus Books).
1436 %
1437 Anthony's Law of Force:
1438 Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
1439 %
1440 Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
1441 Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
1442 corner of the workshop.
1443
1444 Corollary:
1445 On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
1446 your toes.
1447 %
1448 Antonym, n.:
1449 The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
1450 %
1451 Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
1452 -- Charles McCabe
1453 %
1454 Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
1455 representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
1456 representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
1457 capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
1458 -- Richard Schickel
1459 %
1460 Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
1461 -- Aesop
1462 %
1463 Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that
1464 this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a
1465 whole week.
1466 %
1467 Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
1468 sell it.
1469 %
1470 Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche
1471 -- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance,
1472 my grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off
1473 the fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was
1474 undoubtedly true.
1475 -- Solomon Short
1476 %
1477 Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.
1478 -- Sydney J. Harris
1479 %
1480 Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger
1481 object.
1482 %
1483 Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
1484 exactly the point of most pressure.
1485 -- Milt Barber
1486 %
1487 Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
1488 -- Rich Kulawiec
1489 %
1490 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
1491 demo.
1492 %
1493 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
1494 -- Arthur C. Clarke
1495 %
1496 Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
1497 something.
1498 %
1499 Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
1500 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
1501 %
1502 Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
1503 %
1504 Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
1505 probably parked.
1506 %
1507 Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
1508 %
1509 Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
1510 supposed to be doing at the moment.
1511 -- Robert Benchley
1512 %
1513 Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
1514 -- Publius Syrus
1515 %
1516 Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with
1517 none.
1518 %
1519 Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
1520 is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
1521 make messes in the house.
1522 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
1523 %
1524 Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
1525 -- Samuel Goldwyn
1526 %
1527 Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
1528 -- W. C. Fields
1529 %
1530 Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
1531 account be allowed to do the job.
1532 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
1533 %
1534 Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
1535 tried taking candy from a baby.
1536 -- Robin Hood
1537 %
1538 Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
1539 %
1540 Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
1541 %
1542 Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
1543 price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
1544 means the price went way up.
1545 %
1546 Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
1547 %
1548 Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
1549 %
1550 Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution.
1551 %
1552 Aphorism, n.:
1553 A concise, clever statement.
1554 Afterism, n.:
1555 A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
1556 -- James Alexander Thom
1557 %
1558 APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of
1559 the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of
1560 coding bums.
1561 %
1562 APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I
1563 can't read any of them.
1564 -- Roy Keir
1565 %
1566 Aquadextrous, adj.:
1567 Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off
1568 with your toes.
1569 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
1570 %
1571 AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
1572 You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
1573 You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to
1574 be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same
1575 mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid.
1576 %
1577 Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
1578 Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
1579 general can be said."
1580 %
1581 ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
1582 FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
1583 %
1584 Are you a turtle?
1585 %
1586 Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
1587 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
1588 %
1589 ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
1590 You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You
1591 are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are
1592 not very nice.
1593 %
1594 Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
1595 shoes.
1596 -- Mickey Mouse
1597 %
1598 Armadillo:
1599 To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
1600 %
1601 Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1602 (1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
1603 (2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
1604 (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
1605 first two laws.
1606 %
1607 Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
1608 measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
1609 imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
1610 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
1611 %
1612 Art is anything you can get away with.
1613 -- Marshall McLuhan.
1614 %
1615 Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
1616 -- Paul Gauguin
1617 %
1618 Arthur's Laws of Love:
1619 (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
1620 remind them of someone else.
1621 (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
1622 delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
1623 yourself in person.
1624 %
1625 Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
1626 %
1627 As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
1628 interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
1629 perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
1630 "that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?"
1631 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
1632 %
1633 As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
1634 certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I
1635 became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can
1636 meet girls.
1637 -- Matt Cartmill
1638 %
1639 As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
1640 certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
1641 -- Albert Einstein
1642 %
1643 As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
1644 -- Weisert
1645 %
1646 As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
1647 Feeling worse and worser,
1648 There I met a C.R.T.
1649 And it drop't me a cursor.
1650
1651 C.R.T., C.R.T.,
1652 Phosphors light on you!
1653 If I had fifty hours a day
1654 I'd spend them all at you.
1655
1656 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
1657 %
1658 As I was passing Project MAC,
1659 I met a Quux with seven hacks.
1660 Every hack had seven bugs;
1661 Every bug had seven manifestations;
1662 Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
1663 Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
1664 How many losses at Project MAC?
1665 %
1666 As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
1667 industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free
1668 speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to
1669 myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a
1670 real American talk like that.
1671 -- Frank Hague (1896-1956)
1672 %
1673 As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
1674 %
1675 As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
1676 fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
1677 popular.
1678 -- Oscar Wilde
1679 %
1680 As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
1681 %
1682 As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500
1683 programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
1684 -- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
1685 computer system.
1686 %
1687 As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
1688 wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
1689 to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
1690 that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
1691 finding mistakes in my own programs.
1692 -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
1693 %
1694 As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
1695 so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
1696 -- Woody Allen
1697 %
1698 As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
1699 is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
1700 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
1701 %
1702 As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free
1703 variable."
1704 %
1705 As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
1706 memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
1707 to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
1708 E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
1709 -- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
1710 %
1711 As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
1712 interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
1713 Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
1714 out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
1715 Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
1716 organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,
1717 birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never
1718 see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
1719 stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
1720 with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are
1721 talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
1722 highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
1723 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
1724 Teen Should Know"
1725 %
1726 As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull
1727 your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.
1728 The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along
1729 with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall
1730 from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all
1731 over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of
1732 a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the
1733 spider is suing you for damages.
1734 %
1735 As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
1736 %
1737 ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
1738 %
1739 Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
1740 one went to Harvard).
1741 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
1742 %
1743 Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
1744 %
1745 Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
1746 Station-to-Station rate.
1747 %
1748 Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the
1749 bathtub, it tolls for thee.
1750 %
1751 Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
1752 for an answer.
1753 %
1754 Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
1755 woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it,
1756 she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'
1757 -- David Letterman
1758 %
1759 Ass, n.:
1760 The masculine of "lass".
1761 %
1762 Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve.
1763 Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be
1764 strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum.
1765 Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check
1766 and dying broke.
1767 -- Stanley Walker
1768 %
1769 At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
1770 Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
1771 under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
1772 %
1773 At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
1774 not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
1775 it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
1776 -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
1777 %
1778 At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
1779 challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
1780 -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
1781 %
1782 ... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
1783 -- J. B. White
1784 %
1785 At least they're ___________EXPERIENCED incompetents
1786 %
1787 At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
1788 thumb with a hammer.
1789 -- Marshall Lumsden
1790 %
1791 At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
1792 find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
1793 the computer.
1794 %
1795 Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
1796 or street lamp.
1797 %
1798 Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
1799 -- Winston Churchill
1800 %
1801 Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
1802 depths they were once able to plumb.
1803 -- Stanley Kaufman
1804 %
1805 Automobile, n.:
1806 A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
1807 %
1808 Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
1809 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
1810 %
1811 Avoid reality at all costs.
1812 %
1813 Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
1814 we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
1815 -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a student entering
1816 school in the fall after the Kent State shootings
1817 %
1818 Bacchus, n.:
1819 A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
1820 getting drunk.
1821 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1822 %
1823 Bagbiter:
1824 1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually
1825 intermittently. 2. adj.: Failing hardware or software. "This
1826 bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on
1827 obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the
1828 bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS,
1829 CHOMPER, CHOMPING.
1830 %
1831 Bagdikian's Observation:
1832 Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
1833 newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a
1834 ukulele.
1835 %
1836 Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
1837 A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
1838 by governors.
1839 %
1840 Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
1841 %
1842 Banectomy, n.:
1843 The removal of bruises on a banana.
1844 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
1845 %
1846 Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
1847 %
1848 Barach's Rule:
1849 An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.
1850 %
1851 Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
1852 floor -- especially in the dark.
1853 %
1854 Barometer, n.:
1855 An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
1856 are having.
1857 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1858 %
1859 Barth's Distinction:
1860 There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
1861 types, and those who don't.
1862 %
1863 Baruch's Observation:
1864 If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
1865 %
1866 Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high
1867 taxes.
1868 -- Will Rogers
1869 %
1870 Basic is a high level languish.
1871 APL is a high level anguish.
1872 %
1873 BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.
1874 %
1875 BASIC, n.:
1876 A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
1877 that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
1878 %
1879 Bathquake, n.:
1880 The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water
1881 faucet is turned on to a certain point.
1882 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
1883 %
1884 Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your
1885 door.
1886 %
1887 BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...)
1888 %
1889 Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
1890 get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
1891 face.
1892 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
1893 %
1894 Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
1895 %
1896 Be careful of reading health books. You might die of a misprint.
1897 -- Mark Twain
1898 %
1899 Be different: conform.
1900 %
1901 Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
1902 get used to it.
1903 %
1904 Be security conscious -- National Defense is at stake.
1905 %
1906 Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
1907 miss
1908 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
1909 %
1910 Bees are very busy souls
1911 They have no time for birth controls
1912 And that is why in times like these
1913 There are so many Sons of Bees.
1914 %
1915 Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
1916 took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
1917 followers.
1918 One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
1919 there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
1920 "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
1921 commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
1922 Purpose in Life, anyway?"
1923 Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
1924 Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
1925 Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
1926 Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
1927 -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
1928 %
1929 Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
1930 %
1931 Begathon, n.:
1932 A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
1933 you won't have to watch commercials.
1934 %
1935 Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
1936 away.
1937 %
1938 Beifeld's Principle:
1939 The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
1940 receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is
1941 already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better
1942 looking and richer male friend.
1943 %
1944 "Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
1945 %
1946 Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
1947 %
1948 Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
1949 (1) Houses are for people to live in.
1950 (2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
1951 (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
1952 %
1953 Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
1954 -- Time Bandits
1955 %
1956 Besides the device, the box should contain:
1957
1958 * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
1959
1960 * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
1961 club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
1962
1963 YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
1964 cable.
1965
1966 IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
1967 spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
1968 that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
1969 without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
1970 why."
1971
1972 WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
1973 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
1974 %
1975 Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.
1976 %
1977 better !pout !cry
1978 better watchout
1979 lpr why
1980 santa claus <north pole >town
1981
1982 cat /etc/passwd >list
1983 ncheck list
1984 ncheck list
1985 cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
1986 cat list | grep nice >giftlist
1987 santa claus <north pole > town
1988
1989 who | grep sleeping
1990 who | grep awake
1991 who | egrep 'bad|good'
1992 for (goodness sake) {
1993 be good
1994 }
1995 %
1996 Better dead than mellow.
1997 %
1998 Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
1999 Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
2000 Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
2001 great effort pushing boulders into a single word.
2002
2003 It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
2004 Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
2005 equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
2006 destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
2007 both Parliament and Party.
2008
2009 It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
2010 planets, this may be the first message received from us.
2011 -- The Realist, November, 1964.
2012 %
2013 Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
2014 tried it.
2015 -- Donald Knuth
2016 %
2017 Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
2018 %
2019 Beware of low-flying butterflies.
2020 %
2021 Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
2022 -- Leonard Brandwein
2023 %
2024 Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
2025 drip under pressure.
2026 %
2027 Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
2028 finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
2029 murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
2030 their ignorance the hard way.
2031 -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
2032 %
2033 Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
2034 nothing of interest is easy.
2035 %
2036 Binary, adj.:
2037 Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
2038 %
2039 Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
2040 thing as division.
2041 %
2042 Bipolar, adj.:
2043 Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
2044 New York
2045 %
2046 Birth, n.:
2047 The first and direst of all disasters.
2048 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2049 %
2050 Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
2051 %
2052 Bizoos, n.:
2053 The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
2054 basketball.
2055 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
2056 %
2057 ... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...
2058 %
2059 Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
2060 -- Herbert Hoover
2061 %
2062 Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles,
2063 for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
2064 %
2065 BLISS is ignorance.
2066 %
2067 Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
2068 %
2069 Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
2070 %
2071 Blore's Razor:
2072 Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
2073 funnier.
2074 %
2075 Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
2076 plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has
2077 it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was
2078 arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept
2079 throwing up on them.
2080 %
2081 Boling's postulate:
2082 If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
2083 %
2084 Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
2085 Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
2086 vividly manifests their lack of progress.
2087 %
2088 Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
2089 Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
2090 %
2091 BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
2092 %
2093 Boob's Law:
2094 You always find something in the last place you look.
2095 %
2096 Bore, n.:
2097 A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
2098 -- Walter Winchell
2099 %
2100 Bore, n.:
2101 A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
2102 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2103 %
2104 Boren's Laws:
2105 (1) When in charge, ponder.
2106 (2) When in trouble, delegate.
2107 (3) When in doubt, mumble.
2108 %
2109 Boss, n.:
2110 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
2111 the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
2112 in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
2113 ornamental stud."
2114 %
2115 Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry
2116 that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
2117 straightened out for a crowbar.
2118 -- O. W. Holmes
2119 %
2120 Boston, n.:
2121 Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
2122 finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
2123 %
2124 Boy, life takes a long time to live.
2125 -- Steven Wright
2126 %
2127 Boy, n.:
2128 A noise with dirt on it.
2129 %
2130 Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
2131 when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
2132 -- James Thurber
2133 %
2134 Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
2135 -- Kin Hubbard
2136 %
2137 Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the
2138 unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
2139 (gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend
2140 to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
2141 -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking Style"
2142 %
2143 Bradley's Bromide:
2144 If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
2145 committee -- that will do them in.
2146 %
2147 Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
2148 When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
2149 easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have
2150 handled this?"
2151 %
2152 Brain fried -- Core dumped
2153 %
2154 Brain, n.:
2155 The apparatus with which we think that we think.
2156 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2157 %
2158 Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
2159 To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
2160 error in an opponent.
2161 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2162 %
2163 Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
2164 since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
2165 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2166 %
2167 Bride, n.:
2168 A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
2169 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2170 %
2171 Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
2172 revitalize the corner saloon.
2173 %
2174 British Israelites:
2175 The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of
2176 Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by
2177 Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further
2178 believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the
2179 Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in
2180 the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your
2181 head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth.
2182 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2183 %
2184 Broad-mindedness, n.:
2185 The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
2186 %
2187 Brontosaurus Principle:
2188 Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
2189 in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when
2190 this occurs, they are an endangered species.
2191 -- Thomas K. Connellan
2192 %
2193 Brook's Law:
2194 Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
2195 %
2196 Brooke's Law:
2197 Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
2198 discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it
2199 beyond recognition.
2200 %
2201 Bubble Memory, n.:
2202 A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
2203 intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
2204 %
2205 Bucy's Law:
2206 Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
2207 %
2208 Bug, n.:
2209 An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
2210 programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
2211 wrote the program.
2212
2213 Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
2214 -- Ray Simard
2215 %
2216 Bugs, pl. n.:
2217 Small living things that small living boys throw on small
2218 living girls.
2219 %
2220 BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the
2221 outfit."
2222 GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?"
2223 BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive."
2224 -- Jay Ward
2225 %
2226 Bumper sticker:
2227
2228 All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
2229 manufacture.
2230 %
2231 Bureaucrat, n.:
2232 A person who cuts red tape sideways.
2233 -- J. McCabe
2234 %
2235 Bureaucrat, n.:
2236 A politician who has tenure.
2237 %
2238 Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise.
2239 %
2240 Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
2241 (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
2242 sawhorse.
2243 (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
2244 (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
2245 perfectly balanced.
2246 (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
2247 -- Robert Burns
2248 %
2249 But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
2250 easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
2251 and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
2252 upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
2253 without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
2254 on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
2255 was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
2256 sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
2257 human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
2258 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2259 %
2260 But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations paws.
2261 %
2262 But I don't like Spam!!!!
2263 %
2264 But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
2265 intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
2266 we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
2267 that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
2268 of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard
2269 example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
2270 makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
2271 whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
2272 finite or an infinite number.
2273 -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
2274 %
2275 But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
2276 system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
2277 analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
2278 -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
2279 Compilers"
2280 %
2281 But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
2282 to the nearest gas station.
2283 %
2284 But scientists, who ought to know
2285 Assure us that it must be so.
2286 Oh, let us never, never doubt
2287 What nobody is sure about.
2288 -- Hilaire Belloc
2289 %
2290 But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
2291 Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
2292 But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
2293 -- Mark "The Bard" Twain
2294 %
2295 But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
2296 was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
2297 education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
2298 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
2299 American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
2300 invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
2301 invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
2302 adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
2303 electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
2304 electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
2305 part) sends it right back to the customer again.
2306
2307 This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
2308 of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
2309 very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
2310 In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
2311 States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
2312 ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
2313 increases.
2314 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
2315 %
2316 But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
2317 place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
2318 Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a
2319 kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
2320 poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I
2321 explained yet about the bytes?
2322 %
2323 ... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
2324 -- Virginia Masters
2325 %
2326 But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
2327 computers?
2328 %
2329 Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
2330 Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
2331 Less dear than army ants in apple pies
2332 Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
2333 Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
2334 Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
2335 They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
2336 Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
2337 Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
2338 And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
2339 Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
2340 Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
2341 Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
2342 Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
2343 %
2344 By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
2345 completely overwhelm you.
2346 %
2347 By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact,
2348 it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
2349 invent.
2350 -- R. Emerson
2351 -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
2352 (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
2353 [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
2354 misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
2355 %
2356 By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
2357 to suspect 'Hungry' ...
2358 -- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
2359 %
2360 By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I
2361 mean.
2362 -- Mark Twain
2363 %
2364 Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
2365 point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
2366 fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
2367 often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
2368 from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
2369 that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They often
2370 wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
2371 they wanted to be.
2372 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
2373 %
2374 C, n.:
2375 A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more
2376 like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or
2377 anything else. It is either the best language available to the art
2378 today, or it isn't.
2379 -- Ray Simard
2380 %
2381 Cabbage, n.:
2382 A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
2383 a man's head.
2384 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2385 %
2386 Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.
2387 -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
2388 %
2389 Cahn's Axiom:
2390 When all else fails, read the instructions.
2391 %
2392 California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
2393 -- Fred Allen
2394 %
2395 California, n.:
2396 From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or
2397 Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or
2398 "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
2399 -- Ed Moran
2400 %
2401 Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
2402 -- Indian proverb
2403 %
2404 Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
2405 Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept.
2406 %
2407 Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
2408 -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
2409 %
2410 Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
2411 Corner, Vermont.
2412 -- Clarence Darrow
2413 %
2414 Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
2415 points.
2416 -- M. M. Johnston
2417 %
2418 Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
2419 It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
2420
2421 Supplement:
2422 A .44 magnum beats four aces.
2423 %
2424 Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents
2425 for postage and 30 cents for storage.
2426 -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
2427 %
2428 Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
2429 Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
2430 A root or two, a torus and a node:
2431 The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
2432 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
2433 %
2434 CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
2435 You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
2436 problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things
2437 off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare
2438 recipients are Cancer people.
2439 %
2440 Canonical, adj.:
2441 The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true
2442 story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some
2443 annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a
2444 point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and
2445 eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used
2446 the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking.
2447 Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
2448 Stallman: "What did he say?"
2449 Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
2450 %
2451 CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
2452 You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
2453 much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
2454 importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
2455 they take root and become trees.
2456 %
2457 Captain Penny's Law:
2458 You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
2459 the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
2460 %
2461 Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
2462 expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
2463 complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
2464 planning to reduce the time it takes.
2465 %
2466 Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
2467 trousers that don't match.
2468 %
2469 Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
2470 The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
2471 dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
2472 putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
2473 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
2474 %
2475 Cat, n.:
2476 Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
2477 %
2478 Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
2479 -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"
2480 %
2481 Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
2482 %
2483 CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
2484 %
2485 Cecil, you're my final hope
2486 Of finding out the true Straight Dope
2487 For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
2488 But none of my cats are at all like that.
2489 This unusual animal (so it is said)
2490 Is simultaneously alive and dead!
2491 What I don't understand is just why he
2492 Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
2493 My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
2494 In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
2495 If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
2496 And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
2497 But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
2498 Then I will *___and* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
2499 -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
2500 of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
2501 %
2502 Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
2503 %
2504 Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
2505 center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation
2506 works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
2507 -- Kelvin Throop III
2508 %
2509 Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
2510 how many?
2511 %
2512 Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
2513 Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
2514 Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
2515 out of it?
2516 Jaka: Ugh!
2517 Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
2518 -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
2519 %
2520 Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
2521 walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
2522 then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
2523 health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
2524 not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
2525 only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
2526 others who have tried it.
2527 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2528 %
2529 Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
2530 But it's very funny--
2531 Did you ever try buying them without money?
2532 -- Ogden Nash
2533 %
2534 Chapter 1
2535
2536 The story so far:
2537
2538 In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
2539 of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
2540 %
2541 Character Density, n.:
2542 The number of very weird people in the office.
2543 %
2544 Checkuary, n.:
2545 The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and
2546 ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his
2547 checks.
2548 %
2549 Chef, n.:
2550 Any cook who swears in French.
2551 %
2552 Chemicals, n.:
2553 Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
2554 %
2555 Chemistry is applied theology.
2556 -- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
2557 %
2558 Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
2559 %
2560 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
2561 Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
2562 headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
2563 -- Chicago Reader 3/27/81
2564 %
2565 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
2566 The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
2567 for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will
2568 cheerfully baste you.
2569 -- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
2570 %
2571 Chicago, n.:
2572 Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
2573 %
2574 Chicken Little only has to be right once.
2575 %
2576 Chicken Little was right.
2577 %
2578 Chicken Soup, n.:
2579 An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
2580 cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure
2581 is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
2582 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
2583 %
2584 Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every
2585 effort to teach them good manners.
2586 %
2587 Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're
2588 going to catch you in next.
2589 -- Franklin P. Jones
2590 %
2591 Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
2592 And that's what parents were created for.
2593 -- Ogden Nash
2594 %
2595 Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for
2596 word what you shouldn't have said.
2597 %
2598 Chism's Law of Completion:
2599 The amount of time required to complete a government project is
2600 precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
2601 %
2602 Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
2603 When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
2604 %
2605 Chivalry, Schmivalry!
2606 Roger the thief has a
2607 method he uses for
2608 sneaky attacks:
2609 Folks who are reading are
2610 Characteristically
2611 Always Forgetting to
2612 Guard their own bac ...
2613 %
2614 Christ:
2615 A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
2616 %
2617 Churchill's Commentary on Man:
2618 Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
2619 time he will pick himself up and continue on.
2620 %
2621 Cigarette, n.:
2622 A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in
2623 between.
2624 %
2625 Cinemuck, n.:
2626 The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
2627 covers the floors of movie theaters.
2628 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
2629 %
2630 Clairvoyant, n.:
2631 A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
2632 which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.
2633 -- Ambrose Bierce
2634 %
2635 Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like
2636 shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
2637 -- Phyllis Diller
2638 %
2639 Cleanliness is next to impossible.
2640 %
2641 Cleveland still lives. God ____must be dead.
2642 %
2643 Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day.
2644 %
2645 Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
2646 %
2647 Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
2648 society.
2649 -- Mark Twain
2650 %
2651 COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
2652 %
2653 Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
2654 %
2655 Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
2656 "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
2657 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2658 %
2659 Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong.
2660 -- Blair Houghton
2661 %
2662 Coincidence, n.:
2663 You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
2664 going on.
2665 %
2666 Coincidences are spiritual puns.
2667 -- G. K. Chesterton
2668 %
2669 Cold, adj.:
2670 When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
2671 %
2672 Cold, adj.:
2673 When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
2674 pockets.
2675 %
2676 Collaboration, n.:
2677 A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
2678 other fellow can spell.
2679 %
2680 College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
2681 faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
2682 the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
2683 legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
2684 loss to humanity.
2685 -- H. L. Mencken
2686 %
2687 Colvard's Logical Premises:
2688 All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it
2689 won't.
2690
2691 Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
2692 This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
2693 attracted to.
2694
2695 Grelb's Commentary
2696 Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
2697 %
2698 Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
2699 And every vector dreams of matrices.
2700 Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
2701 It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
2702 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
2703 %
2704 Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
2705 Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
2706 Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
2707 Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
2708 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
2709 %
2710 Command, n.:
2711 Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
2712 such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
2713 %
2714 COMMENT
2715
2716 Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
2717 A medley of extemporanea;
2718 And love is thing that can never go wrong;
2719 And I am Marie of Roumania.
2720 -- Dorothy Parker
2721 %
2722 Commitment, n.:
2723 Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
2724 The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
2725 %
2726 Committee Rules:
2727 (1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
2728 (2) Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this
2729 stamps you as being wise.
2730 (3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the
2731 others.
2732 (4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
2733 (5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you
2734 popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for.
2735 %
2736 Committee, n.:
2737 A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
2738 decide that nothing can be done.
2739 -- Fred Allen
2740 %
2741 Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to
2742 be appointed to do the work.
2743 %
2744 Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at
2745 different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
2746 -- Clive James
2747 %
2748 Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
2749 -- Josh Billings
2750 %
2751 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
2752 -- Albert Einstein
2753 %
2754 Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness
2755 of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
2756 -- David Guaspari
2757 %
2758 Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
2759 %
2760 Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
2761 theory.
2762 %
2763 Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
2764 %
2765 Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
2766 -- Pablo Picasso
2767 %
2768 Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
2769 the world that just don't add up.
2770 %
2771 Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more
2772 than the estimate the job will cost.
2773 %
2774 Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
2775 -- LaRouchefoucauld
2776 %
2777 Concept, n.:
2778 Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
2779 $25,000.
2780 %
2781 ... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___did* quote anybody in this
2782 business, it probably would be gibberish.
2783 -- Thom McLeod
2784 %
2785 Condense soup, not books!
2786 %
2787 Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
2788 good for dandruff.
2789 -- Peter de Vries
2790 %
2791 Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
2792 %
2793 Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
2794 would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
2795 you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
2796 maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
2797 OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
2798 UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
2799 IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
2800 WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND
2801 SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,
2802 RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
2803 RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
2804 FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
2805 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
2806 %
2807 Connector Conspiracy, n:
2808 [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the
2809 KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of
2810 manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything)
2811 to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old
2812 stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive
2813 interface devices.
2814 %
2815 Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
2816 -- H. L. Mencken
2817 %
2818 Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
2819 -- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy"
2820 %
2821 Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
2822 %
2823 Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
2824 wish you weren't.
2825 %
2826 Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich.
2827 -- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]
2828 %
2829 Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
2830 give it back to them.
2831 %
2832 "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
2833 if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
2834 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
2835 %
2836 Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
2837 technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat.
2838 %
2839 Conversation, n.:
2840 A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
2841 is called the listener.
2842 %
2843 Conway's Law:
2844 In any organization there will always be one person who knows
2845 what is going on.
2846
2847 This person must be fired.
2848 %
2849 Coronation, n.:
2850 The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
2851 visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
2852 bomb.
2853 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2854 %
2855 Corrupt, adj.:
2856 In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
2857 %
2858 Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a
2859 muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can
2860 make of capitalism.
2861 -- Walter Lippmann
2862 %
2863 Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job
2864 is to enforce the law and fight crime.
2865 -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
2866 %
2867 Court, n.:
2868 A place where they dispense with justice.
2869 -- Arthur Train
2870 %
2871 Coward, n.:
2872 One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
2873 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2874 %
2875 [Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that, with
2876 nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
2877 -- Wernher von Braun
2878 %
2879 Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
2880 -- A. E. Neuman
2881 %
2882 Critic, n.:
2883 A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
2884 to please him.
2885 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2886 %
2887 Croll's Query:
2888 If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
2889 %
2890 cursor address, n:
2891 "Hello, cursor!"
2892 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
2893 %
2894 Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
2895 eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
2896 business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
2897 -- Johnny Hart
2898 %
2899 Cynic, n.:
2900 A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
2901 as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
2902 out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
2903 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2904 %
2905 Cynic, n.:
2906 One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
2907 %
2908 Dare to be naive.
2909 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
2910 %
2911 Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
2912 %
2913 Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
2914 Allen Gwinn: "Yours is."
2915 %
2916 Dawn, n.:
2917 The time when men of reason go to bed.
2918 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2919 %
2920 Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
2921 %
2922 %DCL-E-MEM-BAD, bad memory
2923 -VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
2924 %
2925 Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also
2926 easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
2927 improve.
2928 %
2929 Dear Lord:
2930 I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
2931 the other hand", again.
2932 %
2933 Dear Miss Manners:
2934 My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
2935 elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between
2936 courses, is all right. Which is correct?
2937
2938 Gentle Reader:
2939 For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
2940 economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this
2941 principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now
2942 than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners
2943 believes that is.
2944 %
2945 Dear Miss Manners:
2946 Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
2947 your face.
2948
2949 Gentle Reader:
2950 Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
2951 your face ...
2952 %
2953 Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part
2954 of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old
2955 will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a
2956 commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as
2957 "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a
2958 table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always
2959 says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean,
2960 "Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this
2961 complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim
2962 if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a
2963 dead bat?
2964
2965 Answer: Yes.
2966 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
2967 %
2968 Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
2969
2970 Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business
2971 signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a
2972 word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
2973 ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when
2974 creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put
2975 quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT
2976 DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
2977 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
2978 %
2979 Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
2980 %
2981 Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
2982 -- R. Geis
2983 %
2984 Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
2985 %
2986 Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.
2987 %
2988 Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
2989 %
2990 Death is only a state of mind.
2991
2992 Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.
2993 %
2994 Death to all fanatics!
2995 %
2996 Decision maker, n.:
2997 The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
2998 before the music stopped.
2999 %
3000 Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really
3001 overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene
3002 language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the
3003 judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when
3004 addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
3005 -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
3006 %
3007 Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
3008
3009 Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
3010 Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
3011 Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
3012 Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!
3013
3014 Don't we know archaic barrel,
3015 Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
3016 Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
3017 Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
3018 -- Walt Kelly
3019 %
3020 "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
3021 marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a
3022 theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
3023 those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
3024 blessed.
3025 -- Randy Davis
3026 %
3027 default, n.:
3028 [Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
3029 mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will
3030 come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear.
3031 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
3032 %
3033 #define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
3034 #define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
3035 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
3036 - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
3037
3038 -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
3039 %
3040 Definitions of hardware and software for dummies:
3041 Hardware is what you kick;
3042 Software is what you curse.
3043 %
3044 DELETE A FORTUNE!
3045
3046 Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
3047 to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
3048 "fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
3049 gets expunged.
3050 %
3051 Deliberation, n.:
3052 The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
3053 buttered on.
3054 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3055 %
3056 Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
3057 %
3058 Demand the establishment of the government
3059 in its rightful home at Disneyland.
3060 %
3061 Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than
3062 we deserve.
3063 -- George Bernard Shaw
3064 %
3065 Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
3066 aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
3067 -- Senator Soaper
3068 %
3069 Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
3070 incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
3071 -- G. B. Shaw
3072 %
3073 Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
3074 don't think.
3075 %
3076 Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
3077 Jackasses.
3078 -- H. L. Mencken
3079 %
3080 Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
3081 -- Jawaharlal Nehru
3082 %
3083 Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
3084 are right more than half of the time.
3085 -- E. B. White
3086 %
3087 Democracy, n.:
3088 A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass
3089 meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy.
3090 Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
3091 Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
3092 whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion,
3093 prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
3094 Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
3095 -- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932),
3096 since withdrawn.
3097 %
3098 Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
3099 board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
3100 %
3101 Dentist, n.:
3102 A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
3103 coins out of one's pockets.
3104 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3105 %
3106 Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will
3107 be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over
3108 the table.
3109 -- The Anarchist Cookbook
3110 %
3111 DETERIORATA
3112
3113 Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
3114 And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
3115 Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
3116 Rotate your tires.
3117 Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
3118 And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
3119 Know what to kiss -- and when.
3120 Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
3121 But that three do.
3122 Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
3123 Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
3124 And despite the changing fortunes of time,
3125 There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
3126
3127 You are a fluke of the universe ...
3128 You have no right to be here.
3129 Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
3130 Is laughing behind your back.
3131 -- National Lampoon
3132 %
3133 DeVries's Dilemma:
3134 If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
3135 hits the paper.
3136 %
3137 Did I say 2? I lied.
3138 %
3139 Did you know ...
3140
3141 That no-one ever reads these things?
3142 %
3143 Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
3144 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3145 %
3146 Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined
3147 them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction?
3148 %
3149 Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
3150 that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states:
3151
3152 "Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and
3153 squirrel."
3154
3155 -- ihuxw!tommyo
3156 %
3157 Die, v.:
3158 To stop sinning suddenly.
3159 -- Elbert Hubbard
3160 %
3161 Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
3162 conventional thing to happen to him.
3163 -- John Barrymore's dying words
3164 %
3165 Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
3166 %
3167 Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
3168 Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
3169 %
3170 Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
3171 %
3172 Disc space -- the final frontier!
3173 %
3174 Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be
3175 yours too."
3176 -- Dave Haynie
3177 %
3178 Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my
3179 employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely
3180 coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is
3181 non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the
3182 absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.
3183 The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for
3184 the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal,
3185 non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
3186 %
3187 Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
3188 %
3189 Distinctive, adj.:
3190 A different color or shape than our competitors.
3191 %
3192 Distress, n.:
3193 A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
3194 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3195 %
3196 District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape
3197 injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any
3198 damage inflicted on the vehicle.
3199 %
3200 Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
3201 %
3202 Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
3203 %
3204 Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
3205 %
3206 Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon.
3207 %
3208 Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
3209 anger.
3210 %
3211 Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
3212 with ketchup.
3213 %
3214 Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
3215 Violators will be prosecuted.
3216 (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
3217 %
3218 Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
3219 %
3220 Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
3221 day as it comes.
3222 -- Donald Kaul
3223 %
3224 Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
3225 %
3226 Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
3227 %
3228 Do you have lysdexia?
3229 %
3230 Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
3231 the time to take the dirt out of them?
3232 %
3233 "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
3234 "Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
3235 "I've never done anything illegal before."
3236 "I thought you said you were an accountant!"
3237 %
3238 Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
3239 when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
3240 -- Dick Brandon
3241 %
3242 Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
3243 be good because the programmers hate it so much.
3244 %
3245 Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
3246 %
3247 Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
3248 %
3249 Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
3250 -- Golda Meir
3251 %
3252 Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
3253 %
3254 Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
3255 -- Joe Cointment
3256 %
3257 "Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
3258 sincerely, extremely dangerously.
3259
3260 They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
3261 They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They
3262 used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used
3263 finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used
3264 fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints.
3265 They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile.
3266 They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help.
3267 They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And
3268 what the hell, they caught him.
3269
3270 -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
3271 %
3272 Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
3273 %
3274 Don't feed the bats tonight.
3275 %
3276 Don't get even -- get odd!
3277 %
3278 Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly
3279 misleading. Debug only code.
3280 -- Dave Storer
3281 %
3282 Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes
3283 you nothing. It was here first.
3284 -- Mark Twain
3285 %
3286 Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
3287 %
3288 Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
3289 %
3290 Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.
3291 %
3292 Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
3293 %
3294 Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
3295 %
3296 Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.
3297 %
3298 Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
3299 %
3300 Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
3301 %
3302 Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
3303 it today you can do it again tomorrow.
3304 %
3305 Don't say yes until I finish talking.
3306 -- Darryl F. Zanuck
3307 %
3308 Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.
3309 Cheat.
3310 -- Ambrose Bierce
3311 %
3312 Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
3313 -- "Brazil"
3314 %
3315 Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
3316 -- Walt Kelly
3317 %
3318 Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out of it alive.
3319 %
3320 Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
3321 %
3322 Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
3323 get more wax!!
3324 %
3325 Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
3326 avoiding you.
3327 -- The Old Farmer's Almanac
3328 %
3329 Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
3330 good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
3331 -- Howard Aiken
3332 %
3333 Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already
3334 tomorrow in Australia.
3335 -- Charles Schultz
3336 %
3337 Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
3338 busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
3339 %
3340 Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
3341 %
3342 Don Ameche: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she
3343 pretty?
3344 W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
3345 bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
3346 sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia.
3347 Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
3348 W. C.: It's almost impossible.
3349 -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
3350 E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
3351 %
3352 Double Bucky
3353 (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
3354
3355 Double bucky, you're the one!
3356 You make my keyboard lots of fun
3357 Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
3358 (Vo-vo-de-o!)
3359 Control and Meta side by side,
3360 Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
3361 Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
3362
3363 Oh, I sure wish that I,
3364 Had a couple of bits more!
3365 Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four.
3366
3367 Double bucky, left and right
3368 OR'd together, outta sight!
3369 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
3370 Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
3371 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
3372
3373 -- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
3374 (to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit
3375 be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use
3376 by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"])
3377 %
3378 Double-Blind Experiment, n.:
3379 An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
3380 fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a
3381 strong belief in the tooth fairy.
3382 %
3383 Down with categorical imperative!
3384 %
3385 Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
3386 %
3387 Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
3388 The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
3389 of your eyes.
3390 %
3391 Drink Canada Dry! You might not succeed, but it *__is* fun trying.
3392 %
3393 Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
3394 %
3395 Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!
3396 %
3397 Ducharme's Axiom:
3398 If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
3399 yourself as part of the problem.
3400 %
3401 Ducharme's Precept:
3402 Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
3403 %
3404 Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
3405 it holds the universe together.
3406 -- Carl Zwanzig
3407 %
3408 Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
3409 has been discontinued.
3410 %
3411 Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
3412 and captain of your soul.
3413 %
3414 Due to lack of disk space, this fortune database has been
3415 discontinued.
3416 %
3417 During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
3418 were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a
3419 red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
3420 "Hey, you almost hit my wife."
3421 "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a
3422 shot at mine, over there."
3423 %
3424 During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
3425 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
3426 %
3427 Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
3428 nothing whatever to do with it.
3429 -- W. Somerset Maugham (last words)
3430 %
3431 E Pluribus Unix
3432 %
3433 Eagleson's Law:
3434 Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
3435 months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is
3436 an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
3437 %
3438 Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
3439 %
3440 /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
3441 %
3442 Earth is a beta site.
3443 %
3444 Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
3445 -- Jeff Berner
3446 %
3447 Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
3448 Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the
3449 cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of
3450 the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this
3451 means the puzzle is solved.
3452 -- Steve Rubenstein
3453 %
3454 Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
3455 %
3456 Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work.
3457 %
3458 Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
3459 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
3460 %
3461 Economics, n.:
3462 Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
3463 Galbraith ...
3464 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3465 %
3466 Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy
3467 would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it
3468 hasn't.
3469 -- Robert Orben
3470 %
3471 Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
3472 percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
3473 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
3474 %
3475 Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
3476 -- Fred Allen
3477 %
3478 Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
3479 -- Irsin Edman
3480 %
3481 Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
3482 -- Bullwinkle Moose
3483 %
3484 Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
3485 -- Adlai Stevenson
3486 %
3487 Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
3488 people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
3489 comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
3490 the "nog" comes from.
3491
3492 To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in
3493 season, eggs...
3494 %
3495 Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
3496 of being a damned fool.
3497 -- Bellamy Brooks
3498 %
3499 Egotist, n.:
3500 A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
3501 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3502 %
3503 Ehrman's Commentary:
3504 (1) Things will get worse before they get better.
3505 (2) Who said things would get better?
3506 %
3507 Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
3508 -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
3509 %
3510 Eleanor Rigby
3511 Sits at the keyboard
3512 And waits for a line on the screen
3513 Lives in a dream
3514 Waits for a signal
3515 Finding some code
3516 That will make the machine do some more.
3517 What is it for?
3518
3519 All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
3520 All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
3521
3522 Hacker MacKensie
3523 Writing the code for a program that no one will run
3524 It's nearly done
3525 Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's nobody there.
3526 What does he care?
3527
3528 All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
3529 All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
3530 Ah, look at all the lonely users.
3531 Ah, look at all the lonely users.
3532 %
3533 Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
3534 %
3535 Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
3536 called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
3537 have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
3538 most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
3539 time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
3540 have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
3541 although God alone knows why it would want to.
3542 The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
3543 direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
3544 have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
3545 direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
3546 harmful electron buildup in the wires.
3547 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
3548 %
3549 Electrocution, n.:
3550 Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
3551 %
3552 Elevators smell different to midgets.
3553 %
3554 Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
3555 Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
3556 can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
3557 %
3558 Encyclopedia Salesmen:
3559 Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police
3560 and tell them your house is being burgled.
3561 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3562 %
3563 Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
3564 Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
3565 -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
3566 %
3567 Entropy isn't what it used to be.
3568 %
3569 Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
3570 otherwise require harder thinking.
3571 -- Jerome Lettvin
3572 %
3573 Epperson's law:
3574 When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
3575 something his wife can beat him at.
3576 %
3577 Equal bytes for women.
3578 %
3579 Error in operator: add beer
3580 %
3581 Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
3582 Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
3583 Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven
3584 Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben.
3585 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
3586 %
3587 Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
3588 -- Woody Allen
3589 %
3590 Etymology, n.:
3591 Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
3592 were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed
3593 from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
3594 ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
3595 -- Mike Kellen
3596 %
3597 Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
3598 speak it to?
3599 -- Clarence Darrow
3600 %
3601 Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
3602 -- Will Rogers
3603 %
3604 Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
3605 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
3606 %
3607 Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
3608 States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only two cents a
3609 day.
3610 %
3611 Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
3612 just how busy they are?
3613 %
3614 Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
3615 exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."
3616 All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with
3617 spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about:
3618 Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please
3619 take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something?
3620 My wife is available. No. How about ..."
3621 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
3622 %
3623 Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
3624 %
3625 Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
3626 %
3627 Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this
3628 woman and stop her.
3629 %
3630 Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one
3631 idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's
3632 sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
3633 of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two
3634 highly-motivated, caustic twits.
3635 -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
3636 %
3637 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
3638 signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
3639 fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
3640 spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
3641 genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
3642 of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
3643 humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
3644 -- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
3645 %
3646 Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
3647
3648 Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
3649 front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
3650 odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
3651 and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
3652 legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
3653 there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
3654 of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
3655 color"], that does not exist.
3656 %
3657 Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
3658 -- Frank Moore Colby
3659 %
3660 Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
3661 %
3662 Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
3663 -- Don Vonada
3664 %
3665 Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95.
3666 %
3667 Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
3668 -- Miguel de Cervantes
3669 %
3670 Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the
3671 richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
3672 -- Robert Orben
3673 %
3674 Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
3675
3676 It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
3677 %
3678 Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
3679 instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
3680 program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
3681 %
3682 Every program has two purposes -- one for which it was written and
3683 another for which it wasn't.
3684 %
3685 Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
3686 %
3687 Every solution breeds new problems.
3688 %
3689 Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
3690 guarantee of eventual success.
3691 %
3692 Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
3693 %
3694 Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
3695 -- Beckett
3696 %
3697 Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
3698 -- Dykstra
3699 %
3700 Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
3701 %
3702 Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
3703 taught how ___not to. So it is with the great programmers.
3704 %
3705 Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to
3706 realize it.
3707 %
3708 Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
3709 formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
3710 scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
3711 wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of
3712 existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
3713 discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
3714 problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
3715 mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
3716 one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
3717 different way ...
3718 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
3719 %
3720 Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____does anything about it.
3721 %
3722 Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
3723 no one we know belongs.
3724 %
3725 Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being
3726 that a belch is more satisfying.
3727 -- Ingmar Bergman
3728 %
3729 Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about
3730 something you know.
3731 -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
3732 June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
3733 %
3734 Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
3735 %
3736 Everything you know is wrong!
3737 %
3738 Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
3739 obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
3740 solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
3741 There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
3742 straight lines.
3743 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
3744 %
3745 Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
3746 mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
3747 "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
3748 how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
3749 "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
3750 So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
3751 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
3752 %
3753 Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike the office water cooler.
3754 %
3755 Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
3756 %
3757 Excellent day to have a rotten day.
3758 %
3759 Excellent time to become a missing person.
3760 %
3761 Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
3762 acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
3763 -- W. Somerset Maugham
3764 %
3765 Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
3766 %
3767 Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do
3768 the work.
3769 -- John G. Pollard
3770 %
3771 Expect the worst. It's the least you can do.
3772 %
3773 Expense Accounts, n.:
3774 Corporate food stamps.
3775 %
3776 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
3777 -- Olivier
3778 %
3779 Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
3780 when you make it again.
3781 -- Franklin P. Jones
3782 %
3783 Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and
3784 the instruction afterward.
3785 %
3786 Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
3787 ones.
3788 %
3789 Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
3790 %
3791 Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
3792 %
3793 Expert, n.:
3794 Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides.
3795 %
3796 Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules:
3797
3798 NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
3799
3800 To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully
3801 cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand
3802 corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and
3803 address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) --
3804 to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower
3805 left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card
3806 below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
3807 computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
3808 SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card
3809 (without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the
3810 Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
3811 disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print
3812 this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and
3813 completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
3814 %
3815 F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
3816 %
3817 f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
3818 %
3819 f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
3820 %
3821 F: When into a room I plunge, I
3822 Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI.
3823 Then I linger, darkly brooding
3824 On the poison they're exuding.
3825 -- The Roguelet's ABC
3826 %
3827 Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
3828 %
3829 Fairy Tale, n.:
3830 A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
3831 %
3832 Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
3833 without looking to see whether the seeds move.
3834 %
3835 Faith, n:
3836 That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be
3837 untrue.
3838 %
3839 Fakir, n:
3840 A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
3841 religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
3842 have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
3843 %
3844 Familiarity breeds attempt.
3845 %
3846 Families, when a child is born
3847 Want it to be intelligent.
3848 I, through intelligence,
3849 Having wrecked my whole life,
3850 Only hope the baby will prove
3851 Ignorant and stupid.
3852 Then he will crown a tranquil life
3853 By becoming a Cabinet Minister
3854 -- Su Tung-p'o
3855 %
3856 Famous last words:
3857 %
3858 Famous last words:
3859 (1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
3860 (2) "You and what army?"
3861 (3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
3862 a cop."
3863 %
3864 Famous last words:
3865 (1) Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
3866 (2) Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
3867 (3) What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
3868 (4) We won't need reservations.
3869 (5) It's always sunny there this time of the year.
3870 (6) Don't worry, it's not loaded.
3871 (7) They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
3872 (8) Don't worry! Women love it!
3873 %
3874 Famous, adj.:
3875 Conspicuously miserable.
3876 -- Ambrose Bierce
3877 %
3878 Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
3879 Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
3880 Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
3881 utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
3882 forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
3883 are a pretty neat idea.
3884 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
3885 %
3886 Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
3887 every six months.
3888 -- Oscar Wilde
3889 %
3890 Fats Loves Madelyn.
3891 %
3892 Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ...
3893 %
3894 Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children,
3895 neither will you.
3896 %
3897 Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
3898 other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
3899 the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
3900 d'oeuvres.
3901 Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
3902 to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
3903 Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
3904 piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
3905 Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
3906 inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
3907 other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
3908 placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
3909 the little hammers strike.
3910 Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
3911 their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
3912 Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
3913
3914 You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
3915 you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
3916 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
3917 %
3918 Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
3919 If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
3920
3921 Corollary:
3922 If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
3923 %
3924 Fifth Law of Procrastination:
3925 Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
3926 there is nothing important to do.
3927 %
3928 Fifty flippant frogs
3929 Walked by on flippered feet
3930 And with their slime they made the time
3931 Unnaturally fleet.
3932 %
3933 FIGHTING WORDS
3934
3935 Say my love is easy had,
3936 Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
3937 Say I am too often sad --
3938 Still behold me at your side.
3939
3940 Say I'm neither brave nor young,
3941 Say I woo and coddle care,
3942 Say the devil touched my tongue --
3943 Still you have my heart to wear.
3944
3945 But say my verses do not scan,
3946 And I get me another man!
3947 -- Dorothy Parker
3948 %
3949 Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North
3950 Carolina.
3951 %
3952 Finagle's Creed:
3953 Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
3954 %
3955 Finagle's First Law:
3956 If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
3957 %
3958 Finagle's Fourth Law:
3959 Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
3960 it worse.
3961 %
3962 Finagle's Second Law:
3963 No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
3964 someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it
3965 happened according to his own pet theory.
3966 %
3967 Finagle's Third Law:
3968 In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
3969 beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
3970
3971 Corollaries:
3972 (1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
3973 (2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
3974 don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
3975 %
3976 Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture
3977 on a rock.
3978 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
3979 %
3980 Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
3981 %
3982 Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
3983 %
3984 Fine's Corollary:
3985 Functionality breeds Contempt.
3986 %
3987 Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less:
3988
3989 "Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..."
3990
3991 Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to:
3992
3993 P.O. Box 35
3994 Baffled Greek, Michigan
3995 %
3996 First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
3997 Machines that piss people off get murdered.
3998 -- Pat Taber
3999 %
4000 First Law of Bicycling:
4001 No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
4002 wind.
4003 %
4004 First Law of Procrastination:
4005 Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
4006 for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed
4007 the deadline).
4008 %
4009 First Law of Socio-Genetics:
4010 Celibacy is not hereditary.
4011 %
4012 First Rule of History:
4013 History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
4014 other.
4015 %
4016 First things first -- but not necessarily in that order
4017 -- The Doctor, "Doctor Who"
4018 %
4019 First, a few words about tools.
4020
4021 Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of
4022 the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously
4023 injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If
4024 you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look
4025 particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for
4026 granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
4027 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
4028 %
4029 Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
4030 -- Robert Firth
4031 %
4032 FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
4033 the little hand is on the ....
4034 %
4035 Flon's Law:
4036 There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
4037 the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
4038 %
4039 Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
4040 husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my
4041 joules!"
4042
4043 "Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
4044 a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."
4045
4046 "No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them
4047 in my burette ... We must call a copper."
4048
4049 Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
4050 said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
4051 of Lawrence Ium.
4052
4053 "We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
4054 dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can
4055 catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
4056 activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
4057 -- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
4058 %
4059 flowchart, n. & v.:
4060 [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
4061 "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]
4062 1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
4063 problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
4064 using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic
4065 doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for
4066 wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A
4067 thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's
4068 Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce
4069 flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate
4070 (a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
4071 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
4072 %
4073 Flugg's Law:
4074 When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
4075 world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
4076 %
4077 Flying saucers on occasion
4078 Show themselves to human eyes.
4079 Aliens fume, put off invasion
4080 While they brand these tales as lies.
4081 %
4082 Fog Lamps, n.:
4083 Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the
4084 fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the
4085 driver's brain is in a fog.
4086
4087 See also "Idiot Lights".
4088 %
4089 Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
4090 -- Walt Kelly, "Putluck Pogo"
4091 %
4092 For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
4093 %
4094 For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a
4095 cat.
4096 %
4097 For an adequate time call 555-3321.
4098 %
4099 For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
4100 always old-fashioned.
4101 %
4102 For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
4103 and wrong.
4104 -- H. L. Mencken
4105 %
4106 For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
4107 -- R. Clopton
4108 %
4109 "For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
4110 of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."
4111
4112 "Whose?"
4113
4114 "MINE! HA-HA!"
4115 %
4116 For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
4117 %
4118 For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire
4119 life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days
4120 now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets
4121 when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch
4122 in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have
4123 the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which
4124 means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are
4125 advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are
4126 the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their
4127 names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot
4128 ("part of this complete breakfast").
4129 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
4130 %
4131 For perfect happiness, remember two things:
4132 (1) Be content with what you've got.
4133 (2) Be sure you've got plenty.
4134 %
4135 For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
4136 "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
4137 -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
4138 the U.S.
4139 %
4140 For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
4141 %
4142 For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
4143 a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with
4144 computers altogether?
4145 -- Jehan Shuman
4146 %
4147 For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
4148 -- Abraham Lincoln
4149 %
4150 For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
4151 phone calls taper off.
4152 -- Johnny Carson
4153 %
4154 For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
4155 I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
4156 But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
4157 Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
4158 -- Justin Richardson.
4159 %
4160 For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
4161 %
4162 Forgetfulness, n.:
4163 A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their
4164 destitution of conscience.
4165 %
4166 Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
4167 %
4168 FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS! #6
4169
4170 RAZORBACK: Paul Harbride, 1984, 2 hours 25 min.
4171 One of the great Australian films of the early 1980's, and
4172 arguably the best movie ever made about a large, man-eating
4173 hog. Some violence. With Gregory Harrison.
4174 %
4175 fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
4176
4177 I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
4178 "Hey you, get off my plate"
4179 -- Roger Midnight
4180 %
4181 Fortune's Fictitious Country Song Title of the Week:
4182 "How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?"
4183 %
4184 Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):
4185
4186 Don't Write On Walls!
4187
4188 (and underneath)
4189
4190 You want I should type?
4191 %
4192 Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
4193 No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this
4194 State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed
4195 with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females
4196 weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it
4197 apply to female horses.
4198 %
4199 Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
4200 Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an
4201 impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
4202 clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
4203 exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
4204
4205 DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
4206 having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
4207 HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
4208 DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter
4209 is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
4210 large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
4211 amounts of fertilization ...
4212 HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many
4213 teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
4214 %
4215 Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week:
4216
4217 Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.
4218 %
4219 FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS #14
4220
4221 Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
4222 liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert and
4223 light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything
4224 drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
4225 %
4226 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18:
4227
4228 Q: Are you married?
4229 A: No, I'm divorced.
4230 Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
4231 A: A lot of things I didn't know about.
4232 %
4233 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19:
4234
4235 Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
4236 A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
4237 %
4238 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29:
4239
4240 THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present
4241 information and prejudice from your minds, if you have
4242 any ...
4243 %
4244 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32:
4245
4246 Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
4247 A: I will be three months November 8th.
4248 Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
4249 A: Yes.
4250 Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
4251 %
4252 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:
4253
4254 Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
4255 A: No.
4256 Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears?
4257 A: Picking them up in the air.
4258 Q: Where was the dog at this time?
4259 A: Attached to the ears.
4260 %
4261 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3:
4262
4263 Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were
4264 able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to
4265 go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with
4266 him to the station?
4267 MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.
4268 %
4269 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:
4270
4271 Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
4272 A: By death.
4273 Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
4274 %
4275 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:
4276
4277 Q: What is your name?
4278 A: Ernestine McDowell.
4279 Q: And what is your marital status?
4280 A: Fair.
4281 %
4282 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
4283
4284 Q: What happened then?
4285 A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify
4286 me."
4287 Q: Did he kill you?
4288 A: No.
4289 %
4290 fortune: CPU time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
4291 %
4292 Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
4293 sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
4294
4295 Oh, and have a nice day!
4296 -- Bryce Nesbitt '84
4297 %
4298 Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
4299 The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
4300 instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
4301
4302 Corollary:
4303 Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
4304 except study for that instructor's course.
4305 %
4306 Fourth Law of Revision:
4307 It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
4308 interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
4309 %
4310 Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not
4311 almost one, it is damn near zero.
4312 -- David Ellis
4313 %
4314 Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a
4315 policeman's tie.
4316 %
4317 Fresco's Discovery:
4318 If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
4319 %
4320 Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
4321 Let me clue you in;
4322 I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
4323 The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
4324 The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
4325 Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
4326 If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
4327 And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
4328 Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
4329 So are they all, all cool cats, --
4330 Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
4331 %
4332 Frisbeetarianism, n.:
4333 The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and
4334 gets stuck.
4335 %
4336 Frobnicate, v.:
4337 To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ.
4338 Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a
4339 frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
4340 sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless
4341 manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
4342 search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
4343 turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
4344 he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
4345 screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
4346 turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
4347 %
4348 Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
4349 An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to
4350 electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to
4351 FROTZ, or more commonly to FROB. Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and
4352 FROBNODULE. Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl.
4353 FROBBOTZIM, has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure
4354 via the Adventure spin-off called Zork (Dungeon). These can also be
4355 applied to non-physical objects, such as data structures.
4356 %
4357 [From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
4358 Association, in Rome]:
4359
4360 The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria
4361 and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not
4362 spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods,
4363 or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in
4364 millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have
4365 reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology
4366 engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general,
4367 president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social
4368 schizophrenia in mass genocide.
4369 %
4370 From the "Guiness Book of World Records", 1973:
4371
4372 Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and
4373 the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the
4374 Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his
4375 candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground
4376 nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts,
4377 other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not
4378 qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their
4379 being nuts (unground)."
4380 %
4381 From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
4382 convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
4383 -- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
4384 %
4385 [From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
4386 in Japan]:
4387
4388 The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
4389 MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
4390 featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
4391 against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
4392 "flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
4393 Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
4394 operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
4395
4396 And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
4397 achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
4398 HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
4399 %
4400 From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
4401 instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
4402 experience in sound:
4403
4404 5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading
4405 sound is normal for this type of connector.
4406 %
4407 From too much love of living,
4408 From hope and fear set free,
4409 We thank with brief thanksgiving,
4410 Whatever gods may be,
4411 That no life lives forever,
4412 That dead men rise up never,
4413 That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
4414 -- Swinburne
4415 %
4416 Fuch's Warning:
4417 If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well
4418 enough to travel.
4419 %
4420 Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
4421 Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
4422 %
4423 Furbling, v.:
4424 Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
4425 even when you are the only person in line.
4426 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4427 %
4428 Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
4429 -- H. H. Williams
4430 %
4431 Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
4432 %
4433 G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
4434 of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
4435 secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
4436 `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
4437 that's your chance, my boy."
4438 %
4439 Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
4440 %
4441 Garter, n.:
4442 An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
4443 stockings and desolating the country.
4444 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4445 %
4446 Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall
4447 on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
4448 -- Adventures of Asterix
4449 %
4450 Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
4451
4452 Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
4453 than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
4454 "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
4455 Obvious, isn't it?
4456 Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
4457 speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
4458 long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
4459 your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
4460 so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
4461 individuals and then grow ...
4462 Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
4463 signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
4464 everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
4465 the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
4466 backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
4467 think not, my friend, I think not.
4468 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
4469 %
4470 "Gee, Mudhead, everyone at More Science High has an
4471 extracurricular activity except you."
4472 "Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
4473 "Only to ten, Mudhead."
4474
4475 -- Firesign Theater
4476 %
4477 Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.
4478 %
4479 GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
4480 You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
4481 because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
4482 for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
4483 committing incest.
4484 %
4485 GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
4486 Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while
4487 you can; the bad news will make you forget it. You will enjoy praise
4488 and respect from those around you; everybody loves a sucker. A short
4489 trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's room.
4490 %
4491 Genderplex, n.:
4492 The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
4493 determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
4494 tortoises).
4495 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4496 %
4497 Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
4498 you should.
4499 %
4500 Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
4501 handicapped.
4502 -- Elbert Hubbard
4503 %
4504 Genius, n.:
4505 A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
4506 "bright".
4507 %
4508 George Orwell 1984. Northwestern 0.
4509 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
4510 %
4511 George Orwell was an optimist.
4512 %
4513 George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to
4514 have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend.
4515 -- Ashley Cooper
4516 %
4517 Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
4518 (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
4519 direction.
4520 (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
4521 (3) The energy required to change either one of these states
4522 will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
4523 much as to make the task totally impossible.
4524 %
4525 Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
4526 %
4527 Get GUMMed
4528 --- ------
4529 The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
4530 1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
4531 the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
4532 each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
4533 chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
4534 nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
4535 days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
4536 seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
4537 friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
4538 Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
4539 "cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
4540 Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
4541 all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
4542 could tell them.
4543 -- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
4544 %
4545 Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
4546 %
4547 -- Gifts for Children --
4548
4549 This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
4550 because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
4551 and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
4552 morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
4553 exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
4554 your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
4555 Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
4556 might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
4557 me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
4558 who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
4559 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
4560 %
4561 -- Gifts for Men --
4562
4563 Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
4564 ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
4565 should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
4566 clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
4567 example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
4568 three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
4569 that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
4570 at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
4571 So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
4572 years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
4573 pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
4574
4575 If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
4576 than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
4577 of tires.
4578 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
4579 %
4580 Gimmie That Old Time Religion
4581 We will follow Zarathustra, We will worship like the Druids,
4582 Zarathustra like we use to, Dancing naked in the woods,
4583 I'm a Zarathustra booster, Drinking strange fermented fluids,
4584 And he's good enough for me! And it's good enough for me!
4585 (chorus) (chorus)
4586
4587 In the church of Aphrodite,
4588 The priestess wears a see-through nightie,
4589 She's a mighty righteous sightie,
4590 And she's good enough for me!
4591 (chorus)
4592
4593 CHORUS: Give me that old time religion,
4594 Give me that old time religion,
4595 Give me that old time religion,
4596 'Cause it's good enough for me!
4597 %
4598 Ginsberg's Theorem:
4599 (1) You can't win.
4600 (2) You can't break even.
4601 (3) You can't even quit the game.
4602
4603 Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
4604 Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
4605 meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
4606 Theorem. To wit:
4607
4608 (1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
4609 (2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
4610 (3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
4611 %
4612 Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
4613 to stand, and I will drain the world.
4614 %
4615 Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war.
4616 -- Napoleon
4617 %
4618 Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
4619 %
4620 Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
4621 a new town.
4622 %
4623 Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
4624 %
4625 Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying
4626 around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.
4627 -- Eric Clapton
4628 %
4629 Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden:
4630 Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP
4631 machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
4632 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
4633 %
4634 Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
4635 Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
4636 probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some
4637 useful work done.
4638 %
4639 Gnagloot, n.:
4640 A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
4641 impress people.
4642 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4643 %
4644 Go 'way! You're bothering me!
4645 %
4646 Go climb a gravity well!
4647 %
4648 Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
4649 be in owning a piece thereof.
4650 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
4651 %
4652 //GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
4653 %
4654 God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
4655 days and then pulled an all-nighter.
4656 %
4657 God doesn't play dice.
4658 -- Albert Einstein
4659 %
4660 "God gives burdens; also shoulders"
4661
4662 Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the
4663 end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I
4664 can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why
4665 would he lie about a thing like that?
4666 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
4667 %
4668 God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
4669 The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
4670 not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
4671 ... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
4672 smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and
4673 water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in
4674 the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
4675 night!
4676 -- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
4677 %
4678 God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
4679 %
4680 God is a polytheist.
4681 %
4682 God is Dead
4683 -- Nietzsche
4684 Nietzsche is Dead
4685 -- God
4686 Nietzsche is God
4687 -- The Dead
4688 %
4689 God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
4690 %
4691 God is real, unless declared integer.
4692 %
4693 God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the
4694 elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying
4695 other things.
4696 -- Pablo Picasso
4697 %
4698 God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
4699 -- Alfred Jarry
4700 %
4701 God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
4702 %
4703 God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
4704 %
4705 God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
4706 -- Mark Twain
4707 %
4708 God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
4709 -- Kronecker
4710 %
4711 God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
4712 %
4713 God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
4714 -- Albert Einstein
4715 %
4716 God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.
4717 %
4718 God rest ye CS students now,
4719 Let nothing you dismay.
4720 The VAX is down and won't be up,
4721 Until the first of May.
4722 The program that was due this morn,
4723 Won't be postponed, they say.
4724
4725 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
4726 Comfort and joy,
4727 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
4728
4729 The bearings on the drum are gone,
4730 The disk is wobbling, too.
4731 We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
4732 Can't tell false from true.
4733 And now we find that we can't get
4734 At Berkeley's 4.2.
4735
4736 (chorus)
4737 %
4738 Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
4739 school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
4740 person a car.
4741 %
4742 Gold, n.:
4743 A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It
4744 is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
4745 immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
4746 hasn't done anything to them.
4747 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
4748 %
4749 Goldenstern's Rules:
4750 (1) Always hire a rich attorney.
4751 (2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
4752 %
4753 Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
4754 example.
4755 -- La Rouchefoucauld
4756 %
4757 Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
4758 %
4759 Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
4760 %
4761 Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
4762 %
4763 Good day to let down old friends who need help.
4764 %
4765 Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
4766 %
4767 Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
4768 %
4769 Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
4770 %
4771 Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
4772 new lover.
4773 %
4774 Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
4775 -- George Saunders' dying words
4776 %
4777 Gordon's first law:
4778 If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing
4779 well.
4780 %
4781 Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with
4782 time travel, you never can tell.
4783 -- Doctor Who "Androids of Tara"
4784 %
4785 Got Mole problems?
4786 Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23
4787 %
4788 Goto, n.:
4789 A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
4790 to complain about unstructured programmers.
4791 -- Ray Simard
4792 %
4793 Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
4794 -- John Updike, "Couples"
4795 %
4796 Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are
4797 different lies.
4798 %
4799 Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know
4800 any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
4801 doesn't know much.
4802 -- Will Rogers
4803 %
4804 Grabel's Law:
4805 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
4806 %
4807 Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
4808 %
4809 Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
4810 %
4811 Grandpa Charnock's Law:
4812 You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
4813 %
4814 Gravity is a myth: the Earth sucks.
4815 %
4816 Gray's Law of Programming:
4817 `_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
4818 time as `_n' tasks.
4819
4820 Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
4821 `_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks.
4822 %
4823 Great minds run in great circles.
4824 %
4825 GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917
4826
4827 On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
4828 Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
4829 off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
4830 wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
4831 mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
4832 tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
4833 stood lookout.
4834 %
4835 Green light in A.M. for new projects.
4836 Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
4837 %
4838 Greener's Law:
4839 Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
4840 %
4841 Grelb's Reminder:
4842 Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
4843 average drivers.
4844 %
4845 Grub first, then ethics.
4846 -- Bertolt Brecht
4847 %
4848 Gurmlish, n.:
4849 The red warning flag at the top of a club sandwich which
4850 prevents the person from biting into it and puncturing the roof of his
4851 mouth.
4852 -- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
4853 %
4854 Gyroscope, n.:
4855 A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
4856 free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
4857 other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
4858 mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
4859 other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
4860 offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
4861 torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
4862 -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
4863 %
4864 H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L.
4865 Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
4866 -- Maxwell Bodenheim
4867 %
4868 H. L. Mencken's Law:
4869 Those who can -- do.
4870 Those who can't -- teach.
4871
4872 Martin's Extension:
4873 Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
4874 %
4875 H: If a 'GOBLIN (HOB) waylays you,
4876 Slice him up before he slays you.
4877 Nothing makes you look a slob
4878 Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB).
4879 -- The Roguelet's ABC
4880 %
4881 Hacker's Law:
4882 The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
4883 nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
4884 %
4885 Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
4886 %
4887 Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
4888 and you would not have been informed.
4889 %
4890 Hail to the sun god
4891 He sure is a fun god
4892 Ra! Ra! Ra!
4893 %
4894 Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big
4895 enough majority in any town?
4896 -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
4897 %
4898 Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
4899 %
4900 Half-done:
4901 This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
4902 crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference
4903 between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
4904 the difference between life and death.
4905 You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
4906 there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
4907 airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
4908 Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
4909 Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
4910 about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
4911 man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
4912 Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
4913 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
4914 %
4915 Hall's Laws of Politics:
4916 (1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
4917 (2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
4918 fixed.
4919 (3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
4920 military spending, and conservatives social spending in
4921 their own districts).
4922 %
4923 Hand, n.:
4924 A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
4925 commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
4926 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4927 %
4928 Hanlon's Razor:
4929 Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
4930 stupidity.
4931 %
4932 Hanson's Treatment of Time:
4933 There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
4934 before Saturday.
4935 %
4936 Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
4937 -- Ogden Nash
4938 %
4939 Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
4940 -- Oscar Levant
4941 %
4942 Happiness, n.:
4943 An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
4944 another.
4945 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4946 %
4947 Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances?
4948 %
4949 Hardware, n.:
4950 The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
4951 %
4952 Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand
4953 convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
4954 -- Tobias Smollet
4955 %
4956 Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
4957 The Duke is fond of kittens
4958 He likes to take their insides out
4959 And use them for his mittens
4960 From "The Thirteen Clocks"
4961 %
4962 Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
4963 Advertising wondrous things.
4964 -- Tom Lehrer
4965 %
4966 Harris's Lament:
4967 All the good ones are taken.
4968 %
4969 Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
4970 Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment
4971 ruined.
4972 %
4973 Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
4974 makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
4975 famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
4976 probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
4977 have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
4978 enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
4979 attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
4980 down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
4981 just like Richard Nixon."
4982 -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
4983 %
4984 Hartley's First Law:
4985 You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
4986 on his back, you've got something.
4987 %
4988 Hartley's Second Law:
4989 Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
4990 %
4991 Harvard Law:
4992 Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
4993 temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
4994 do as it damn well pleases.
4995 %
4996 "Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
4997 "Yes, I don't have one."
4998 "Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..."
4999 -- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
5000 %
5001 Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
5002 typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
5003 keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
5004 of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
5005 not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
5006 %
5007 Has your family tried 'em?
5008
5009 POWDERMILK BISCUITS
5010
5011 Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
5012
5013 They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the
5014 strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
5015
5016 POWDERMILK BISCUITS
5017
5018 Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the
5019 biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains
5020 that indicate freshness.
5021 %
5022 Hatred, n.:
5023 A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
5024 superiority.
5025 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5026 %
5027 Have an adequate day.
5028 %
5029 Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is
5030 to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
5031 non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
5032
5033 Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This
5034 still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or
5035 only serves to blunt the warning signs.
5036
5037 Long live the revolution!
5038 Have a nice day.
5039 %
5040 Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell
5041 you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time
5042 for play?
5043 %
5044 Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs,
5045 I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container
5046 filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite
5047 sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in
5048 their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or
5049 mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is why
5050 they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week.
5051 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
5052 %
5053 "Have you lived here all your life?"
5054 "Oh, twice that long."
5055 %
5056 Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
5057 crack in your sidewalk?
5058 %
5059 Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
5060 sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
5061 -- Dr. Who
5062 %
5063 Have you reconsidered a computer career?
5064 %
5065 He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
5066 effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable
5067 perversion.
5068 -- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
5069 %
5070 He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
5071 -- Stephen Leacock
5072 %
5073 He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
5074 perfectly delightful.
5075 -- Sydney Smith
5076 %
5077 He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
5078 heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
5079 of ever behaving "normally."
5080 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
5081 %
5082 He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
5083 -- Oscar Wilde
5084 %
5085 He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
5086 -- Mark Twain
5087 %
5088 He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
5089 %
5090 He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
5091 -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
5092 %
5093 He thought he saw an albatross
5094 That fluttered 'round the lamp.
5095 He looked again and saw it was
5096 A penny postage stamp.
5097 "You'd best be getting home," he said,
5098 "The nights are rather damp."
5099 %
5100 He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
5101 -- Jonathan Swift
5102 %
5103 He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable.
5104 %
5105 He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
5106 %
5107 He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
5108 attacks democracy itself.
5109 -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
5110 %
5111 He who Laughs, Lasts.
5112 %
5113 He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ...
5114 %
5115 He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
5116 there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
5117 %
5118 He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ...
5119 %
5120 HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
5121 SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their ___OWN brains.
5122 -- Walt Kelley
5123 %
5124 Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
5125 %
5126 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
5127 of nothing.
5128 -- Redd Foxx
5129 %
5130 Heaven, n.:
5131 A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
5132 their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
5133 expound your own.
5134 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5135 %
5136 Heavy, adj.:
5137 Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
5138 %
5139 Heisenberg may have slept here.
5140 %
5141 Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
5142 -- Milton Friedman
5143 %
5144 Heller's Law:
5145 The first myth of management is that it exists.
5146
5147 Johnson's Corollary:
5148 Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
5149 organization.
5150 %
5151 "Hello," he lied.
5152 -- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent
5153 %
5154 Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
5155 %
5156 Help fight continental drift.
5157 %
5158 Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file!
5159 %
5160 Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.
5161 %
5162 Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
5163 %
5164 HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!
5165 -- E. E. CUMMINGS
5166 %
5167 Her locks an ancient lady gave
5168 Her loving husband's life to save;
5169 And men -- they honored so the dame --
5170 Upon some stars bestowed her name.
5171
5172 But to our modern married fair,
5173 Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
5174 No stellar recognition's given.
5175 There are not stars enough in heaven.
5176 %
5177 Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
5178 Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ...
5179 %
5180 Here I sit, broken-hearted,
5181 All logged in, but work unstarted.
5182 First net.this and net.that,
5183 And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
5184
5185 The boss comes by, and I play the game,
5186 Then I turn back to net.flame.
5187 Is there a cure (I need your views),
5188 For someone trapped in net.news?
5189
5190 I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
5191 'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
5192 %
5193 Here in my heart, I am Helen;
5194 I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
5195 I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
5196 I'm Salome, moon of the East.
5197
5198 Here in my soul I am Sappho;
5199 Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
5200 In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
5201 With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
5202
5203 I'm all of the glamorous ladies
5204 At whose beckoning history shook.
5205 But you are a man, and see only my pan,
5206 So I stay at home with a book.
5207 -- Dorothy Parker
5208 %
5209 Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
5210 lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
5211 your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
5212 Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
5213 pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
5214 but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
5215 important electrical lesson.
5216
5217 It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
5218 your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
5219 objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
5220 attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
5221 collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
5222 friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
5223 carpet, thus completing the circuit.
5224
5225 Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
5226 touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
5227 finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you
5228 have carpeting.
5229 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
5230 %
5231 Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
5232 month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
5233 are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
5234 The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
5235 (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
5236 tadpole".
5237 Bite the wax tadpole.
5238 There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
5239 The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
5240 hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
5241 bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
5242 but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
5243 -- John Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
5244 %
5245 Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
5246 `Psychic Wins Lottery'?
5247 -- Jay Leno
5248 %
5249 Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs,
5250 then they'd be algorithms.
5251 %
5252 Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!
5253 -- W. C. Fields
5254 %
5255 Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
5256 reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
5257 nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
5258 %
5259 "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet.
5260 As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of
5261 equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney.
5262 Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you
5263 probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of
5264 course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my
5265 experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out
5266 of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser.
5267
5268 "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our
5269 motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'"
5270 -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
5271 %
5272 Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
5273 Im Leibe dick, an Suenden reich.
5274 Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws
5275 Weil es uns duenkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
5276 We buried him today because
5277 As far as we can tell, he's dead.
5278 -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty
5279 Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
5280 "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele
5281 %
5282 Higgledy Piggledy,
5283 Hamlet of Elsinore
5284 Ruffled the critics by
5285 Dropping this bomb:
5286 "Phooey on Freud and his
5287 Psychoanalysis --
5288 Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
5289 I just loved Mom."
5290 %
5291 Hindsight is an exact science.
5292 %
5293 Hippogriff, n.:
5294 An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
5295 The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
5296 The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
5297 is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full
5298 of surprises.
5299 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5300 %
5301 Hire the morally handicapped.
5302 %
5303 His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
5304 money, he went to Southern California.
5305 %
5306 His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice.
5307 -- Foghorn Leghorn
5308 %
5309 His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier.
5310 %
5311 History is curious stuff
5312 You'd think by now we had enough
5313 Yet the fact remains I fear
5314 They make more of it every year.
5315 %
5316 History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
5317 %
5318 History, n.:
5319 Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we
5320 learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from
5321 what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long
5322 view.
5323 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
5324 %
5325 Hlade's Law:
5326 If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
5327 will find an easier way to do it.
5328 %
5329 Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
5330 Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
5331 %
5332 Hofstadter's Law:
5333 It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
5334 Hofstadter's Law into account.
5335 %
5336 Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
5337 -- Rex Reed
5338 %
5339 Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
5340 willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
5341 for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
5342 "shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
5343 centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
5344 trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
5345 because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
5346 object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
5347 Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
5348 broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
5349 a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
5350 inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
5351 same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
5352 an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
5353 these sometime around the middle of next week".
5354 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
5355 %
5356 Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories:
5357 The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.
5358 -- Chris Shaw
5359 %
5360 Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
5361 %
5362 Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
5363 -- F. M. Hubbard
5364 %
5365 Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
5366 %
5367 Honk if you love peace and quiet.
5368 %
5369 Honorable, adj.:
5370 Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
5371 bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
5372 honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
5373 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5374 %
5375 Horngren's Observation:
5376 Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
5377 %
5378 Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
5379 people.
5380 -- W. C. Fields
5381 %
5382 Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
5383 %
5384 Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
5385 -- Neil Armstrong
5386 %
5387 How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
5388 %
5389 How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
5390 %
5391 How come wrong numbers are never busy?
5392 %
5393 How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows.
5394 %
5395 How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
5396 -- Elliot, "E.T."
5397 %
5398 How doth the little crocodile
5399 Improve his shining tail,
5400 And pour the waters of the Nile
5401 On every golden scale!
5402
5403 How cheerfully he seems to grin,
5404 How neatly spreads his claws,
5405 And welcomes little fishes in,
5406 With gently smiling jaws!
5407 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
5408 %
5409 How doth the VAX's C compiler
5410 Improve its object code.
5411 And even as we speak does it
5412 Increase the system load.
5413
5414 How patiently it seems to run
5415 And spit out error flags,
5416 While users, with frustration, all
5417 Tear their clothes to rags.
5418 %
5419 How I love to watch the morn,
5420 With golden sun that shines,
5421 Up above to nicely warm
5422 These frosty toes of mine.
5423
5424 The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
5425 Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
5426 It must have blown through someone's feet,
5427 Like those of ... Caspar Weinberger.
5428 -- P. Opus (Bloom County)
5429 %
5430 How doth the VAX's C-compiler
5431 Improve its object code.
5432 And even as we speak does it
5433 Increase the system load.
5434
5435 How patiently it seems to run
5436 And spit out error flags,
5437 While users, with frustration, all
5438 Tear all their clothes to rags.
5439 %
5440 How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
5441 on.
5442 %
5443 How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
5444 None: "We'll fix it in software."
5445
5446 How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
5447 None: "We'll document it in the manual."
5448
5449 How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
5450 None: "The user can work it out."
5451 %
5452 How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
5453 carried by a waiter at a nice party?
5454
5455 Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
5456 d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell
5457 what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then
5458 say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it
5459 back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another
5460 cheese!" and so on.
5461 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
5462 %
5463 How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
5464 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
5465 who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
5466 nanocentury.
5467 -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
5468 %
5469 How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton?
5470 -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey
5471 %
5472 How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
5473 %
5474 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
5475 #1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
5476 %
5477 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
5478 #15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
5479 %
5480 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
5481 #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of you.
5482 %
5483 Howe's Law:
5484 Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
5485 %
5486 However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
5487 manner ... sulking and nausea.
5488 -- Tom K. Ryan
5489 %
5490 HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill.,
5491 motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate
5492 amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits.
5493 The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the
5494 Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the
5495 bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on
5496 the bill. Agreed to.
5497 -- Albuquerque Journal
5498 %
5499 Hug O' War
5500
5501 I will not play at tug o' war.
5502 I'd rather play at hug o' war,
5503 Where everyone hugs
5504 Instead of tugs,
5505 Where everyone giggles
5506 And rolls on the rug,
5507 Where everyone kisses,
5508 And everyone grins,
5509 And everyone cuddles,
5510 And everyone wins.
5511 -- Shel Silverstein
5512 %
5513 Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
5514 %
5515 Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
5516 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
5517 operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a urethral
5518 catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
5519 his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
5520 the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
5521 Nobel Prize.
5522 %
5523 Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
5524 %
5525 Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
5526 -- William Gilbert
5527 %
5528 Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
5529 The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
5530 to ..... to ........ uh ..............
5531 %
5532 I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a
5533 professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any
5534 other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority.
5535 -- Richard M. Nixon
5536
5537 What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
5538 -- Richard M. Nixon
5539 %
5540 I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
5541 have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
5542 This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
5543 reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
5544 buy some more.
5545 -- timw (a] zeb.USWest.COM
5546 %
5547 I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.
5548 %
5549 I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
5550 -- Paul McCracken
5551 %
5552 I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger.
5553 -- Gloria Steinem
5554 %
5555 I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.
5556 -- Dennis Ritchie
5557 %
5558 I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it.
5559 -- English Professor
5560 %
5561 I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
5562 great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
5563 -- Winston Churchill
5564 %
5565 I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
5566 has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
5567 -- English Professor, Ohio University
5568 %
5569 I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
5570 with an option to buy.
5571 %
5572 I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
5573 %
5574 I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person,
5575 of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell
5576 you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
5577 atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
5578 inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
5579 -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
5580 %
5581 I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of
5582 the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for
5583 you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
5584 -- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
5585 University of Tennessee at Knoxville
5586 %
5587 I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
5588 argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and
5589 steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,
5590 they don't even invite me.
5591 -- Dave Barry
5592 %
5593 I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
5594 -- G. K. Chesterton
5595 %
5596 I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
5597 -- Will Rogers
5598 %
5599 I bet the human brain is a kludge.
5600 -- Marvin Minsky
5601 %
5602 I brake for chezlogs!
5603 %
5604 I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up.
5605 -- Biff Barf
5606 %
5607 I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan
5608 prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very
5609 bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after
5610 relentless day.
5611 -- Betty MacDonald
5612 %
5613 I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
5614 %
5615 I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
5616 25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
5617 true.
5618 -- Harry Truman
5619 %
5620 I can resist anything but temptation.
5621 %
5622 I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
5623 -- Joe Walsh
5624 %
5625 I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
5626 -- Florence Henderson
5627 %
5628 I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can
5629 understand it.
5630 -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
5631 %
5632 I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
5633 novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
5634 -- Fred Allen
5635 %
5636 I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
5637 -- Lillian Hellman
5638 %
5639 I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
5640 of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
5641 -- F. H. Wales (1936)
5642 %
5643 I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
5644
5645 What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
5646 grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
5647 of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
5648 United States would have lost World War II."
5649 -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
5650 %
5651 "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
5652 quavering voice.
5653 "No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
5654 course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
5655 I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
5656 Elven-lore:
5657
5658 "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
5659 Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
5660 Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
5661 This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
5662 The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
5663 The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
5664 If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
5665 If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
5666 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
5667 %
5668 I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
5669 instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is
5670 standing still ...
5671 -- Steven Wright
5672 %
5673 I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
5674 dance with the cows till you come home.
5675 -- Groucho Marx
5676 %
5677 I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps
5678 the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ...
5679 -- Peter Oakley
5680 %
5681 I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.
5682 %
5683 I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The
5684 curtain was up.
5685 %
5686 I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because
5687 we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently
5688 leads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,
5689 in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had
5690 time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the
5691 library, we could call each other up:
5692
5693 You: Hello? Bob?
5694 Bob: Yes?
5695 You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you
5696 took last Thursday? Outside of Sears?
5697 Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed?
5698 You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
5699 "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait.
5700 I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
5701 and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto
5702 the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to
5703 have to get back to you.
5704 Bob: Fine.
5705 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
5706 %
5707 I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
5708 exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to
5709 minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary
5710 accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a
5711 mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the
5712 bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always
5713 different.
5714 -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
5715 %
5716 I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
5717 -- Isaac Asimov
5718 %
5719 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
5720 with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
5721 -- Galileo Galilei
5722 %
5723 I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
5724 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
5725 %
5726 I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
5727 don't believe in astrology.
5728 -- James R. F. Quirk
5729 %
5730 I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just
5731 a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more
5732 numbers!!
5733 %
5734 I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of
5735 a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
5736 -- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
5737 %
5738 I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
5739 nominating.
5740 -- Boss Tweed
5741 %
5742 I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
5743 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
5744 %
5745 I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
5746 people waiting to abuse me.
5747 -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
5748 %
5749 I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
5750 -- Elvis Presley
5751 %
5752 "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
5753 Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
5754 till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
5755 you!'"
5756 "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
5757 objected.
5758 "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
5759 tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
5760 less."
5761 "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
5762 so many different things."
5763 "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
5764 that's all."
5765 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
5766 %
5767 I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd
5768 eat it, and I just hate it.
5769 -- Clarence Darrow
5770 %
5771 I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path.
5772 -- Ronald Mabbitt
5773 %
5774 I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
5775 streets and frighten the horses.
5776 -- Victor Hugo
5777 %
5778 I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?
5779 %
5780 "I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
5781 %
5782 I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other
5783 hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out.
5784 %
5785 I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
5786 the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is
5787 thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists
5788 broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake.
5789 Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off
5790 their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ...
5791 -- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE
5792 COMING!"
5793 %
5794 I doubt, therefore I might be.
5795 %
5796 I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
5797 on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
5798 he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual
5799 becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
5800 -- George Bernard Shaw
5801 %
5802 I drink to make other people interesting.
5803 -- George Jean Nathan
5804 %
5805 I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
5806 so I woke up from sheer boredom.
5807 %
5808 I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
5809 accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
5810 the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
5811 can't be measured in monetary terms.
5812
5813 Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
5814 that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
5815 subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
5816 someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
5817 understand his long delay.
5818 %
5819 I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words.
5820 %
5821 I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
5822 reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment.
5823 -- Gotama Buddha
5824 %
5825 I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most *__________horrifying* 20
5826 minutes of my life!
5827 %
5828 I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
5829 -- Mae West
5830 %
5831 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
5832 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
5833 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
5834 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
5835 %
5836 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
5837 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
5838 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
5839 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
5840
5841 Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
5842 My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
5843 But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
5844 And think of the places my get-up has been.
5845 -- Pete Seeger
5846 %
5847 I had this sudden vision of a klein pizza containing all the mozarella
5848 in the world.
5849 -- Peter da Silva
5850 %
5851 I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
5852 Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!
5853 -- Mary Lou Bax
5854 %
5855 I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense.
5856 %
5857 I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
5858 it's going to be up all night.
5859 -- Steven Wright
5860 %
5861 I hate quotations.
5862 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
5863 %
5864 I have a simple philosophy:
5865
5866 Fill what's empty.
5867 Empty what's full.
5868 Scratch where it itches.
5869 -- A. R. Longworth
5870 %
5871 I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
5872 any time!
5873 %
5874 I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
5875 which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'.
5876 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
5877 %
5878 I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
5879 and they never believe me.
5880 -- Camillo Di Cavour
5881 %
5882 I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
5883 -- Edgar Allan Poe
5884 %
5885 I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
5886 sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
5887 eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
5888 have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
5889 beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
5890 guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
5891 of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry.
5892 -- President Harry S Truman
5893 %
5894 I have learned
5895 To spell hors d'oeuvres
5896 Which still grates on
5897 Some people's n'oeuvres.
5898 -- Warren Knox
5899 %
5900 I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming
5901 that I have never made one.
5902 -- James Gordon Bennett
5903 %
5904 I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
5905 make it shorter.
5906 -- Blaise Pascal
5907 %
5908 I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
5909 ____BODY!
5910 -- from "Cerebus" #82
5911 %
5912 I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
5913 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
5914 %
5915 I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
5916 -- Oscar Wilde
5917 %
5918 I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
5919 scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it.
5920 -- Steven Wright
5921 %
5922 I have to convince you, or at least snow you ...
5923 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
5924 %
5925 I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
5926 his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell
5927 beating up a child.
5928 -- Steven Wright
5929 %
5930 I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
5931 at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
5932 -- Poul Anderson
5933 %
5934 I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
5935 %
5936 I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
5937 %
5938 I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
5939 %
5940 I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
5941 -- Bill Hoest
5942 %
5943 I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
5944 %
5945 I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
5946 War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
5947 -- Albert Einstein
5948 %
5949 I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
5950 The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.
5951 -- Charles Schulz
5952 %
5953 I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
5954 -- Art Leo
5955 %
5956 I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
5957 promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want
5958 peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
5959 the way and let them have it.
5960 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
5961 %
5962 I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours.
5963 %
5964 I like your game but we have to change the rules.
5965 %
5966 I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
5967 entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils.
5968 -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
5969 %
5970 "I love to eat them Smurfies
5971 Smurfies what I love to eat
5972 Bite they ugly heads off,
5973 Nibble on they bluish feet."
5974 %
5975 I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
5976 don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the
5977 speed of light.
5978 -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
5979 %
5980 I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
5981 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
5982 %
5983 I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
5984 week sometimes to make it up.
5985 -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
5986 %
5987 I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
5988 %
5989 I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
5990 was to go away.
5991 %
5992 I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
5993 %
5994 I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
5995 -- G. B. Shaw
5996 %
5997 I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!
5998 -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
5999 %
6000 I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
6001 kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
6002 substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no
6003 restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
6004 made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
6005 powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
6006 nerve disease.
6007 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
6008 %
6009 I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
6010 %
6011 I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
6012 -- William F. Buckley
6013 %
6014 "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
6015 that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
6016 more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
6017 might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
6018 otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
6019 otherwise.'"
6020 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
6021 %
6022 I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that
6023 the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
6024 congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile
6025 so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the
6026 plumber.
6027
6028 But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such
6029 as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of
6030 the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never
6031 win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually
6032 write about, such as nose-picking.
6033 -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
6034 Political Fallout"
6035 %
6036 I really hate this damned machine
6037 I wish that they would sell it.
6038 It never does quite what I want
6039 But only what I tell it.
6040 %
6041 I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
6042 %
6043 I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
6044 they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
6045 -- Will Rogers
6046 %
6047 I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
6048 I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
6049 Bernoulli would have been content to die
6050 Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
6051 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
6052 %
6053 I sent a letter to the fish,
6054 I told them, "This is what I wish."
6055 The little fishes of the sea,
6056 They sent an answer back to me.
6057 The little fishes' answer was
6058 "We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
6059 I sent a letter back to say
6060 It would be better to obey.
6061 But someone came to me and said
6062 "The little fishes are in bed."
6063 I said to him, and I said it plain
6064 "Then you must wake them up again."
6065 I said it very loud and clear,
6066 I went and shouted in his ear.
6067 But he was very stiff and proud,
6068 He said "You needn't shout so loud."
6069 And he was very proud and stiff,
6070 He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
6071 I took a kettle from the shelf,
6072 I went to wake them up myself.
6073 But when I found the door was locked
6074 I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
6075 And when I found the door was shut,
6076 I tried to turn the handle, But ...
6077
6078 "Is that all?" asked Alice.
6079 "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
6080 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
6081 %
6082 I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
6083 -- Graffito in Los Angeles
6084 %
6085 "... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
6086 supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
6087 actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
6088 -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
6089 Points in l'Amour"
6090 %
6091 I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full
6092 house and four people died.
6093 -- Steven Wright
6094 %
6095 I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
6096 see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
6097 -- Shirley Temple
6098 %
6099 I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
6100 too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which
6101 direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After
6102 much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot
6103 tub to face is up.
6104 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
6105 %
6106 I think it is true for all _n. I was just playing it safe with _n >= 3
6107 because I couldn't remember the proof.
6108 -- Baker, Pure Math 351a
6109 %
6110 I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.
6111 %
6112 I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
6113 and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
6114 country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
6115 in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
6116 not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
6117 -- Monty Python
6118 %
6119 I think that I shall never see
6120 A billboard lovely as a tree.
6121 Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
6122 I'll never see a tree at all.
6123 -- Ogden Nash
6124 %
6125 I think that I shall never see
6126 A thing as lovely as a tree.
6127 But as you see the trees have gone
6128 They went this morning with the dawn.
6129 A logging firm from out of town
6130 Came and chopped the trees all down.
6131 But I will trick those dirty skunks
6132 And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'.
6133 %
6134 I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
6135 to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the
6136 farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
6137 into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
6138 the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
6139 off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
6140 color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
6141 out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars
6142 singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors.
6143 -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
6144 %
6145 I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
6146 ... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think
6147 we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.
6148 When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we
6149 are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was
6150 driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa
6151 Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,
6152 were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous
6153 conversation ...
6154 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
6155 %
6156 "I thought you were trying to get into shape."
6157 "I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
6158 %
6159 ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
6160 pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!
6161 -- Winston Churchill
6162 %
6163 I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in
6164 twenty minutes. It's about Russia.
6165 -- Woody Allen
6166 %
6167 I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
6168 %
6169 I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
6170 %
6171 I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
6172 %
6173 I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
6174 body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
6175 -- Emo Phillips
6176 %
6177 I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere
6178 near the place.
6179 -- Steven Wright
6180 %
6181 I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to
6182 animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for
6183 anything connected with society except that which makes the roads
6184 safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women
6185 warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
6186 -- Brendan Behan
6187 %
6188 I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
6189 Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
6190 HAW"!!'
6191 -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
6192 %
6193 I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
6194 anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is
6195 a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows
6196 up.
6197 -- Will Rogers
6198 %
6199 I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
6200 put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
6201 what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
6202 should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
6203 get off my driveway.
6204 -- Steven Wright
6205 %
6206 I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
6207 didn't know.
6208 -- Mark Twain
6209 %
6210 I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
6211 their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
6212 buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
6213 -- Emile Henry Gauvreay
6214 %
6215 I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
6216 house and four people died.
6217 -- Steven Wright
6218 %
6219 I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific.
6220 -- Steven Wright
6221 %
6222 I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
6223 it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
6224 stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
6225 I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
6226 absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
6227 developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
6228 Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
6229 temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
6230 chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
6231 the point where it would not run at all.
6232 -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
6233 Holes and the Fate of Stars"
6234 %
6235 I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
6236 questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
6237 speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
6238
6239 He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
6240 for him then.
6241 -- Steven Wright
6242 %
6243 I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
6244 the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
6245 included.
6246 -- Steven Wright
6247 %
6248 I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
6249 statues that are in all the other museums.
6250 -- Steven Wright
6251 %
6252 I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
6253 it took seven others to beat him!
6254 %
6255 I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
6256 There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work.
6257 -- Gallagher
6258 %
6259 I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
6260 always worked for me.
6261 -- Hunter S. Thompson
6262 %
6263 I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
6264 %
6265 I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
6266 to undo it.
6267 %
6268 I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat.
6269 %
6270 I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I snore.
6271 %
6272 I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in `Y.'
6273 %
6274 I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my blender.
6275 %
6276 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my garage door.
6277 %
6278 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
6279 Julian to Gregorian.
6280 %
6281 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
6282 static cling.
6283 %
6284 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered.
6285 %
6286 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
6287 cottage cheese sculpture.
6288 %
6289 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving.
6290 %
6291 I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma transplant.
6292 %
6293 I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night.
6294 %
6295 I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV.
6296 %
6297 I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never came back.
6298 %
6299 I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to stay tuned.
6300 %
6301 I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
6302 need worrying about.
6303 %
6304 I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
6305 %
6306 I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
6307 carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
6308 I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun.
6309 -- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
6310 %
6311 I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
6312 listen to it!
6313 -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
6314 %
6315 I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
6316 Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
6317 And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
6318 And in our bound partition never part.
6319 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
6320 %
6321 I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
6322 That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood.
6323 -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
6324 %
6325 I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man.
6326 %
6327 I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
6328 %
6329 I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister.
6330 %
6331 I'm changing my name to Chrysler
6332 I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
6333 I'll tell some power broker
6334 What they did for Iacocca
6335 Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
6336 I'm changing my name to Chrysler,
6337 I'm heading for that great receiving line.
6338 When they hand a million grand out,
6339 I'll be standing with my hand out,
6340 Yessir, I'll get mine!
6341 -- Tom Paxton
6342 %
6343 I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
6344 %
6345 I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
6346 die in.
6347 -- George McGovern
6348 %
6349 I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
6350 -- Fred Allen
6351 %
6352 I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
6353 -- Spider Robinson
6354 %
6355 ... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a
6356 KOSHER DELI!!
6357 %
6358 I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
6359 -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
6360 %
6361 I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
6362 living apart.
6363 -- e. e. cummings
6364 %
6365 I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
6366 N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
6367 I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
6368 She's traversed me seven times before.
6369 And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
6370 Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
6371 I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
6372 N-ary the tree I am, I am,
6373 N-ary the tree I am.
6374 %
6375 I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
6376 It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
6377 %
6378 I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
6379 %
6380 I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
6381 -- I could be just as proud for half the money.
6382 -- Arthur Godfrey
6383 %
6384 I'm rated PG-34!!
6385 %
6386 I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL
6387 soon ...
6388 %
6389 I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
6390 (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage.
6391 -- English Professor, Providence College
6392 %
6393 I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
6394 I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
6395 In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
6396 I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
6397 -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
6398 %
6399 I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives
6400 %
6401 I've built a better model than the one at Data General
6402 For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
6403 My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
6404 My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
6405 My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
6406 You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
6407 There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
6408 My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.
6409
6410 I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
6411 There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
6412 Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
6413 I've built a better model than the one at Data General.
6414
6415 -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
6416 "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
6417 by Gilbert & Sullivan)
6418 %
6419 I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
6420 %
6421 I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was
6422 this little hole in the bottom ...
6423 -- John Croll
6424 %
6425 I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
6426 %
6427 I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
6428 -- Groucho Marx
6429 %
6430 I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
6431 on the same day.
6432 %
6433 I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer.
6434 %
6435 I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer.
6436 -- Senator Claghorn
6437 %
6438 I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab.
6439 I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate.
6440 All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week.
6441 Time to die...
6442 -- Peter Gutmann
6443 %
6444 I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
6445 And from that full meridian of my glory
6446 I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
6447 Like a bright exhalation in the evening
6448 And no man see me more.
6449 -- Shakespeare
6450 %
6451 IBM had a PL/I,
6452 Its syntax worse than JOSS;
6453 And everywhere this language went,
6454 It was a total loss.
6455 %
6456 Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box
6457 of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
6458 %
6459 Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
6460 solitary confinement.
6461 %
6462 Idiot Box, n.:
6463 The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
6464 stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
6465 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
6466 %
6467 Idiot, n.:
6468 A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
6469 affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
6470 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6471 %
6472 If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
6473 at about 30 miles/second.
6474 -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
6475 %
6476 If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
6477 -- Roy Santoro
6478 %
6479 If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far.
6480 -- Paul White
6481 %
6482 If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus
6483 forecast is a camel's behind.
6484 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
6485 %
6486 If A equals success, then the formula is _A = _X + _Y + _Z. _X is work. _Y
6487 is play. _Z is keep your mouth shut.
6488 -- Albert Einstein
6489 %
6490 If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1
6491 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
6492 -- T. Cheatham
6493 %
6494 If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four
6495 hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where
6496 it votes guilty.
6497 -- Joseph C. Goulden
6498 %
6499 If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
6500 him up.
6501 %
6502 If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
6503 %
6504 If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have
6505 dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to
6506 maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it
6507 must drop. The law of gravity supersedes the law of golf.
6508 -- Donald A. Metz
6509 %
6510 If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
6511 attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to
6512 playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win --
6513 unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager
6514 can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?
6515 -- Sparky Anderson
6516 %
6517 If all be true that I do think,
6518 There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
6519 Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
6520 Or lest we should be by-and-by,
6521 Or any other reason why.
6522 %
6523 If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
6524 error.
6525 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
6526 %
6527 If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot
6528 platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave
6529 that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.
6530 %
6531 If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
6532 -- Paul Beatty
6533 %
6534 If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
6535 conclusion.
6536 -- William Baumol
6537 %
6538 If an S and an I and an O and a U
6539 With an X at the end spell Su;
6540 And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
6541 Pray what is a speller to do?
6542 Then, if also an S and an I and a G
6543 And an HED spell side,
6544 There's nothing much left for a speller to do
6545 But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
6546 -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
6547 %
6548 If anything can go wrong, it will.
6549 %
6550 If at first you don't succeed, give up. No use being a damn fool.
6551 %
6552 If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
6553 %
6554 If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
6555 tellers?
6556 %
6557 If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
6558 %
6559 If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
6560 %
6561 If everybody minded their own business, the world would go
6562 around a deal faster.
6563 -- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
6564 %
6565 If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
6566 %
6567 ... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
6568 the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
6569 asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
6570 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
6571 %
6572 If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three
6573 to a can.
6574 %
6575 If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
6576 %
6577 If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
6578 %
6579 If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears.
6580 %
6581 If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads.
6582 %
6583 If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
6584 green, baggy skin.
6585 %
6586 If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
6587 %
6588 If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
6589 invent it.
6590 %
6591 If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
6592 hands.
6593 %
6594 If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
6595 %
6596 If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
6597 %
6598 If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.
6599 -- Yiddish saying
6600 %
6601 If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
6602 -- Marvin Kitman
6603 %
6604 If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be
6605 replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!
6606 %
6607 If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
6608 -- Samuel Goldwyn
6609 %
6610 If I don't drive around the park,
6611 I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
6612 If I'm in bed each night by ten,
6613 I may get back my looks again.
6614 If I abstain from fun and such,
6615 I'll probably amount to much;
6616 But I shall stay the way I am,
6617 Because I do not give a damn.
6618 -- Dorothy Parker
6619 %
6620 If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
6621 %
6622 If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
6623 plantation and go home.
6624 -- Eugene P. Gallagher
6625 %
6626 If I had any humility I would be perfect.
6627 -- Ted Turner
6628 %
6629 If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
6630 -- Albert Einstein
6631 %
6632 If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
6633 shoulders of giants.
6634 -- Isaac Newton
6635
6636 In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
6637 with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
6638 -- Gerald Holton
6639
6640 If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
6641 on my shoulders.
6642 -- Hal Abelson
6643
6644 In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
6645 -- Brian K. Reid
6646 %
6647 If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
6648
6649 On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
6650 also a psychological interaction.
6651
6652 The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so
6653 friendly.
6654
6655 The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
6656 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
6657 %
6658 If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
6659 As Dame Fortune did intend,
6660 Murphy would be there to tell me
6661 The pot's at the other end.
6662 -- Bert Whitney
6663 %
6664 If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
6665 %
6666 If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
6667 %
6668 If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
6669 They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
6670 of it.
6671 -- Thomas Carlyle
6672 %
6673 If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
6674 forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
6675 just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
6676 And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
6677 pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
6678 And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
6679 think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
6680 receive Net Mail ...
6681 -- Leith (Casey) Leedom
6682 %
6683 If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
6684 %
6685 If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
6686 -- Tom Robbins
6687 %
6688 If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
6689 you've got in the house.
6690 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
6691 %
6692 If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
6693 the page number.
6694 %
6695 If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
6696 %
6697 If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
6698 little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
6699 Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
6700 -- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
6701 %
6702 If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
6703 -- A. Einstein.
6704 %
6705 If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
6706 in my name at a Swiss bank.
6707 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
6708 %
6709 If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
6710 %
6711 If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
6712 having to accomplish anything.
6713 %
6714 If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
6715 he should see how bad it is with representation.
6716 %
6717 If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
6718 arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
6719 physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
6720 entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
6721 -- Vannevar Bush
6722 %
6723 If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
6724 harder.
6725 -- Pope John Paul I
6726 %
6727 If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem.
6728 -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
6729 %
6730 If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
6731 presumably flunk it.
6732 -- Stanley Garn
6733 %
6734 If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
6735 -- Norm Schryer
6736 %
6737 If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
6738 get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
6739 See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
6740 the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
6741 that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The
6742 college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
6743 and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
6744 rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
6745 Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
6746 interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by
6747 opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
6748 himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
6749 boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
6750 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
6751 %
6752 If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
6753 -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
6754 %
6755 If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
6756 are 50-50 it will.
6757 %
6758 If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.
6759 If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.
6760 If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance
6761 will exceed all expectations.
6762 -- Reverend Chichester
6763 %
6764 If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
6765 %
6766 If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
6767 will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
6768 %
6769 If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
6770 -- Art Hoppe
6771 %
6772 If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
6773 something out of you.
6774 -- Muhammad Ali
6775 %
6776 If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
6777 %
6778 If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
6779 %
6780 If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
6781 %
6782 If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
6783 yesterday?
6784 %
6785 If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
6786 doing the thinking.
6787 -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
6788 %
6789 If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
6790 -- Laurence J. Peter
6791 %
6792 If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely
6793 %
6794 If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.
6795 %
6796 If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
6797 in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
6798 qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
6799 -- Marguerite Emmons
6800 %
6801 If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
6802 -- Ann Edwards-Duff
6803 %
6804 If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
6805 -- J. Paul Getty
6806 %
6807 If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
6808 %
6809 If you can read this, you're too close.
6810 %
6811 If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
6812 %
6813 If you can't be good, be careful.
6814 If you can't be careful, give me a call.
6815 %
6816 If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
6817 %
6818 If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
6819 -- Harry S Truman
6820 %
6821 If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
6822 %
6823 If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
6824 %
6825 If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
6826 -- Clarence Day
6827 %
6828 If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
6829 -- Freeman Dyson
6830 %
6831 If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
6832 Lavoris in the toilet.
6833 -- Jay Leno
6834 %
6835 If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
6836 either of you for the rest of the day.
6837 %
6838 If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
6839 have to get a toehold in the public eye.
6840 %
6841 If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
6842 will.
6843 %
6844 If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
6845 will always do it.
6846 -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
6847 %
6848 If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
6849 make the rubble bounce.
6850 -- Winston Churchill
6851 %
6852 If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
6853 %
6854 If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
6855 %
6856 If you have to hate, hate gently.
6857 %
6858 If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to
6859 boot yourself in the posterior.
6860 -- A. J. Liebling, "The Press"
6861 %
6862 If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
6863 %
6864 If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
6865 -- Graham Summer
6866 %
6867 If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
6868 people die past the age of a hundred.
6869 -- George Burns
6870 %
6871 If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
6872 but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
6873 %
6874 If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
6875 -- Maslow
6876 %
6877 If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
6878 can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
6879 develop.
6880 %
6881 If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
6882 you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
6883 -- Mark Twain
6884 %
6885 If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
6886 you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
6887 ice, but no cup.
6888 %
6889 If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
6890 this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
6891 somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
6892 %
6893 If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're
6894 the sucker.
6895 %
6896 If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
6897 %
6898 If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
6899 -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
6900 %
6901 If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
6902 tomorrow!
6903 %
6904 If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
6905 payments.
6906 -- Earl Wilson
6907 %
6908 If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
6909 -- Arthur Kasspe
6910 %
6911 If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
6912 shopping center in the world?
6913 -- Richard M. Nixon
6914 %
6915 If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
6916 be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
6917 you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw
6918 another party next year.
6919
6920 What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
6921 several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
6922 been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to
6923 avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
6924 parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
6925 having another one ...
6926
6927 If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
6928 your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
6929 through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure
6930 that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting
6931 someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
6932 -- Dave Barry
6933 %
6934 If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
6935 end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
6936 -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
6937 %
6938 If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
6939 -- A. L.
6940 %
6941 If you want divine justice, die.
6942 -- Nick Seldon
6943 %
6944 If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
6945 he gave it to.
6946 -- Dorothy Parker
6947 %
6948 If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
6949 Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
6950 statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
6951 telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
6952 titles beginning with the word "National".
6953 -- George Will
6954 %
6955 If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
6956 word you say, talk in your sleep.
6957 %
6958 If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
6959 memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it,
6960 even if they don't know what it means.
6961 -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
6962 %
6963 If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
6964 %
6965 If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
6966 tomorrow morning, sleep late.
6967 -- Henny Youngman
6968 %
6969 If you're happy, you're successful.
6970 %
6971 If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
6972 around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
6973 explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
6974 "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
6975 deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
6976 better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
6977 with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
6978 you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
6979 successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
6980 And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
6981 You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
6982 difficult can it be?"
6983 Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
6984 which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
6985 other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
6986 yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
6987 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
6988 %
6989 If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
6990 %
6991 If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
6992 -- Benjamin Disraeli
6993 %
6994 If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
6995 %
6996 If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
6997 off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?
6998 %
6999 If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
7000 -- Ronald Reagan
7001 %
7002 Ignisecond, n.:
7003 The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car
7004 door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
7005 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
7006 %
7007 Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
7008 Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
7009 Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
7010 Et le m^omerade horgrave.
7011 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
7012 %
7013 Iles's Law:
7014 There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly
7015 at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
7016 Neither will Iles.
7017 %
7018 Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
7019 land He's trying to ignore.
7020 %
7021 Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
7022 -- Jules de Gaultier
7023 %
7024 Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
7025 usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
7026 thinks of complaining.
7027 -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
7028 %
7029 Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
7030 a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
7031 storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
7032 voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
7033 What's the first question that the computer community asks?
7034
7035 "Is it PC compatible?"
7036 %
7037 Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
7038 -- Jack Paar
7039 %
7040 Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
7041 -- Edgar A. Shoaff
7042 %
7043 Impartial, adj.:
7044 Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
7045 espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
7046 conflicting opinions.
7047 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7048 %
7049 Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
7050 mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
7051 Boss is reading it.
7052 %
7053 Impossible, adj.:
7054 (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
7055 (2) I can't be bothered;
7056 (3) God can't be bothered.
7057 Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
7058 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
7059 %
7060 In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of
7061 stairs.
7062 %
7063 In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.
7064 %
7065 In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't
7066 get parts.
7067 %
7068 In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The
7069 creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across.
7070 %
7071 In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred
7072 syrup.
7073 %
7074 In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
7075 we can't control when the five year period will begin.
7076 %
7077 In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
7078 junior, what are you up to?"
7079 "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
7080 rabbit.
7081 "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
7082 "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the
7083 rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
7084 expression on his face.
7085 Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
7086 "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
7087 devour wolves."
7088 "Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?"
7089 "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes
7090 out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
7091 Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
7092 should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
7093 next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.
7094
7095 The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
7096 it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
7097 %
7098 In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
7099 Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
7100 -- Frank Mankiewicz
7101 %
7102 In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
7103 "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
7104 -- Mark Twain
7105 %
7106 In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
7107 with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call
7108 this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
7109 %
7110 In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
7111 sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All
7112 those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the
7113 devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up
7114 as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.
7115 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
7116 %
7117 In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
7118 of the risks he takes.
7119 -- Adlai Stevenson
7120 %
7121 In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
7122 incompetency
7123 -- The Peter Principle
7124 %
7125 In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
7126 are to be treated as variables.
7127 %
7128 In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
7129 nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir.
7130 -- Stuart Keate
7131 %
7132 In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
7133 at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
7134 %
7135 In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
7136 %
7137 In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
7138 will be temporarily canceled.
7139 %
7140 In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and
7141 make it better.
7142 %
7143 In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
7144 a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
7145 to get her attention.
7146 %
7147 In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
7148 in any motor vehicle.
7149 %
7150 In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
7151 -- Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
7152 %
7153 In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
7154 neighbor.
7155 %
7156 In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
7157 %
7158 In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
7159 resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
7160 inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
7161 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7162 %
7163 In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
7164 programming languages.
7165 %
7166 In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
7167 the sidewalks when a concert is on.
7168 %
7169 In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
7170 into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
7171 between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
7172 will only make it mushy.
7173 -- Mark Twain
7174 %
7175 In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
7176 pocket.
7177 %
7178 In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
7179 pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
7180 either flying or waiting to board a plane.
7181 %
7182 In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
7183 there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
7184 flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
7185 %
7186 In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
7187 to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
7188 speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
7189 %
7190 In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
7191 universe.
7192 -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
7193 %
7194 In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
7195 intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from
7196 the cares of office.
7197 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7198 %
7199 In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
7200 and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
7201 %
7202 In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying
7203 of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public
7204 view."
7205 %
7206 In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
7207 Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
7208 Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
7209 We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
7210 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
7211 %
7212 In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
7213 is over six feet in length.
7214 %
7215 In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
7216 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
7217 %
7218 In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian.
7219 %
7220 In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
7221 %
7222 In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
7223 moving automobile.
7224 %
7225 [In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
7226 could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
7227 that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
7228
7229 And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
7230 over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
7231 didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
7232 point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
7233 we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....
7234
7235 So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
7236 Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
7237 ___see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
7238 rolled back.
7239 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
7240 %
7241 In the beginning was the word.
7242 But by the time the second word was added to it,
7243 there was trouble.
7244 For with it came syntax ...
7245 -- John Simon
7246 %
7247 In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat
7248 hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am
7249 training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the
7250 net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any
7251 preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you
7252 close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be
7253 empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
7254 %
7255 In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
7256 the proper order then why can't he?
7257 %
7258 In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
7259 Dead.
7260 -- Egyptian Book of the Dead
7261 %
7262 In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
7263 -- Alan Perlis
7264 %
7265 In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
7266 a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
7267 to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
7268 forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you
7269 stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
7270 punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
7271 enough to punch you.
7272 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
7273 %
7274 In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
7275 shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the
7276 Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million
7277 three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years
7278 from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.
7279 ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
7280 wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
7281 fact.
7282 -- Mark Twain
7283 %
7284 In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
7285 drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
7286 discotheques.
7287 -- Art Linkletter
7288 %
7289 In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
7290 my advice.
7291 -- Winston Churchill
7292 %
7293 In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
7294 the supervision of a licensed engineer.
7295 %
7296 In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse
7297 along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
7298 %
7299 Incumbent, n.:
7300 Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
7301 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7302 %
7303 ... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
7304 smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
7305 not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
7306 -- Stephen Crane
7307 %
7308 Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
7309 %
7310 Individualists unite!
7311 %
7312 Infancy, n.:
7313 The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
7314 lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon
7315 afterward.
7316 -- Ambrose Bierce
7317 %
7318 Information Center, n.:
7319 A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
7320 to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
7321 %
7322 Ingrate, n.:
7323 A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
7324 indigestion.
7325 %
7326 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
7327 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
7328 %
7329 Ink, n.:
7330 A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
7331 water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
7332 intellectual crime.
7333 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7334 %
7335 Innovation is hard to schedule.
7336 -- Dan Fylstra
7337 %
7338 Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
7339 %
7340 Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
7341 salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
7342 %
7343 Interpreter, n.:
7344 One who enables two persons of different languages to
7345 understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
7346 the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
7347 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7348 %
7349 Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
7350 %
7351 I/O, I/O,
7352 It's off to disk I go,
7353 A bit or byte to read or write,
7354 I/O, I/O, I/O
7355 %
7356 INVENTORY
7357 Four be the things I am wiser to know:
7358 Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
7359
7360 Four be the things I'd been better without:
7361 Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
7362
7363 Three be the things I shall never attain:
7364 Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
7365
7366 Three be the things I shall have till I die:
7367 Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
7368 %
7369 Iron Law of Distribution:
7370 Them that has, gets.
7371 %
7372 Irrationality is the square root of all evil
7373 -- Douglas Hofstadter
7374 %
7375 Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
7376 meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
7377 soap bubble?
7378 %
7379 Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
7380 beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
7381 out, and such as are out wish to get in?
7382 -- Ralph Emerson
7383 %
7384 Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!
7385 %
7386 Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
7387 listen to weather forecasts and economists?
7388 -- Kelvin Throop III
7389 %
7390 Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
7391 tellers take economists seriously?
7392 %
7393 Issawi's Laws of Progress:
7394
7395 The Course of Progress:
7396 Most things get steadily worse.
7397
7398 The Path of Progress:
7399 A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
7400 %
7401 It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
7402 as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he
7403 had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked,
7404 "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed
7405 Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival
7406 came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer
7407 this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the
7408 Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
7409 To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's
7410 your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked,
7411 "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
7412 %
7413 It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown
7414 came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and
7415 applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I
7416 think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
7417 wits, who believe that it is a joke.
7418 -- S. A. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
7419 %
7420 It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
7421 thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
7422 drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
7423 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7424 %
7425 It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
7426 that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that
7427 one can learn."
7428 -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
7429 %
7430 It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
7431 been searching for evidence which could support this.
7432 -- Bertrand Russell
7433 %
7434 It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
7435 %
7436 It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
7437 program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
7438 organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
7439 self-critical?
7440 -- Alan Perlis
7441 %
7442 It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
7443 Urbana, Illinois.
7444 %
7445 It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will
7446 not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves
7447 and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like
7448 mature human beings ...
7449 -- Playboy, January 1983
7450 %
7451 It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
7452 pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
7453 sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
7454 -- Voltaire
7455 %
7456 It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
7457 they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
7458 that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
7459 much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
7460 had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But
7461 conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
7462 intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
7463
7464 Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
7465 destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
7466 alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
7467 misinterpreted ...
7468 -- Douglas Adams "The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy"
7469 %
7470 It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
7471 coming up it.
7472 -- Henry Allen
7473 %
7474 It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
7475 One in a million, perhaps.
7476 %
7477 It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
7478 %
7479 It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
7480 benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
7481 to use either.
7482 -- Mark Twain
7483 %
7484 It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
7485 incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
7486 twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
7487 -- Rod Serling
7488 %
7489 It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
7490 lightly greased.
7491 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
7492 %
7493 It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
7494 proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community
7495 a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to
7496 treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the
7497 focus of attention, the harder the task.
7498 -- Sydney J. Harris
7499 %
7500 It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
7501 %
7502 It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
7503 %
7504 It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
7505 %
7506 It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
7507 if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
7508 people.
7509 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
7510 %
7511 It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
7512 Boulevard at one time.
7513 %
7514 It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
7515 %
7516 It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
7517 a tune.
7518 -- Woody Allen
7519 %
7520 It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
7521 ingenious.
7522 %
7523 It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
7524 desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
7525 -- Woody Allen
7526 %
7527 It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our
7528 offense consists in doubting it.
7529 -- Justice Robert H. Jackson
7530 %
7531 It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
7532 problem.
7533 %
7534 It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
7535 privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
7536 corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
7537 -- George Bernard Shaw
7538 %
7539 It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
7540 -- Gore Vidal
7541 %
7542 It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
7543 damn thing over and over.
7544 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
7545 %
7546 It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
7547 -- Elizabeth Carpenter
7548 %
7549 It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.
7550 %
7551 It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
7552 virginity could be a virtue.
7553 -- Voltaire
7554 %
7555 It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
7556 dignity.
7557 %
7558 It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared
7559 to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
7560 -- Havelock Ellis
7561 %
7562 It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
7563 students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential
7564 programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
7565 regeneration.
7566 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
7567 %
7568 It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
7569 lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
7570 high as the eagle?
7571 %
7572 It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
7573 statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
7574 glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
7575 which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
7576 day, that is the highest of arts.
7577 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
7578 %
7579 It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad
7580 crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed
7581 until the other has gone.
7582 %
7583 It is the business of little minds to shrink.
7584 -- Carl Sandburg
7585 %
7586 It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
7587 -- Hawkwind
7588 %
7589 It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for
7590 five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But
7591 it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
7592 %
7593 It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the
7594 future.
7595 %
7596 It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
7597 %
7598 It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
7599 good either if you speak when your head is empty.
7600 %
7601 It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
7602 warning to others.
7603 %
7604 It runs like _x, where _x is something unsavory
7605 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
7606 %
7607 It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
7608 flag.
7609 %
7610 It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the
7611 municipality.
7612 -- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
7613 %
7614 It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
7615 but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous.
7616 -- Robert Benchly
7617 %
7618 It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
7619 %
7620 It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot.
7621 %
7622 It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a
7623 breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was
7624 broken ...
7625 -- James Dent
7626 %
7627 It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
7628 I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I
7629 don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
7630 the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual
7631 charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
7632 novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
7633 yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable
7634 man a lifetime.
7635 -- Thomas Aldrich
7636 %
7637 It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
7638 laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
7639 thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
7640 nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
7641 for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
7642 Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
7643 under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
7644 icepacks.
7645 -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
7646 %
7647 It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like
7648 the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
7649 %
7650 It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
7651 the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
7652 %
7653 It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human
7654 nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant
7655 examples.
7656 -- Charles Dickens
7657 %
7658 It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
7659 warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
7660 two things still safe to eat.
7661 -- Robert Fuoss
7662 %
7663 It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
7664 -- Andrew Jackson
7665 %
7666 It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.
7667 -- Cheers
7668 %
7669 It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
7670 %
7671 It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
7672 -- Steven Wright
7673 %
7674 "It's a summons."
7675 "What's a summons?"
7676 "It means summon's in trouble."
7677 -- Rocky and Bullwinkle
7678 %
7679 It's a very *__UN*lucky week in which to be took dead.
7680 -- Churchy La Femme
7681 %
7682 It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
7683 %
7684 It's bad luck to be superstitious.
7685 -- Andrew W. Mathis
7686 %
7687 It's better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all.
7688 -- Marty Winch
7689 %
7690 "It's easier said than done."
7691
7692 ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
7693 said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
7694 said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
7695 done".
7696 %
7697 It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
7698 %
7699 It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
7700 being right.
7701 %
7702 It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
7703 -- Macy's
7704 %
7705 It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
7706 %
7707 It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
7708 is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It
7709 isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
7710 -- Oxford University Press, "Edpress News"
7711 %
7712 It's just a jump to the left
7713 And then a step to the right.
7714 Put your hands on your hips
7715 And pull your knees in tight.
7716 But it's the pelvic thrust
7717 That really drives you insa-a-a-a-a-ane!
7718
7719 LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
7720
7721 -- Rocky Horror Picture Show
7722 %
7723 It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
7724 -- Walt Disney
7725 %
7726 "It's Like This"
7727
7728 Even the samurai
7729 have teddy bears,
7730 and even the teddy bears
7731 get drunk.
7732 %
7733 It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
7734 direction.
7735 %
7736 It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name.
7737 %
7738 It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
7739 -- Sam Goldwyn
7740 %
7741 It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
7742 to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
7743 -- George Burns
7744 %
7745 It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
7746 -- Phil White
7747 %
7748 It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either.
7749 -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
7750 %
7751 It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
7752 -- Alexander Korda
7753 %
7754 It's not just a computer -- it's your ass.
7755 -- Cal Keegan
7756 %
7757 It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
7758 what you're taking for it...
7759 %
7760 It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
7761 the ground.
7762 -- Daniel B. Luten
7763 %
7764 It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
7765 happens.
7766 -- Woody Allen
7767 %
7768 It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
7769 -- Garfield
7770 %
7771 It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that
7772 English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many
7773 other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
7774 -- Sydney J. Harris
7775 %
7776 It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
7777 %
7778 It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
7779 %
7780 It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
7781 Devil when he is the only explanation of it.
7782 %
7783 It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which
7784 raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody
7785 not to.
7786 -- Franklin P. Jones
7787 %
7788 It's the thought, if any, that counts!
7789 %
7790 JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
7791 by Mark Isaak
7792
7793 Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
7794 character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
7795 hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
7796 are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
7797 BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
7798 to him.
7799 So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
7800 he met the traveling salesman.
7801 "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
7802 in high-level language.
7803 "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
7804 and Apples," commented Jack.
7805 "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
7806 there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
7807 Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
7808 he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
7809 started thrashing.
7810 "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
7811 kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
7812 window ...
7813 %
7814 Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
7815 No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
7816 legislature is in session.
7817 %
7818 James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
7819 indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
7820 -- Tom Stoppard
7821 %
7822 Jenkinson's Law:
7823 It won't work.
7824 %
7825 Jesus Saves,
7826 Moses Invests,
7827 But only Buddha pays Dividends.
7828 %
7829 Job Placement, n.:
7830 Telling your boss what he can do with your job.
7831 %
7832 Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
7833 %
7834 Johnson's First Law:
7835 When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
7836 most inconvenient possible time.
7837 %
7838 Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called
7839 "Bureaucracy". Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do
7840 anything loses.
7841 %
7842 Join the march to save individuality!
7843 %
7844 Jone's Law:
7845 The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
7846 to blame it on.
7847 %
7848 Jone's Motto:
7849 Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
7850 %
7851 Jones's First Law:
7852 Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
7853 endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction
7854 to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their
7855 original contribution.
7856 %
7857 Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
7858 (and nobody cares about it).
7859 -- Bill Joy 6/21/85
7860 %
7861 Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good
7862 solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires
7863 one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the
7864 winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is
7865 because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise
7866 mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political
7867 motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the
7868 whole truth.
7869 -- Stephen R. Schwambach
7870 %
7871 Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has
7872 changed.
7873 -- Irene Peter
7874 %
7875 Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
7876 %
7877 Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
7878 knows what it is.
7879 %
7880 Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
7881 get a prompt, type like hell.
7882 %
7883 Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
7884 immune to bullets.
7885 -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
7886 %
7887 Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
7888 of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?
7889 -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa (a] killer.DALLAS.TX.US
7890 %
7891 Just remember, it all started with a mouse.
7892 -- Walt Disney
7893 %
7894 Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
7895 twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
7896 %
7897 `Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
7898 As he landed his crew with care;
7899 Supporting each man on the top of the tide
7900 By a finger entwined in his hair.
7901
7902 'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
7903 That alone should encourage the crew.
7904 Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
7905 What I tell you three times is true.'
7906 %
7907 Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a
7908 faster rat!!!
7909 %
7910 Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven!
7911 -- Michael J. Wagner
7912 %
7913 Justice is incidental to law and order.
7914 -- J. Edgar Hoover
7915 %
7916 Justice, n.:
7917 A decision in your favor.
7918 %
7919 K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
7920 Cobol's wordy and confining;
7921 KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
7922 Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
7923 -- The Roguelet's ABC
7924 %
7925 Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to
7926 wear tail lights.
7927 %
7928 Katz' Law:
7929 Man and nations will act rationally when all other
7930 possibilities have been exhausted.
7931 %
7932 Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
7933 %
7934 Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze
7935 - Hellman's Mayonnaise
7936 %
7937 Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
7938 %
7939 Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
7940 %
7941 Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
7942 (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
7943 straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
7944 force is technically termed "car suck").
7945 (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
7946 than "Watch this!"
7947 %
7948 Keep your Eye on the Ball,
7949 Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
7950 Your Nose to the Grindstone,
7951 Your Feet on the Ground,
7952 Your Head on your Shoulders.
7953 Now ... try to get something DONE!
7954 %
7955 Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
7956 automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
7957 numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
7958 driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
7959 dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
7960 what's wrong."
7961 %
7962 Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
7963 Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
7964 and parking for the faculty.
7965 %
7966 Kids have *_____never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could
7967 travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the
7968 original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate
7969 teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
7970 grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate
7971 teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
7972 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
7973 %
7974 Kin, n.:
7975 An affliction of the blood
7976 %
7977 Kinkler's First Law:
7978 Responsibility always exceeds authority.
7979
7980 Kinkler's Second Law:
7981 All the easy problems have been solved.
7982 %
7983 Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
7984 %
7985 Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
7986 any of its streets.
7987 %
7988 Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
7989 %
7990 Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
7991 %
7992 Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
7993 %
7994 Kleptomaniac, n.:
7995 A rich thief.
7996 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7997 %
7998 Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
7999 %
8000 Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
8001 -- Henry N. Camp
8002 %
8003 Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
8004 The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
8005 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
8006 %
8007 Labor, n.:
8008 One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
8009 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8010 %
8011 Lackland's Laws:
8012 (1) Never be first.
8013 (2) Never be last.
8014 (3) Never volunteer for anything
8015 %
8016 Lactomangulation, n.:
8017 Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
8018 that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
8019 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
8020 %
8021 Ladybug, ladybug,
8022 Look to your stern!
8023 Your house is on fire,
8024 Your children will burn!
8025 So jump ye and sing, for
8026 The very first time
8027 The four lines above
8028 Have been put into rhyme.
8029 -- Walt Kelly
8030 %
8031 Laetrile is the pits
8032 %
8033 Langsam's Laws:
8034 (1) Everything depends.
8035 (2) Nothing is always.
8036 (3) Everything is sometimes.
8037 %
8038 Larkinson's Law:
8039 All laws are basically false.
8040 %
8041 Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with
8042 was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting
8043 pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the
8044 farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
8045 sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
8046 you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
8047 What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
8048 of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
8049 the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
8050 whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
8051 Lassie filed the applications for.
8052 -- Dave Barry
8053 %
8054 Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
8055 had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to
8056 my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'
8057 -- Steven Wright
8058 %
8059 Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police
8060 record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense
8061 of humor.
8062 %
8063 Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won.
8064 %
8065 Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
8066 %
8067 Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
8068 -- Victor Borge
8069 %
8070 Law of Communications:
8071 The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
8072 between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
8073 misunderstanding.
8074 %
8075 Law of Probable Dispersal:
8076 Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
8077 distributed.
8078 %
8079 Law of Selective Gravity:
8080 An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
8081
8082 Jenning's Corollary:
8083 The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
8084 directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
8085
8086 Law of the Perversity of Nature:
8087 You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
8088 bread to butter.
8089 %
8090 Laws of Serendipity:
8091
8092 (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
8093 something.
8094 (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
8095 be engaged in making an inferior one.
8096 %
8097 Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
8098 No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
8099 approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
8100 %
8101 Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
8102 %
8103 Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
8104 everything else follows in the same way.
8105 -- Alan J. Perlis
8106 %
8107 Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
8108 %
8109 Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the
8110 fun?
8111 %
8112 Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
8113 "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
8114 unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
8115 drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he
8116 can."
8117 %
8118 Leibowitz's Rule:
8119 When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
8120 hold the hammer with both hands.
8121 %
8122 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
8123 You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are
8124 pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike
8125 honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people
8126 are thieves.
8127 %
8128 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
8129 Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
8130 Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
8131 you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of
8132 fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
8133 a sick sense of humor.
8134 %
8135 Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
8136 %
8137 Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
8138 number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash
8139 and another number.
8140 -- James Estes
8141 %
8142 Let us live!!!
8143 Let us love!!!
8144 Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
8145
8146 You first.
8147 %
8148 Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every
8149 relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you
8150 really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the
8151 end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
8152 qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and
8153 bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
8154 his back.
8155 -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
8156 %
8157 Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
8158 your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
8159 Mental Anguish. You would sue:
8160
8161 * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
8162 section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
8163 into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
8164 in there".
8165
8166 * The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
8167 cretin like yourself.
8168
8169 * Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
8170 case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
8171 a large cash settlement anyway.
8172 -- Dave Barry
8173 %
8174 Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
8175 overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of
8176 dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your
8177 tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to
8178 spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe
8179 money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will
8180 probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?
8181 It's not his money.
8182 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
8183 %
8184 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
8185
8186 Dear Sir,
8187
8188 I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
8189 to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
8190 public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
8191 in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
8192 will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
8193 agricultural industry.
8194
8195 Yours faithfully,
8196 Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
8197 Sevenoaks
8198 %
8199 Lewis's Law of Travel:
8200 The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
8201 anyone, ever.
8202 %
8203 Liar, n.:
8204 A lawyer with a roving commission.
8205 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8206 %
8207 Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
8208 -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
8209 %
8210 LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
8211 Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
8212 desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and
8213 polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
8214 %
8215 LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
8216 You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
8217 reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay.
8218 Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most
8219 Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal
8220 disease.
8221 %
8222 Lie, n.:
8223 A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
8224 discovered to date.
8225 %
8226 Lieberman's Law:
8227 Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
8228 %
8229 Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
8230 %
8231 Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
8232 %
8233 Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
8234 eat it nevertheless.
8235 -- Flaubert
8236 %
8237 Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it.
8238 %
8239 Life is like a simile.
8240 %
8241 Life is like an analogy.
8242 %
8243 Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
8244 there is nothing in it.
8245 %
8246 Life is too important to take seriously.
8247 -- Corky Siegel
8248 %
8249 Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
8250 which I disapprove.
8251 %
8252 Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility.
8253 -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
8254 %
8255 Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
8256 weren't for other people.
8257 -- Blore
8258 %
8259 Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
8260 %
8261 Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
8262 -- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
8263 %
8264 Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
8265 sense from things she found in gift shops.
8266 -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
8267 %
8268 Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
8269 for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
8270 -- Alan McKay
8271 %
8272 Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
8273 %
8274 Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe
8275 we should think only about today.
8276 Charlie Brown:
8277 No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
8278 better.
8279 %
8280 Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
8281 -- Candice Bergen
8282 %
8283 Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
8284 around the Sun.
8285 %
8286 Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
8287 before.
8288 %
8289 Lizzie Borden took an axe,
8290 And plunged it deep into the VAX;
8291 Don't you envy people who
8292 Do all the things ___YOU want to do?
8293 %
8294 Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these
8295 interest rates, we don't need it."
8296 %
8297 Lobster:
8298 Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
8299 squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the
8300 only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to
8301 eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial
8302 before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most
8303 ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime
8304 in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its
8305 unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of
8306 the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout,
8307 "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a
8308 memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe
8309 at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot.
8310 Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be,
8311 too.
8312 -- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and
8313 Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
8314 %
8315 Lockwood's Long Shot:
8316 The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
8317 one in a million, but once would be enough.
8318 %
8319 Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____awful*.
8320 %
8321 ... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
8322 legally ... impeccable!
8323 %
8324 Logicians have but ill defined
8325 As rational the human kind.
8326 Logic, they say, belongs to man,
8327 But let them prove it if they can.
8328 -- Oliver Goldsmith
8329 %
8330 Look out! Behind you!
8331 %
8332 Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us
8333 to pay income taxes, too?
8334 -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
8335 %
8336 Loose bits sink chips.
8337 %
8338 Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying
8339 "BOOGA, BOOGA!"
8340 %
8341 Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
8342 %
8343 Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in
8344 Halstead, Kansas.
8345 %
8346 Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
8347 %
8348 Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
8349 world has ever seen.
8350 %
8351 Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
8352 -- Sigmund Freud
8353 %
8354 Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
8355 flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
8356 -- Matt Groening
8357 %
8358 Love is a word that is constantly heard,
8359 Hate is a word that is not.
8360 Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
8361 Love, I have read, is hot.
8362 But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
8363 And Love but a drug on the mart.
8364 Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
8365 But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
8366 -- Ogden Nash
8367 %
8368 Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
8369 the ideal never goes unpunished.
8370 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8371 %
8372 Love is sentimental measles.
8373 %
8374 Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
8375 -- H. L. Mencken
8376 %
8377 Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
8378 %
8379 Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
8380 -- Louise Beal
8381 %
8382 Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
8383 %
8384 Love's Drug
8385
8386 My love is like an iron wand
8387 That conks me on the head,
8388 My love is like the valium
8389 That I take before my bed,
8390 My love is like the pint of scotch
8391 That I drink when I be dry;
8392 And I shall love thee still, my dear,
8393 Until my wife is wise.
8394 %
8395 Lowery's Law:
8396 If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
8397 anyway.
8398 %
8399 LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
8400 %
8401 Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
8402 There's always one more bug.
8403 %
8404 Lunatic Asylum, n.:
8405 The place where optimism most flourishes.
8406 %
8407 Lysistrata had a good idea.
8408 %
8409 MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
8410 the smallest amount of thoughts.
8411 -- Winston Churchill
8412 %
8413 Machine-Independent, adj.:
8414 Does not run on any existing machine.
8415 %
8416 Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
8417 and play games -- but not with pleasure.
8418 -- Leo Rosten
8419 %
8420 Mad, adj.:
8421 Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
8422 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8423 %
8424 Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
8425 first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
8426 -- W. C. Fields
8427 %
8428 MAFIA, n:
8429 [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
8430 Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
8431 subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
8432 rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
8433 reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
8434 operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
8435 MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
8436 variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
8437 security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
8438 more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
8439 imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
8440 options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
8441 Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
8442 powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
8443 entire nodal aggravations.
8444 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
8445 %
8446 Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism.
8447
8448 Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
8449
8450 The two definition immediately preceding are condensed from the works
8451 of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
8452 with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
8453 knowledge.
8454 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8455 %
8456 Magnocartic, adj.:
8457 Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts.
8458 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
8459 %
8460 Magpie, n.:
8461 A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
8462 might be taught to talk.
8463 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8464 %
8465 Maier's Law:
8466 If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
8467
8468 Corollaries:
8469 (1) The bigger the theory, the better.
8470 (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
8471 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
8472 obtain a correspondence with the theory.
8473 %
8474 Main's Law:
8475 For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
8476 %
8477 Maintainer's Motto:
8478 If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
8479 %
8480 Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
8481 as one man.
8482
8483 Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
8484
8485 Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
8486 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8487 %
8488 Majority, n.:
8489 That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
8490 %
8491 Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!
8492 %
8493 Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
8494 tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It
8495 has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
8496 the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
8497 -- System V.2 administrator's guide
8498 %
8499 Malek's Law:
8500 Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
8501 %
8502 Man 1: Ask me the what the most important thing about telling a good
8503 joke is.
8504
8505 Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
8506
8507 Man 1: ______TIMING!
8508 %
8509 Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
8510 -- Lily Tomlin
8511 %
8512 Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
8513 upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
8514 -- Oscar Wilde
8515 %
8516 Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
8517 only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
8518 -- Wernher von Braun
8519 %
8520 Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
8521 -- Mark Twain
8522 %
8523 Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
8524 victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
8525 -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
8526 %
8527 Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
8528 is an enemy.
8529 -- Albert Einstein
8530 %
8531 Man, n.:
8532 An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
8533 he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
8534 occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which,
8535 however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole
8536 habitable earth and Canada.
8537 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8538 %
8539 Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
8540 Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
8541 don't think, right?"
8542 -- Dr. Who
8543 %
8544 Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
8545 dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
8546 man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
8547 air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
8548 primitive umpire.
8549
8550 What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
8551 mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
8552 -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
8553 %
8554 Manual, n.:
8555 A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a
8556 given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The
8557 information you need is in the others.
8558 -- Ray Simard
8559 %
8560 Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
8561 there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
8562 was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
8563 completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
8564 -- Walt Kelly
8565 %
8566 Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
8567 Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
8568 simple yes or no answer.
8569 %
8570 Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
8571 -- Voltaire
8572 %
8573 Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
8574 the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam
8575 dancing.
8576 -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
8577 %
8578 Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.
8579 -- Malcolm Smith
8580 %
8581 Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
8582 -- R. Drabek
8583 %
8584 Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
8585 translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something
8586 entirely different.
8587 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8588 %
8589 Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
8590 described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can
8591 play.
8592 -- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
8593 James Blish
8594 %
8595 Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence.
8596 %
8597 Matter cannot be created or destroyed,
8598 nor can it be returned without a receipt.
8599 %
8600 Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
8601 -- Jules Feiffer
8602 %
8603 May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts.
8604 %
8605 May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
8606 %
8607 May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
8608 %
8609 May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
8610 Thousand Caramels.
8611 %
8612 Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
8613 -- R. S. Barton
8614 %
8615 Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
8616 it.
8617 %
8618 McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
8619 If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
8620 $19.95.
8621 %
8622 Meader's Law:
8623 Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
8624 everyone you know, only more so.
8625 %
8626 Meeting, n.:
8627 An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
8628 department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
8629 %
8630 Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
8631 from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
8632 Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
8633 had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
8634 -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams
8635 %
8636 Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
8637 it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
8638 very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
8639 tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...
8640 [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important
8641 world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the
8642 next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]
8643 ... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
8644 cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
8645 billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even
8646 more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a
8647 fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the
8648 older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and
8649 obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the
8650 window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger
8651 hotshot cells moving up from below.
8652 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
8653 %
8654 Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
8655 The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
8656 %
8657 Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
8658 The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
8659 cork makes when it is popped.
8660 %
8661 Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
8662 All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
8663 %
8664 Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
8665 Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
8666 is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can
8667 never hope to acquire it.
8668 %
8669 Menu, n.:
8670 A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
8671 %
8672 Meskimen's Law:
8673 There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
8674 do it over.
8675 %
8676 MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
8677 %
8678 Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
8679 %
8680 methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin-
8681 ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
8682 phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
8683 taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
8684 glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala-
8685 nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta-
8686 minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly-
8687 cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl-
8688 leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu-
8689 cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva-
8690 lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro-
8691 sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu-
8692 cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe-
8693 nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala-
8694 nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas-
8695 partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl-
8696 glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl-
8697 valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu-
8698 cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi-
8699 nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse-
8700 rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl-
8701 glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly-
8702 sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro-
8703 lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl-
8704 glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
8705 The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
8706 1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
8707 -- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
8708 Preposterous Words
8709 %
8710 Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
8711 %
8712 Micro Credo:
8713 Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
8714 %
8715 Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
8716 watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks.
8717 %
8718 Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
8719 out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
8720 -- Casablanca
8721 %
8722 Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
8723 Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
8724 inconsiderate."
8725 -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
8726 %
8727 Miksch's Law:
8728 If a string has one end, then it has another end.
8729 %
8730 Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
8731 -- Groucho Marx
8732 %
8733 Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
8734 -- Groucho Marx
8735 %
8736 Millihelen, adj:
8737 The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
8738 %
8739 Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
8740 themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
8741 -- Susan Ertz
8742 %
8743 Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
8744 politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum
8745 and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they
8746 are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
8747 rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all
8748 the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
8749 Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert
8750 Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
8751 Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
8752 black.
8753 -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
8754 %
8755 Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
8756 is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
8757 myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
8758 the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
8759 unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
8760 will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
8761 dead as a door-nail.
8762 %
8763 Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
8764 %
8765 Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
8766 pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
8767 %
8768 Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
8769 %
8770 Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
8771 -- Russell Baker
8772 %
8773 Misfortune, n.:
8774 The kind of fortune that never misses.
8775 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8776 %
8777 Miss, n.:
8778 A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
8779 they are in the market.
8780 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8781 %
8782 Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
8783 %
8784 Mitchell's Law of Committees:
8785 Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
8786 held to discuss it.
8787 %
8788 MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
8789
8790 Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
8791 2 cups water 2 cups sugar
8792 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
8793 Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
8794 Cinnamon
8795
8796 Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break
8797 RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar
8798 and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon
8799 juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
8800 with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top
8801 crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let
8802 steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
8803 is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
8804 -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
8805 %
8806 Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
8807 %
8808 Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked
8809 him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just
8810 last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew
8811 better.
8812 %
8813 Molecule, n.:
8814 The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished
8815 from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
8816 closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
8817 matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
8818 atom in that it is an ion ...
8819 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8820 %
8821 Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
8822 If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
8823 it wasn't worth doing.
8824 %
8825 Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
8826 %
8827 Monday, n.:
8828 In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
8829 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8830 %
8831 Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
8832 %
8833 Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
8834 %
8835 Money is the root of all wealth.
8836 %
8837 Moon, n.:
8838 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
8839 hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
8840 %
8841 Mophobia, n.:
8842 Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
8843 %
8844 MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
8845 The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
8846 Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while
8847 the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
8848 Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
8849 paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
8850 took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
8851 their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player
8852 said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a
8853 fight and the match was called by officials.
8854 %
8855 More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One
8856 path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
8857 extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
8858 -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
8859 %
8860 Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
8861 Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
8862 be out of a job.
8863 %
8864 Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
8865 because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
8866 and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
8867 eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
8868 and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
8869 female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
8870 dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven
8871 by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the
8872 truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
8873 them that it doesn't make any difference.
8874 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
8875 Teen Should Know"
8876 %
8877 Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
8878 than they do.
8879 -- Turgenev
8880 %
8881 Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
8882 -- Frank Zappa
8883 %
8884 Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
8885 -- Arnold Bennett
8886 %
8887 Mother is the invention of necessity.
8888 %
8889 Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
8890 %
8891 Mr. Cole's Axiom:
8892 The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
8893 population is growing.
8894 %
8895 "Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams)
8896 "365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old
8897 Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his
8898 pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
8899 in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
8900 in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
8901 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic
8902 computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
8903 fun to watch.
8904 -- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
8905 %
8906 Murphy's Discovery:
8907 Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
8908 women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
8909 will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in
8910 trouble!
8911 %
8912 Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
8913 work.
8914 %
8915 Murphy's Law of Research:
8916 Enough research will tend to support your theory.
8917 %
8918 Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Goedel's Theorem ...
8919 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
8920 %
8921 Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
8922 Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
8923 pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
8924 military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
8925 Esther and hustle them off to prison.
8926 They can't prove who they are because they've left their
8927 passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
8928 and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
8929 movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
8930 charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
8931 The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
8932 they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
8933 if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
8934 her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
8935 possible, and turns to Murray.
8936 "This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
8937 spits in the sergeants face.
8938 "Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
8939 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
8940 %
8941 Mustgo, n.:
8942 Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
8943 long it has become a science project.
8944 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
8945 %
8946 My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
8947 -- "Grendel", by John Gardner
8948 %
8949 My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
8950 threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.
8951 First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
8952 frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
8953 the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed
8954 forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
8955 perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
8956 the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
8957 crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a
8958 symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
8959 in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
8960 really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
8961 OK.
8962 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
8963 %
8964 My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
8965 there are three other people.
8966 -- Orson Welles
8967 %
8968 My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
8969 times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
8970 sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right
8971 through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
8972 listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
8973 log out again.
8974 %
8975 My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?
8976 -- MadameX
8977 %
8978 My love runs by like a day in June,
8979 And he makes no friends of sorrows.
8980 He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
8981 In the pathway or the morrows.
8982 He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
8983 Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
8984 My own dear love, he is all my heart --
8985 And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
8986 -- Dorothy Parker
8987 %
8988 My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
8989 And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
8990 The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
8991 And the skies are sunlit for him.
8992 As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
8993 As the fragrance of acacia.
8994 My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
8995 And I wish he were in Asia.
8996 -- Dorothy Parker
8997 %
8998 My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
8999 -- Groucho Marx
9000 %
9001 My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
9002 %
9003 My own dear love, he is strong and bold
9004 And he cares not what comes after.
9005 His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
9006 And his eyes are lit with laughter.
9007 He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
9008 Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
9009 My own dear love, he is all my world --
9010 And I wish I'd never met him.
9011 -- Dorothy Parker
9012 %
9013 My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!!
9014 -- Zippy the Pinhead
9015 %
9016 My pen is at the bottom of a page,
9017 Which, being finished, here the story ends;
9018 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
9019 But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
9020 -- Byron
9021 %
9022 My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
9023 -- Christopher Morley
9024 %
9025 My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies
9026 %
9027 Mythology, n.:
9028 The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
9029 origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
9030 from the true accounts which it invents later.
9031 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9032 %
9033 n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
9034 n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
9035 n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
9036 n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
9037 n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
9038
9039 -- C code which reverses the bits in a word.
9040 %
9041 Naeser's Law:
9042 You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
9043 damnfoolproof.
9044 %
9045 NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he
9046 says is wrong.
9047 GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
9048 will be right.
9049 -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
9050 %
9051 Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant
9052 said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
9053 time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone
9054 might steal it."
9055 %
9056 Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
9057 villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time,"
9058 said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the
9059 villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The
9060 remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he
9061 said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of
9062 my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually
9063 spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
9064 %
9065 Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
9066 serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk
9067 into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?"
9068 "Never." "Then how do you know it was me?"
9069 %
9070 Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
9071 than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the
9072 light more."
9073 %
9074 Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver
9075 pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of
9076 meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it,
9077 "Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without
9078 the recipe?"
9079 %
9080 Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
9081 conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the
9082 fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
9083 is most likely to be creamed?
9084 -- Solomon Short
9085 %
9086 Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
9087 God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
9088
9089 It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
9090 Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
9091 %
9092 Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
9093 cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
9094 -- Fran Leibowitz
9095 %
9096 Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
9097 character, give him power.
9098 -- Abraham Lincoln
9099 %
9100 Necessity is a mother.
9101 %
9102 Neckties strangle clear thinking.
9103 -- Lin Yutang
9104 %
9105 Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
9106 %
9107 Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
9108 %
9109 Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
9110 %
9111 Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.
9112 %
9113 Never drink Coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled
9114 with the chemicals in Coke produce hallucinations. People tend to
9115 change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
9116 fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
9117 have windows.
9118 %
9119 Never eat more than you can lift.
9120 -- Miss Piggy
9121 %
9122 Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
9123 %
9124 Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
9125 %
9126 Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
9127 -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
9128 %
9129 Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
9130 make it complex and wonderful.
9131 %
9132 Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
9133 -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
9134 %
9135 Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
9136 %
9137 Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a
9138 law against it by that time.
9139 %
9140 Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
9141 %
9142 Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
9143 %
9144 Never try to outstubborn a cat.
9145 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
9146 %
9147 Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
9148 -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
9149 %
9150 Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon.
9151 %
9152 Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
9153 supposed to do.
9154 -- R. A. Heinlein
9155 %
9156 New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
9157 %
9158 New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
9159 any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
9160 %
9161 New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
9162 Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
9163 %
9164 New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
9165 -- Monty Python's Big Red Book
9166 %
9167 New systems generate new problems.
9168 %
9169 New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
9170 his wife most often reminds him to act it.
9171 -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
9172 %
9173 New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.
9174 %
9175 New York's got the ways and means;
9176 Just won't let you be.
9177 -- The Grateful Dead
9178 %
9179 Newlan's Truism:
9180 An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
9181 economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
9182 %
9183 NEWS FLASH!!
9184 Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
9185 German pole-vault champion.
9186 %
9187 *** NEWSFLASH ***
9188 Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!
9189 %
9190 Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
9191 %
9192 Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
9193 A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
9194 %
9195 Next Friday will not be your lucky day.
9196 As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.
9197 %
9198 Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
9199 as an income tax refund.
9200 -- F. J. Raymond
9201 %
9202 Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
9203 -- Foghorn Leghorn
9204 %
9205 Nihilism should commence with oneself.
9206 %
9207 Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
9208 correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
9209 (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
9210 Americans call him by value.
9211 %
9212 Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
9213 Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
9214 Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
9215 Three megs for system source;
9216
9217 One disk to rule them all,
9218 One disk to bind them,
9219 One disk to hold the files
9220 And in the darkness grind 'em.
9221 %
9222 Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
9223 And tapes without any tracks;
9224 Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
9225 And tapes mixed up on the racks --
9226 Take hold of the tape
9227 And pull off the strip,
9228 And then you'll be sure
9229 Your tape drive will skip.
9230
9231 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
9232 %
9233 Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
9234 would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
9235 that much.
9236 -- Augustine
9237 %
9238 Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
9239 The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
9240 the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
9241 %
9242 Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends
9243 hang out.
9244 -- Zonker Harris
9245 %
9246 No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
9247 absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
9248 -- Fran Lebowitz
9249 %
9250 No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
9251 camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
9252 effectively under such difficult conditions.
9253 -- Laurence J. Peter
9254 %
9255 No good deed goes unpunished.
9256 -- Clare Boothe Luce
9257 %
9258 No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
9259 eating one peanut.
9260 -- Channing Pollock
9261 %
9262 No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
9263 %
9264 No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will
9265 seriously cramp his style.
9266 %
9267 No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
9268 immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
9269 %
9270 No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
9271 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
9272 %
9273 No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.
9274 %
9275 No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
9276 system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
9277 the author.
9278 -- Chris Shaw
9279 %
9280 No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
9281 He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
9282 Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
9283 And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
9284 CHORUS:
9285 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
9286 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
9287 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
9288 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
9289 Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
9290 And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
9291 All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
9292 But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
9293 (chorus)
9294 Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
9295 The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
9296 A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
9297 But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
9298 (chorus)
9299 %
9300 No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
9301 -- C. Schulz
9302 %
9303 No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
9304 %
9305 No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
9306 occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
9307 indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
9308 occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
9309 an indication-applied occurrence.
9310 -- ALGOL 68 Report
9311 %
9312 No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper.
9313 -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
9314 taken over by Rupert Murdoch
9315 %
9316 No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
9317 -- Sherlock Holmes
9318 %
9319 No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'
9320 -- Dr. Who
9321 %
9322 Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
9323 -- Tallulah Bankhead
9324 %
9325 NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
9326 %
9327 Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
9328 %
9329 Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in
9330 order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the
9331 substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young
9332 and rob the old.
9333 -- Lewis Lapham
9334 %
9335 Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with
9336 constructive praise.
9337 %
9338 Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
9339 Negative expectations yield negative results.
9340 Positive expectations yield negative results.
9341 %
9342 Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
9343 %
9344 Noncombatant, n.:
9345 A dead Quaker.
9346 -- Ambrose Bierce
9347 %
9348 Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
9349 %
9350 Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
9351 %
9352 Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
9353 Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
9354 in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
9355 moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
9356 dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
9357 respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
9358 it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
9359 then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
9360 chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
9361 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
9362 %
9363 Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
9364 -- Shakespeare
9365 %
9366 Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
9367 is from the wrong kind of tree.
9368 -- Professor W., EECS, George Washington University
9369 %
9370 Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
9371 of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
9372 is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
9373 unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is
9374 careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
9375 -- Woody Allen
9376 %
9377 Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
9378 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
9379 %
9380 Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
9381 %
9382 Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
9383
9384 To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
9385 light comes on.
9386 %
9387 Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
9388 -- Andrew Young
9389 %
9390 Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
9391 tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
9392 -- Nero Wolfe
9393 %
9394 Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
9395 Conscience makes egotists of us all.
9396 -- Oscar Wilde
9397 %
9398 Nothing recedes like success.
9399 -- Walter Winchell
9400 %
9401 Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
9402 -- Charlie Brown
9403 %
9404 November, n.:
9405 The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
9406 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9407 %
9408 Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
9409 %
9410 Now I lay me down to sleep
9411 I pray the double lock will keep;
9412 May no brick through the window break,
9413 And, no one rob me till I awake.
9414 %
9415 Now is the time for all good men to come to.
9416 -- Walt Kelly
9417 %
9418 Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
9419 time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
9420 to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
9421 eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
9422 the following questions:
9423
9424 (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
9425 food?
9426 (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
9427 exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
9428 (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
9429 prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
9430 double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living
9431 right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
9432 longer.)
9433
9434 That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
9435 %
9436 Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
9437 Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
9438 were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ...
9439 -- "The Begatting of a President"
9440 %
9441 Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette.
9442 -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
9443 %
9444 ... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
9445 get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
9446 the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
9447 on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
9448 children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
9449 snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
9450 to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
9451 a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
9452 outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
9453 he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
9454 Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
9455 Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
9456 kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
9457 children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
9458 quickly.
9459 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
9460 %
9461 Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
9462 tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
9463 Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
9464 plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
9465 they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
9466 Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
9467 administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
9468 you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
9469 described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
9470 interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
9471 that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
9472 This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
9473 inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
9474 so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
9475 if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
9476 direct sunlight.
9477 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
9478 %
9479 Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile.
9480 -- Karl Lehenbauer
9481 %
9482 Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
9483 normal routines, for children and adults alike.
9484 -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
9485 %
9486 Nuclear war would really set back cable.
9487 -- Ted Turner
9488 %
9489 [Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
9490 -- Edwin Meese III
9491 %
9492 Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
9493 %
9494 (null cookie; hope that's ok)
9495 %
9496 Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
9497 %
9498 O give me a home,
9499 Where the buffalo roam,
9500 Where the deer and the antelope play,
9501 Where seldom is heard
9502 A discouraging word,
9503 'Cause what can an antelope say?
9504 %
9505 O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
9506 Murphy was an optimist.
9507 %
9508 Of ______course it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
9509 fake?
9510 %
9511 Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
9512 reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
9513 amount of hot air.
9514 -- Thomas L. Martin
9515 %
9516 Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
9517 -- Plato
9518 %
9519 Of all the words of witch's doom
9520 There's none so bad as which and whom.
9521 The man who kills both which and whom
9522 Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
9523 -- Fletcher Knebel
9524 %
9525 Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
9526 tools aren't soluble in alcohol ...
9527 -- Crazy Nigel
9528 %
9529 Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
9530 %
9531 Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%.
9532 And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
9533 blazer.
9534 %
9535 Office Automation, n.:
9536 The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
9537 you would want to talk with over coffee.
9538 %
9539 Ogden's Law:
9540 The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
9541 up.
9542 %
9543 Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
9544 %
9545 Oh don't the days seem lank and long
9546 When all goes right and none goes wrong,
9547 And isn't your life extremely flat
9548 With nothing whatever to grumble at!
9549 %
9550 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
9551 I muck with indices and structs all day
9552 And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
9553 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
9554 %
9555 Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
9556 be irresponsible, too.
9557 -- Lichty & Wagner
9558 %
9559 Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
9560 And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
9561 Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
9562 Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
9563 You have not dreamed of --
9564 Wheeled and soared and swung
9565 High in the sunlit silence.
9566 Hovering there
9567 I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
9568 My eager craft through footless halls of air.
9569 Up, up along delirious, burning blue
9570 I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
9571 Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
9572 And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
9573 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
9574 Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
9575 -- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
9576 %
9577 Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
9578 %
9579 Oh, when I was in love with you,
9580 Then I was clean and brave,
9581 And miles around the wonder grew
9582 How well did I behave.
9583
9584 And now the fancy passes by,
9585 And nothing will remain,
9586 And miles around they'll say that I
9587 Am quite myself again.
9588 -- A. E. Housman
9589 %
9590 Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
9591 %
9592 OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard.
9593 -- Dr. Joy
9594 %
9595 OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
9596 %
9597 Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
9598 -- Trotsky
9599 %
9600 Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
9601 %
9602 Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
9603 %
9604 Oliver's Law:
9605 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
9606 it.
9607 %
9608 Omnibiblious, adj.:
9609 Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything.
9610 I'm omnibiblious."
9611 %
9612 OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need four GALLONS of
9613 JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O
9614 as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ...
9615 WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES?
9616 %
9617 On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
9618
9619 This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
9620 -- Wolfgang Pauli
9621 %
9622 On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
9623 nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
9624 what it does.
9625 -- Will Rogers
9626 %
9627 On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
9628 receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
9629 income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
9630 $283 on the desk before the cashier.
9631 "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
9632 route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
9633 "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
9634 business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
9635 worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
9636 %
9637 On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
9638 created jerks.
9639 -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
9640 %
9641 On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a
9642 POINT ...
9643 %
9644 On the subject of C program indentation:
9645
9646 "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
9647 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
9648 -- Blair P. Houghton
9649 %
9650 On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
9651 Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
9652 answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
9653 confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
9654 -- Charles Babbage
9655 %
9656 On-line, adj.:
9657 The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
9658 computer.
9659 %
9660 Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
9661 forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
9662 -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
9663 %
9664 Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
9665 each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
9666 choice.
9667
9668 In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
9669 called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka"
9670 and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
9671 passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
9672 Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
9673 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
9674 %
9675 Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
9676 Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
9677 Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
9678 principals or your mistress".
9679 %
9680 Once Law was sitting on the bench
9681 And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
9682 "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
9683 Nor come before me creeping.
9684 Upon your knees if you appear,
9685 'Tis plain you have no standing here."
9686
9687 Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
9688 "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
9689 "Amica curiae," she replied --
9690 "Friend of the court, so please you."
9691 "Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
9692 I never saw your face before!"
9693 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9694 %
9695 Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
9696 beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
9697 side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
9698 which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
9699 sky.
9700 -- Rainer Rilke
9701 %
9702 Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
9703 great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
9704 the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
9705 life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But
9706 one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
9707 going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I
9708 shall die of boredom."
9709 The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that
9710 current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
9711 rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
9712 But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
9713 and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
9714 Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
9715 lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
9716 And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
9717 "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the
9718 Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current
9719 said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us
9720 free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this
9721 adventure.
9722 But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
9723 the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
9724 %
9725 Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
9726 us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
9727 the smaller prime numbers.
9728
9729 2: The Odd Prime --
9730 It's the only even prime, therefore it's odd. QED.
9731 3: The True Prime --
9732 Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
9733 31: The Arbitrary Prime --
9734 Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime
9735 in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91
9736 received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
9737 next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
9738 at all.
9739
9740 Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
9741 derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
9742 true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
9743 %
9744 ... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
9745 with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
9746 shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
9747 advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
9748 shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
9749 them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
9750 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
9751 %
9752 Once, adv.:
9753 Enough.
9754 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9755 %
9756 One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
9757 somebody's listening.
9758 -- Franklin P. Jones
9759 %
9760 "One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."
9761
9762 Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
9763 The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
9764 -- Chuq Von Rospach
9765 %
9766 One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
9767 %
9768 One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
9769 how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
9770 -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
9771 %
9772 One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell
9773 the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald
9774 announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to
9775 a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The
9776 captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth
9777 -- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin,
9778 "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if
9779 I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!"
9780 "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
9781 %
9782 One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
9783 when well oiled.
9784 %
9785 One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
9786 never have to stop and answer the phone.
9787 %
9788 One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
9789 -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
9790 %
9791 One learns to itch where one can scratch.
9792 -- Ernest Bramah
9793 %
9794 One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
9795 one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
9796 produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
9797 represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
9798 many ...
9799 -- Anthony Chevins
9800 %
9801 One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
9802 %
9803 One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
9804 will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
9805 I'll tell you."
9806 %
9807 One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
9808 %
9809 One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
9810 from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at
9811 least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts
9812 are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but
9813 when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
9814 -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
9815 %
9816 One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
9817 do and always a clever thing to say.
9818 -- Will Durant
9819 %
9820 One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
9821 lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
9822 their C programs.
9823 -- Robert Firth
9824 %
9825 One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
9826 create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________somebody has to buy
9827 retail."
9828 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
9829 %
9830 One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
9831 enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
9832 Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
9833 years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
9834 Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
9835 language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
9836 students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
9837 interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
9838 its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
9839 VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
9840 It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
9841 run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
9842 will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
9843 With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
9844 quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
9845 VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
9846 documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
9847 difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
9848 is that it's all there.
9849 -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
9850 %
9851 One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
9852 seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best
9853 way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
9854 fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
9855 disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
9856 %
9857 The Seventh Commandments for Technicians
9858 Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
9859 fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in
9860 other ways.
9861 %
9862 The First Commandment for Technicians:
9863 Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
9864 capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
9865 untechnician-like manner.
9866 %
9867 One Page Principle:
9868 A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
9869 paper cannot be understood.
9870 -- Mark Ardis
9871 %
9872 One planet is all you get.
9873 %
9874 One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
9875 manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
9876 they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's
9877 say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
9878 study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
9879 sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
9880 strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
9881 rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also
9882 be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.
9883 Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
9884 Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
9885 millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
9886 support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that
9887 your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
9888 of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
9889 already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
9890 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
9891 %
9892 One reason why George Washington
9893 Is held in such veneration:
9894 He never blamed his problems
9895 On the former Administration.
9896 -- George O. Ludcke
9897 %
9898 One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
9899 %
9900 One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
9901 %
9902 One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
9903 sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of
9904 sheer terror.
9905 -- W. K. Hartmann
9906 %
9907 One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
9908 new model.
9909 %
9910 One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
9911 %
9912 One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
9913 at the stake while the votes were being counted.
9914 -- Thomas B. Reed
9915 %
9916 One-Shot Case Study, n.:
9917 The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
9918 it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes
9919 green.
9920 %
9921 Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
9922 %
9923 Only God can make random selections.
9924 %
9925 Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to
9926 use the editorial "we."
9927 %
9928 Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
9929 %
9930 Optimization hinders evolution.
9931 %
9932 Oregano, n.:
9933 The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
9934 %
9935 Oregon, n.:
9936 Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
9937 night.
9938 %
9939 Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
9940 Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
9941 -- Mike Adams
9942 %
9943 Osborn's Law:
9944 Variables won't; constants aren't.
9945 %
9946 Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.
9947 %
9948 Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
9949 they charge fifteen cents for them.
9950 %
9951 Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the
9952 office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
9953 were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of
9954 juice. But only *__he* had a lollipop.
9955
9956 He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"
9957
9958 Her reply:
9959
9960 "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it
9961 means to be a programmer."
9962 %
9963 Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
9964 Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
9965 In kernel as it is in user!
9966 %
9967 Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
9968 -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
9969 %
9970 ... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
9971 Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
9972 thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
9973 somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
9974 on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
9975 a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
9976 -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
9977 %
9978 Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it.
9979 -- Alex Schure
9980 %
9981 Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
9982 -- General Omar N. Bradley
9983 %
9984 OUTCONERR
9985 Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
9986 Did logzerneg the ifthen block
9987 All kludgy were the function flows
9988 And subroutines adhoc.
9989
9990 Beware the runtime-bug my friend
9991 squrooneg, the false goto
9992 Beware the infiniteloop
9993 And shun the inprectoo.
9994 %
9995 Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
9996 it's too dark to read.
9997 -- Groucho Marx
9998 %
9999 Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
10000 I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
10001 %
10002 Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
10003 %
10004 Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
10005 %
10006 Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
10007 %
10008 Ozman's Laws:
10009 (1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
10010 won't.
10011 (2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
10012 make.
10013 (3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
10014 (4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
10015 %
10016 Painting, n.:
10017 The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
10018 exposing them to the critic.
10019 -- Ambrose Bierce
10020 %
10021 panic: can't find /
10022 %
10023 panic: kernel trap (ignored)
10024 %
10025 Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much
10026 better.
10027 -- Laurie Anderson
10028 %
10029 Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
10030 %
10031 Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
10032 %
10033 Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
10034 %
10035 Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
10036 criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
10037 -- D. J. Hicks
10038 %
10039 Pardo's First Postulate:
10040 Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
10041 fattening.
10042
10043 Arnold's Addendum:
10044 Everything else causes cancer in rats.
10045 %
10046 Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
10047 %
10048 Parker's Law:
10049 Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
10050 %
10051 Parkinson's Fifth Law:
10052 If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
10053 bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
10054 %
10055 Parkinson's Fourth Law:
10056 The number of people in any working group tends to increase
10057 regardless of the amount of work to be done.
10058 %
10059 Parsley
10060 is gharsley.
10061 -- Ogden Nash
10062 %
10063 Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
10064 %
10065 Pascal is not a high-level language.
10066 -- Steven Feiner
10067 %
10068 Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat.
10069 -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340
10070 %
10071 Pascal Users:
10072 To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
10073 death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed.
10074 %
10075 Pascal, n.:
10076 A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
10077 his grave if he knew about it.
10078 %
10079 Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
10080 -- Eric Hoffer
10081 %
10082 Patageometry, n.:
10083 The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
10084 under brain transplants.
10085 %
10086 Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
10087 %
10088 Paul's Law:
10089 In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
10090 save.
10091 %
10092 Paul's Law:
10093 You can't fall off the floor.
10094 %
10095 Peace, n.:
10096 In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
10097 periods of fighting.
10098 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10099 %
10100 Peanut Blossoms
10101
10102 4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
10103 4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
10104 4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
10105 8 eggs 4 tsp. soda
10106 4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
10107
10108 Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
10109 sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
10110 Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
10111 hell of a lot.
10112 %
10113 Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
10114 Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
10115 it.
10116 %
10117 Pedaeration, n.:
10118 The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
10119 sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
10120 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
10121 %
10122 Penguin Trivia #46:
10123 Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
10124 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
10125 %
10126 People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
10127 -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10128 %
10129 People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
10130 the future.
10131 %
10132 People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
10133 -- Ken Kesey
10134 %
10135 People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
10136 %
10137 People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better
10138 press than people who are just funny and smart.
10139 -- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
10140 %
10141 People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
10142 slept in a room with a single mosquito.
10143 %
10144 People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
10145 haven't what they want that they don't want it.
10146 -- Ogden Nash
10147 %
10148 People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
10149 Benjamin Franklin said it first.
10150 %
10151 People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
10152 %
10153 People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they
10154 did yesterday.
10155 %
10156 Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
10157 "Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
10158 -- Aelius Donatus
10159 %
10160 Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
10161 %
10162 Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
10163 when there is no longer anything to take away.
10164 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
10165 %
10166 Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
10167 %
10168 Peter's Law of Substitution:
10169 Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
10170 themselves.
10171 %
10172 Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
10173 exciting Camden, New Jersey.
10174 %
10175 Philogeny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogeny.
10176 %
10177 Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
10178 -- John Keats
10179 %
10180 Pick another fortune cookie.
10181 %
10182 Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
10183 hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
10184 sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ...
10185 %
10186 Pig, n.:
10187 An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
10188 by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
10189 inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
10190 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10191 %
10192 PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
10193 You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
10194 followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your
10195 associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack
10196 confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible
10197 things to small animals.
10198 %
10199 PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
10200 Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
10201 American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as
10202 nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will
10203 probably get run over by a bus.
10204 %
10205 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
10206
10207 (7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
10208 but a steady left tail light. This means
10209
10210 (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
10211 to call the problem to the driver's attention.
10212 (b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
10213 (c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
10214 (d) the driver is from out of town.
10215
10216 The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
10217 countries to signal turns.
10218 %
10219 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
10220
10221 (8) Pedestrians are
10222
10223 (a) irrelevant.
10224 (b) communists.
10225 (c) a nuisance.
10226 (d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
10227
10228 The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
10229 totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
10230 %
10231 Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
10232 -- Don Marquis
10233 %
10234 PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
10235 solution set.
10236 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
10237 %
10238 Plaese porrf raed.
10239 -- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
10240 %
10241 Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
10242 because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
10243 couldn't compete successfully with poets.
10244 -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
10245 Shell"
10246 %
10247 Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them.
10248 %
10249 Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.
10250 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
10251 %
10252 Please ignore previous fortune.
10253 %
10254 Please take note:
10255 %
10256 Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas"
10257 until you are told that those rooms are "punched out". Once punched
10258 out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
10259 and such.
10260 -- N. Meyrowitz
10261 %
10262 Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
10263 %
10264 Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
10265 requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
10266 into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
10267 problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
10268 radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
10269 plumbing works.
10270 A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
10271 except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
10272 it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
10273 and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
10274 all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
10275 kill you.
10276 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
10277 %
10278 PLUNDERER'S THEME
10279 (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
10280
10281 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
10282 If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
10283 Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
10284 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
10285 %
10286 Pohl's law:
10287 Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
10288 %
10289 Police: Good evening, are you the host?
10290 Host: No.
10291 Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
10292 Host: About the drugs?
10293 Police: No.
10294 Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
10295 Police: No, the noise.
10296 Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
10297 or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
10298 background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
10299 The neighbors?
10300 Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
10301 complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
10302 ask the host to quiet things down?
10303 Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagen bug with primitive
10304 religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
10305 room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
10306 lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
10307 onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
10308 down.
10309 %
10310 Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
10311 all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
10312 %
10313 Politician, n.:
10314 An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
10315 organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the
10316 agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared
10317 with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
10318 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10319 %
10320 Politician, n.:
10321 From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or
10322 "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence
10323 "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
10324 -- Martin Pitt
10325 %
10326 Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
10327 where there is no river.
10328 -- Nikita Khrushchev
10329 %
10330 Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart enough
10331 to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
10332 %
10333 Polymer physicists are into chains.
10334 %
10335 Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
10336 Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The
10337 white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
10338 it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
10339 name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with
10340 laughter, singing
10341
10342 Half a pound of tuppenny rice
10343 Half a pound of treacle
10344 That's the way the chimney smokes
10345 Pope Goestheveezl
10346
10347 The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of
10348 laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for
10349 hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
10350 Hans Neizant B"ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"oln in 1653.
10351 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
10352 %
10353 Portable, adj.:
10354 Survives system reboot.
10355 %
10356 Positive, adj.:
10357 Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
10358 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10359 %
10360 Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
10361 %
10362 Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
10363 -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
10364 %
10365 Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
10366 %
10367 Power, n:
10368 The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
10369 %
10370 Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
10371 more time for dreaming.
10372 -- J. P. McEvoy
10373 %
10374 Predestination was doomed from the start.
10375 %
10376 President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
10377 forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
10378 %
10379 President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the
10380 vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
10381 -- The Washington Post
10382 %
10383 Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
10384 %
10385 Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
10386 It's on the other side.
10387 %
10388 [Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
10389 to see him work.
10390 -- Winston Churchill
10391 %
10392 Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
10393 %
10394 Probable-Possible, my black hen,
10395 She lays eggs in the Relative When.
10396 She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
10397 Because she's unable to postulate how.
10398 -- Frederick Winsor
10399 %
10400 Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have
10401 orgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, which
10402 is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime.
10403 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
10404 Teen Should Know"
10405 %
10406 Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
10407 encryption standard and they came up with ...
10408 Student: EBCDIC!
10409 %
10410 Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
10411 Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on
10412 his exam. Newell has now tossed five shutouts this quarter. Newell's
10413 earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
10414 %
10415 Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
10416 build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
10417 to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
10418 -- Rich Cook
10419 %
10420 Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
10421
10422 This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction
10423 techniques are very popular; even the military used them.
10424
10425 SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
10426
10427 We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
10428 for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
10429 as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
10430 trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We
10431 can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
10432 about _n.
10433 QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
10434 %
10435 Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
10436 SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
10437 (1) Horses have an even number of legs.
10438 (2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
10439 (3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
10440 legs for a horse.
10441 (4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
10442 (5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.
10443
10444 Topics to be covered in future issues include proof by:
10445 Intimidation
10446 Gesticulation (handwaving)
10447 "Try it; it works"
10448 Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
10449 Blatant assertion
10450 Changing all the 2's to _n's
10451 Mutual consent
10452 Lack of a counterexample, and
10453 "It stands to reason"
10454 %
10455 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
10456
10457 BBW Branch Both Ways
10458 BEW Branch Either Way
10459 BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full
10460 BH Branch and Hang
10461 BMR Branch Multiple Registers
10462 BOB Branch On Bug
10463 BPO Branch on Power Off
10464 BST Backspace and Stretch Tape
10465 CDS Condense and Destroy System
10466 CLBR Clobber Register
10467 CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately
10468 CM Circulate Memory
10469 CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming
10470 CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip
10471 CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
10472 %
10473 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
10474
10475 DC Divide and Conquer
10476 DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key
10477 DO Divide and Overflow
10478 EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator
10479 EPI Execute Programmer Immediately
10480 EROS Erase Read Only Storage
10481 EXCE Execute Customer Engineer
10482 HCF Halt and Catch Fire
10483 IBP Insert Bug and Proceed
10484 INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out])
10485 PBC Print and Break Chain
10486 PDSK Punch Disk
10487 %
10488 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
10489
10490 PI Punch Invalid
10491 POPI Punch Operator Immediately
10492 PVLC Punch Variable Length Card
10493 RASC Read And Shred Card
10494 RPM Read Programmers Mind
10495 RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy)
10496 RTAB Rewind tape and break
10497 RWDSK rewind disk
10498 RWOC Read Writing On Card
10499 SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write
10500 SLC Search for Lost Chord
10501 SPSW Scramble Program Status Word
10502 SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk
10503 STROM Store in Read Only Memory
10504 TDB Transfer and Drop Bit
10505 WBT Water Binary Tree
10506 %
10507 Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
10508 than the both put together.
10509 %
10510 Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
10511 three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
10512 %
10513 Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
10514 anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
10515 -- H. L. Mencken
10516 %
10517 Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves
10518 to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way
10519 to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the
10520 cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in
10521 fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a
10522 lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of
10523 the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
10524 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
10525 %
10526 Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
10527 %
10528 Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
10529 %
10530 Put no trust in cryptic comments.
10531 %
10532 Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
10533 -- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
10534 %
10535 Putt's Law:
10536 Technology is dominated by two types of people:
10537 Those who understand what they do not manage.
10538 Those who manage what they do not understand.
10539 %
10540 Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
10541 A: One per person.
10542 %
10543 Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
10544 A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
10545 %
10546 Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat ?
10547 A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
10548 %
10549 Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat?
10550 A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
10551
10552 Q: How long does it take?
10553 A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've
10554 brought with them.
10555
10556 Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
10557 A: They replace your generator.
10558 %
10559 Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10560 A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb
10561 itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
10562 reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
10563 maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
10564 %
10565 Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb
10566 in San Francisco?
10567 A: Both of them.
10568 %
10569 Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to do a logical right shift?
10570 A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
10571 %
10572 Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a job?
10573 A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
10574 %
10575 Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
10576 A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
10577 Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
10578 the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
10579 of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
10580 of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
10581 %
10582 Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10583 A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
10584 light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
10585 plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer
10586 prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb
10587 assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
10588 %
10589 Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10590 A: One and a half.
10591 %
10592 Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10593 A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
10594 to the earlier joke.
10595 %
10596 Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
10597 A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
10598 Californians trying to share the experience.
10599 %
10600 Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
10601 A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
10602 with brightly colored machine tools.
10603 %
10604 Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
10605 A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
10606 of the way.
10607 %
10608 Q: What's a light-year?
10609 A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
10610 %
10611 Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
10612 A: Because it was on the other side.
10613 %
10614 Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
10615 A: To stamp out forest fires.
10616
10617 Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
10618 A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
10619 %
10620 Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
10621 A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
10622 %
10623 Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What
10624 should I do?
10625
10626 A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on
10627 believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be
10628 the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No
10629 time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if
10630 somebody else has made the correction.
10631
10632 And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're
10633 the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have
10634 to inform the whole net right away!
10635
10636 -- Brad Templeton, "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions
10637 on Netiquette"
10638 %
10639 Quality Control, n.:
10640 The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
10641 a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
10642 %
10643 Question:
10644 Man Invented Alcohol,
10645 God Invented Grass.
10646 Who do you trust?
10647 %
10648 Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
10649 %
10650 Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
10651 %
10652 Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
10653
10654 (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
10655 %
10656 Quigley's Law:
10657 Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
10658 atttempt to use it.
10659 %
10660 QUOTE OF THE DAY:
10661
10662 `
10663
10664 %
10665 Qvid me anxivs svm?
10666 %
10667 QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]:
10668 1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69
10669 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [colloq.] one
10670 thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [anat.] a
10671 painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [slang]
10672 person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert.
10673 -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.
10674 %
10675 Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
10676 %
10677 Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
10678 I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
10679 computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
10680 store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
10681 all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all
10682 the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are
10683 they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current
10684 rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
10685 Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be
10686 impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying
10687 goes, giving away the store?
10688 -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
10689 %
10690 Ray's Rule of Precision:
10691 Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
10692 %
10693 Razors pain you;
10694 Rivers are damp;
10695 Acids stain you;
10696 And drugs cause cramp.
10697 Guns aren't lawful;
10698 Nooses give;
10699 Gas smells awful;
10700 You might as well live.
10701 -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926
10702 %
10703 Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
10704 the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
10705 with pictures.
10706 %
10707 Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
10708 Congress. But I repeat myself.
10709 -- Mark Twain
10710 %
10711 Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic
10712 value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is
10713 much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice
10714 this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA.
10715 %
10716 Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware
10717 has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing
10718 machines are so poor at I/O.
10719 %
10720 Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are
10721 so long they can't afford the disk space.
10722 %
10723 Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
10724 in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
10725 %
10726 Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker
10727 with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they
10728 hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for
10729 applications.)
10730 %
10731 Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
10732 on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
10733 sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
10734 %
10735 Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured
10736 programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-
10737 trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
10738 clear desks.
10739 %
10740 Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
10741 doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell
10742 quiche.
10743 %
10744 Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it
10745 should be hard to understand.
10746 %
10747 Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the
10748 illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how
10749 much good it did them.
10750 %
10751 Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
10752 you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
10753 wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
10754 spring up in the middle of the machine room.
10755 %
10756 Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write
10757 in BASIC after reaching puberty.
10758 %
10759 Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress
10760 freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who
10761 wear white socks.
10762 %
10763 Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who
10764 can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
10765 %
10766 Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
10767 %
10768 Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
10769 functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
10770 %
10771 Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
10772 This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
10773 computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
10774 %
10775 Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
10776 greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
10777 moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
10778 systems could be virtual at *___all* levels. They would like personal
10779 computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
10780 DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
10781 Correctness Verification Aid packages.
10782 %
10783 Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the
10784 job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like
10785 using an undocumented external procedure.
10786 %
10787 Real Time, adj.:
10788 Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
10789 and then.
10790 %
10791 Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
10792 afraid to break your face.
10793 %
10794 Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
10795 down the system for days.
10796 %
10797 Real Users hate Real Programmers.
10798 %
10799 Real Users know your home telephone number.
10800 %
10801 Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
10802 program doesn't deliver it.
10803 %
10804 Real Users never use the Help key.
10805 %
10806 Real World, The n.:
10807 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may
10808 be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
10809 programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
10810 to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
10811 tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5.
10812 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
10813 "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
10814 pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
10815 of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
10816 deceased person.
10817 %
10818 Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
10819 %
10820 Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
10821 %
10822 Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
10823 -- Patrick Sky
10824 %
10825 Reality is for people who lack imagination.
10826 %
10827 Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
10828 %
10829 Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
10830 -- Alvy Ray Smith
10831 %
10832 Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"
10833 -- Philip K. Dick
10834 %
10835 Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!
10836 %
10837 Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
10838 being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
10839 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
10840 %
10841 Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
10842 lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
10843 but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
10844 Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3
10845 recessions.
10846 %
10847 Reclaimer, spare that tree!
10848 Take not a single bit!
10849 It used to point to me,
10850 Now I'm protecting it.
10851 It was the reader's CONS
10852 That made it, paired by dot;
10853 Now, GC, for the nonce,
10854 Thou shalt reclaim it not.
10855 %
10856 "Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
10857 Candy
10858 Is dandy
10859 But liquor
10860 Is quicker.
10861 -- Ogden Nash
10862 %
10863 "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe
10864 again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
10865 which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
10866 spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
10867 starfield surrounding the ship.
10868
10869 "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC
10870 announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they
10871 are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been
10872 intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and
10873 transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
10874 Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
10875 -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
10876 %
10877 Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
10878 If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
10879 %
10880 Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
10881 -- Anatole France
10882 %
10883 Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it.
10884 -- Dave Barry
10885 %
10886 Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
10887 worse in Cleveland.
10888 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
10889 %
10890 Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good
10891 offense!
10892 %
10893 Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
10894 %
10895 Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
10896 %
10897 Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
10898 -- Dave Butler
10899 %
10900 Renning's Maxim:
10901 Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
10902 %
10903 Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
10904 Civilization?
10905 Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
10906 %
10907 Reporter, n.:
10908 A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
10909 tempest of words.
10910 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10911 %
10912 REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
10913
10914 SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
10915 the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
10916 carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
10917 I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
10918 of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
10919 do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
10920 ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
10921 need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
10922 career by being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
10923 that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
10924 can't help it.
10925 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
10926 %
10927 Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
10928 -- Wernher von Braun
10929 %
10930 Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
10931 another chance later on.
10932 %
10933 Review Questions
10934
10935 (1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
10936 and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
10937 he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
10938 Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
10939
10940 (2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
10941 twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
10942 every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
10943 his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
10944
10945 (3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
10946 the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
10947 pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
10948 Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
10949 %
10950 Rhode's Law:
10951 When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
10952 circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
10953 empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred,
10954 induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always
10955 for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage,
10956 material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or
10957 none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed,
10958 proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably,
10959 universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it
10960 becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
10961 %
10962 Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
10963 -- Steven Wright
10964 %
10965 Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
10966 Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
10967 reject the proposal.
10968 %
10969 Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
10970 -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo"
10971 %
10972 ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
10973 MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
10974 door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
10975 %
10976 Rudin's Law:
10977 If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it
10978 every time.
10979 %
10980 Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
10981 Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
10982 be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person
10983 shall be deemed to be a cat.
10984 %
10985 Rule of Creative Research:
10986 (1) Never draw what you can copy.
10987 (2) Never copy what you can trace.
10988 (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
10989 %
10990 Rule of Defactualization:
10991 Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
10992 %
10993 Rule of Feline Frustration:
10994 When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
10995 content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
10996 %
10997 Rule of the Great:
10998 When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
10999 thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
11000 %
11001 Rules for Academic Deans:
11002 (1) HIDE!!!!
11003 (2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
11004 -- Father Damian C. Fandal
11005 %
11006 Rules for driving in New York:
11007 (1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
11008 (2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers
11009 on.
11010 (3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
11011 intersection.
11012 %
11013 RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
11014 (1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
11015 (2) Never leave the table hungry.
11016 (3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
11017 (4) Enjoy your food.
11018 (5) Enjoy your companion's food.
11019 (6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
11020 accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
11021 (7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
11022 for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
11023 brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
11024 (8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
11025 (9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
11026 can always eat it later.
11027 (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
11028 (11) Avoid blue food.
11029 -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
11030 %
11031 Rules:
11032 (1) The boss is always right.
11033 (2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
11034 %
11035 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
11036 Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.
11037
11038 (1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs,
11039 ants.
11040 (2) Something is missing in your personal relationships.
11041 (3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
11042 (4) You have a hard time getting a waiter.
11043 (5) Exotic birds flock around you.
11044 (6) People ignore you at parties.
11045 (7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
11046 (8) You no longer get off on cocaine.
11047 %
11048 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
11049 (1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
11050 bomb; use the stairs.
11051 (2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
11052 the ground.
11053 (3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
11054 (4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
11055 psychological problems.
11056 (5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to
11057 recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed
11058 potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
11059 (6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs
11060 will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
11061 (7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
11062 (8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
11063 staggering illegally.
11064 (9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
11065 sanitary due to limited circulation.
11066 (10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
11067 D-Day.
11068 %
11069 SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
11070 You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
11071 tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority
11072 of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People
11073 laugh at you a great deal.
11074 %
11075 San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
11076 -- Herb Caen
11077 %
11078 San Francisco, n.:
11079 Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
11080 %
11081 Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
11082 -- Mark Harrold
11083 %
11084 Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
11085 He must be a communist.
11086 And a beard and long hair,
11087 Must be a pacifist.
11088
11089 What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
11090 -- Arlo Guthrie
11091 %
11092 Satellite Safety Tip #14:
11093 If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
11094 %
11095 Sattinger's Law:
11096 It works better if you plug it in.
11097 %
11098 Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
11099 Is like being nowhere at all,
11100 All through the day how the hours rush by,
11101 You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
11102 -- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
11103 %
11104 Sauron is alive in Argentina!
11105 %
11106 Save energy: be apathetic.
11107 %
11108 Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
11109 %
11110 Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
11111 %
11112 Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I
11113 ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.
11114 -- Steven Wright
11115 %
11116 SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
11117 -- Ken Thompson
11118 %
11119 Schapiro's Explanation:
11120 The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's
11121 because they use more manure.
11122 %
11123 Schizophrenia beats being alone.
11124 %
11125 Schlattwhapper, n.:
11126 The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
11127 hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
11128 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11129 %
11130 Schnuffel, n.:
11131 A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in
11132 mixed company.
11133 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11134 %
11135 Schwiggle, n.:
11136 The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a
11137 pencil.
11138 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11139 %
11140 Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
11141 of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
11142 is not necessarily science.
11143 -- Henri Poincair'e
11144 %
11145 Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
11146 %
11147 Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
11148 -- William Buckley
11149
11150 %
11151 SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
11152 You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
11153 achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
11154 ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.
11155 %
11156 Scott's first Law:
11157 No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
11158 %
11159 Scott's second Law:
11160 When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
11161 to have been wrong in the first place.
11162
11163 Corollary:
11164 After the correction has been found in error, it will be
11165 impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
11166 %
11167 Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
11168 Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
11169 Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
11170 Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
11171 Spock: Affirmative.
11172 Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
11173 Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
11174 %
11175 Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
11176 %
11177 Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
11178 Presidency.
11179 -- Richard Nixon
11180 %
11181 Second Law of Business Meetings:
11182 If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
11183 will pick the wrong one.
11184
11185 Corollary:
11186 If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
11187 wrong, anyway.
11188 %
11189 Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
11190 In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
11191 multiline message byte.
11192 In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
11193 must be sent passive true.
11194 The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
11195 (1) The ANRS if DAV is false
11196 (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
11197 (a) The LADS is active
11198 (b) Nor LACS is active
11199
11200 -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
11201 Programmable Instrumentation
11202 %
11203 Security check: INTRUDER ALERT!
11204 %
11205 Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
11206 She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
11207 Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
11208 Silently scheming,
11209 Sightlessly seeking
11210 Some savage, spectacular suicide.
11211 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
11212 %
11213 See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ...
11214 %
11215 Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
11216 Ice Cream cures all ills.
11217 %
11218 Self Test for Paranoia:
11219 You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
11220 your own fault.
11221 %
11222 Seminars, n.:
11223 From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
11224 %
11225 Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
11226 notify you if the record has pornographic material or
11227 material glorifying violence?"
11228 Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
11229 Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
11230 legs on the album cover is good indication that it's
11231 not for little Johnny."
11232
11233 -- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock
11234 lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985
11235 %
11236 Senate, n.:
11237 A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
11238 misdemeanors.
11239 -- Ambrose Bierce
11240 %
11241 Serenity through viciousness.
11242 %
11243 Serocki's Stricture:
11244 Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
11245 %
11246 Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
11247 %
11248 "Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated
11249 thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY
11250 advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
11251 "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly.
11252 "Too proud?" the other enquired.
11253 Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"
11254 she said, "that one can't help growing older."
11255 "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With
11256 proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
11257 -- Lewis Carroll
11258 %
11259 Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
11260 big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
11261 reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's
11262 build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up
11263 like crabgrass all over the United States.
11264 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
11265 %
11266 Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke.
11267 %
11268 Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
11269 -- Swami X
11270 %
11271 Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
11272 -- M. C. Reed.
11273 %
11274 Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
11275 it's one of the best.
11276 -- Woody Allen
11277 %
11278 Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
11279 A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
11280 temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
11281 A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagogue
11282 functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
11283 A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
11284 middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be
11285 bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
11286 The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
11287 am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
11288 he's nobody!"
11289 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
11290 %
11291 Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
11292 during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
11293 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
11294 Teen Should Know"
11295 %
11296 Shaw's Principle:
11297 Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
11298 want to use it.
11299 %
11300 She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.
11301 -- Gypsy Rose Lee
11302 %
11303 She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
11304 -- Mark Twain
11305 %
11306 She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them
11307 were bad.
11308 %
11309 She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
11310 have poured on a waffle ...
11311 %
11312 She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
11313 you should hear me play piano.'
11314 -- Morrisey
11315 %
11316 She's genuinely bogus.
11317 %
11318 Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
11319 taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
11320 excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
11321 -- Samuel Johnson
11322 %
11323 SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
11324 POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
11325 %
11326 Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
11327 playing golf with his boss.
11328 %
11329 Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
11330 %
11331 Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
11332 -- from the Brown University Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
11333 %
11334 Silverman's Law:
11335 If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
11336 %
11337 Simon's Law:
11338 Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
11339 %
11340 Since I hurt my pendulum
11341 My life is all erratic.
11342 My parrot, who was cordial,
11343 Is now transmitting static.
11344 The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
11345 The cat keeps doing poo.
11346 The only thing that keeps me sane
11347 Is talking to my shoe.
11348 -- My Shoe
11349 %
11350 Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
11351 alive.
11352 -- John Sloan
11353 %
11354 Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
11355 -- Bob "Mountain" Beck
11356 %
11357 [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
11358 vices I admire.
11359 -- Winston Churchill
11360 %
11361 Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
11362 Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
11363 excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
11364 This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally
11365 examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published
11366 Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
11367 printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry
11368 comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
11369 no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
11370 %
11371 Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
11372 That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
11373 or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should
11374 have gotten.
11375 %
11376 Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
11377 to work.
11378 %
11379 Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
11380 when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
11381 apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I
11382 neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
11383 tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they
11384 were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
11385 souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a
11386 testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
11387 chains.
11388 -- Frederick Douglass
11389 %
11390 Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
11391 (1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
11392 check.
11393 (2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
11394 (3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
11395 attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
11396 attracted to dark objects.
11397 %
11398 Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...
11399 %
11400 Slurm, n.:
11401 The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
11402 it sits in the dish too long.
11403 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11404 %
11405 Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
11406 -- Fletcher Knebel
11407 %
11408 Snacktrek, n.:
11409 The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
11410 returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
11411 materialized.
11412 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11413 %
11414 So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
11415 your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
11416 hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
11417 array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
11418
11419 ... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
11420 were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
11421 that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
11422 toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
11423 made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
11424 format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
11425 -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
11426 Revolution"
11427 %
11428 So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
11429 praise of intelligence.
11430 -- Bertrand Russell
11431 %
11432 ... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
11433 who wish to tyranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
11434 and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
11435 and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
11436 -- Voltarine de Cleyre
11437 %
11438 So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
11439 With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
11440 maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
11441 corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
11442 flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
11443 it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
11444 I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
11445 the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
11446 Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
11447 I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
11448 heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
11449 unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
11450 up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
11451 opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
11452 our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
11453 the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
11454 cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
11455 these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
11456 into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
11457 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
11458 %
11459 So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
11460 pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
11461 its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
11462 imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
11463 and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
11464 and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
11465 gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
11466 -- Samuel Foote
11467 %
11468 ... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
11469 procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
11470 to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
11471 sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
11472 documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
11473 listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
11474 documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
11475 under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
11476 effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
11477 scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
11478 in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
11479 thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
11480 then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
11481 dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all
11482 along.
11483 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
11484 %
11485 So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway?
11486 And why can't he ever remember his Bible?
11487 %
11488 Sodd's Second Law:
11489 Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
11490 bound to occur.
11491 %
11492 Software, n.:
11493 Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
11494 %
11495 Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
11496 %
11497 Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
11498 -- Ed Howe
11499 %
11500 Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
11501 celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
11502 stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
11503 "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
11504 of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
11505 government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
11506 Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
11507 billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
11508 it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
11509 thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
11510 the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
11511 and go to a mall.
11512 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
11513 %
11514 Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
11515 people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
11516 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
11517 %
11518 Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only
11519 one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
11520 %
11521 Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
11522 them on the head.
11523 %
11524 Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic.
11525 %
11526 Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
11527 you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
11528 worse.
11529 -- Avery
11530 %
11531 Some points to remember [about animals]:
11532
11533 (1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
11534 hippopotamuses;
11535 (2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
11536 front of your clothes;
11537 (3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
11538 you have just kicked.
11539 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
11540 %
11541 Some primal termite knocked on wood.
11542 And tasted it, and found it good.
11543 And that is why your Cousin May
11544 Fell through the parlor floor today.
11545 -- Ogden Nash
11546 %
11547 Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand
11548 progress.
11549 %
11550 Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
11551 progress.
11552 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
11553 %
11554 Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
11555 pens will multiply instead of disappear.
11556 %
11557 Someone will try to honk your nose today.
11558 %
11559 Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
11560 the only ashtray.
11561 %
11562 Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
11563 -- Lily Tomlin
11564 %
11565 "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
11566 Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
11567 intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
11568 and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
11569 best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
11570 we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
11571
11572 "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
11573 -- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
11574 %
11575 Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
11576 %
11577 Song Title of the Week:
11578 "They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
11579 in me."
11580 %
11581 Sooner or later you must pay for your sins.
11582 (Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune).
11583 %
11584 Sorry, no fortune this time.
11585 %
11586 Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
11587 %
11588 Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
11589 bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
11590 road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
11591 -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
11592 %
11593 Spare no expense to save money on this one.
11594 -- Samuel Goldwyn
11595 %
11596 Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
11597 If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
11598 if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question
11599 back at him.
11600 %
11601 Speak roughly to your little boy,
11602 And beat him when he sneezes:
11603 He only does it to annoy
11604 Because he knows it teases.
11605
11606 Wow! wow! wow!
11607
11608 I speak severely to my boy,
11609 And beat him when he sneezes:
11610 For he can thoroughly enjoy
11611 The pepper when he pleases!
11612
11613 Wow! wow! wow!
11614 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
11615 %
11616 Speak roughly to your little VAX,
11617 And boot it when it crashes;
11618 It knows that one cannot relax
11619 Because the paging thrashes!
11620
11621 Wow! Wow! Wow!
11622
11623 I speak severely to my VAX,
11624 And boot it when it crashes;
11625 In spite of all my favorite hacks
11626 My jobs it always thrashes!
11627
11628 Wow! Wow! Wow!
11629 %
11630 Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
11631 %
11632 Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
11633 -- Dave Millman
11634 %
11635 Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
11636 sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
11637 cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free
11638 the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a
11639 bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
11640 controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
11641 passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same
11642 memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well,
11643 no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously
11644 designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
11645 %
11646 Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
11647
11648 With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
11649 He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
11650 And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
11651 As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
11652 Helpless users with projects due
11653 Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
11654
11655 Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
11656 Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
11657
11658 * VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
11659 * DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
11660 -- Curtis Jackson
11661 %
11662 Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
11663 these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
11664 to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
11665 communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
11666 on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
11667 life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
11668 communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____least
11669 he can do is to Shut Up!
11670 -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
11671 %
11672 Speed is subsittute fo accurancy.
11673 %
11674 Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
11675 The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
11676 number of times you have looked at it.
11677 %
11678 Spelling is a lossed art.
11679 %
11680 Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
11681 %
11682 Spirtle, n.:
11683 The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
11684 your eye.
11685 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
11686 %
11687 Spouse, n.:
11688 Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
11689 wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
11690 %
11691 Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
11692 drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'ee of bat guano; and the
11693 greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
11694 take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
11695 -- Harlan Ellison
11696 %
11697 Stay away from flying saucers today.
11698 %
11699 Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
11700 %
11701 Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
11702 %
11703 Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
11704 Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
11705 another drink.
11706 %
11707 Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
11708 Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
11709 handle.
11710 %
11711 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
11712 %
11713 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
11714 Now, if they'd only take a bath ...
11715 %
11716 Stult's Report:
11717 Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
11718 fight the solutions.
11719 %
11720 Stupid, n.:
11721 Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
11722 %
11723 Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
11724 %
11725 Sturgeon's Law:
11726 90% of everything is crud.
11727 %
11728 Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
11729 editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
11730 -- Mark Twain
11731 %
11732 Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
11733 before it is understood.
11734 %
11735 Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
11736 %
11737 Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
11738 without his duck ...
11739 %
11740 (Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
11741
11742 To code the impossible code,
11743 To bring up a virgin machine,
11744 To pop out of endless recursion,
11745 To grok what appears on the screen,
11746
11747 To right the unrightable bug,
11748 To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
11749 To mount the unmountable magtape,
11750 To stop the unstoppable crash!
11751 %
11752 Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
11753 %
11754 Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
11755 %
11756 Support your local police force -- steal!!
11757 %
11758 Support your local Search and Rescue unit -- get lost.
11759 %
11760 Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
11761 %
11762 Surprise due today. Also the rent.
11763 %
11764 Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
11765 %
11766 Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type
11767 in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
11768 the room is punishable under law:
11769
11770 Name #
11771
11772
11773 %
11774 Swahili, n.:
11775 The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions.
11776 -- Johnny Hart
11777 %
11778 Sweater, n.:
11779 A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
11780 %
11781 Swipple's Rule of Order:
11782 He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
11783 %
11784 Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
11785 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
11786 %
11787 Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
11788 infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
11789 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
11790 %
11791 _
11792 _ / \ o
11793 / \ | | o o o
11794 | | | | _ o o o o
11795 | \_| | / \ o o o
11796 \__ | | | o o
11797 | | | | ______ ~~~~ _____
11798 | |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__
11799 | ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\
11800 | | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " )
11801 | | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
11802 | | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\
11803 | | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\
11804 // | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\
11805 // ( ) / / \` \__ \\
11806 //-------------------------------------------------------------\\
11807
11808 Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
11809 start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
11810 then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
11811 music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
11812 -- H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
11813 %
11814 T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
11815 He don't rock, and he don't roll;
11816 Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
11817 He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
11818 -- The Roguelet's ABC
11819 %
11820 Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
11821 hole in his head.
11822 %
11823 Tact, n.:
11824 The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
11825 %
11826 Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
11827 %
11828 Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
11829 enough cheese.
11830 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
11831 %
11832 Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
11833 %
11834 Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
11835 needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
11836 -- Kipling
11837 %
11838 Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit
11839 back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
11840 beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
11841 drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
11842 nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
11843 and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
11844 Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
11845 no need to improve ...
11846 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
11847 %
11848 Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
11849 your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
11850 and they'll call you crazy.
11851 -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
11852 %
11853 Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
11854 -- Euripides
11855 %
11856 Talkers are no good doers.
11857 -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
11858 %
11859 Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
11860 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
11861 %
11862 TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
11863 You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
11864 determination and work like hell. Most people think you are
11865 stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.
11866 %
11867 Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
11868 the tree."
11869 -- Russell Long
11870 %
11871 Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
11872 out of the market.
11873 %
11874 Taxes, n.:
11875 Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
11876 an extension.
11877 %
11878 Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when they
11879 grows up, they will never be able to edge their car onto a freeway.
11880 %
11881 Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
11882 %
11883 Technological progress has merely provided us
11884 with more efficient means for going backwards.
11885 -- Aldous Huxley
11886 %
11887 Telephone, n.:
11888 An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
11889 advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
11890 -- Ambrose Bierce
11891 %
11892 Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
11893 Is those things arms, or is they legs?
11894 I marvel at thee, Octopus;
11895 If I were thou, I'd call me us.
11896 -- Ogden Nash
11897 %
11898 Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
11899 writing.
11900 -- R. Geis
11901 %
11902 Terence, this is stupid stuff:
11903 You eat your victuals fast enough;
11904 There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
11905 To see the rate you drink your beer.
11906 But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
11907 It gives a chap the belly-ache.
11908 The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
11909 It sleeps well the horned head:
11910 We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
11911 To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
11912 Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
11913 Your friends to death before their time.
11914 Moping, melancholy mad:
11915 Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.
11916 -- A. E. Housman
11917 %
11918 Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
11919 surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
11920 hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
11921 hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother.
11922 -- Len Cool, "American Pie"
11923 %
11924 Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
11925 pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
11926 until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
11927 ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
11928 because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
11929 fact, for he merely said:
11930
11931 "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
11932 it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
11933 because it is impossible."
11934
11935 Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
11936 philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
11937 -- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
11938
11939 (Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
11940 %
11941 Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
11942 %
11943 Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
11944 %
11945 Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
11946 one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
11947 -- J. Finnegan, USC.
11948 %
11949 Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
11950 -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
11951 %
11952 That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver.
11953 -- Foghorn Leghorn
11954 %
11955 That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
11956 -- Moliere
11957 %
11958 That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
11959 %
11960 That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
11961 -- Dorothy Parker
11962 %
11963 The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
11964 %
11965 The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
11966 people who want some.
11967 -- Dwight MacDonald
11968 %
11969 The Abrams' Principle:
11970 The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
11971 %
11972 The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
11973 -- Thomas Jefferson
11974 %
11975 The Advertising Agency Song:
11976
11977 When your client's hopping mad,
11978 Put his picture in the ad.
11979 If he still should prove refractory,
11980 Add a picture of his factory.
11981 %
11982 The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
11983 someone with it.
11984 -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340
11985 %
11986 ... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
11987 consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
11988 of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
11989 listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
11990 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
11991 %
11992 The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas
11993 River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little
11994 Rock.
11995 %
11996 The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
11997 Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
11998 and color, but also on ability.
11999 -- T. Lehrer
12000 %
12001 The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
12002 -- Bill Murray
12003 %
12004 The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
12005 in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
12006 Declaration not for that, but for future use.
12007 -- Abraham Lincoln
12008 %
12009 The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m.
12010 %
12011 The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
12012 average man can see better than he can think.
12013 %
12014 The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
12015 people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried
12016 anything.
12017 -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
12018 %
12019 The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
12020 cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
12021 difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
12022 which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
12023 here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
12024 RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you
12025 want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking
12026 lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
12027 squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
12028 and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
12029 his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
12030 neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
12031 lots.
12032 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
12033 %
12034 The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit
12035 called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in
12036 writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would
12037 be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices
12038 immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a
12039 bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special
12040 Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of
12041 paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty
12042 would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.
12043 The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to
12044 emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood
12045 Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
12046 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
12047 %
12048 The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
12049 but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
12050 %
12051 The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
12052 -- W. C. Fields
12053 %
12054 The best defense against logic is ignorance.
12055 %
12056 The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
12057 %
12058 "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
12059 blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
12060 You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
12061 night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
12062 love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
12063 know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only
12064 one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what
12065 wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
12066 never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
12067 dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a
12068 lot of things there are to learn."
12069 -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
12070 %
12071 The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
12072 is a match.
12073 -- Will Rogers
12074 %
12075 The bigger the theory the better.
12076 %
12077 The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
12078 time.
12079 -- Merrick Furst
12080 %
12081 The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss
12082 Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
12083
12084 It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been
12085 known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and,
12086 in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two
12087 under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of
12088 people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a
12089 city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking
12090 umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of
12091 activity that frightens the horses on the street ...
12092 %
12093 The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch.
12094 %
12095 The bogosity meter just pegged.
12096 %
12097 The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
12098 in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
12099 %
12100 The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
12101 To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
12102 program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and
12103 convert to the next higher units.
12104 %
12105 The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be.
12106 Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in
12107 automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
12108 -- Art Buchwald
12109 %
12110 The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
12111 bureaucracy.
12112 %
12113 The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
12114 flexibility and power of assembly language with the readability
12115 of assembly language.
12116 %
12117 The camel has a single hump;
12118 The dromedary two;
12119 Or else the other way around.
12120 I'm never sure. Are you?
12121 -- Ogden Nash
12122 %
12123 The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
12124 greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
12125 inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
12126 party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
12127 -- H. L. Mencken
12128 %
12129 The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.
12130 -- G. Fitch
12131 %
12132 The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
12133 at the steam fitters' picnic.
12134 %
12135 The chief cause of problems is solutions.
12136 -- Eric Sevareid
12137 %
12138 The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
12139 -- Alfred Adler
12140 %
12141 The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will
12142 walk carefully.
12143 -- Russian Proverb
12144 %
12145 The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
12146 %
12147 The Computer made me do it.
12148 %
12149 The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
12150 -- Alan Perlis
12151 %
12152 The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his
12153 memos.
12154 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
12155 %
12156 The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other
12157 subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up
12158 every bird watcher in the country.
12159 -- John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972
12160 %
12161 The Consultant's Curse:
12162 When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him
12163 what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong
12164 medicine, and is normally only required once.
12165 %
12166 The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
12167 none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
12168 Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
12169 Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
12170 talked about.
12171 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
12172 %
12173 The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
12174 %
12175 The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
12176 %
12177 The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to
12178 eat.
12179 -- John McNulty
12180 %
12181 The Crown is full of it!
12182 -- Nate Harris, 1775
12183 %
12184 The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should
12185 therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could
12186 hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to
12187 declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war,
12188 then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press.
12189 Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
12190 -- William Ellery Channing
12191 %
12192 The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
12193 %
12194 The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
12195 us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
12196 Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
12197 %
12198 The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
12199 %
12200 The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
12201 %
12202 The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
12203 into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him
12204 out again, it would be a calamity.
12205 -- Benjamin Disraeli
12206 %
12207 The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
12208 requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
12209 -- Robert Heinlein
12210 %
12211 The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
12212 following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
12213
12214 "I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
12215 Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
12216 Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
12217 "Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
12218 Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
12219 Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
12220 Macaroons are ____very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
12221 goyish. Lime soda is ____very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
12222 Jews won't go near them ..."
12223 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
12224 %
12225 The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
12226 a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
12227 %
12228 The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
12229 really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
12230 -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
12231 %
12232 The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show
12233 off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
12234 next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
12235 duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
12236 duck and returned it to his master.
12237 "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
12238 "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."
12239 %
12240 The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
12241 and owns the worm farm.
12242 -- Travis McGee
12243 %
12244 The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
12245 %
12246 The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
12247 add ten percent.
12248 %
12249 The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
12250 weather forecasters.
12251 -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
12252 %
12253 The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
12254 Compute' -- I forget which.
12255 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12256 %
12257 The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
12258 civilization.
12259 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
12260 %
12261 The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
12262 symposium to follow.
12263 %
12264 The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
12265 their children to speak it.
12266 -- G. B. Shaw
12267 %
12268 The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a
12269 remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
12270 -- Ambrose Bierce
12271 %
12272 The fact that it works is immaterial.
12273 -- L. Ogborn
12274 %
12275 The faster we go, the rounder we get.
12276 -- The Grateful Dead
12277 %
12278 The Fifth Rule:
12279 You have taken yourself too seriously.
12280 %
12281 The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
12282 -- Abbie Hoffman
12283 %
12284 The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
12285 Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
12286 tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
12287 forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
12288 fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
12289 threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked
12290 suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
12291 foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
12292 one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with
12293 dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found
12294 drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
12295 and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have
12296 thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
12297 of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left
12298 in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
12299 crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave
12300 Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
12301 a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
12302 throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
12303 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
12304 %
12305 The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
12306 management is that success equals skill.
12307 -- Robert Heller
12308 %
12309 The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
12310 child, was propounded to me by my father:
12311 "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
12312 whistles?"
12313 I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
12314 gave up.
12315 "A herring," said my father.
12316 "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
12317 "So hang it there."
12318 "But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
12319 "Paint it."
12320 "But a herring isn't wet."
12321 "If it's just painted it's still wet."
12322 "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
12323 doesn't whistle!!"
12324 "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
12325 hard."
12326 -- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
12327 %
12328 The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
12329 hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do.
12330 -- McCloctnik the Lucid
12331 %
12332 The First Rule of Program Optimization:
12333 Don't do it.
12334
12335 The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
12336 Don't do it yet.
12337 -- Michael Jackson
12338 %
12339 The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
12340 The second, a trick.
12341 Later, it's a well-established technique!
12342 -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics
12343 %
12344 The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
12345 Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
12346
12347 As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
12348 logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
12349 appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
12350 four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
12351 . . .
12352 Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
12353 blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
12354 parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
12355 of the hyper-cube.
12356 %
12357 The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
12358 a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
12359 %
12360 The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.
12361 -- Dave Barry
12362 %
12363 The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
12364 number of your kids by 32 teeth.
12365 %
12366 The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
12367 chance.
12368 %
12369 The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
12370 %
12371 The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
12372 center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
12373 Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
12374 End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
12375 %
12376 The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled
12377 today.
12378 %
12379 The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
12380 least until we've finished building it.
12381 %
12382 The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
12383 The goal of nature is to build better mice.
12384 %
12385 The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him
12386 love and he invented marriage.
12387 %
12388 THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
12389 The one who has the gold makes the rules.
12390 %
12391 The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
12392 make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
12393 have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
12394 man in the bonds of Hell.
12395 -- St. Augustine
12396 %
12397 The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
12398 to be good.
12399 %
12400 "The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")
12401
12402 On the good ship Enterprise
12403 Every week there's a new surprise
12404 Where the Romulans lurk
12405 And the Klingons often go berserk.
12406
12407 Yes, the good ship Enterprise
12408 There's excitement anywhere it flies
12409 Where Tribbles play
12410 And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.
12411
12412 See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
12413 Mr. Spock is at his side.
12414 The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
12415 It gets fried, scattered far and wide.
12416
12417 It's the good ship Enterprise
12418 Heading out where danger lies
12419 And you live in dread
12420 If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
12421 -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
12422 %
12423 The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
12424 statistics. These are raised to the _nth degree, the cube roots are
12425 extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
12426 displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
12427 case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
12428 down anything he damn well pleases.
12429 -- Sir Josiah Stamp
12430 %
12431 The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
12432 who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
12433 -- Benjamin Franklin.
12434 %
12435 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
12436 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
12437 courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk
12438 clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods
12439 of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
12440 Hedgehog Eater.
12441 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
12442 %
12443 The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
12444 of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
12445 -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
12446 %
12447 The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
12448 -- Albert Einstein
12449 %
12450 The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a
12451 custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the
12452 contrary, nohow.
12453 %
12454 The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
12455 You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
12456 %
12457 The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
12458 thinkers.
12459 %
12460 The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
12461 which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
12462 least 5000 years old."
12463 %
12464 The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
12465 lists of "Ten Best".
12466 -- H. Allen Smith
12467 %
12468 The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
12469 has gills through which it can see.
12470 -- Monty Python
12471 %
12472 The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
12473 capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
12474 %
12475 The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
12476 protein -- it rejects it.
12477 -- P. Medawar
12478 %
12479 The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can
12480 remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider
12481 struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in
12482 spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and
12483 wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head
12484 off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe.
12485 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
12486 %
12487 The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
12488 -- Mark Twain
12489 %
12490 The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
12491 procession but carrying a banner.
12492 -- Mark Twain
12493 %
12494 The idea is to die young as late as possible.
12495 -- Ashley Montague
12496 %
12497 The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
12498 devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
12499 where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with
12500 sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,
12501 consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than
12502 have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones
12503 repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist
12504 of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic
12505 devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
12506 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
12507 %
12508 The identical is equal to itself, since it is different.
12509 -- Franco Spisani
12510 %
12511 The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
12512 -- Henry Kissinger
12513 %
12514 The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
12515 has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
12516 when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
12517 -- Will Rogers
12518 %
12519 The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
12520 point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
12521 important thing to people.
12522 -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
12523 %
12524 The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
12525 number of participants.
12526 -- Adam Walinsky
12527 %
12528 The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
12529 by the number of people in the group.
12530 %
12531 The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
12532 information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
12533 dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
12534 real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
12535
12536 So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
12537 pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
12538 consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
12539 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
12540 %
12541 The Kennedy Constant:
12542 Don't get mad -- get even.
12543 %
12544 The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
12545 %
12546 The ladies men admire, I've heard,
12547 Would shudder at a wicked word.
12548 Their candle gives a single light;
12549 They'd rather stay at home at night.
12550 They do not keep awake till three,
12551 Nor read erotic poetry.
12552 They never sanction the impure,
12553 Nor recognize an overture.
12554 They shrink from powders and from paints ...
12555 So far, I've had no complaints.
12556 -- Dorothy Parker
12557 %
12558 The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a
12559 word processor," I replied, "They used to say the same thing about
12560 drugs."
12561 -- Roy Blount, Jr.
12562 %
12563 The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
12564 law free.
12565 -- Henry David Thoreau
12566 %
12567 The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
12568 poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
12569 bread.
12570 -- Anatole France
12571 %
12572 The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all
12573 men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the
12574 universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we
12575 presently imagine we own.
12576 -- H.G. Wells
12577 %
12578 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
12579
12580 SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
12581 Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
12582 Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
12583 with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
12584 END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
12585 a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
12586 they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
12587 the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
12588 %
12589 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
12590
12591 This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
12592 an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
12593 to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
12594 %
12595 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL
12596
12597 SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
12598 Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
12599 compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
12600 coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
12601 sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
12602 compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
12603 infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
12604 %
12605 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE
12606
12607 Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
12608 unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
12609 are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
12610 SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
12611 parties.
12612 %
12613 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C-
12614
12615 This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he
12616 submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is
12617 best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the
12618 language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code
12619 statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very
12620 similar to COBOL.
12621 %
12622 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18a: FIFTH
12623
12624 FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
12625 refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and
12626 JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and
12627 BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY,
12628 CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
12629
12630 The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
12631 financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include
12632 VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH
12633 and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers
12634 who end up using this language.
12635 %
12636 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
12637
12638 Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
12639 DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
12640 language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
12641 and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
12642 spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
12643 ours."
12644
12645 The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have
12646 almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the
12647 organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to
12648 exist.
12649 %
12650 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL
12651 From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley,
12652 VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry.
12653
12654 Here is a sample program:
12655 LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
12656 IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND
12657 VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN
12658 FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
12659 DO*WAH - (DITTY**2)
12660 BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
12661 SURE
12662 LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
12663 REALLY
12664 LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW)
12665 IM*SURE
12666 GOTO THE MALL
12667
12668 When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message:
12669
12670 GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!
12671 %
12672 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
12673
12674 This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
12675 Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
12676 the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
12677
12678 The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
12679 while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
12680 because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
12681 Perrier.
12682
12683 Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
12684 and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
12685 case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
12686 message:
12687 "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
12688 you find the time to try it again?"
12689 %
12690 The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
12691 train.
12692 %
12693 The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
12694 %
12695 The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
12696 much sleep.
12697 -- Woody Allen
12698 %
12699 The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
12700 -- Henry Kissinger
12701 %
12702 The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
12703 we could with both of them.
12704 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
12705 %
12706 The makers may make
12707 And the users may use,
12708 But the fixers must fix
12709 With but minimal clues
12710 %
12711 The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
12712 crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
12713 one has ever been.
12714 -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
12715 %
12716 The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
12717 will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
12718 -- Mark Twain.
12719 %
12720 The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
12721 soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
12722 when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
12723 %
12724 ... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ...
12725 -- Dave Barry
12726 %
12727 The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
12728 %
12729 The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
12730 klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
12731
12732 "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
12733
12734 "How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
12735 %
12736 The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
12737 devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
12738 -- Lew Mammel, Jr.
12739 %
12740 The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might
12741 be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the
12742 law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was
12743 guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples
12744 Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking
12745 Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality
12746 of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive
12747 power.
12748 -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
12749 Thinking."
12750 %
12751 The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
12752 -- Laurence J. Peter
12753 %
12754 The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
12755 -- Nicol Williamson
12756 %
12757 The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
12758 %
12759 The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
12760 %
12761 The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
12762 lower the mailing cost.
12763 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
12764 %
12765 The more laws and order are made prominent,
12766 the more thieves and robbers there will be.
12767 -- Lao Tsu
12768 %
12769 The more things change, the more they stay insane.
12770 %
12771 The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
12772 is right.
12773 %
12774 The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
12775 -- Andy Warhol
12776 %
12777 The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
12778 to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
12779 -- Theodore H. White
12780 %
12781 The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
12782 discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
12783 -- Isaac Asimov
12784 %
12785 The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
12786 %
12787 ... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!!
12788 %
12789 "... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
12790 "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
12791 feel interested.
12792 "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
12793 vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
12794 Aged Man.'"
12795 "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
12796 Alice corrected herself.
12797 "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
12798 called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
12799 "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time
12800 completely bewildered.
12801 "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
12802 "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
12803 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
12804 %
12805 The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
12806 1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert.
12807 -- D. Letterman
12808 %
12809 The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
12810 Support your right to bare arms!
12811 %
12812 The net of law is spread so wide,
12813 No sinner from its sweep may hide.
12814 Its meshes are so fine and strong,
12815 They take in every child of wrong.
12816 O wondrous web of mystery!
12817 Big fish alone escape from thee!
12818 -- James Jeffrey Roche
12819 %
12820 The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
12821 hope I don't get run over again.
12822 %
12823 The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
12824 in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
12825
12826 But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
12827 whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
12828 -- Matthew 5:37
12829 %
12830 The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
12831 Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country.
12832 The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive
12833 and running the country ...
12834 -- Robert J Woodhead
12835 %
12836 The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
12837 choose from.
12838 -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
12839 %
12840 The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
12841 80-column card.
12842 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
12843 %
12844 The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should
12845 serve the state is essentially a Communist notion ... In a free society
12846 these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their
12847 function is to serve as checks upon the state.
12848 -- Alan Barth
12849 %
12850 The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are
12851 correct.
12852 -- Ralph Hartley
12853 %
12854 The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly
12855 analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their
12856 occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve
12857 these problems when called upon.
12858
12859 However, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
12860 remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
12861 %
12862 The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
12863 Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,
12864 Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate
12865 Planning."
12866 %
12867 The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
12868 %
12869 The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
12870 brings wisdom.
12871 -- H. L. Mencken
12872 %
12873 The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader
12874 catch his own breath.
12875 -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
12876 %
12877 The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
12878 to cringe.
12879 %
12880 The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
12881 `social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
12882 -- Ernest Rutherford
12883 %
12884 The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
12885 and take a rest.
12886 %
12887 The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon.
12888 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
12889 Over and Over"
12890 %
12891 The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it.
12892 %
12893 The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber
12894 has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,
12895 finished, and put inside boxes.
12896 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
12897 %
12898 The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.
12899 It is never any use to oneself.
12900 -- Oscar Wilde
12901 %
12902 The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
12903 -- Hegel
12904
12905 I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
12906 long view.
12907 -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
12908 %
12909 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
12910 -- Oscar Wilde
12911 %
12912 The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
12913 until 5 or 6 p.m.
12914 %
12915 The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
12916 -- Bohr
12917 %
12918 The optimum committee has no members.
12919 -- Norman Augustine
12920 %
12921 The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
12922 went back in time.
12923 -- Steven Wright
12924 %
12925 The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
12926 it isn't here.
12927 -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
12928 %
12929 The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
12930 were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
12931 -- H. L. Mencken
12932 %
12933 The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the
12934 Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a
12935 large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress'
12936 it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the
12937 apparatus for a spectator sport.
12938
12939 The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for
12940 castrating pigs during Sunday service.
12941 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
12942 %
12943 The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
12944 Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
12945 Let others think his heart is big,
12946 I think it stupid of the Pig.
12947 -- Ogden Nash
12948 %
12949 The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
12950 swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
12951 batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
12952 center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
12953 his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
12954 -- Dizzy Dean
12955 %
12956 The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
12957 -- David Lardner
12958 %
12959 The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish
12960 to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it
12961 is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of
12962 courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own
12963 preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper
12964 social function of expressing true distaste.
12965 -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to
12966 Excruciatingly Correct Behavior"
12967 %
12968 The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often.
12969 %
12970 The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
12971 Were each of them once a kiddie.
12972 A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
12973 Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
12974 -- Ogden Nash
12975 %
12976 The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his
12977 brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is
12978 Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
12979 -- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
12980 %
12981 The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
12982 they might force their beliefs on us.
12983 -- Mario Cuomo
12984 %
12985 The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
12986 warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by
12987 changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped
12988 marker.
12989 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
12990 %
12991 The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
12992 constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
12993 appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
12994 statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
12995 also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
12996 -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
12997 %
12998 The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
12999 voters to win the next election.
13000 %
13001 The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO"
13002 represents the secondary theme:
13003
13004 Law Enforcement Officials
13005
13006 The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
13007
13008 Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
13009
13010 -- M. Gallaher
13011 %
13012 ... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
13013 other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
13014 charity we can only call "inhuman."
13015 -- R. A. Lafferty
13016 %
13017 The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
13018 stupidity of your action.
13019 %
13020 The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
13021 Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
13022 using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
13023 Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
13024 etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
13025 bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
13026 of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
13027 developed cancer.
13028 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
13029 %
13030 The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
13031 to erase it.
13032 -- Glaser and Way
13033 %
13034 The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get
13035 results.
13036
13037 The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
13038 problems in order to get results.
13039
13040 The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy
13041 problems in order to get results.
13042 %
13043 The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
13044 pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
13045 -- Elizabeth Taylor
13046 %
13047 The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
13048 %
13049 The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
13050 outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
13051 mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once
13052 tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
13053 the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
13054 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13055 %
13056 "The pyramid is opening!"
13057 "Which one?"
13058 "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
13059 -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
13060 Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
13061 %
13062 The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
13063 "My brain is paged out to my liver"
13064 %
13065 The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is
13066 it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
13067 that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of
13068 industrial waste?
13069 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
13070 %
13071 The rain it raineth on the just
13072 And also on the unjust fella,
13073 But chiefly on the just, because
13074 The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
13075 --Lord Bowen
13076 %
13077 The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
13078 cursed.
13079 %
13080 The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
13081 %
13082 The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",
13083 which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape
13084 Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil
13085 Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like.
13086 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
13087 %
13088 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
13089 persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
13090 progress depends on the unreasonable man.
13091 -- George Bernard Shaw
13092 %
13093 The revolution will not be televised.
13094 %
13095 The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
13096 -- Emerson
13097 %
13098 The rhino is a homely beast,
13099 For human eyes he's not a feast.
13100 Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
13101 I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
13102 -- Ogden Nash
13103 %
13104 The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This
13105 means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
13106 %
13107 The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
13108 and to his imagination for his facts.
13109 -- Sheridan
13110 %
13111 The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
13112 -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
13113 %
13114 The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
13115 House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
13116 you have and what rights you have not got.
13117 -- J. Parnell Thomas
13118 %
13119 The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
13120 sloppy analysis!
13121 %
13122 The Roman Rule
13123 The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
13124 one who is doing it.
13125 %
13126 The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
13127 his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
13128 one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
13129 take it too seriously.
13130 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13131 %
13132 The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
13133 give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
13134 -- Jane Bryant Quinn
13135 %
13136 "The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
13137 %
13138 The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
13139 showed that all had these things in common:
13140
13141 (1) They all had moderate appetites.
13142 (2) They all came from middle class homes
13143 (3) All but two of them were dead.
13144 %
13145 The scum also rises.
13146 -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
13147 %
13148 The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
13149 respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones
13150 from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
13151 milestones are lifted.
13152 -- George Bernard Shaw
13153 %
13154 The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
13155 as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
13156 The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
13157 the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in
13158 twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
13159
13160 "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
13161 everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
13162 fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one --
13163 and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
13164
13165 "How?" demanded Fafhrd.
13166
13167 Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
13168 -- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
13169 %
13170 The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land.
13171 %
13172 The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
13173 -- Noelie Alito
13174 %
13175 The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:
13176 The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going
13177 in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long
13178 way.)
13179 -- Dan Roddick
13180 %
13181 The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
13182 and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
13183 activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
13184 neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
13185 %
13186 The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
13187 money.
13188 -- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon"
13189 %
13190 The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!
13191 %
13192 The sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you will be
13193 able to correct them.
13194 -- Nicolaides
13195 %
13196 The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
13197 %
13198 The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
13199 readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
13200 some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
13201 reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
13202 the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
13203 known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
13204 Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
13205 of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
13206 psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
13207 Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
13208 these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
13209 further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
13210 something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
13211 the Russians.
13212 -- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
13213 %
13214 The STAR WARS Song
13215 Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
13216
13217 I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
13218 Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
13219 S-O-D-A soda
13220 I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
13221 I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
13222 Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
13223
13224 Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
13225 A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
13226 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
13227 Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
13228 How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
13229 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
13230 %
13231 The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
13232 %
13233 The steady state of disks is full.
13234 -- Ken Thompson
13235 %
13236 THE STORY OF CREATION
13237 or
13238 THE MYTH OF URK
13239
13240 In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
13241 and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
13242 was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
13243 registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
13244 and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
13245 Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
13246 and there was morning, one interrupt.
13247 -- Rico Tudor
13248 %
13249 The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make
13250 them unsafe.
13251 -- Mayor Frank Rizzo
13252 %
13253 The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
13254 is an emerging underachiever.
13255 %
13256 The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant
13257 biology.
13258 %
13259 The subspace _W inherits the other 8 properties of _V. And there aren't
13260 even any property taxes.
13261 -- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
13262 %
13263 The sum of the Universe is zero.
13264 %
13265 The sun was shining on the sea,
13266 Shining with all his might:
13267 He did his very best to make
13268 The billows smooth and bright --
13269 And this was very odd, because it was
13270 The middle of the night.
13271 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
13272 %
13273 The superfluous is very necessary.
13274 -- Voltaire
13275 %
13276 The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
13277 -- Mark Twain
13278 %
13279 The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
13280 authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
13281 the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
13282 the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
13283 radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
13284 as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
13285 receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
13286 Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
13287 heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
13288 the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
13289 heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
13290 radiation, (_H/_E)^4 = 50, where _E is the absolute temperature of the
13291 earth (-300K), gives _H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
13292 cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
13293 fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
13294 burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
13295 that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
13296 have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
13297 -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
13298 %
13299 The Third Law of Photography:
13300 If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
13301 when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark
13302 leaks out.
13303 %
13304 The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
13305
13306 The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
13307 The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break
13308 even.
13309 The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
13310 %
13311 The Three Major Kind of Tools
13312
13313 * Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
13314 jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
13315 manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
13316 bludgeons, and truncheons.)
13317
13318 * Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
13319
13320 * Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
13321 greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
13322 (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
13323 any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
13324 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
13325 %
13326 The trouble with a kitten is that
13327 When it grows up, it's always a cat
13328 -- Ogden Nash.
13329 %
13330 The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
13331 %
13332 The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
13333 it.
13334 -- Franklin P. Jones
13335 %
13336 The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
13337 more important to do.
13338 %
13339 The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
13340 appreciates how difficult it was.
13341 %
13342 The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths.
13343 -- Ken Kesey
13344 %
13345 The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
13346 -- Lenny Bruce
13347 %
13348 The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.
13349 And vice versa.
13350 %
13351 The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
13352 Which practically conceal its sex.
13353 I think it clever of the turtle
13354 In such a fix to be so fertile.
13355 -- Ogden Nash
13356 %
13357 The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
13358 %
13359 The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
13360 annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
13361 -- Oscar Wilde
13362 %
13363 The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
13364 "100 percent American"...
13365 -- U. S. Army (1945)
13366 %
13367 The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
13368 everybody and still nobody likes him.
13369 -- Jim Samuels
13370 %
13371 The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be
13372 broken.
13373 %
13374 The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
13375 combination is locked up in the safe.
13376 -- Peter DeVries
13377 %
13378 The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
13379 Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
13380 to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his
13381 decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
13382 %
13383 The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
13384 religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
13385 from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
13386 yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
13387 world put together.
13388 -- Sir Peter Medawar
13389 %
13390 The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
13391 regarded as a criminal offense.
13392 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
13393 %
13394 The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
13395 the worst cigars.
13396 -- H. L. Mencken
13397 %
13398 The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
13399 prejudice.
13400 -- Mark Twain
13401 %
13402 The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
13403 Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
13404 to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
13405 be one of the facts that needs altering.
13406 -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
13407 %
13408 The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
13409 it's just a tired feeling:
13410 %
13411 The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
13412 %
13413 The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
13414 that would be clearly understood.
13415 -- Alexander Haig
13416 %
13417 The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
13418 with a large fortune.
13419 %
13420 THE WOMBAT
13421
13422 The wombat lives across the seas,
13423 Among the far Antipodes.
13424 He may exist on nuts and berries,
13425 Or then again, on missionaries;
13426 His distant habitat precludes
13427 Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
13428 But I would not engage the wombat
13429 In any form of mortal combat.
13430 %
13431 The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
13432 %
13433 The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
13434 %
13435 The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
13436 %
13437 The world's as ugly as sin,
13438 And almost as delightful.
13439 -- Frederick Locker-Lampson
13440 %
13441 The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
13442 four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
13443 the answers.
13444 %
13445 Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
13446
13447 He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
13448 then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
13449 market.
13450
13451 If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
13452 not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
13453
13454 Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
13455 Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
13456 Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
13457 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
13458 %
13459 Then here's to the City of Boston,
13460 The town of the cries and the groans.
13461 Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
13462 And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
13463 -- Franklin Pierce Adams
13464 %
13465 THEORY
13466 Into love and out again,
13467 Thus I went and thus I go.
13468 Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
13469 Well and bitterly I know
13470 All the songs were ever sung,
13471 All the words were ever said;
13472 Could it be, when I was young,
13473 Someone dropped me on my head?
13474 -- Dorothy Parker
13475 %
13476 There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
13477 %
13478 There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
13479 and praiseworthy ...
13480 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
13481 %
13482 There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own
13483 cats.
13484 %
13485 There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis
13486 are chosen correctly.
13487 %
13488 There are no games on this system.
13489 %
13490 There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
13491 existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
13492 marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
13493 engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
13494 obviously impossible.
13495 -- Richard Davisson
13496 %
13497 There are people so addicted to exaggeration
13498 that they can't tell the truth without lying.
13499 -- Josh Billings
13500 %
13501 There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
13502 vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
13503 -- Gloria Steinem
13504 %
13505 There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
13506 someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
13507 Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
13508 Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
13509 every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
13510 this?
13511 Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
13512 centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___you
13513 can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
13514 forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
13515 -- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
13516 even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
13517 why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
13518 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
13519 %
13520 There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
13521 plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
13522 and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
13523 don't we all?
13524 %
13525 There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
13526 and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated
13527 pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving
13528 them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you
13529 stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your
13530 intelligence.
13531 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
13532 %
13533 There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
13534 -- Disraeli
13535 %
13536 There are three possibilities:
13537 Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from the sun;
13538 there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or
13539 someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
13540 %
13541 There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
13542 offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
13543 a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
13544 of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
13545 affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
13546 When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
13547 Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
13548 -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
13549 %
13550 There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
13551 engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far
13552 the more certain.
13553 -- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
13554 %
13555 There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
13556 the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many
13557 facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next
13558 fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent
13559 Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
13560 Factor; that's engineering.
13561 %
13562 There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I
13563 can't remember.
13564 -- Italo Svevo
13565 %
13566 There are three ways to get something done:
13567 (1) Do it yourself.
13568 (2) Hire someone to do it for you.
13569 (3) Forbid your kids to do it.
13570 %
13571 There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
13572 someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
13573 %
13574 There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is
13575 one of them.
13576 %
13577 There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
13578 the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
13579 sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
13580 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
13581 %
13582 There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
13583 sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
13584 -- Woody Allen
13585 %
13586 There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
13587 make is so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
13588 other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
13589 deficiencies.
13590 -- C. A. R. Hoare
13591 %
13592 There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
13593 other is to read Pope.
13594 -- Oscar Wilde
13595 %
13596 There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
13597 works.
13598 %
13599 There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
13600 suitable application of high explosives.
13601 %
13602 There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
13603 -- R. W. Gerard
13604 %
13605 There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
13606 -- Henry Kissinger
13607 %
13608 There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
13609 than 100.
13610 -- Steele's Law
13611 %
13612 There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
13613 nothing about.
13614 %
13615 There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an
13616 opinion.
13617 -- Anatole France
13618 %
13619 There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
13620 paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
13621 %
13622 There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
13623 %
13624 There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
13625 tied during the month of April.
13626 %
13627 There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
13628 -- Walt Disney
13629 %
13630 There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,
13631 Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and
13632 love of the Fatherland.
13633 -- Adolf Hitler
13634 %
13635 There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
13636 what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
13637 disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
13638 inexplicable.
13639
13640 There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
13641
13642 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
13643 %
13644 There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
13645 -- Arthur C. Clarke
13646 %
13647 There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
13648 -- Mark Twain
13649 %
13650 There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
13651 tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
13652 abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
13653 war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
13654 of course.
13655 -- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
13656 %
13657 There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
13658 -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, World Future Society
13659 Convention, 1977
13660 %
13661 There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
13662 -- G. B. Shaw
13663 %
13664 There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
13665 %
13666 There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
13667 %
13668 There is no time like the pleasant.
13669 %
13670 There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
13671 doing.
13672 %
13673 There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY.
13674 There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS I'm very probably wrong.
13675 %
13676 "There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
13677 said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat. "And yet just
13678 a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable
13679 question," said Nasrudin. "I could have answered it if I had been
13680 there." "Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
13681 the middle of the night?'"
13682 %
13683 There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the
13684 ocean level wouldn't cure.
13685 -- Ross MacDonald
13686 %
13687 There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
13688 that is not being talked about.
13689 -- Oscar Wilde
13690 %
13691 There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
13692 returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
13693 -- Mark Twain
13694 %
13695 There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
13696 -- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
13697 %
13698 There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
13699 left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
13700 Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
13701 started debating who should be allowed to stay.
13702
13703 The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
13704 over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
13705 would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley
13706 said, "Look! We're not solving anything like this! The only fair
13707 thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
13708 votes.
13709 %
13710 There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
13711 both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
13712 talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
13713 during the trial.
13714 -- David Letterman
13715 %
13716 There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
13717 the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
13718 digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
13719 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the
13720 transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
13721 stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
13722 feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
13723 systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
13724 first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
13725 satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
13726 telephone business?
13727 %
13728 There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not
13729 a fence.
13730 %
13731 There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
13732 %
13733 There's little in taking or giving,
13734 There's little in water or wine:
13735 This living, this living, this living,
13736 Was never a project of mine.
13737 Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
13738 The gain of the one at the top,
13739 For art is a form of catharsis,
13740 And love is a permanent flop,
13741 And work is the province of cattle,
13742 And rest's for a clam in a shell,
13743 So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
13744 Would you kindly direct me to hell?
13745 -- Dorothy Parker
13746 %
13747 There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our
13748 whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
13749 -- Walt Kelly
13750 %
13751 There's no future in time travel.
13752 %
13753 There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
13754 -- Dr. Who
13755 %
13756 There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
13757 any worse.
13758 %
13759 There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
13760 %
13761 There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
13762 working for you.
13763 -- Will Rodgers
13764 %
13765 There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and
13766 dead armadillos.
13767 -- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
13768 %
13769 There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them
13770 won't aggravate.
13771 %
13772 There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
13773 what it is I'll get married again.
13774 -- Clint Eastwood
13775 %
13776 There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
13777 becoming an endangered synthetic.
13778 -- Lily Tomlin
13779 %
13780 "These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
13781 "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
13782 "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
13783 out of MEGATON MAN!"
13784 %
13785 These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
13786 used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
13787 %
13788 They also surf who only stand on waves.
13789 %
13790 They make a desert and call it peace.
13791 -- Tacitus (55?-120?)
13792 %
13793 They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
13794 always spell better than they pronounce.
13795 -- Mark Twain
13796 %
13797 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
13798 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
13799 -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
13800 %
13801 They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!
13802 %
13803 They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results
13804 About a month before. Their hair began to curl
13805 The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it
13806 But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL.
13807
13808 He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this
13809 To pass where they had failed For it must ever be
13810 And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest
13811 The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me.
13812
13813 My notion was to start again
13814 Ignoring all they'd done
13815 We quickly turned it into code
13816 To see if it would run.
13817 %
13818 They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
13819 %
13820 They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult to like.
13821 -- Avon
13822 %
13823 Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
13824 %
13825 Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
13826 %
13827 Think big. Pollute the Mississippi.
13828 %
13829 Think honk if you're a telepath.
13830 %
13831 Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
13832 %
13833 Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer
13834 crashes.
13835 %
13836 Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
13837 %
13838 "Thirty days hath Septober,
13839 April, June, and no wonder.
13840 all the rest have peanut butter
13841 except my father who wears red suspenders."
13842 %
13843 This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
13844 %
13845 This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need,
13846 please use the program "________randchar". This program generates random
13847 characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
13848 something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be
13849 more profound than THIS program has ever been.
13850 %
13851 This fortune intentionally not included.
13852 %
13853 This fortune is false.
13854 %
13855 This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
13856 %
13857 This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
13858 regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
13859 %
13860 This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT DOG.
13861 -- Bob Violence
13862 %
13863 This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
13864 actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
13865 %
13866 This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
13867 because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
13868 which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has
13869 "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the
13870 consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any
13871 rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for
13872 oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill
13873 Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers
13874 over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These
13875 innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been
13876 passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
13877 amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do
13878 apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,
13879 and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
13880 -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
13881 %
13882 This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
13883 %
13884 This is for all ill-treated fellows
13885 Unborn and unbegot,
13886 For them to read when they're in trouble
13887 And I am not.
13888 -- A. E. Housman
13889 %
13890 This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
13891 to one.
13892 -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
13893 %
13894 This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
13895 %
13896 THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
13897
13898 If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
13899 contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
13900 without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
13901 contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
13902 can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
13903 for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
13904 difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
13905 and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
13906 "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before
13907 you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
13908 Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
13909 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
13910 Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
13911 more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
13912 %
13913 This is the ____LAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
13914 %
13915 This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
13916 power of computers:
13917
13918 Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
13919 the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
13920 minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
13921 results are that one should eat each day:
13922
13923 1/2 chicken
13924 1 egg
13925 1 glass of skim milk
13926 27 heads of lettuce.
13927 -- Rev. Adrian Melott
13928 %
13929 This is the story of the bee
13930 Whose sex is very hard to see
13931
13932 You cannot tell the he from the she
13933 But she can tell, and so can he
13934
13935 The little bee is never still
13936 She has no time to take the pill
13937
13938 And that is why, in times like these
13939 There are so many sons of bees.
13940 %
13941 This is your fortune.
13942 %
13943 This land is full of trousers!
13944 this land is full of mausers!
13945 And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
13946 -- Firesign Theater
13947 %
13948 This land is made of mountains,
13949 This land is made of mud,
13950 This land has lots of everything,
13951 For me and Elmer Fudd.
13952
13953 This land has lots of trousers,
13954 This land has lots of mousers,
13955 And pussycats to eat them
13956 When the sun goes down.
13957 %
13958 This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life,
13959 you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
13960 to go.
13961 %
13962 This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
13963 %
13964 This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
13965 great force.
13966 -- Dorothy Parker
13967 %
13968 This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
13969 the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
13970 solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
13971 largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
13972 which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
13973 paper that were unhappy.
13974 -- Douglas Adams
13975 %
13976 This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
13977 something child-like.
13978 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
13979 %
13980 This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
13981 student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
13982
13983 One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
13984 Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
13985 computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
13986 which identifies errors in the original program.
13987 %
13988 This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
13989 -- Hofstadter
13990 %
13991 ... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives
13992 as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as
13993 determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people
13994 buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s
13995 couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three
13996 weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available,
13997 they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent
13998 restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of
13999 excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going
14000 off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have
14001 a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli.
14002 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
14003 %
14004 This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
14005 %
14006 Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
14007 rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
14008 than he does.
14009 As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
14010 it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
14011 sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
14012 consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
14013 being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
14014 The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
14015 do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
14016 honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
14017 be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
14018 relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
14019 Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
14020 This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
14021 -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
14022 from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
14023 and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
14024 %
14025 Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those
14026 of us who do.
14027 %
14028 Those who can't write, write manuals.
14029 %
14030 Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
14031 %
14032 Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics.
14033 -- French Proverb
14034 %
14035 Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
14036 -- Henry Spencer
14037 %
14038 Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
14039 for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
14040 -- Aristotle
14041 %
14042 Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often
14043 surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
14044 -- Mark B. Cohen
14045 %
14046 Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
14047 %
14048 Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
14049 will make violent revolution inevitable.
14050 -- John F. Kennedy
14051 %
14052 Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
14053 men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
14054 without the roar of its many waters.
14055 -- Frederick Douglass
14056 %
14057 Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
14058 the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
14059 Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
14060 whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
14061 fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
14062 more about the matter than the others.
14063 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14064 %
14065 Time flies like an arrow
14066 Fruit flies like a banana
14067 %
14068 Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
14069 %
14070 Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so.
14071 -- Ford Prefect
14072 %
14073 Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
14074 once.
14075 %
14076 'Tis the dream of each programmer,
14077 Before his life is done,
14078 To write three lines of APL,
14079 And make the damn things run.
14080 %
14081 (to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
14082 Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
14083 Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
14084 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
14085 Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
14086 Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
14087 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
14088 And we've also found Just flip one switch
14089 When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
14090 You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
14091 in a flash.
14092 Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
14093 Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
14094 And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
14095 %
14096 To A Quick Young Fox:
14097 Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
14098 Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
14099 Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
14100 Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
14101 -- Lazy Dog
14102 %
14103 To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
14104 %
14105 To be is to do.
14106 -- I. Kant
14107 To do is to be.
14108 -- A. Sartre
14109 Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
14110 -- F. Flintstone
14111 %
14112 To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
14113 this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
14114 offer in response is based on information available to make no such
14115 statement.
14116 %
14117 To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
14118 call it the target.
14119 %
14120 To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
14121 %
14122 To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System
14123 %
14124 To err is human, to moo bovine.
14125 %
14126 To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
14127 -- B. Duggan
14128 %
14129 To generalize is to be an idiot.
14130 -- William Blake
14131 %
14132 To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
14133 men, two of them absent.
14134 %
14135 To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
14136 -- Thomas Edison
14137 %
14138 To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
14139 -- Robert Heller
14140 %
14141 To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
14142 %
14143 To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide
14144 a test load.
14145 %
14146 To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
14147 system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
14148 inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
14149 precision and flexibility may be just as dysfunctional in novel,
14150 uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
14151 well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
14152 of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
14153 secure ecological niche.
14154 -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
14155 %
14156 To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
14157 telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
14158 computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
14159 in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
14160 lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
14161
14162 Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
14163 suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
14164 computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
14165 one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
14166 break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
14167 incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
14168 an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
14169 pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
14170 loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
14171 and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
14172 -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
14173 Phones?"
14174 %
14175 To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?
14176 %
14177 To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
14178 -- Woody Allen
14179 %
14180 Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
14181 %
14182 Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
14183 %
14184 Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
14185 %
14186 Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
14187 %
14188 Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
14189 %
14190 Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
14191
14192 And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
14193 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
14194 %
14195 Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
14196 cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
14197 spectacular adventure starring ... Tippy, the Wonder Dog.
14198 -- Bob & Ray
14199 %
14200 Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
14201 except in major motion pictures.
14202 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14203 %
14204 Toilet Toup'ee, n.:
14205 Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
14206 creating endless annoyance to male users.
14207 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
14208 %
14209 Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
14210 %
14211 Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
14212 %
14213 Too clever is dumb.
14214 -- Ogden Nash
14215 %
14216 Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
14217 -- Mae West
14218 %
14219 Too much of everything is just enough.
14220 -- Bob Wier
14221 %
14222 Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
14223 briefcases.
14224 -- Governor Jerry Brown
14225 %
14226 Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
14227 10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
14228 9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
14229 8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
14230 7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
14231 Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
14232 assurance people in its wake.
14233 6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
14234 - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
14235 5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
14236 4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
14237 3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
14238 are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
14239 2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
14240 original Klingon.
14241 1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it!
14242 Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
14243 %
14244 Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the
14245 earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century.
14246 As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help.
14247 Please...
14248
14249 CONSERVE GRAVITY
14250
14251 Follow these simple suggestions:
14252
14253 (1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
14254 (2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
14255 (3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like
14256 curling.
14257 (4) Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
14258 (5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big
14259 pile.
14260 (6) Stop flipping pancakes
14261 %
14262 Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
14263 %
14264 Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful, wealthy, and live
14265 in eucalyptus trees.
14266 %
14267 Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
14268 -- Henrik Tikkanen
14269 %
14270 Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
14271 -- Mark Twain
14272 %
14273 Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
14274 %
14275 Truthful, adj.:
14276 Dumb and illiterate.
14277 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14278 %
14279 Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
14280 -- Charles Schulz
14281 %
14282 Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.
14283 %
14284 Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
14285 is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written
14286 in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and
14287 pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer),
14288 defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the
14289 absolutely perfect future.
14290 -- Amrom Katz
14291 %
14292 Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
14293 %
14294 Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
14295 specification is that it should run noiselessly.
14296 %
14297 Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
14298 -- Alan Watts
14299 %
14300 Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____yell into keyboard.
14301 %
14302 Turnaucka's Law:
14303 The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
14304 electrical cord.
14305 %
14306 Tussman's Law:
14307 Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
14308 %
14309 TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
14310 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
14311 %
14312 'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
14313 Did gyre and gimble in their cave
14314 All mimsy was the CS-VAX
14315 And Cory raths outgrabe.
14316
14317 "Beware the software rot, my son!
14318 The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
14319 Beware the broken pipe, and shun
14320 The frumious system crash!"
14321 %
14322 'Twas the Night before Crisis
14323
14324 'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
14325 Not a program was working not even a browse.
14326 The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
14327 Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
14328 The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
14329 While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
14330 When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
14331 I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
14332 And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
14333 But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
14334 More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
14335 And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
14336 On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
14337 On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
14338 His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
14339 From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
14340 A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
14341 Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
14342 %
14343 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
14344 preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
14345 throughout our place of residence,
14346 Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
14347 possessors of this potential, including that
14348 species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
14349 Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
14350 edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
14351 Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
14352 imminent visitation from an eccentric
14353 philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
14354 is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
14355 %
14356 Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
14357 -- Walt Kelly
14358 %
14359 Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
14360 -- Howard Kandel
14361 %
14362 Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man
14363 said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The
14364 second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his
14365 chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded
14366 only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the
14367 courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.
14368 If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is
14369 dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and
14370 must pay three silver pieces."
14371 %
14372 Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
14373 %
14374 Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
14375 I forget the second.
14376 %
14377 Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
14378 %
14379 U: There's a U -- a Unicorn!
14380 Run right up and rub its horn.
14381 Look at all those points you're losing!
14382 UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
14383 -- The Roguelet's ABC
14384 %
14385 "Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."
14386
14387 (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
14388 -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
14389 %
14390 UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
14391 %
14392 "Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
14393
14394 "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
14395 right?"
14396 -- MacNelley, "Shoe"
14397 %
14398 Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
14399 Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
14400 hammer or get a splinter in it.
14401 %
14402 Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
14403 just man is also a prison.
14404 %
14405 Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
14406 can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
14407 %
14408 Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
14409 Superiority is recessive.
14410 %
14411 Unfair animal names:
14412
14413 -- tsetse fly -- bullhead
14414 -- booby -- duck-billed platypus
14415 -- sapsucker -- Clarence
14416 -- Gary Larson
14417 %
14418 United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
14419 Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
14420 all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
14421 all the patriots of every persuasion.
14422
14423 Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
14424 world.
14425 -- Isaac Asimov
14426 %
14427 Universe, n.:
14428 The problem.
14429 %
14430 University, n.:
14431 Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
14432 usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
14433 fix it, and ...
14434 %
14435 unix soit qui mal y pense
14436 %
14437 UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
14438 Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
14439 -- Andy Tannenbaum
14440 %
14441 Unnamed Law:
14442 If it happens, it must be possible.
14443 %
14444 Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
14445 twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
14446 -- H. L. Mencken
14447 %
14448 Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
14449 %
14450 User n.:
14451 A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
14452 %
14453 USER, n.:
14454 The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
14455 -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
14456 %
14457 Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
14458 -- S. C. Johnson
14459 %
14460 Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
14461 opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
14462 -- Doug Larson
14463 %
14464 Vail's Second Axiom:
14465 The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
14466 amount of work already completed.
14467 %
14468 Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ...
14469 Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ...
14470 -- Tom Chapin
14471 %
14472 Van Roy's Law:
14473 An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
14474 %
14475 Vanilla, adj.:
14476 Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food,
14477 very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
14478 extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply
14479 "vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot
14480 and sour won ton soup.
14481 %
14482 Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
14483 (1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
14484 once.
14485 (2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
14486 points.
14487 %
14488 Veni, Vidi, Visa.
14489 %
14490 "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past
14491 year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley
14492 reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
14493 artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue
14494 moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
14495 Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the
14496 entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the
14497 sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
14498
14499 "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
14500
14501 "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made
14502 good copy."
14503 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
14504 %
14505 Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
14506 %
14507 Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
14508 Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
14509 waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
14510 %
14511 Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
14512 -- Salvor Hardin
14513 %
14514 Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the
14515 yard.
14516 %
14517 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14518 Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
14519 ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
14520 morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
14521 wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
14522 that old underwear you own.
14523 %
14524 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14525 You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
14526 sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and
14527 sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus
14528 drivers.
14529 %
14530 "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
14531 %
14532 Virtue is its own punishment.
14533 %
14534 Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
14535 from where you left them to where you can't find them.
14536 %
14537 Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.
14538 %
14539 VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.
14540 %
14541 Vote anarchist.
14542 %
14543 Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
14544 TAX-DEFERRED!
14545 %
14546 VYARZERZOMANIMORORSEZASSEZANSERAREORSES?
14547 %
14548
14549 *** System shutdown message from root ***
14550
14551 System going down in 60 seconds
14552
14553
14554 %
14555 Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
14556 -- Mark Twain
14557 %
14558 Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
14559 1st customer: "I'll have tea."
14560 2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
14561 (Waiter exits, returns)
14562 Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
14563 %
14564 Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
14565 %
14566 War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
14567 -- Charles Edward Montague
14568 %
14569 War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
14570 %
14571 WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
14572
14573 Firings will continue until morale improves.
14574 %
14575 WARNING:
14576 Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
14577 mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on
14578 your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war.
14579 %
14580 Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
14581 those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking
14582 up.
14583 -- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
14584 %
14585 Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.
14586 %
14587 Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
14588 -- John F. Kennedy
14589 %
14590 Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
14591 %
14592 Wasting time is an important part of living.
14593 %
14594 Watson's Law:
14595 The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
14596 number and significance of any persons watching it.
14597 %
14598 We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
14599 divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being
14600 correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
14601 -- Niels Bohr
14602 %
14603 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
14604 -- Oscar Wilde
14605 %
14606 We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
14607 -- Winston Churchill
14608 %
14609 We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
14610 -- Whole Earth Catalog
14611 %
14612 We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
14613 -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
14614 %
14615 We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
14616 socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The
14617 bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say
14618 socialism?
14619 -- Fidel Castro
14620 %
14621 We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
14622 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
14623 %
14624 We are upping our standards ... so up yours.
14625 -- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988.
14626 %
14627 We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
14628 %
14629 We can predict everything, except the future.
14630 %
14631 We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
14632 deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
14633 -- James E. Day, Postmaster General
14634 %
14635 We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
14636 -- Vroomfondel
14637 %
14638 We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
14639 %
14640 We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a
14641 fish.
14642 %
14643 We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
14644 hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights!
14645 %
14646 We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
14647 -- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
14648 %
14649 We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
14650 hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
14651 mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
14652 our grave singing Haleleuia ...
14653 -- Monty Python
14654 %
14655 We have met the enemy, and he is us.
14656 -- Walt Kelly
14657 %
14658 We have only two things to worry about: That things will never get
14659 back to normal, and that they already have.
14660 %
14661 We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
14662 hands for masturbation.
14663 -- Lily Tomlin
14664 %
14665 We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
14666 official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death
14667 Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish
14668 you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that
14669 said "ELECTROCUTION".
14670
14671 Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your
14672 teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
14673 process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a
14674 couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways
14675 out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste
14676 stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom
14677 floor, which is how the police would find you.
14678
14679 You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
14680 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
14681 %
14682 We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all
14683 purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start
14684 with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the
14685 playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is
14686 best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can
14687 buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.
14688 -- Alan M. Turing
14689 %
14690 We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
14691 respect their good judgement.
14692 %
14693 We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
14694 no matter how self-seeking.
14695 -- F. G. Withington
14696 %
14697 We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago
14698 people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.
14699 For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had
14700 to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare
14701 fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with
14702 primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how
14703 ugly paneling is to begin with.
14704 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
14705 %
14706 We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
14707 friends are trying to kill us.
14708 %
14709 We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.
14710 But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle
14711 Haggard song at a French restaurant. ...
14712 I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
14713 her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I
14714 had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone
14715 told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was
14716 lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he
14717 fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing
14718 what men must do. ...
14719 "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible
14720 sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew
14721 not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a
14722 quiet and peace I will never forget.
14723 "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
14724 tollway belle's for thee."
14725 The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was
14726 a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I
14727 poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
14728 -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
14729 Competition
14730 %
14731 We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
14732 technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
14733 %
14734 We will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
14735 we will cry over things we used to laugh &
14736 our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
14737 creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
14738 in the end a summer with wild winds &
14739 new friends will be.
14740 %
14741 We wish you a Hare Krishna
14742 We wish you a Hare Krishna
14743 We wish you a Hare Krishna
14744 And a Sun Myung Moon!
14745 -- Maxwell Smart
14746 %
14747 We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later.
14748 %
14749 We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
14750 the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
14751 you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
14752 in his bowl full of jelly.
14753 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
14754 %
14755 We're only in it for the volume.
14756 -- Black Sabbath
14757 %
14758 We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
14759 of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
14760 but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
14761 -- Andy Rooney
14762 %
14763 Weiler's Law:
14764 Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
14765 %
14766 Weinberg's First Law:
14767 Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
14768 %
14769 Weinberg's Principle:
14770 An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
14771 sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
14772 %
14773 Weinberg's Second Law:
14774 If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
14775 then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
14776 %
14777 Weiner's Law of Libraries:
14778 There are no answers, only cross references.
14779 %
14780 Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if
14781 you run out of food.
14782 -- Dean McLaughlin.
14783 %
14784 Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
14785 lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
14786 governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the
14787 reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top
14788 contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men
14789 will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the
14790 most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and
14791 appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday
14792 morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit
14793 interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a
14794 guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through
14795 the entire show without answering a single question ...
14796 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
14797 %
14798 Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
14799 back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
14800 or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
14801 they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
14802 -- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
14803 %
14804 Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can*
14805 you believe?!
14806 -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
14807 %
14808 Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
14809 And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
14810 I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
14811 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
14812
14813 If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
14814 Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
14815 'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
14816 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
14817
14818 On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
14819 But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
14820 Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
14821 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
14822 -- Core Dumped Blues
14823 %
14824 "Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
14825
14826 "Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
14827 coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
14828 -- Dr. Who
14829 %
14830 "Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is
14831 no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five
14832 hundred."
14833 -- The Mahabharata.
14834 %
14835 Westheimer's Discovery:
14836 A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
14837 couple of hours in the library.
14838 %
14839 Wethern's Law:
14840 Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
14841 %
14842 "What are we going to do?"
14843
14844 "Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking for
14845 something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
14846 short initiation period."
14847 %
14848 "What are you doing?"
14849
14850 "Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something
14851 that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short
14852 initiation period."
14853 %
14854 What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
14855 %
14856 "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
14857 teenager asked her mother.
14858 "Encouragement, dear," she replied.
14859 %
14860 What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
14861 %
14862 What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
14863 %
14864 What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
14865 %
14866 What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
14867 %
14868 What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
14869 that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our
14870 country. Nice try anyway, George.
14871 -- D.J. on KSFO/KYA
14872 %
14873 What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
14874 entrance?
14875 %
14876 What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
14877 in his footsteps?
14878 %
14879 What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower
14880 stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed
14881 barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character
14882 from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of
14883 while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our
14884 dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up
14885 powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the
14886 bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any
14887 one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact
14888 lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where
14889 you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",
14890 if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with
14891 that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;
14892 they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to
14893 flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
14894 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
14895 %
14896 What I tell you three times is true.
14897 %
14898 What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
14899 sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
14900 with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
14901 came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
14902 parties.
14903 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14904 %
14905 What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
14906 %
14907 What I've done, of course, is total garbage.
14908 -- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
14909 %
14910 What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
14911 definitely overpaid for my carpet.
14912 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
14913 %
14914 What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's
14915 worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
14916 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
14917 %
14918 What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
14919 -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
14920 %
14921 What is mind? No matter.
14922 What is matter? Never mind.
14923 -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
14924 %
14925 What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
14926 computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
14927 and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
14928 %
14929 "What is the Nature of God?"
14930
14931 CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
14932 1 QT. SOUR CREAM
14933 1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT
14934 1/2 CUT CHIVES.
14935 STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.
14936
14937 "I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
14938 -- Bloom County
14939 %
14940 What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?
14941 -- Bertolt Brecht
14942 %
14943 What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
14944 which is the exact opposite.
14945 -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
14946 %
14947 What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
14948 %
14949 What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
14950 to compare it with.
14951 %
14952 What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
14953 It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
14954 and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
14955 and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes,
14956 women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
14957 mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
14958 and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
14959 -- Susan Gordon
14960 %
14961 What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
14962 -- Ursula K. LeGuin
14963 %
14964 What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
14965 %
14966 What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
14967 %
14968 What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
14969 %
14970 What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
14971 %
14972 What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
14973 %
14974 What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
14975 %
14976 What this country needs is a good five cent nickel.
14977 %
14978 What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
14979 %
14980 What this world needs is a good five-dollar plasma weapon.
14981 %
14982 What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
14983 -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
14984 %
14985 What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which
14986 nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday
14987 Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-
14988 launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just
14989 remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual
14990 process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still
14991 be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed.
14992 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14993 %
14994 What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
14995 %
14996 What's another word for Thesaurus?
14997 -- Steven Wright
14998 %
14999 "What's that thing?"
15000 "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
15001 computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
15002 it does. We call it a two-by-four."
15003 -- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
15004 %
15005 What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
15006 -- Dr. Who
15007 %
15008 Whatever became of eternal truth?
15009 %
15010 Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
15011 cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils
15012 as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding
15013 hundred dollar bills."
15014 -- Herb Caen
15015 %
15016 Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
15017 nailed down.
15018 -- Collis P. Huntingdon
15019 %
15020 Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches!
15021 -- Mom
15022 %
15023 When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
15024 money is.
15025 -- Robespierre
15026 %
15027 When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
15028 thing," it's the money.
15029 -- Kim Hubbard
15030 %
15031 When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
15032 loop?
15033 %
15034 When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
15035 not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
15036 travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
15037 -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
15038 %
15039 When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
15040 sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
15041 relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
15042 -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
15043 %
15044 When all other means of communication fail, try words.
15045 %
15046 When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
15047 tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?
15048 -- Reuben Flagg
15049 %
15050 When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
15051 the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
15052 -- Vine Deloria, Jr.
15053 %
15054 When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I
15055 think it was a Tuesday.
15056 %
15057 When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
15058 guarantee them.
15059 %
15060 When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
15061 parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if
15062 I'm leaving.
15063 -- Steven Wright
15064 %
15065 When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
15066 year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire
15067 winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.
15068 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15069 %
15070 When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
15071 ladies, and, of course, the goat.
15072 %
15073 When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
15074 I'm beginning to believe it.
15075 -- Clarence Darrow
15076 %
15077 When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you
15078 take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come
15079 and get you."
15080 -- Jerry Lewis
15081 %
15082 When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
15083 firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'
15084 -- Steven Wright
15085 %
15086 When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
15087 the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
15088 -- Woody Allen
15089 %
15090 When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an
15091 act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A
15092 group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a
15093 six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things
15094 together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ...
15095 Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective
15096 responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military
15097 establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have
15098 been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
15099 together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
15100 -- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
15101 %
15102 When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
15103 or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
15104 cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
15105 go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
15106 -- Mark Twain
15107 %
15108 When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
15109 %
15110 When in doubt, tell the truth.
15111 -- Mark Twain
15112 %
15113 When in doubt, use brute force.
15114 -- Ken Thompson
15115 %
15116 When in panic, fear and doubt,
15117 Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
15118 %
15119 When love is gone, there's always justice.
15120 And when justice is gone, there's always force.
15121 And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
15122 Hi, Mom!
15123 -- Laurie Anderson
15124 %
15125 When Marriage is Outlawed,
15126 Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
15127 %
15128 When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
15129 results.
15130 -- Calvin Coolidge
15131 %
15132 When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony
15133 concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years --
15134 and I find I mind it less and less."
15135 -- Louise Andrews Kent
15136 %
15137 When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
15138 for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
15139 your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
15140 -- Daniel B. Luten
15141 %
15142 When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
15143 say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
15144 %
15145 When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
15146 -- Jon Carroll
15147 %
15148 When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
15149 modify the problem, not the remedy.
15150 %
15151 When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
15152 the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
15153 nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____that.
15154 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
15155 %
15156 When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is
15157 metaphysics.
15158 -- Voltaire
15159 %
15160 When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
15161 stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
15162 from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
15163 were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
15164 corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
15165 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
15166 %
15167 When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
15168 plane will fly.
15169 -- Donald Douglas
15170 %
15171 When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
15172 insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
15173 required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
15174 exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
15175 -- George Bernard Shaw
15176 %
15177 When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
15178 not hereditary.
15179 -- Thomas Paine
15180 %
15181 When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
15182 except our fingertips will have been singed.
15183 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
15184 %
15185 When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
15186 investigation of a topic, it is well to have the answer firmly in hand,
15187 so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
15188 swayed, directly to the goal.
15189 -- Amrom Katz
15190 %
15191 When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
15192 %
15193 When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
15194 %
15195 When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
15196 -- Harry Truman
15197 %
15198 When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
15199 clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
15200 to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
15201 In a way, the next move is up to him.
15202 -- R. A. Lafferty
15203 %
15204 When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
15205 -- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war
15206 %
15207 When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
15208 asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
15209 know the answer either.
15210 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
15211 %
15212 When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
15213 -- The Wall Street Journal
15214 %
15215 When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the
15216 impression you will make.
15217 %
15218 When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
15219 Wretched, bored, dejected; only
15220 Here's the rub, my darling dear
15221 I feel the same when you are near.
15222 -- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"
15223 %
15224 When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
15225 %
15226 Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
15227 -- Dave Parnas
15228 %
15229 Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
15230 see it tried on him personally.
15231 -- A. Lincoln
15232 %
15233 Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
15234 -- Oscar Wilde
15235 %
15236 Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
15237 you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
15238 Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
15239 -- Mark Twain
15240 "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
15241 %
15242 Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
15243 to reform.
15244 -- Mark Twain
15245 %
15246 WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
15247
15248 Oh, dear, where can the matter be
15249 When it's converted to energy?
15250 There is a slight loss of parity.
15251 Johnny's so long at the fair.
15252 %
15253 Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
15254 is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
15255 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
15256 %
15257 Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
15258 %
15259 Whether you can hear it or not
15260 The Universe is laughing behind your back
15261 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
15262 %
15263 Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
15264 %
15265 While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
15266 admission to someone else.
15267 %
15268 While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
15269 The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
15270 While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
15271 And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
15272 Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
15273 The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
15274 -- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
15275 November 26, 1792
15276 %
15277 While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
15278 %
15279 While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
15280 keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
15281 -- Edward Stevenson
15282 %
15283 While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
15284 form of misery.
15285 %
15286 While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
15287 %
15288 While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
15289 correctness never does.
15290 %
15291 While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very
15292 reassuring to know that it's still there.
15293 %
15294 While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
15295 safe, for you can watch both of his.
15296 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15297 %
15298 Whistler's Law:
15299 You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
15300 charge.
15301 %
15302 Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
15303 Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ...
15304 %
15305 Who made the world I cannot tell;
15306 'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
15307 My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
15308 I never soiled with such a deed.
15309 -- A. E. Housman
15310 %
15311 Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?
15312 %
15313 Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
15314 %
15315 Who's on first?
15316 %
15317 "Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
15318 -- George Ade
15319 %
15320 Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
15321 %
15322 Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
15323 %
15324 Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
15325 have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing.
15326 -- Ian Shoales
15327 %
15328 Why be a man when you can be a success?
15329 -- Bertolt Brecht
15330 %
15331 Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we
15332 have?
15333 %
15334 Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
15335 %
15336 Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
15337 avoid responsibility with?
15338 %
15339 Why did the Roman Empire collapse?
15340 What is the Latin for office automation?
15341 %
15342 Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
15343 %
15344 Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
15345 there must be a beverage.
15346 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15347 %
15348 Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps and California have
15349 more lawyers?
15350
15351 New Jersey had first choice.
15352 %
15353 Why don't elephants eat penguins ?
15354
15355 Because they can't get the wrappers off ...
15356 %
15357 Why I Can't Go Out With You:
15358
15359 I'd LOVE to, but ...
15360 -- I have to floss my cat.
15361 -- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
15362 -- I need to spend more time with my blender.
15363 -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
15364 -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
15365 -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
15366 -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
15367 -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
15368 -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
15369 -- I have some really hard words to look up.
15370 -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
15371 -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
15372 %
15373 Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
15374 because we are not the person involved
15375 -- Mark Twain
15376 %
15377 Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
15378 %
15379 Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
15380 -- Lily Tomlin
15381 %
15382 Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
15383 you knowing nothing?
15384 -- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
15385 %
15386 Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
15387 Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
15388 children open their old-fashioned presents.
15389
15390 Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
15391
15392 You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
15393 falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
15394
15395 Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
15396 with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
15397 and I get this cretin TOP?"
15398
15399 Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
15400
15401 You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
15402
15403 Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
15404 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15405 %
15406 Why was I born with such contemporaries?
15407 -- Oscar Wilde
15408 %
15409 Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
15410 No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
15411 when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
15412 direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
15413 -- John L. Shelton
15414 %
15415 Wiker's Law:
15416 Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
15417 %
15418 William Safire's Rules for Writers:
15419
15420 Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never
15421 be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to
15422 agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
15423 out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
15424 of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
15425 not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
15426 conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
15427 sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
15428 close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
15429 words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
15430 must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
15431 linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
15432 metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
15433 be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
15434 writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
15435 the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
15436 viable alternatives.
15437 %
15438 Williams and Holland's Law:
15439 If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
15440 statistical methods.
15441 %
15442 Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
15443 it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
15444 %
15445 Wit, n.:
15446 The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
15447 ... by leaving it out.
15448 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15449 %
15450 With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
15451 try to be a fraud and a half.
15452 -- Otto von Bismark
15453 %
15454 With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
15455 -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
15456 %
15457 With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
15458 build a nuclear balm?
15459 %
15460 With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
15461 miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
15462 still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
15463 such thing as progress.
15464 -- Ransom K. Ferm
15465 %
15466 With trembling hands he unfurled the ancient cracked parchment,
15467 this was the place, it had to be. Uncertainly he began to mumble the
15468 chant "rdbms, sql, third normal formal form, java, table, scalable".
15469 Something moved... From outside they heard a scream and a thud.
15470 The sales department had awoken.
15471 %
15472 Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
15473 %
15474 Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
15475 (1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
15476 (2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
15477 (3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
15478 (4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
15479 VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
15480 (5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
15481 -- Rich Kulawiec
15482 %
15483 Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
15484 you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
15485 down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
15486 tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
15487 long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
15488 there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
15489 come back.
15490
15491 Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
15492 when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
15493 Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
15494 cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
15495 heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
15496 beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
15497 and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
15498 although their insurance rates went way up.
15499 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15500 %
15501 Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
15502 We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage
15503 any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you
15504 should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are,
15505 and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
15506 bargained for.
15507 %
15508 Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs.
15509 %
15510 World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
15511 dress code!
15512 %
15513 Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
15514 August. The lines are the shortest, though.
15515 -- Steve Rubenstein
15516 %
15517 Worst Month of the Year:
15518 February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
15519 you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't
15520 get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
15521 -- Steve Rubenstein
15522 %
15523 Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
15524 From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
15525 in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs
15526 damage my videotapes?"
15527 %
15528 Worst Vegetable of the Year:
15529 The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next
15530 year.
15531 -- Steve Rubenstein
15532 %
15533 "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
15534
15535 "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
15536 -- Lewis Carroll
15537 %
15538 Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
15539 and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer
15540 if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
15541 and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
15542 and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
15543 %
15544 Write-Protect Tab, n.:
15545 A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
15546 left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error
15547 message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the
15548 momentary inconvenience.
15549 -- Robb Russon
15550 %
15551 Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
15552 -- Frank Zappa
15553 %
15554 "Wrong," said Renner.
15555
15556 "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
15557 the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
15558 %
15559 X-rated movies are all alike -- the only thing they leave to the
15560 imagination is the plot.
15561 %
15562 Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
15563 %
15564 Xerox never comes up with anything original.
15565 %
15566 XIIdigitation, n.:
15567 The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made
15568 by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.
15569 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15570 %
15571 "Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
15572 goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
15573 their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating
15574 unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
15575 doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
15576 -- Stephen C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
15577 %
15578 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
15579 fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic
15580 operators together.
15581 -- Steve Higgins
15582 %
15583 Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
15584 %
15585 Year, n.:
15586 A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
15587 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15588 %
15589 Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
15590 %
15591 Yes, but which self do you want to be?
15592 %
15593 Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog.
15594 Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog.
15595 Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
15596 -- Snoopy
15597 %
15598 Yesterday upon the stair
15599 I met a man who wasn't there.
15600 He wasn't there again today --
15601 I think he's from the CIA.
15602 %
15603 Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
15604 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
15605 %
15606 Yinkel, n.:
15607 A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
15608 will notice.
15609 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15610 %
15611 You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
15612 %
15613 You are here:
15614 ***
15615 ***
15616 *********
15617 *******
15618 *****
15619 ***
15620 *
15621
15622 But you're not all there.
15623 %
15624 "You are old, Father William," the young man said,
15625 "All your papers these days look the same;
15626 Those William's would be better unread --
15627 Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
15628
15629 "In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
15630 "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
15631 But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
15632 Made it pointless to think any more."
15633 %
15634 "You are old, father William," the young man said,
15635 "And your hair has become very white;
15636 And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
15637 Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
15638
15639 "In my youth," father William replied to his son,
15640 "I feared it might injure the brain;
15641 But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
15642 Why, I do it again and again."
15643 -- Lewis Carroll
15644 %
15645 "You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
15646 That your lectures bore people to death.
15647 Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
15648 Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
15649
15650 "I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
15651 Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
15652 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
15653 Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
15654 %
15655 "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
15656 For anything tougher than suet;
15657 Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
15658 Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
15659
15660 "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
15661 And argued each case with my wife;
15662 And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
15663 Has lasted the rest of my life."
15664 -- Lewis Carroll
15665 %
15666 "You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
15667 And there isn't one language you like;
15668 Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
15669 Have you thought about taking a hike?"
15670
15671 "Since I never write programs," his father replied,
15672 "Every language looks equally bad;
15673 Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
15674 And don't realize that they've been had."
15675 %
15676 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
15677 And have grown most uncommonly fat;
15678 Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
15679 Pray what is the reason of that?"
15680
15681 "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
15682 "I kept all my limbs very supple
15683 By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
15684 Allow me to sell you a couple?"
15685 -- Lewis Carroll
15686 %
15687 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
15688 And make errors few people could bear;
15689 You complain about everyone's English but yours --
15690 Do you really think this is quite fair?"
15691
15692 "I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
15693 "But my stature these days is so great
15694 That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
15695 And to stop me it's now far too late."
15696 %
15697 "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
15698 That your eye was as steady as ever;
15699 Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
15700 What made you so awfully clever?"
15701
15702 "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
15703 Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
15704 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
15705 Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
15706 -- Lewis Carroll
15707 %
15708 You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
15709 %
15710 You are the only person to ever get this message.
15711 %
15712 You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
15713 this sort of trash.
15714 %
15715 You buttered your bread, now lie in it!
15716 %
15717 You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
15718 incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
15719 Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
15720 to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because
15721 nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
15722 they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
15723 some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
15724
15725 The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
15726 pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear
15727 safety glasses.
15728 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15729 %
15730 You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
15731 doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on.
15732 -- Hepler, Systems Design 182
15733 %
15734 You can create your own opportunities this week.
15735 Blackmail a senior executive.
15736 %
15737 You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
15738 Why do you find that funny?
15739 -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350, University of Washington
15740 %
15741 You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
15742 can with just a kind word.
15743 -- Bumper Sticker
15744 %
15745 You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have,
15746 for instance.
15747 -- Franklin P. Jones
15748 %
15749 You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
15750 %
15751 You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
15752 the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
15753 -- Alan Perlis
15754 %
15755 You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
15756 %
15757 You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
15758 decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
15759 over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
15760 -- F. Allen
15761 %
15762 You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
15763 supercomputers.
15764 -- Steven Feiner
15765 %
15766 You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
15767 %
15768 You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename.
15769 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
15770 %
15771 You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
15772 %
15773 You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
15774 -- Steven Wright
15775 %
15776 You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
15777 -- Booker T. Washington
15778 %
15779 You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
15780 %
15781 You can't make a program without broken egos.
15782 %
15783 You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
15784 enough worrying about what's happening now.
15785 -- Lauren Bacall
15786 %
15787 You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten.
15788 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
15789 Over and Over"
15790 %
15791 You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.
15792 -- Dagwood Bumstead
15793 %
15794 You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
15795 %
15796 You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
15797 %
15798 You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
15799 %
15800 You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
15801 and last month in advance.
15802 %
15803 You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
15804 doubt.
15805 -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
15806 %
15807 You do not have mail.
15808 %
15809 You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
15810 -- J. D. Salinger
15811 %
15812 You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting
15813 needles.
15814 -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
15815 %
15816 You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
15817 The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
15818 which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
15819 tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
15820 names. Here's the complete text:
15821
15822 "(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
15823 "(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
15824 "(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
15825 send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
15826 THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
15827 household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
15828 you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
15829 NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
15830
15831 The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
15832 money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
15833 form.
15834 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
15835 %
15836 You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
15837 %
15838 You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
15839
15840 This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
15841
15842 You are permanently confused.
15843 -- Dave Decot
15844 %
15845 You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
15846 metal objects which are not fastened down.
15847 %
15848 You have junk mail.
15849 %
15850 You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
15851 wrinkled.
15852 %
15853 You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
15854 %
15855 You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
15856 you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
15857 %
15858 You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
15859 anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
15860 you can always change the channel.
15861 -- Jim Ignatowski
15862 %
15863 You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
15864 -- S. Rickly Christian
15865 %
15866 You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
15867 -- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
15868 %
15869 You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
15870 friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
15871 %
15872 You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
15873 %
15874 "You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
15875 airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
15876 deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
15877 when I was young!"
15878 "Why, what did she tell you?"
15879 "I don't know, I didn't listen!"
15880 -- Douglas Adams, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
15881 %
15882 You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
15883 %
15884 You may be recognized soon. Hide.
15885 %
15886 You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
15887 is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
15888 -- Sydney Harris
15889 %
15890 You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with
15891 him.
15892 -- Ed Howe
15893 %
15894 You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
15895 -- Alfred Kahn
15896 %
15897 You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
15898 success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
15899 or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
15900 party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
15901 -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
15902 %
15903 You might have mail.
15904 %
15905 You might have had mail.
15906 %
15907 You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
15908 proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
15909 %
15910 You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll
15911 be dead.
15912 %
15913 You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
15914 reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
15915 the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
15916 independence.
15917 -- Charles A. Beard
15918 %
15919 You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
15920 beach.
15921 %
15922 You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were
15923 you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
15924 yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
15925 company.
15926 -- J. Wellington Wells
15927 %
15928 You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
15929 %
15930 You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
15931 know how seldom they do.
15932 -- Olin Miller.
15933 %
15934 You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
15935 if they are dead.
15936 %
15937 You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
15938 about 10^12 to 1.
15939 -- Ernest Rutherford
15940 %
15941 You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
15942 freedom and liberty.
15943 -- Henrik Ibsen
15944 %
15945 You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
15946 contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
15947 houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
15948 scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
15949 summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
15950 you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
15951 sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
15952 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15953 %
15954 You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name,
15955 another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and
15956 another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
15957 such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
15958 many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
15959 If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
15960 should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
15961 for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
15962 because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
15963 chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
15964
15965 In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his
15966 hemorrhoids.
15967 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
15968 %
15969 You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
15970 plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture.
15971 -- Business Professor, University of Georgia
15972 %
15973 You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
15974 %
15975 YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF
15976 PAPER SHUFFLING!
15977
15978 Mr. TAA of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be
15979 a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel
15980 really important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."
15981
15982 Mr. MARC had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
15983 to was a dead-end job as a engineer. Now I have a promising future and
15984 make really big Zorkmids."
15985
15986 MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
15987 you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.
15988
15989 SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
15990 %
15991 You too can wear a nose mitten.
15992 %
15993 You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
15994 %
15995 You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
15996 a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
15997 %
15998 You will be surprised by a loud noise.
15999 %
16000 You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
16001 %
16002 You will feel hungry again in another hour.
16003 %
16004 You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door
16005 mayonnaise salesman.
16006 %
16007 You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the
16008 Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
16009 parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
16010 -- Sherlock Holmes
16011 %
16012 You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
16013 %
16014 You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to
16015 worry.
16016 %
16017 You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
16018 taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
16019 minute and a huff.
16020 -- Groucho Marx
16021 %
16022 You'll never be the man your mother was!
16023 %
16024 You're at the end of the road again.
16025 %
16026 You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
16027 %
16028 You're never too old to become younger.
16029 -- Mae West
16030 %
16031 You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
16032 -- Dean Martin
16033 %
16034 You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
16035 %
16036 You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
16037 %
16038 You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.
16039 -- Gary Giddens
16040 %
16041 "You've got to think about tomorrow!"
16042
16043 "TOMORROW! I haven't even prepared for *_________yesterday* yet!"
16044 %
16045 Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
16046 thing he tells you.
16047 %
16048 Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
16049 from enjoying it.
16050 %
16051 Your fault: core dumped
16052 %
16053 Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that
16054 bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a
16055 chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home
16056 electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit
16057 breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires
16058 until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can
16059 damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change
16060 your fuses regularly.
16061 Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This
16062 sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more
16063 often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case
16064 you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not
16065 sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a
16066 fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed
16067 electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession,
16068 such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette
16069 table, etc.
16070 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
16071 %
16072 Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
16073 %
16074 Your lucky color has faded.
16075 %
16076 Your lucky number has been disconnected.
16077 %
16078 Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
16079 %
16080 Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
16081 %
16082 Yow! Am I having fun yet?
16083 -- Zippy the Pinhead
16084 %
16085 YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!
16086 %
16087 Zero Defects, n.:
16088 The result of shutting down a production line.
16089 %
16090 Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
16091 since I first called my brother's father dad.
16092 -- William Shakespeare, "King John"
16093 %
16094 Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
16095 People are always available for work in the past tense.
16096 %
16097 THE LAST BUG
16098
16099 "But you're out of your mind," It still wasn't perfect,
16100 They said with a shrug. As year followed year,
16101 "The customer's happy; And strangers would comment,
16102 What's one little bug?" "Is that guy still here?"
16103
16104 But he was determined. He died at the console,
16105 The others went home. Of hunger and thirst.
16106 He spread out the program, Next day he was buried,
16107 Deserted, alone. Face down, nine-edge first.
16108
16109 The cleaning men came, And the last bug in sight,
16110 The whole room was cluttered An ant passing by,
16111 With memory-dumps, punch cards. Saluted his tombstone,
16112 "I'm close," he muttered. And whispered, "Nice try."
16113
16114 The mumbling got louder,
16115 Simple deduction,
16116 "I've got it, it's right,
16117 Just change one instruction."
16118 %
16119 Speaking of the philosophy involved in moving humanity into space:
16120
16121 Furniture will be a largely obsolete concept. Take for example the dresser my
16122 mom bought for me when I was a kid. I still have it, and by the standards of
16123 its era, it's an admirable household fixture. It is a massive construction of
16124 maple wood, expertly joined with cunningly fit pieces, fitted and glued with
16125 the strength of iron. It is set with massive brass fixtures, and looks today
16126 -- discounting the dust -- as new as the day it was purchased, a quarter
16127 century ago. So far, so good; a fine piece of furniture, you might say. But
16128 let's look at it objectively, as a machine, as an object with a purpose. Here
16129 sit a hundred pounds of hardwood with a compressive strength of 1500 psi,
16130 jointed by an expert craftsman into a rigid box that would easily support a
16131 bull elephant. And what is the sole purpose of this massive crate, this
16132 monument to a dead tree? -- it holds my socks.
16133
16134 Not only is it blind engineering overkill of epic proportions, it is also an
16135 environmental disaster. The home to generations of squirrels, a sentinel post
16136 for falcons, an autumnal banner of golden glory, a living creature, was chopped
16137 down to enshrine some underwear. This, my friends, is no way to run a planet.
16138 -- Marshall T. Savage, from The Millennial Project:
16139 Colonizing the Galaxy -- In Eight Easy Steps
16140 %
16141 Nearly every software professional has heard the term spaghetti code as a
16142 pejorative description for complicated, difficult to understand, and impossible
16143 to maintain, software. However, many people may not know the other two
16144 elements of the complete Pasta Theory of Software.
16145
16146 Lasagna code is used to describe software that has a simple, understandable,
16147 and layered structure. Lasagna code, although structured, is unfortunately
16148 monolithic and not easy to modify. An attempt to change one layer conceptually
16149 simple, is often very difficult in actual practice.
16150
16151 The ideal software structure is one having components that are small and
16152 loosely coupled; this ideal structure is called ravioli code. In ravioli
16153 code, each of the components, or objects, is a package containing some meat
16154 or other nourishment for the system; any component can be modified or replaced
16155 without significantly affecting other components.
16156
16157 We need to go beyond the condemnation of spaghetti code to the active
16158 encouragement of ravioli code.
16159 -- Raymond J. Rubey, in a letter to the editor of Crosstalk
16160 magazine
16161 %
16162 63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
16163 ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
16164 now there's 63,005 bugs in the code!!
16165