fortunes revision 1.37 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 Gandhi
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 phenomena.
127 -- Donald A. Metz
128 %
129 A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
130 responsibility at the other.
131 %
132 A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
133 -- Carl Sandburg
134 %
135 A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out
136 of a divorce.
137 -- Don Quinn
138 %
139 A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
140 and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
141 -- Mark Twain
142 %
143 A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it
144 adds up to be real money.
145 -- Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
146 %
147 A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
148 %
149 A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
150 %
151 A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
152 %
153 ... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you
154 have turned into a pile of dust.
155 %
156 A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
157 enlightened him with ours.
158 %
159 A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
160 as afterward.
161 %
162 A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
163 poor to protect them from each other.
164 %
165 A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
166 %
167 A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not
168 mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty
169 trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
170 -- Dave Barry
171 %
172 A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
173 %
174 A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
175 Avoid him. He's a Commie.
176 %
177 A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
178 won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
179 -- Bill Vaughan
180 %
181 A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
182 -- Herbert Prochnow
183 %
184 A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
185 wants to read.
186 -- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
187 %
188 A closed mouth gathers no foot.
189 %
190 A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
191 %
192 A CONS is an object which cares.
193 -- Bernie Greenberg
194 %
195 A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it
196 is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
197 %
198 A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
199 -- Dyer
200 %
201 A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
202 damned things is ample.
203 -- Rebecca West
204 %
205 A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
206 -- Ben Franklin
207 %
208 A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen
209 lantern.
210 -- Edgar A. Shoaff
211 %
212 A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
213 %
214 A day without sunshine is like night.
215 %
216 A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur
217 coat.
218 %
219 A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
220 you will look forward to the trip.
221 %
222 A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
223 eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality
224 test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
225 Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
226 the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
227 %
228 A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
229 %
230 A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
231 about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their
232 arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
233 the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
234 Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
235 incredible surgical feat."
236 The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the
237 Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
238 that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an
239 architect."
240 The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
241 "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
242 %
243 A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
244 -- Ogden Nash
245 %
246 A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
247 Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
248 Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
249 with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the
250 Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly
251 pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while
252 simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick
253 Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
254 %
255 A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
256 subject.
257 -- Winston Churchill
258 %
259 A fool must now and then be right by chance.
260 %
261 A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
262 superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
263 -- G. B. Shaw
264 %
265 A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block
266 of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an
267 elephant.
268 %
269 A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
270 -- D. Gries
271 %
272 A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
273 dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension.
274 -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
275 %
276 A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
277 -- Adlai Stevenson
278 %
279 A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than
280 he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
281 favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
282 facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
283 -- H. L. Mencken
284 %
285 A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
286 ducks.
287 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
288 %
289 A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
290 A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
291 But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *____that ___had __to ____mean _________something*.
292 -- S. Morgenstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
293 %
294 A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
295 of).
296 %
297 A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
298 into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
299 hope of greening the landscape of idea.
300 -- John Ciardi
301 %
302 A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
303 rearranging their prejudices.
304 -- William James
305 %
306 A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
307 man a century.
308 %
309 A hypothetical paradox:
310 What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security
311 team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of
312 Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
313 -- Tom Galloway
314 %
315 A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
316 C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh.
317 E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.
318 G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
319 I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
320 K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
321 M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of ennui.
322 O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
323 Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
324 S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
325 U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
326 W is for Winnie, embedded in ice, X is for Xerxes, devoured by mice.
327 Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
328 -- Edward Gorey "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"
329 %
330 A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
331 %
332 A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
333 -- Robert Frost
334 %
335 A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
336 %
337 A lady with one of her ears applied
338 To an open keyhole heard, inside,
339 Two female gossips in converse free --
340 The subject engaging them was she.
341 "I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
342 That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
343 As soon as no more of it she could hear
344 The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
345 "I will not stay," she said with a pout,
346 "To hear my character lied about!"
347 -- Gopete Sherany
348 %
349 A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
350 not worth knowing.
351 %
352 A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
353 in than some that do.
354 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
355 %
356 A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work
357 by being declared to work.
358 -- Anatol Holt
359 %
360 A Law of Computer Programming:
361 Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
362 will find the programmers cannot write in English.
363 %
364 A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
365 nothing.
366 -- Alan Perlis
367 %
368 A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
369 -- H. H. Munroe, "Saki"
370 %
371 A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
372 %
373 A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any
374 price.
375 %
376 A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in
377 his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and
378 exceptional ability in that particular field."
379 %
380 A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
381 -- Steve Wright
382 %
383 A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
384 believe everything positively stinks.
385 -- Lew Col
386 %
387 A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
388 first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
389 "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
390 and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
391 "But the collar is up around my ears!"
392 "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
393 little more ... that's it."
394 "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
395 "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
396 go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
397 So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
398 street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
399 "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
400 "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
401 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
402 %
403 A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
404
405 "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
406 sense of obligation."
407 -- Stephen Crane
408 %
409 A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
410 %
411 A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his
412 novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how
413 insignificant," said the master.
414
415 "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
416
417 "It is," came the reply.
418
419 "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
420
421 "It is even in a video game," said the master.
422
423 "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
424
425 The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The
426 lesson is over for today," he said.
427 -- "The Tao of Programming"
428 %
429 A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
430 %
431 A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
432 on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
433 game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
434 pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
435 along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
436 heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
437 around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
438 direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
439 paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
440 colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
441 fall over gently onto their backs.
442
443 -- Audubon Society Magazine
444
445
446 [From the BBC, 2001-02-02:
447 For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
448 monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as Lynx
449 helicopters passed overhead.
450 "Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
451 said team leader Dr. Richard Stone.
452 "As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
453 calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
454 with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
455 really."
456 The conclusion, said Dr. Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
457 (1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects" on
458 king penguins.]
459 %
460 A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
461 the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
462 pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
463 nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
464 "If what?" asked the composer.
465 "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
466 %
467 A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out
468 on loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed
469 loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom
470 do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
471 %
472 A new koan:
473
474 If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
475
476 If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
477
478 It is an ice cream koan.
479 %
480 A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
481 Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a round tuit now
482 has no excuse for further procrastination.
483 %
484 A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies
485 insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the
486 right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
487 %
488 A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the
489 rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
490 %
491 A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
492 removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
493 doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
494 amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
495 limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
496 larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
497 power-down sequence.
498 An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
499 building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
500 bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
501 cool.
502 %
503 A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power
504 off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly:
505 "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
506 understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off
507 and on. The machine worked.
508 %
509 A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
510 %
511 A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
512 -- Gloria Steinem
513 %
514 A penny saved is ridiculous.
515 %
516 A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
517 %
518 A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
519 -- George Wald
520 %
521 A pig is a jolly companion,
522 Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
523 A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
524 Though mountains may topple and tilt.
525 When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
526 When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
527 Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
528 You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
529 You'll never go wrong with a pig!
530 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
531 %
532 A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
533 by Mark Twain
534
535 For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
536 to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
537 be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
538 would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
539 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
540 same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
541 "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
542 Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
543 with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
544 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
545 Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
546 ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
547 ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
548 Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
549 hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
550 %
551 A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
552 -- The Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Sumatra"
553 %
554 A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
555
556 And the Master answered:
557
558 It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
559
560 It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
561
562 It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
563 upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
564 to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
565
566 And that is Fate? said the priest.
567
568 Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
569
570 That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
571 too.
572 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
573 %
574 A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
575 upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
576 "That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
577 man".
578 As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
579 he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
580 %
581 A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
582 %
583 A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
584 of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
585 series of incomprehensible answers calculated with micrometric
586 precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
587 inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
588 accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
589 for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
590 defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
591 information in the first place.
592 -- IEEE Grid news magazine
593 %
594 A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
595 your wife will give you for free.
596 %
597 A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
598 too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
599 was intended for her preservation.
600 -- Colton
601 %
602 A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
603 "you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
604 the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
605 to make a travesty of the game.
606 -- Donald A. Metz
607 %
608 A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked
609 out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.
610 -- Steel City News
611 %
612 A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.
613 %
614 A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:
615
616 Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying,
617 "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny
618 bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the
619 lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and
620 breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the
621 Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of
622 the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt
623 thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then
624 proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being
625 the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand
626 Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight,
627 shall snuff it."
628 -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
629 %
630 A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
631 that the system works.
632 %
633 A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
634 the real reason.
635 %
636 A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
637 objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
638 scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
639 concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
640 dimensional objects ...
641 %
642 A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
643 not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized
644 rosewater.
645 %
646 A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
647 contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
648 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
649 %
650 A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will
651 keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those
652 that are worth committing.
653 -- Samuel Butler
654 %
655 A Severe Strain on the Credulity
656
657 As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
658 parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
659 is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one
660 considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
661 begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really
662 starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
663 maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
664 Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
665 of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
666 re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
667 against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the
668 knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
669 -- New York Times Editorial, 1920
670 %
671 A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard.
672 -- Prof. Steiner
673 %
674 ... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
675 was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
676 -- Mark Twain
677 %
678 A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
679 -- O'Henry
680 %
681 A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
682 bad measures.
683 -- Daniel Webster
684 %
685 A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
686 exam.
687 %
688 A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
689 Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
690 true," asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as
691 Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt
692 shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
693 %
694 A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
695 undreamed of by its author.
696 -- S. C. Johnson
697 %
698 A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
699 Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
700 other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
701 new versions of their own innards!
702 -- Michael O'Brien
703 %
704 A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
705 %
706 A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
707 and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
708 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
709 %
710 A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
711 blowing first.
712 %
713 A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
714 triangle.
715 %
716 A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
717 %
718 A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
719 in students.
720 -- John Ciardi
721 %
722 A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
723 -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
724 %
725 A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
726 replaces it with.
727 -- Tennessee Williams
728 %
729 A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
730 getting nervous.
731 %
732 A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets
733 people's attention.
734 %
735 A witty saying proves nothing.
736 -- Voltaire
737 %
738 A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to
739 admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact
740 remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one
741 reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It
742 is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of
743 using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these
744 matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times.
745 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
746 %
747 A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
748 %
749 A.A.A.A.A.:
750 An organization for drunks who drive
751 %
752 AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
753 You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
754 %
755 Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
756 %
757 About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
758 -- Herbert Hoover
759 %
760 Absence makes the heart go wander.
761 %
762 Absent, adj.:
763 Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
764 slandered.
765 %
766 Absentee, n.:
767 A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
768 himself from the sphere of exaction.
769 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
770 %
771 Abstainer, n.:
772 A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
773 pleasure.
774 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
775 %
776 Absurdity, n.:
777 A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
778 opinion.
779 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
780 %
781 Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
782 because the stakes are so low.
783 -- Wallace Sayre
784 %
785 Accident, n.:
786 A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
787 body is better.
788 -- Foolish Dictionary
789 %
790 Accidents cause History.
791
792 If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
793 Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
794 have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
795 could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
796 the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
797 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
798 %
799 According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person
800 shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
801 fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
802 of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
803 the returns."
804 %
805 According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least
806 once a year.
807 %
808 According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
809 -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
810 %
811 According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
812 totally worthless.
813 %
814 According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
815 dies.
816 %
817 According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to
818 live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came
819 in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much.
820 Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime.
821 -- David Letterman
822 %
823 Accordion, n.:
824 A bagpipe with pleats.
825 %
826 Accuracy, n.:
827 The vice of being right.
828 %
829 ACHTUNG!!!
830
831 Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
832 schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
833 spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
834 rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und
835 vatch das blinkenlights!!!
836 %
837 Acid -- better living through chemistry.
838 %
839 Acid absorbs 47 times its weight in excess Reality.
840 %
841 Acquaintance, n.:
842 A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well
843 enough to lend to.
844 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
845 %
846 Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
847 %
848 Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
849 everyone glued in their seats!"
850 Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
851 it!"
852 %
853 Actor: So what do you do for a living?
854 Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
855 dishes for Chinese restaurants.
856 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
857 %
858 Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
859 %
860 ADA, n.:
861 Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
862 Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
863 awareness."
864 -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
865 %
866 Admiration, n.:
867 Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
868 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
869 %
870 Adolescence, n.:
871 The stage between puberty and adultery.
872 %
873 Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
874 like you ...
875 -- Gilda Radner
876 %
877 Adore, v.:
878 To venerate expectantly.
879 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
880 %
881 Adult, n.:
882 One old enough to know better.
883 %
884 Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
885 way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
886 -- Sinclair Lewis
887 %
888 Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
889 then at least be aseptic.
890 %
891 After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
892 names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
893 Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted
894 many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi
895 Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
896 different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
897 developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
898 attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led
899 to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today,
900 skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
901 injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
902 hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
903 that it sinks like a stone.
904 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
905 %
906 After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
907 It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
908 more advanced than the lichen family.
909 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
910 %
911 After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
912 %
913 ... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
914 quotations.
915 -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
916 %
917 After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not
918 for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
919 simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
920 -- P. J. O'Rourke
921 %
922 After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
923 on the bench.
924 %
925 After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
926 Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
927 and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
928 to be created."
929 "This is true," He replied.
930 "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
931 "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
932 right to make his laws?"
933 "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
934 make his own."
935 It was so granted.
936 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
937 %
938 After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
939 the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
940 cost to others, to win advancement.
941 -- Norman Thomas
942 %
943 After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
944 %
945 After living in New York, you trust nobody, but you believe
946 everything. Just in case.
947 %
948 After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
949 cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
950 removed.
951 %
952 Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a
953 change.
954 %
955 Afternoon, n.:
956 That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
957 morning.
958 %
959 Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
960 -- Dorothy Parker
961 %
962 Age, n.:
963 That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
964 still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise
965 to commit.
966 -- Ambrose Bierce
967 %
968 Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
969 %
970 Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
971 there's the rub.
972
973 For all dreams are not equal,
974 some exit to nightmare
975 most end with the dreamer
976
977 But at least one must be lived ... and died.
978 %
979 Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
980 Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact
981 that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately
982 unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep
983 up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers.
984 -- A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
985 %
986 Air is water with holes in it.
987 %
988 Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
989 -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
990 %
991 Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
992 telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
993 York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
994 And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
995 receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
996 %
997 Alden's Laws:
998 (1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
999 of pregnancy.
1000 (2) Always be backlit.
1001 (3) Sit down whenever possible.
1002 %
1003 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
1004 Aleph-null bottles of beer,
1005 You take one down, and pass it around,
1006 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
1007 %
1008 Alex Haley was adopted!
1009 %
1010 Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
1011 for a dial tone.
1012 %
1013 Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
1014 them keeps paying for it.
1015 -- Peggy Joyce
1016 %
1017 All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
1018 upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
1019 visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
1020 informing, stimulating and ennobling.
1021 -- H. L. Mencken
1022 %
1023 All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
1024 than others.
1025 -- Alan Truscott
1026 %
1027 All extremists should be taken out and shot.
1028 %
1029 All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
1030 without thinking.
1031 %
1032 "All flesh is grass"
1033 -- Isaiah
1034 Smoke a friend today.
1035 %
1036 All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
1037 %
1038 All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
1039 importance.
1040 %
1041 All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
1042 by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
1043 %
1044 All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
1045 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
1046 %
1047 All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
1048 Socrates.
1049 -- Woody Allen
1050 %
1051 All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane.
1052 %
1053 All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
1054 specific.
1055 -- Jane Wagner
1056 %
1057 All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
1058 -- The Book of Bokonon / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
1059 %
1060 All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
1061 the United States.
1062 -- Vic Gold
1063 %
1064 All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
1065 %
1066 All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
1067 %
1068 All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
1069 every organism to live beyond its income.
1070 -- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
1071 %
1072 All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
1073 -- Ernest Rutherford
1074 %
1075 All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right
1076 hands.
1077 -- Saint Patrick
1078 %
1079 All syllogisms have three parts; therefore this is not a syllogism.
1080 %
1081 All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
1082 too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
1083 subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
1084 can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
1085 Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
1086 decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
1087 if it rains?"
1088 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
1089 %
1090 ... all the modern inconveniences ...
1091 -- Mark Twain
1092 %
1093 All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
1094 ridiculous ones.
1095 -- La Rochefoucauld
1096 %
1097 All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
1098 the government in less than a second.
1099 -- Jim Fiebig
1100 %
1101 All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
1102 -- Sean O'Casey
1103 %
1104 All the world's a VAX,
1105 And all the coders merely butchers;
1106 They have their exits and their entrails;
1107 And one int in his time plays many widths,
1108 His sizeof being _N bytes. At first the infant,
1109 Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
1110 And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
1111 And shining morning face, creeping like slug
1112 Unwillingly to school.
1113 -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
1114 %
1115 All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
1116 and all theoretical chemists know it.
1117 -- Richard P. Feynman
1118 %
1119 All things are possible, except skiing thru a revolving door.
1120 %
1121 All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for
1122 fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
1123 -- Henry Tyroon
1124 %
1125 All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
1126 %
1127 All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
1128 infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
1129 which he was born.
1130 -- Francois Fenelon
1131 %
1132 Alliance, n.:
1133 In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
1134 their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
1135 separately plunder a third.
1136 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1137 %
1138 Alone, adj.:
1139 In bad company.
1140 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1141 %
1142 Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
1143 Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
1144 -- Dave Barry
1145 %
1146 Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
1147 %
1148 Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
1149 mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
1150 any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
1151 to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
1152 Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
1153 serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
1154 same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
1155 that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
1156 penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
1157 running the post office.
1158 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
1159 %
1160 Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
1161 reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the
1162 day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable
1163 interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on
1164 pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin,
1165 and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
1166 Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous
1167 material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the
1168 management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion
1169 the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical
1170 Gamekeeping."
1171 -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
1172 %
1173 Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
1174 back.
1175 %
1176 Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
1177 %
1178 Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
1179 that way.
1180 %
1181 Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
1182 %
1183 AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
1184
1185 If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
1186 across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
1187 %
1188 AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
1189
1190 There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
1191 would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
1192 %
1193 Ambidextrous, adj.:
1194 Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
1195 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1196 %
1197 Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
1198 -- Charlie McCarthy
1199 %
1200 America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
1201 to decadence without touching civilization.
1202 -- John O'Hara
1203 %
1204 America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
1205 until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
1206 changed its name to "America".
1207 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1208 %
1209 American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective
1210 employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for
1211 employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference
1212 between the men's room and the women's room without having little
1213 pictures on the doors.
1214 -- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
1215 %
1216 Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
1217 %
1218 An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
1219 people refuse to see it.
1220 -- James Michener, "Space"
1221 %
1222 An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
1223 is always polite to traffic cops.
1224 %
1225 An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to
1226 New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but
1227 not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
1228 -- David Letterman
1229 %
1230 An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
1231 %
1232 An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He
1233 knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
1234 great restraint.
1235 As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
1236 embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away
1237 to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished,
1238 and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
1239 that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
1240 This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
1241 When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
1242 confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
1243 and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
1244 are particular and not generalizable.
1245 The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
1246 all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
1247 one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
1248 -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
1249 %
1250 An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
1251 %
1252 An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree
1253 murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's
1254 mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border.
1255 Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the
1256 suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a
1257 murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
1258 %
1259 An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
1260 really care to know.
1261 %
1262 An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
1263 %
1264 An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
1265 %
1266 An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded
1267 summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your
1268 arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey
1269 responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
1270 %
1271 An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
1272 -- A. P. Herbert
1273 %
1274 An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He
1275 wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is
1276 advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and
1277 Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in
1278 incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
1279 excellence:
1280
1281 The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
1282 discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
1283 to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
1284 things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
1285 parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
1286 timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
1287 doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
1288 Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
1289 school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
1290 successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
1291 they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha.
1292 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
1293 %
1294 An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
1295 %
1296 ... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
1297 picturesque liar.
1298 -- Mark Twain
1299 %
1300 An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
1301 eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
1302 possible.
1303 -- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
1304 %
1305 An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
1306 %
1307 An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
1308 in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
1309 "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
1310 you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
1311 an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
1312 hour seems like a minute."
1313 The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
1314 moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
1315 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
1316 %
1317 An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge.
1318 %
1319 Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
1320 government at all.
1321 %
1322 And as we stand on the edge of darkness
1323 Let our chant fill the void
1324 That others may know
1325
1326 In the land of the night
1327 The ship of the sun
1328 Is drawn by
1329 The grateful dead.
1330
1331 -- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
1332 %
1333 ... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
1334 %
1335 And I heard Jeff exclaim,
1336 As they strolled out of sight,
1337 "Merry Christmas to all --
1338 You take credit cards, right?"
1339 -- "Outsiders" comic
1340 %
1341 ... And malt does more than Milton can
1342 To justify God's ways to man
1343 -- A. E. Housman
1344 %
1345 And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
1346 %
1347 ... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
1348 your own.
1349 -- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
1350 Preposterous Words
1351 %
1352 And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
1353 fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
1354 looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One
1355 approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
1356 is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
1357 of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
1358 gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this
1359 procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
1360 youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
1361 Orson Welles.
1362 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
1363 %
1364 ...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
1365 courtesy detail.
1366 %
1367 And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a
1368 horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
1369 columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory,
1370 ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
1371 world.
1372 -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
1373 %
1374 "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
1375 asked the father of his little son.
1376 "Diet."
1377 %
1378 And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
1379 a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
1380 tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets
1381 tragedy face to face, we have politics.
1382 -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and
1383 Ground Cover"
1384 %
1385 Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
1386 Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _____needs heroes.
1387 -- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
1388 %
1389 Angels we have heard on High
1390 Tell us to go out and Buy.
1391 -- Tom Lehrer
1392 %
1393 Ankh if you love Isis.
1394 %
1395 Anoint, v.:
1396 To grease a king or other great functionary already
1397 sufficiently slippery.
1398 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1399 %
1400 Another Glitch in the Call
1401 ------- ------ -- --- ----
1402 (Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)
1403
1404 We don't need no indirection
1405 We don't need no flow control
1406 No data typing or declarations
1407 Did you leave the lists alone?
1408
1409 Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
1410
1411 Chorus:
1412 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
1413 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
1414 %
1415 Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
1416 %
1417 Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
1418 television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
1419 and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
1420 offers whiter teeth *___and* fresher breath.
1421 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
1422 %
1423 Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
1424
1425 (1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
1426 (2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
1427 (3) I don't know.
1428 (4) Who cares?
1429 (5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
1430 Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
1431 (6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
1432 book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
1433 bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
1434 Papyrus Books).
1435 %
1436 Anthony's Law of Force:
1437 Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
1438 %
1439 Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
1440 Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
1441 corner of the workshop.
1442
1443 Corollary:
1444 On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
1445 your toes.
1446 %
1447 Antonym, n.:
1448 The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
1449 %
1450 Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
1451 -- Charles McCabe
1452 %
1453 Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
1454 representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
1455 representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
1456 capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
1457 -- Richard Schickel
1458 %
1459 Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
1460 -- Aesop
1461 %
1462 Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that
1463 this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a
1464 whole week.
1465 %
1466 Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
1467 sell it.
1468 %
1469 Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche
1470 -- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance,
1471 my grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off
1472 the fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was
1473 undoubtedly true.
1474 -- Solomon Short
1475 %
1476 Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.
1477 -- Sydney J. Harris
1478 %
1479 Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger
1480 object.
1481 %
1482 Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
1483 exactly the point of most pressure.
1484 -- Milt Barber
1485 %
1486 Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
1487 -- Rich Kulawiec
1488 %
1489 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
1490 demo.
1491 %
1492 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
1493 -- Arthur C. Clarke
1494 %
1495 Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
1496 something.
1497 %
1498 Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
1499 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
1500 %
1501 Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
1502 %
1503 Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
1504 probably parked.
1505 %
1506 Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
1507 %
1508 Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
1509 supposed to be doing at the moment.
1510 -- Robert Benchley
1511 %
1512 Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
1513 -- Publius Syrus
1514 %
1515 Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with
1516 none.
1517 %
1518 Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
1519 is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
1520 make messes in the house.
1521 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
1522 %
1523 Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
1524 -- Samuel Goldwyn
1525 %
1526 Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
1527 -- W. C. Fields
1528 %
1529 Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
1530 account be allowed to do the job.
1531 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
1532 %
1533 Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
1534 tried taking candy from a baby.
1535 -- Robin Hood
1536 %
1537 Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
1538 %
1539 Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
1540 %
1541 Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
1542 price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
1543 means the price went way up.
1544 %
1545 Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
1546 %
1547 Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
1548 %
1549 Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution.
1550 %
1551 Aphorism, n.:
1552 A concise, clever statement.
1553 Afterism, n.:
1554 A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
1555 -- James Alexander Thom
1556 %
1557 APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of
1558 the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of
1559 coding bums.
1560 %
1561 APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I
1562 can't read any of them.
1563 -- Roy Keir
1564 %
1565 Aquadextrous, adj.:
1566 Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off
1567 with your toes.
1568 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
1569 %
1570 AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
1571 You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
1572 You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to
1573 be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same
1574 mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid.
1575 %
1576 Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
1577 Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
1578 general can be said."
1579 %
1580 ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
1581 FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
1582 %
1583 Are you a turtle?
1584 %
1585 Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
1586 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
1587 %
1588 ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
1589 You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You
1590 are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are
1591 not very nice.
1592 %
1593 Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
1594 shoes.
1595 -- Mickey Mouse
1596 %
1597 Armadillo:
1598 To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
1599 %
1600 Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1601 (1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
1602 (2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
1603 (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
1604 first two laws.
1605 %
1606 Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
1607 measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
1608 imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
1609 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
1610 %
1611 Art is anything you can get away with.
1612 -- Marshall McLuhan
1613 %
1614 Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
1615 -- Paul Gauguin
1616 %
1617 Arthur's Laws of Love:
1618 (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
1619 remind them of someone else.
1620 (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
1621 delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
1622 yourself in person.
1623 %
1624 Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
1625 %
1626 As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
1627 interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
1628 perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
1629 "that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?"
1630 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
1631 %
1632 As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
1633 certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I
1634 became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can
1635 meet girls.
1636 -- Matt Cartmill
1637 %
1638 As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
1639 certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
1640 -- Albert Einstein
1641 %
1642 As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
1643 -- Weisert
1644 %
1645 As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
1646 Feeling worse and worser,
1647 There I met a C.R.T.
1648 And it drop't me a cursor.
1649
1650 C.R.T., C.R.T.,
1651 Phosphors light on you!
1652 If I had fifty hours a day
1653 I'd spend them all at you.
1654
1655 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
1656 %
1657 As I was passing Project MAC,
1658 I met a Quux with seven hacks.
1659 Every hack had seven bugs;
1660 Every bug had seven manifestations;
1661 Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
1662 Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
1663 How many losses at Project MAC?
1664 %
1665 As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
1666 industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free
1667 speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to
1668 myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a
1669 real American talk like that.
1670 -- Frank Hague (1896-1956)
1671 %
1672 As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
1673 %
1674 As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
1675 fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
1676 popular.
1677 -- Oscar Wilde
1678 %
1679 As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
1680 %
1681 As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500
1682 programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
1683 -- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
1684 computer system.
1685 %
1686 As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
1687 wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
1688 to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
1689 that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
1690 finding mistakes in my own programs.
1691 -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
1692 %
1693 As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
1694 so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
1695 -- Woody Allen
1696 %
1697 As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
1698 is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
1699 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
1700 %
1701 As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free
1702 variable."
1703 %
1704 As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
1705 memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
1706 to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
1707 E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
1708 -- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
1709 %
1710 As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
1711 interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
1712 Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
1713 out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
1714 Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
1715 organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,
1716 birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never
1717 see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
1718 stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
1719 with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are
1720 talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
1721 highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
1722 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
1723 Teen Should Know"
1724 %
1725 As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull
1726 your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.
1727 The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along
1728 with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall
1729 from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all
1730 over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of
1731 a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the
1732 spider is suing you for damages.
1733 %
1734 As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
1735 %
1736 ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
1737 %
1738 Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
1739 one went to Harvard).
1740 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
1741 %
1742 Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
1743 %
1744 Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
1745 Station-to-Station rate.
1746 %
1747 Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the
1748 bathtub, it tolls for thee.
1749 %
1750 Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
1751 for an answer.
1752 %
1753 Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
1754 woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it,
1755 she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'
1756 -- David Letterman
1757 %
1758 Ass, n.:
1759 The masculine of "lass".
1760 %
1761 Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve.
1762 Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be
1763 strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum.
1764 Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check
1765 and dying broke.
1766 -- Stanley Walker
1767 %
1768 At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
1769 Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
1770 under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
1771 %
1772 At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
1773 not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
1774 it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
1775 -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
1776 %
1777 At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
1778 challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
1779 -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
1780 %
1781 ... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
1782 -- J. B. White
1783 %
1784 At least they're ___________EXPERIENCED incompetents
1785 %
1786 At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
1787 thumb with a hammer.
1788 -- Marshall Lumsden
1789 %
1790 At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
1791 find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
1792 the computer.
1793 %
1794 Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
1795 or street lamp.
1796 %
1797 Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
1798 -- Winston Churchill
1799 %
1800 Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
1801 depths they were once able to plumb.
1802 -- Stanley Kaufman
1803 %
1804 Automobile, n.:
1805 A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
1806 %
1807 Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
1808 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
1809 %
1810 Avoid reality at all costs.
1811 %
1812 Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
1813 we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
1814 -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a student entering
1815 school in the fall after the Kent State shootings
1816 %
1817 Bacchus, n.:
1818 A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
1819 getting drunk.
1820 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1821 %
1822 Bagbiter:
1823 1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually
1824 intermittently. 2. adj.: Failing hardware or software. "This
1825 bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on
1826 obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the
1827 bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS,
1828 CHOMPER, CHOMPING.
1829 %
1830 Bagdikian's Observation:
1831 Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
1832 newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a
1833 ukulele.
1834 %
1835 Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
1836 A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
1837 by governors.
1838 %
1839 Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
1840 %
1841 Banectomy, n.:
1842 The removal of bruises on a banana.
1843 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
1844 %
1845 Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
1846 %
1847 Barach's Rule:
1848 An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.
1849 %
1850 Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
1851 floor -- especially in the dark.
1852 %
1853 Barometer, n.:
1854 An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
1855 are having.
1856 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1857 %
1858 Barth's Distinction:
1859 There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
1860 types, and those who don't.
1861 %
1862 Baruch's Observation:
1863 If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
1864 %
1865 Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high
1866 taxes.
1867 -- Will Rogers
1868 %
1869 Basic is a high level languish.
1870 APL is a high level anguish.
1871 %
1872 BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.
1873 %
1874 BASIC, n.:
1875 A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
1876 that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
1877 %
1878 Bathquake, n.:
1879 The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water
1880 faucet is turned on to a certain point.
1881 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
1882 %
1883 Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your
1884 door.
1885 %
1886 BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...)
1887 %
1888 Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
1889 get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
1890 face.
1891 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
1892 %
1893 Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
1894 %
1895 Be careful of reading health books. You might die of a misprint.
1896 -- Mark Twain
1897 %
1898 Be different: conform.
1899 %
1900 Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
1901 get used to it.
1902 %
1903 Be security conscious -- National Defense is at stake.
1904 %
1905 Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
1906 miss
1907 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
1908 %
1909 Bees are very busy souls
1910 They have no time for birth controls
1911 And that is why in times like these
1912 There are so many Sons of Bees.
1913 %
1914 Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
1915 took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
1916 followers.
1917 One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
1918 there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
1919 "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
1920 commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
1921 Purpose in Life, anyway?"
1922 Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
1923 Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
1924 Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
1925 Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
1926 -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
1927 %
1928 Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
1929 %
1930 Begathon, n.:
1931 A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
1932 you won't have to watch commercials.
1933 %
1934 Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
1935 away.
1936 %
1937 Beifeld's Principle:
1938 The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
1939 receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is
1940 already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better
1941 looking and richer male friend.
1942 %
1943 "Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
1944 %
1945 Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
1946 %
1947 Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
1948 (1) Houses are for people to live in.
1949 (2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
1950 (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
1951 %
1952 Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
1953 -- Time Bandits
1954 %
1955 Besides the device, the box should contain:
1956
1957 * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
1958
1959 * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
1960 club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
1961
1962 YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
1963 cable.
1964
1965 IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
1966 spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
1967 that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
1968 without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
1969 why."
1970
1971 WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
1972 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
1973 %
1974 Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.
1975 %
1976 better !pout !cry
1977 better watchout
1978 lpr why
1979 santa claus <north pole >town
1980
1981 cat /etc/passwd >list
1982 ncheck list
1983 ncheck list
1984 cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
1985 cat list | grep nice >giftlist
1986 santa claus <north pole > town
1987
1988 who | grep sleeping
1989 who | grep awake
1990 who | egrep 'bad|good'
1991 for (goodness sake) {
1992 be good
1993 }
1994 %
1995 Better dead than mellow.
1996 %
1997 Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
1998 Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
1999 Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
2000 great effort pushing boulders into a single word.
2001
2002 It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
2003 Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
2004 equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
2005 destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
2006 both Parliament and Party.
2007
2008 It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
2009 planets, this may be the first message received from us.
2010 -- The Realist, November, 1964
2011 %
2012 Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
2013 tried it.
2014 -- Donald Knuth
2015 %
2016 Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
2017 %
2018 Beware of low-flying butterflies.
2019 %
2020 Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
2021 -- Leonard Brandwein
2022 %
2023 Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
2024 drip under pressure.
2025 %
2026 Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
2027 finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
2028 murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
2029 their ignorance the hard way.
2030 -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
2031 %
2032 Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
2033 nothing of interest is easy.
2034 %
2035 Binary, adj.:
2036 Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
2037 %
2038 Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
2039 thing as division.
2040 %
2041 Bipolar, adj.:
2042 Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
2043 New York
2044 %
2045 Birth, n.:
2046 The first and direst of all disasters.
2047 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2048 %
2049 Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
2050 %
2051 Bizoos, n.:
2052 The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
2053 basketball.
2054 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
2055 %
2056 ... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...
2057 %
2058 Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
2059 -- Herbert Hoover
2060 %
2061 Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles,
2062 for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
2063 %
2064 BLISS is ignorance.
2065 %
2066 Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
2067 %
2068 Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
2069 %
2070 Blore's Razor:
2071 Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
2072 funnier.
2073 %
2074 Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
2075 plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has
2076 it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was
2077 arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept
2078 throwing up on them.
2079 %
2080 Boling's postulate:
2081 If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
2082 %
2083 Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
2084 Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
2085 vividly manifests their lack of progress.
2086 %
2087 Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
2088 Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
2089 %
2090 BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
2091 %
2092 Boob's Law:
2093 You always find something in the last place you look.
2094 %
2095 Bore, n.:
2096 A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
2097 -- Walter Winchell
2098 %
2099 Bore, n.:
2100 A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
2101 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2102 %
2103 Boren's Laws:
2104 (1) When in charge, ponder.
2105 (2) When in trouble, delegate.
2106 (3) When in doubt, mumble.
2107 %
2108 Boss, n.:
2109 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
2110 the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
2111 in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
2112 ornamental stud."
2113 %
2114 Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry
2115 that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
2116 straightened out for a crowbar.
2117 -- O. W. Holmes
2118 %
2119 Boston, n.:
2120 Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
2121 finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
2122 %
2123 Boy, life takes a long time to live.
2124 -- Steven Wright
2125 %
2126 Boy, n.:
2127 A noise with dirt on it.
2128 %
2129 Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
2130 when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
2131 -- James Thurber
2132 %
2133 Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
2134 -- Kim Hubbard
2135 %
2136 Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the
2137 unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
2138 (gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend
2139 to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
2140 -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking Style"
2141 %
2142 Bradley's Bromide:
2143 If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
2144 committee -- that will do them in.
2145 %
2146 Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
2147 When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
2148 easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have
2149 handled this?"
2150 %
2151 Brain fried -- Core dumped
2152 %
2153 Brain, n.:
2154 The apparatus with which we think that we think.
2155 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2156 %
2157 Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
2158 To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
2159 error in an opponent.
2160 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2161 %
2162 Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
2163 since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
2164 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2165 %
2166 Bride, n.:
2167 A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
2168 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2169 %
2170 Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
2171 revitalize the corner saloon.
2172 %
2173 British Israelites:
2174 The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of
2175 Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by
2176 Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further
2177 believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the
2178 Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in
2179 the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your
2180 head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth.
2181 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2182 %
2183 Broad-mindedness, n.:
2184 The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
2185 %
2186 Brontosaurus Principle:
2187 Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
2188 in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when
2189 this occurs, they are an endangered species.
2190 -- Thomas K. Connellan
2191 %
2192 Brook's Law:
2193 Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
2194 %
2195 Brooke's Law:
2196 Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
2197 discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it
2198 beyond recognition.
2199 %
2200 Bubble Memory, n.:
2201 A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
2202 intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
2203 %
2204 Bucy's Law:
2205 Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
2206 %
2207 Bug, n.:
2208 An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
2209 programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
2210 wrote the program.
2211
2212 Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
2213 -- Ray Simard
2214 %
2215 Bugs, pl. n.:
2216 Small living things that small living boys throw on small
2217 living girls.
2218 %
2219 BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the
2220 outfit."
2221 GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?"
2222 BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive."
2223 -- Jay Ward
2224 %
2225 Bumper sticker:
2226
2227 All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
2228 manufacture.
2229 %
2230 Bureaucrat, n.:
2231 A person who cuts red tape sideways.
2232 -- J. McCabe
2233 %
2234 Bureaucrat, n.:
2235 A politician who has tenure.
2236 %
2237 Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise.
2238 %
2239 Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
2240 (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
2241 sawhorse.
2242 (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
2243 (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
2244 perfectly balanced.
2245 (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
2246 -- Robert Burns
2247 %
2248 But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
2249 easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
2250 and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
2251 upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
2252 without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
2253 on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
2254 was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
2255 sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
2256 human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
2257 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2258 %
2259 But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations paws.
2260 %
2261 But I don't like Spam!!!!
2262 %
2263 But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
2264 intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
2265 we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
2266 that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
2267 of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard
2268 example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
2269 makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
2270 whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
2271 finite or an infinite number.
2272 -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
2273 %
2274 But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
2275 system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
2276 analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
2277 -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
2278 Compilers"
2279 %
2280 But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
2281 to the nearest gas station.
2282 %
2283 But scientists, who ought to know
2284 Assure us that it must be so.
2285 Oh, let us never, never doubt
2286 What nobody is sure about.
2287 -- Hilaire Belloc
2288 %
2289 But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
2290 Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
2291 But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
2292 -- Mark "The Bard" Twain
2293 %
2294 But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
2295 was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
2296 education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
2297 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
2298 American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
2299 invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
2300 invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
2301 adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
2302 electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
2303 electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
2304 part) sends it right back to the customer again.
2305
2306 This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
2307 of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
2308 very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
2309 In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
2310 States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
2311 ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
2312 increases.
2313 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
2314 %
2315 But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
2316 place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
2317 Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a
2318 kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
2319 poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I
2320 explained yet about the bytes?
2321 %
2322 ... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
2323 -- Virginia Masters
2324 %
2325 But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
2326 computers?
2327 %
2328 Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
2329 Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
2330 Less dear than army ants in apple pies
2331 Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
2332 Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
2333 Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
2334 They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
2335 Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
2336 Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
2337 And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
2338 Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
2339 Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
2340 Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
2341 Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
2342 %
2343 By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
2344 completely overwhelm you.
2345 %
2346 By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact,
2347 it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
2348 invent.
2349 -- R. Emerson
2350 -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
2351 (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
2352 [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
2353 misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
2354 %
2355 By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
2356 to suspect 'Hungry' ...
2357 -- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
2358 %
2359 By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I
2360 mean.
2361 -- Mark Twain
2362 %
2363 Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
2364 point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
2365 fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
2366 often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
2367 from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
2368 that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They often
2369 wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
2370 they wanted to be.
2371 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
2372 %
2373 C, n.:
2374 A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more
2375 like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or
2376 anything else. It is either the best language available to the art
2377 today, or it isn't.
2378 -- Ray Simard
2379 %
2380 Cabbage, n.:
2381 A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
2382 a man's head.
2383 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2384 %
2385 Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.
2386 -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
2387 %
2388 Cahn's Axiom:
2389 When all else fails, read the instructions.
2390 %
2391 California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
2392 -- Fred Allen
2393 %
2394 California, n.:
2395 From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or
2396 Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or
2397 "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
2398 -- Ed Moran
2399 %
2400 Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
2401 -- Indian proverb
2402 %
2403 Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
2404 Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept.
2405 %
2406 Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
2407 -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
2408 %
2409 Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
2410 Corner, Vermont.
2411 -- Clarence Darrow
2412 %
2413 Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
2414 points.
2415 -- M. M. Johnston
2416 %
2417 Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
2418 It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
2419
2420 Supplement:
2421 A .44 magnum beats four aces.
2422 %
2423 Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents
2424 for postage and 30 cents for storage.
2425 -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
2426 %
2427 Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
2428 Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
2429 A root or two, a torus and a node:
2430 The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
2431 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
2432 %
2433 CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
2434 You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
2435 problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things
2436 off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare
2437 recipients are Cancer people.
2438 %
2439 Canonical, adj.:
2440 The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true
2441 story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some
2442 annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a
2443 point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and
2444 eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used
2445 the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking.
2446 Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
2447 Stallman: "What did he say?"
2448 Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
2449 %
2450 CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
2451 You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
2452 much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
2453 importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
2454 they take root and become trees.
2455 %
2456 Captain Penny's Law:
2457 You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
2458 the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
2459 %
2460 Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
2461 expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
2462 complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
2463 planning to reduce the time it takes.
2464 %
2465 Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
2466 trousers that don't match.
2467 %
2468 Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
2469 The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
2470 dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
2471 putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
2472 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
2473 %
2474 Cat, n.:
2475 Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
2476 %
2477 Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
2478 -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"
2479 %
2480 Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
2481 %
2482 CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
2483 %
2484 Cecil, you're my final hope
2485 Of finding out the true Straight Dope
2486 For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
2487 But none of my cats are at all like that.
2488 This unusual animal (so it is said)
2489 Is simultaneously alive and dead!
2490 What I don't understand is just why he
2491 Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
2492 My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
2493 In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
2494 If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
2495 And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
2496 But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
2497 Then I will *___and* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
2498 -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
2499 of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
2500 %
2501 Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
2502 %
2503 Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
2504 center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation
2505 works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
2506 -- Kelvin Throop III
2507 %
2508 Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
2509 how many?
2510 %
2511 Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
2512 Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
2513 Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
2514 out of it?
2515 Jaka: Ugh!
2516 Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
2517 -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
2518 %
2519 Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
2520 walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
2521 then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
2522 health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
2523 not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
2524 only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
2525 others who have tried it.
2526 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2527 %
2528 Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
2529 But it's very funny--
2530 Did you ever try buying them without money?
2531 -- Ogden Nash
2532 %
2533 Chapter 1
2534
2535 The story so far:
2536
2537 In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
2538 of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
2539 %
2540 Character Density, n.:
2541 The number of very weird people in the office.
2542 %
2543 Checkuary, n.:
2544 The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and
2545 ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his
2546 checks.
2547 %
2548 Chef, n.:
2549 Any cook who swears in French.
2550 %
2551 Chemicals, n.:
2552 Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
2553 %
2554 Chemistry is applied theology.
2555 -- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
2556 %
2557 Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
2558 %
2559 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
2560 Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
2561 headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
2562 -- Chicago Reader 3/27/81
2563 %
2564 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
2565 The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
2566 for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will
2567 cheerfully baste you.
2568 -- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
2569 %
2570 Chicago, n.:
2571 Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
2572 %
2573 Chicken Little only has to be right once.
2574 %
2575 Chicken Little was right.
2576 %
2577 Chicken Soup, n.:
2578 An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
2579 cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure
2580 is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
2581 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
2582 %
2583 Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every
2584 effort to teach them good manners.
2585 %
2586 Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're
2587 going to catch you in next.
2588 -- Franklin P. Jones
2589 %
2590 Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
2591 And that's what parents were created for.
2592 -- Ogden Nash
2593 %
2594 Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for
2595 word what you shouldn't have said.
2596 %
2597 Chism's Law of Completion:
2598 The amount of time required to complete a government project is
2599 precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
2600 %
2601 Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
2602 When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
2603 %
2604 Chivalry, Schmivalry!
2605 Roger the thief has a
2606 method he uses for
2607 sneaky attacks:
2608 Folks who are reading are
2609 Characteristically
2610 Always Forgetting to
2611 Guard their own bac ...
2612 %
2613 Christ:
2614 A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
2615 %
2616 Churchill's Commentary on Man:
2617 Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
2618 time he will pick himself up and continue on.
2619 %
2620 Cigarette, n.:
2621 A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in
2622 between.
2623 %
2624 Cinemuck, n.:
2625 The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
2626 covers the floors of movie theaters.
2627 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
2628 %
2629 Clairvoyant, n.:
2630 A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
2631 which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.
2632 -- Ambrose Bierce
2633 %
2634 Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like
2635 shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
2636 -- Phyllis Diller
2637 %
2638 Cleanliness is next to impossible.
2639 %
2640 Cleveland still lives. God ____must be dead.
2641 %
2642 Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day.
2643 %
2644 Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
2645 %
2646 Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
2647 society.
2648 -- Mark Twain
2649 %
2650 COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
2651 %
2652 Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
2653 %
2654 Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
2655 "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
2656 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2657 %
2658 Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong.
2659 -- Blair Houghton
2660 %
2661 Coincidence, n.:
2662 You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
2663 going on.
2664 %
2665 Coincidences are spiritual puns.
2666 -- G. K. Chesterton
2667 %
2668 Cold, adj.:
2669 When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
2670 %
2671 Cold, adj.:
2672 When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
2673 pockets.
2674 %
2675 Collaboration, n.:
2676 A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
2677 other fellow can spell.
2678 %
2679 College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
2680 faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
2681 the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
2682 legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
2683 loss to humanity.
2684 -- H. L. Mencken
2685 %
2686 Colvard's Logical Premises:
2687 All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it
2688 won't.
2689
2690 Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
2691 This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
2692 attracted to.
2693
2694 Grelb's Commentary
2695 Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
2696 %
2697 Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
2698 And every vector dreams of matrices.
2699 Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
2700 It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
2701 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
2702 %
2703 Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
2704 Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
2705 Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
2706 Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
2707 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
2708 %
2709 Command, n.:
2710 Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
2711 such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
2712 %
2713 COMMENT
2714
2715 Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
2716 A medley of extemporanea;
2717 And love is thing that can never go wrong;
2718 And I am Marie of Roumania.
2719 -- Dorothy Parker
2720 %
2721 Commitment, n.:
2722 Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
2723 The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
2724 %
2725 Committee Rules:
2726 (1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
2727 (2) Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this
2728 stamps you as being wise.
2729 (3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the
2730 others.
2731 (4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
2732 (5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you
2733 popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for.
2734 %
2735 Committee, n.:
2736 A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
2737 decide that nothing can be done.
2738 -- Fred Allen
2739 %
2740 Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to
2741 be appointed to do the work.
2742 %
2743 Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at
2744 different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
2745 -- Clive James
2746 %
2747 Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
2748 -- Josh Billings
2749 %
2750 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
2751 -- Albert Einstein
2752 %
2753 Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness
2754 of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
2755 -- David Guaspari
2756 %
2757 Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
2758 %
2759 Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
2760 theory.
2761 %
2762 Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
2763 %
2764 Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
2765 -- Pablo Picasso
2766 %
2767 Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
2768 the world that just don't add up.
2769 %
2770 Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more
2771 than the estimate the job will cost.
2772 %
2773 Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
2774 -- La Rochefoucauld
2775 %
2776 Concept, n.:
2777 Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
2778 $25,000.
2779 %
2780 ... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___did* quote anybody in this
2781 business, it probably would be gibberish.
2782 -- Thom McLeod
2783 %
2784 Condense soup, not books!
2785 %
2786 Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
2787 good for dandruff.
2788 -- Peter de Vries
2789 %
2790 Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
2791 %
2792 Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
2793 would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
2794 you undoubtedly will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
2795 maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
2796 OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
2797 UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
2798 IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
2799 WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND
2800 SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,
2801 RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
2802 RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
2803 FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
2804 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
2805 %
2806 Connector Conspiracy, n:
2807 [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the
2808 KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of
2809 manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything)
2810 to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old
2811 stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive
2812 interface devices.
2813 %
2814 Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
2815 -- H. L. Mencken
2816 %
2817 Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
2818 -- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy"
2819 %
2820 Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
2821 %
2822 Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
2823 wish you weren't.
2824 %
2825 Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich.
2826 -- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]
2827 %
2828 Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
2829 give it back to them.
2830 %
2831 "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
2832 if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
2833 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
2834 %
2835 Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
2836 technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat.
2837 %
2838 Conversation, n.:
2839 A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
2840 is called the listener.
2841 %
2842 Conway's Law:
2843 In any organization there will always be one person who knows
2844 what is going on.
2845
2846 This person must be fired.
2847 %
2848 Coronation, n.:
2849 The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
2850 visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
2851 bomb.
2852 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2853 %
2854 Corrupt, adj.:
2855 In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
2856 %
2857 Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a
2858 muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can
2859 make of capitalism.
2860 -- Walter Lippmann
2861 %
2862 Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job
2863 is to enforce the law and fight crime.
2864 -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
2865 %
2866 Court, n.:
2867 A place where they dispense with justice.
2868 -- Arthur Train
2869 %
2870 Coward, n.:
2871 One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
2872 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2873 %
2874 [Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that, with
2875 nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
2876 -- Wernher von Braun
2877 %
2878 Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
2879 -- A. E. Neuman
2880 %
2881 Critic, n.:
2882 A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
2883 to please him.
2884 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2885 %
2886 Croll's Query:
2887 If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
2888 %
2889 cursor address, n:
2890 "Hello, cursor!"
2891 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
2892 %
2893 Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
2894 eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
2895 business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
2896 -- Johnny Hart
2897 %
2898 Cynic, n.:
2899 A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
2900 as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
2901 out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
2902 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2903 %
2904 Cynic, n.:
2905 One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
2906 %
2907 Dare to be naive.
2908 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
2909 %
2910 Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
2911 %
2912 Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
2913 Allen Gwinn: "Yours is."
2914 %
2915 Dawn, n.:
2916 The time when men of reason go to bed.
2917 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2918 %
2919 Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
2920 %
2921 %DCL-E-MEM-BAD, bad memory
2922 -VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
2923 %
2924 Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also
2925 easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
2926 improve.
2927 %
2928 Dear Lord:
2929 I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
2930 the other hand", again.
2931 %
2932 Dear Miss Manners:
2933 My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
2934 elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between
2935 courses, is all right. Which is correct?
2936
2937 Gentle Reader:
2938 For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
2939 economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this
2940 principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now
2941 than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners
2942 believes that is.
2943 %
2944 Dear Miss Manners:
2945 Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
2946 your face.
2947
2948 Gentle Reader:
2949 Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
2950 your face ...
2951 %
2952 Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part
2953 of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old
2954 will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a
2955 commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as
2956 "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a
2957 table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always
2958 says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean,
2959 "Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this
2960 complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim
2961 if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a
2962 dead bat?
2963
2964 Answer: Yes.
2965 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
2966 %
2967 Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
2968
2969 Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business
2970 signs to alert the reader than an "S" is coming up at the end of a
2971 word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
2972 ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when
2973 creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put
2974 quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT
2975 DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
2976 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
2977 %
2978 Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
2979 %
2980 Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
2981 -- R. Geis
2982 %
2983 Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
2984 %
2985 Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.
2986 %
2987 Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
2988 %
2989 Death is only a state of mind.
2990
2991 Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.
2992 %
2993 Death to all fanatics!
2994 %
2995 Decision maker, n.:
2996 The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
2997 before the music stopped.
2998 %
2999 Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really
3000 overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene
3001 language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the
3002 judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when
3003 addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
3004 -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
3005 %
3006 Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
3007
3008 Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
3009 Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
3010 Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
3011 Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!
3012
3013 Don't we know archaic barrel,
3014 Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
3015 Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
3016 Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
3017 -- Walt Kelly
3018 %
3019 "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
3020 marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a
3021 theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
3022 those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
3023 blessed.
3024 -- Randy Davis
3025 %
3026 default, n.:
3027 [Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
3028 mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will
3029 come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear
3030 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
3031 %
3032 #define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
3033 #define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
3034 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
3035 - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
3036
3037 -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
3038 %
3039 Definitions of hardware and software for dummies:
3040 Hardware is what you kick;
3041 Software is what you curse.
3042 %
3043 DELETE A FORTUNE!
3044
3045 Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
3046 to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
3047 "fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
3048 gets expunged.
3049 %
3050 Deliberation, n.:
3051 The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
3052 buttered on.
3053 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3054 %
3055 Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
3056 %
3057 Demand the establishment of the government
3058 in its rightful home at Disneyland.
3059 %
3060 Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than
3061 we deserve.
3062 -- George Bernard Shaw
3063 %
3064 Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
3065 aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
3066 -- Senator Soaper
3067 %
3068 Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
3069 incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
3070 -- G. B. Shaw
3071 %
3072 Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
3073 don't think.
3074 %
3075 Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
3076 Jackasses.
3077 -- H. L. Mencken
3078 %
3079 Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
3080 -- Jawaharlal Nehru
3081 %
3082 Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
3083 are right more than half of the time.
3084 -- E. B. White
3085 %
3086 Democracy, n.:
3087 A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass
3088 meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy.
3089 Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
3090 Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
3091 whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion,
3092 prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
3093 Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
3094 -- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932),
3095 since withdrawn.
3096 %
3097 Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
3098 board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
3099 %
3100 Dentist, n.:
3101 A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
3102 coins out of one's pockets.
3103 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3104 %
3105 Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will
3106 be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over
3107 the table.
3108 -- The Anarchist Cookbook
3109 %
3110 DETERIORATA
3111
3112 Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
3113 And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
3114 Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
3115 Rotate your tires.
3116 Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
3117 And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
3118 Know what to kiss -- and when.
3119 Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
3120 But that three do.
3121 Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
3122 Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
3123 And despite the changing fortunes of time,
3124 There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
3125
3126 You are a fluke of the universe ...
3127 You have no right to be here.
3128 Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
3129 Is laughing behind your back.
3130 -- National Lampoon
3131 %
3132 DeVries's Dilemma:
3133 If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
3134 hits the paper.
3135 %
3136 Did I say 2? I lied.
3137 %
3138 Did you know ...
3139
3140 That no-one ever reads these things?
3141 %
3142 Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
3143 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3144 %
3145 Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined
3146 them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction?
3147 %
3148 Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
3149 that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states:
3150
3151 "Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and
3152 squirrel."
3153
3154 -- ihuxw!tommyo
3155 %
3156 Die, v.:
3157 To stop sinning suddenly.
3158 -- Elbert Hubbard
3159 %
3160 Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
3161 conventional thing to happen to him.
3162 -- John Barrymore's dying words
3163 %
3164 Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
3165 %
3166 Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
3167 Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
3168 %
3169 Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
3170 %
3171 Disc space -- the final frontier!
3172 %
3173 Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be
3174 yours too."
3175 -- Dave Haynie
3176 %
3177 Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my
3178 employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely
3179 coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is
3180 non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the
3181 absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.
3182 The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for
3183 the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal,
3184 non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
3185 %
3186 Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
3187 %
3188 Distinctive, adj.:
3189 A different color or shape than our competitors.
3190 %
3191 Distress, n.:
3192 A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
3193 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3194 %
3195 District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape
3196 injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any
3197 damage inflicted on the vehicle.
3198 %
3199 Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
3200 %
3201 Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
3202 %
3203 Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
3204 %
3205 Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon.
3206 %
3207 Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
3208 anger.
3209 %
3210 Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
3211 with ketchup.
3212 %
3213 Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
3214 Violators will be prosecuted.
3215 (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
3216 %
3217 Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
3218 %
3219 Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
3220 day as it comes.
3221 -- Donald Kaul
3222 %
3223 Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
3224 %
3225 Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
3226 %
3227 Do you have lysdexia?
3228 %
3229 Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
3230 the time to take the dirt out of them?
3231 %
3232 "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
3233 "Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
3234 "I've never done anything illegal before."
3235 "I thought you said you were an accountant!"
3236 %
3237 Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
3238 when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
3239 -- Dick Brandon
3240 %
3241 Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
3242 be good because the programmers hate it so much.
3243 %
3244 Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
3245 %
3246 Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
3247 %
3248 Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
3249 -- Golda Meir
3250 %
3251 Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
3252 %
3253 Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
3254 -- Joe Cointment
3255 %
3256 "Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
3257 sincerely, extremely dangerously.
3258
3259 They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
3260 They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They
3261 used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used
3262 finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used
3263 fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints.
3264 They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile.
3265 They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help.
3266 They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And
3267 what the hell, they caught him.
3268
3269 -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
3270 %
3271 Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
3272 %
3273 Don't feed the bats tonight.
3274 %
3275 Don't get even -- get odd!
3276 %
3277 Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly
3278 misleading. Debug only code.
3279 -- Dave Storer
3280 %
3281 Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes
3282 you nothing. It was here first.
3283 -- Mark Twain
3284 %
3285 Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
3286 %
3287 Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
3288 %
3289 Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.
3290 %
3291 Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
3292 %
3293 Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
3294 %
3295 Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.
3296 %
3297 Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
3298 %
3299 Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
3300 %
3301 Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
3302 it today you can do it again tomorrow.
3303 %
3304 Don't say yes until I finish talking.
3305 -- Darryl F. Zanuck
3306 %
3307 Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.
3308 Cheat.
3309 -- Ambrose Bierce
3310 %
3311 Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
3312 -- "Brazil"
3313 %
3314 Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
3315 -- Walt Kelly
3316 %
3317 Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out of it alive.
3318 %
3319 Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
3320 %
3321 Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
3322 get more wax!!
3323 %
3324 Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
3325 avoiding you.
3326 -- The Old Farmer's Almanac
3327 %
3328 Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
3329 good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
3330 -- Howard Aiken
3331 %
3332 Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already
3333 tomorrow in Australia.
3334 -- Charles Schultz
3335 %
3336 Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
3337 busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
3338 %
3339 Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
3340 %
3341 Don Ameche: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she
3342 pretty?
3343 W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
3344 bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
3345 sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia.
3346 Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
3347 W. C.: It's almost impossible.
3348 -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
3349 E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
3350 %
3351 Double Bucky
3352 (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
3353
3354 Double bucky, you're the one!
3355 You make my keyboard lots of fun
3356 Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
3357 (Vo-vo-de-o!)
3358 Control and Meta side by side,
3359 Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
3360 Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
3361
3362 Oh, I sure wish that I,
3363 Had a couple of bits more!
3364 Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four.
3365
3366 Double bucky, left and right
3367 OR'd together, outta sight!
3368 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
3369 Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
3370 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
3371
3372 -- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
3373 (to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit
3374 be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use
3375 by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"])
3376 %
3377 Double-Blind Experiment, n.:
3378 An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
3379 fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a
3380 strong belief in the tooth fairy.
3381 %
3382 Down with categorical imperative!
3383 %
3384 Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
3385 %
3386 Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
3387 The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
3388 of your eyes.
3389 %
3390 Drink Canada Dry! You might not succeed, but it *__is* fun trying.
3391 %
3392 Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
3393 %
3394 Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!
3395 %
3396 Ducharme's Axiom:
3397 If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
3398 yourself as part of the problem.
3399 %
3400 Ducharme's Precept:
3401 Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
3402 %
3403 Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
3404 it holds the universe together.
3405 -- Carl Zwanzig
3406 %
3407 Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
3408 has been discontinued.
3409 %
3410 Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
3411 and captain of your soul.
3412 %
3413 Due to lack of disk space, this fortune database has been
3414 discontinued.
3415 %
3416 During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
3417 were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a
3418 red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
3419 "Hey, you almost hit my wife."
3420 "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a
3421 shot at mine, over there."
3422 %
3423 During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
3424 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
3425 %
3426 Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
3427 nothing whatever to do with it.
3428 -- W. Somerset Maugham (last words)
3429 %
3430 E Pluribus Unix
3431 %
3432 Eagleson's Law:
3433 Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
3434 months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is
3435 an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
3436 %
3437 Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
3438 %
3439 /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
3440 %
3441 Earth is a beta site.
3442 %
3443 Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
3444 -- Jeff Berner
3445 %
3446 Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
3447 Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the
3448 cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of
3449 the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this
3450 means the puzzle is solved.
3451 -- Steve Rubenstein
3452 %
3453 Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
3454 %
3455 Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work.
3456 %
3457 Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
3458 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
3459 %
3460 Economics, n.:
3461 Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
3462 Galbraith ...
3463 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3464 %
3465 Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy
3466 would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it
3467 hasn't.
3468 -- Robert Orben
3469 %
3470 Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
3471 percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
3472 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
3473 %
3474 Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
3475 -- Fred Allen
3476 %
3477 Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
3478 -- Irsin Edman
3479 %
3480 Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
3481 -- Bullwinkle Moose
3482 %
3483 Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
3484 -- Adlai Stevenson
3485 %
3486 Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
3487 people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
3488 comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
3489 the "nog" comes from.
3490
3491 To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in
3492 season, eggs...
3493 %
3494 Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
3495 of being a damned fool.
3496 -- Bellamy Brooks
3497 %
3498 Egotist, n.:
3499 A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
3500 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3501 %
3502 Ehrman's Commentary:
3503 (1) Things will get worse before they get better.
3504 (2) Who said things would get better?
3505 %
3506 Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
3507 -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
3508 %
3509 Eleanor Rigby
3510 Sits at the keyboard
3511 And waits for a line on the screen
3512 Lives in a dream
3513 Waits for a signal
3514 Finding some code
3515 That will make the machine do some more.
3516 What is it for?
3517
3518 All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
3519 All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
3520
3521 Hacker MacKensie
3522 Writing the code for a program that no one will run
3523 It's nearly done
3524 Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's nobody there.
3525 What does he care?
3526
3527 All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
3528 All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
3529 Ah, look at all the lonely users.
3530 Ah, look at all the lonely users.
3531 %
3532 Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
3533 %
3534 Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
3535 called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
3536 have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
3537 most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
3538 time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
3539 have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
3540 although God alone knows why it would want to.
3541 The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
3542 direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
3543 have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
3544 direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
3545 harmful electron buildup in the wires.
3546 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
3547 %
3548 Electrocution, n.:
3549 Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
3550 %
3551 Elevators smell different to midgets.
3552 %
3553 Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
3554 Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
3555 can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
3556 %
3557 Encyclopedia Salesmen:
3558 Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police
3559 and tell them your house is being burgled.
3560 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3561 %
3562 Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
3563 Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
3564 -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
3565 %
3566 Entropy isn't what it used to be.
3567 %
3568 Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
3569 otherwise require harder thinking.
3570 -- Jerome Lettvin
3571 %
3572 Epperson's law:
3573 When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
3574 something his wife can beat him at.
3575 %
3576 Equal bytes for women.
3577 %
3578 Error in operator: add beer
3579 %
3580 Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
3581 Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
3582 Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven
3583 Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben.
3584 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
3585 %
3586 Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
3587 -- Woody Allen
3588 %
3589 Etymology, n.:
3590 Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
3591 were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed
3592 from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
3593 ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
3594 -- Mike Kellen
3595 %
3596 Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
3597 speak it to?
3598 -- Clarence Darrow
3599 %
3600 Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
3601 -- Will Rogers
3602 %
3603 Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
3604 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
3605 %
3606 Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
3607 States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only two cents a
3608 day.
3609 %
3610 Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
3611 just how busy they are?
3612 %
3613 Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
3614 exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."
3615 All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with
3616 spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about:
3617 Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please
3618 take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something?
3619 My wife is available. No. How about ..."
3620 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
3621 %
3622 Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
3623 %
3624 Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
3625 %
3626 Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this
3627 woman and stop her.
3628 %
3629 Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one
3630 idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's
3631 sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
3632 of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two
3633 highly-motivated, caustic twits.
3634 -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
3635 %
3636 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
3637 signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
3638 fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
3639 spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
3640 genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
3641 of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
3642 humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
3643 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
3644 %
3645 Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
3646
3647 Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
3648 front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
3649 odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
3650 and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
3651 legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
3652 there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
3653 of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
3654 color"], that does not exist.
3655 %
3656 Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
3657 -- Frank Moore Colby
3658 %
3659 Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
3660 %
3661 Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
3662 -- Don Vonada
3663 %
3664 Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95.
3665 %
3666 Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
3667 -- Miguel de Cervantes
3668 %
3669 Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the
3670 richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
3671 -- Robert Orben
3672 %
3673 Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
3674
3675 It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
3676 %
3677 Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
3678 instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
3679 program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
3680 %
3681 Every program has two purposes -- one for which it was written and
3682 another for which it wasn't.
3683 %
3684 Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
3685 %
3686 Every solution breeds new problems.
3687 %
3688 Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
3689 guarantee of eventual success.
3690 %
3691 Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
3692 %
3693 Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
3694 -- Beckett
3695 %
3696 Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
3697 -- Dykstra
3698 %
3699 Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
3700 %
3701 Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
3702 taught how ___not to. So it is with the great programmers.
3703 %
3704 Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to
3705 realize it.
3706 %
3707 Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
3708 formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
3709 scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
3710 wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of
3711 existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
3712 discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
3713 problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
3714 mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
3715 one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
3716 different way ...
3717 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
3718 %
3719 Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____does anything about it.
3720 %
3721 Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
3722 no one we know belongs.
3723 %
3724 Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being
3725 that a belch is more satisfying.
3726 -- Ingmar Bergman
3727 %
3728 Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about
3729 something you know.
3730 -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
3731 June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
3732 %
3733 Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
3734 %
3735 Everything you know is wrong!
3736 %
3737 Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
3738 obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
3739 solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
3740 There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
3741 straight lines.
3742 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
3743 %
3744 Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
3745 mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
3746 "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
3747 how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
3748 "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
3749 So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
3750 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
3751 %
3752 Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike the office water cooler.
3753 %
3754 Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
3755 %
3756 Excellent day to have a rotten day.
3757 %
3758 Excellent time to become a missing person.
3759 %
3760 Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
3761 acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
3762 -- W. Somerset Maugham
3763 %
3764 Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
3765 %
3766 Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do
3767 the work.
3768 -- John G. Pollard
3769 %
3770 Expect the worst. It's the least you can do.
3771 %
3772 Expense Accounts, n.:
3773 Corporate food stamps.
3774 %
3775 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
3776 -- Olivier
3777 %
3778 Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
3779 when you make it again.
3780 -- Franklin P. Jones
3781 %
3782 Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and
3783 the instruction afterward.
3784 %
3785 Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
3786 ones.
3787 %
3788 Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
3789 %
3790 Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
3791 %
3792 Expert, n.:
3793 Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides.
3794 %
3795 Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules:
3796
3797 NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
3798
3799 To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully
3800 cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand
3801 corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and
3802 address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) --
3803 to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower
3804 left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card
3805 below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
3806 computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
3807 SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card
3808 (without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the
3809 Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
3810 disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print
3811 this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and
3812 completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
3813 %
3814 F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
3815 %
3816 f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
3817 %
3818 f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
3819 %
3820 F: When into a room I plunge, I
3821 Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI.
3822 Then I linger, darkly brooding
3823 On the poison they're exuding.
3824 -- The Roguelet's ABC
3825 %
3826 Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
3827 %
3828 Fairy Tale, n.:
3829 A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
3830 %
3831 Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
3832 without looking to see whether the seeds move.
3833 %
3834 Faith, n:
3835 That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be
3836 untrue.
3837 %
3838 Fakir, n:
3839 A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
3840 religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
3841 have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
3842 %
3843 Familiarity breeds attempt.
3844 %
3845 Families, when a child is born
3846 Want it to be intelligent.
3847 I, through intelligence,
3848 Having wrecked my whole life,
3849 Only hope the baby will prove
3850 Ignorant and stupid.
3851 Then he will crown a tranquil life
3852 By becoming a Cabinet Minister
3853 -- Su Tung-p'o
3854 %
3855 Famous last words:
3856 %
3857 Famous last words:
3858 (1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
3859 (2) "You and what army?"
3860 (3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
3861 a cop."
3862 %
3863 Famous last words:
3864 (1) Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
3865 (2) Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
3866 (3) What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
3867 (4) We won't need reservations.
3868 (5) It's always sunny there this time of the year.
3869 (6) Don't worry, it's not loaded.
3870 (7) They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
3871 (8) Don't worry! Women love it!
3872 %
3873 Famous, adj.:
3874 Conspicuously miserable.
3875 -- Ambrose Bierce
3876 %
3877 Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
3878 Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
3879 Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
3880 utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
3881 forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
3882 are a pretty neat idea.
3883 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
3884 %
3885 Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
3886 every six months.
3887 -- Oscar Wilde
3888 %
3889 Fats Loves Madelyn.
3890 %
3891 Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ...
3892 %
3893 Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children,
3894 neither will you.
3895 %
3896 Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
3897 other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
3898 the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
3899 d'oeuvres.
3900 Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
3901 to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
3902 Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
3903 piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
3904 Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
3905 inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
3906 other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
3907 placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
3908 the little hammers strike.
3909 Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
3910 their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
3911 Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
3912
3913 You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
3914 you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
3915 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
3916 %
3917 Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
3918 If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
3919
3920 Corollary:
3921 If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
3922 %
3923 Fifth Law of Procrastination:
3924 Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
3925 there is nothing important to do.
3926 %
3927 Fifty flippant frogs
3928 Walked by on flippered feet
3929 And with their slime they made the time
3930 Unnaturally fleet.
3931 %
3932 FIGHTING WORDS
3933
3934 Say my love is easy had,
3935 Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
3936 Say I am too often sad --
3937 Still behold me at your side.
3938
3939 Say I'm neither brave nor young,
3940 Say I woo and coddle care,
3941 Say the devil touched my tongue --
3942 Still you have my heart to wear.
3943
3944 But say my verses do not scan,
3945 And I get me another man!
3946 -- Dorothy Parker
3947 %
3948 Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North
3949 Carolina.
3950 %
3951 Finagle's Creed:
3952 Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
3953 %
3954 Finagle's First Law:
3955 If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
3956 %
3957 Finagle's Fourth Law:
3958 Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
3959 it worse.
3960 %
3961 Finagle's Second Law:
3962 No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
3963 someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it
3964 happened according to his own pet theory.
3965 %
3966 Finagle's Third Law:
3967 In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
3968 beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
3969
3970 Corollaries:
3971 (1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
3972 (2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
3973 don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
3974 %
3975 Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture
3976 on a rock.
3977 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
3978 %
3979 Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
3980 %
3981 Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
3982 %
3983 Fine's Corollary:
3984 Functionality breeds Contempt.
3985 %
3986 Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less:
3987
3988 "Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..."
3989
3990 Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to:
3991
3992 P.O. Box 35
3993 Baffled Greek, Michigan
3994 %
3995 First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
3996 Machines that piss people off get murdered.
3997 -- Pat Taber
3998 %
3999 First Law of Bicycling:
4000 No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
4001 wind.
4002 %
4003 First Law of Procrastination:
4004 Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
4005 for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed
4006 the deadline).
4007 %
4008 First Law of Socio-Genetics:
4009 Celibacy is not hereditary.
4010 %
4011 First Rule of History:
4012 History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
4013 other.
4014 %
4015 First things first -- but not necessarily in that order
4016 -- The Doctor, "Doctor Who"
4017 %
4018 First, a few words about tools.
4019
4020 Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of
4021 the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously
4022 injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If
4023 you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look
4024 particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for
4025 granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
4026 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
4027 %
4028 Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
4029 -- Robert Firth
4030 %
4031 FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
4032 the little hand is on the ....
4033 %
4034 Flon's Law:
4035 There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
4036 the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
4037 %
4038 Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
4039 husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my
4040 joules!"
4041
4042 "Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
4043 a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."
4044
4045 "No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them
4046 in my burette ... We must call a copper."
4047
4048 Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
4049 said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
4050 of Lawrence Ium.
4051
4052 "We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
4053 dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can
4054 catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
4055 activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
4056 -- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
4057 %
4058 flowchart, n. & v.:
4059 [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
4060 "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]
4061 1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
4062 problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
4063 using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic
4064 doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for
4065 wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A
4066 thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's
4067 Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce
4068 flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate
4069 (a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
4070 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
4071 %
4072 Flugg's Law:
4073 When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
4074 world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
4075 %
4076 Flying saucers on occasion
4077 Show themselves to human eyes.
4078 Aliens fume, put off invasion
4079 While they brand these tales as lies.
4080 %
4081 Fog Lamps, n.:
4082 Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the
4083 fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the
4084 driver's brain is in a fog.
4085
4086 See also "Idiot Lights".
4087 %
4088 Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
4089 -- Walt Kelly, "Putluck Pogo"
4090 %
4091 For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
4092 %
4093 For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a
4094 cat.
4095 %
4096 For an adequate time call 555-3321.
4097 %
4098 For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
4099 always old-fashioned.
4100 %
4101 For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
4102 and wrong.
4103 -- H. L. Mencken
4104 %
4105 For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
4106 -- R. Clopton
4107 %
4108 "For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
4109 of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."
4110
4111 "Whose?"
4112
4113 "MINE! HA-HA!"
4114 %
4115 For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
4116 %
4117 For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire
4118 life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days
4119 now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets
4120 when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch
4121 in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have
4122 the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which
4123 means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are
4124 advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are
4125 the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their
4126 names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot
4127 ("part of this complete breakfast").
4128 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
4129 %
4130 For perfect happiness, remember two things:
4131 (1) Be content with what you've got.
4132 (2) Be sure you've got plenty.
4133 %
4134 For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
4135 "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
4136 -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
4137 the U.S.
4138 %
4139 For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
4140 %
4141 For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
4142 a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with
4143 computers altogether?
4144 -- Jehan Shuman
4145 %
4146 For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
4147 -- Abraham Lincoln
4148 %
4149 For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
4150 phone calls taper off.
4151 -- Johnny Carson
4152 %
4153 For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
4154 I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
4155 But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
4156 Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
4157 -- Justin Richardson
4158 %
4159 For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
4160 %
4161 Forgetfulness, n.:
4162 A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their
4163 destitution of conscience.
4164 %
4165 Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
4166 %
4167 FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS! #6
4168
4169 RAZORBACK: Paul Harbride, 1984, 2 hours 25 min.
4170 One of the great Australian films of the early 1980's, and
4171 arguably the best movie ever made about a large, man-eating
4172 hog. Some violence. With Gregory Harrison.
4173 %
4174 fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
4175
4176 I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
4177 "Hey you, get off my plate"
4178 -- Roger Midnight
4179 %
4180 Fortune's Fictitious Country Song Title of the Week:
4181 "How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?"
4182 %
4183 Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):
4184
4185 Don't Write On Walls!
4186
4187 (and underneath)
4188
4189 You want I should type?
4190 %
4191 Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
4192 No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this
4193 State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed
4194 with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females
4195 weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it
4196 apply to female horses.
4197 %
4198 Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
4199 Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an
4200 impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
4201 clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
4202 exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
4203
4204 DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
4205 having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
4206 HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
4207 DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter
4208 is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
4209 large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
4210 amounts of fertilization ...
4211 HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many
4212 teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
4213 %
4214 Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week:
4215
4216 Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.
4217 %
4218 FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS #14
4219
4220 Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
4221 liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert and
4222 light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything
4223 drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
4224 %
4225 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18:
4226
4227 Q: Are you married?
4228 A: No, I'm divorced.
4229 Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
4230 A: A lot of things I didn't know about.
4231 %
4232 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19:
4233
4234 Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
4235 A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
4236 %
4237 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29:
4238
4239 THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present
4240 information and prejudice from your minds, if you have
4241 any ...
4242 %
4243 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32:
4244
4245 Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
4246 A: I will be three months November 8th.
4247 Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
4248 A: Yes.
4249 Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
4250 %
4251 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:
4252
4253 Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
4254 A: No.
4255 Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears?
4256 A: Picking them up in the air.
4257 Q: Where was the dog at this time?
4258 A: Attached to the ears.
4259 %
4260 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3:
4261
4262 Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were
4263 able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to
4264 go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with
4265 him to the station?
4266 MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.
4267 %
4268 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:
4269
4270 Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
4271 A: By death.
4272 Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
4273 %
4274 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:
4275
4276 Q: What is your name?
4277 A: Ernestine McDowell.
4278 Q: And what is your marital status?
4279 A: Fair.
4280 %
4281 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
4282
4283 Q: What happened then?
4284 A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify
4285 me."
4286 Q: Did he kill you?
4287 A: No.
4288 %
4289 fortune: CPU time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
4290 %
4291 Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
4292 sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
4293
4294 Oh, and have a nice day!
4295 -- Bryce Nesbitt '84
4296 %
4297 Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
4298 The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
4299 instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
4300
4301 Corollary:
4302 Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
4303 except study for that instructor's course.
4304 %
4305 Fourth Law of Revision:
4306 It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
4307 interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
4308 %
4309 Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not
4310 almost one, it is damn near zero.
4311 -- David Ellis
4312 %
4313 Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a
4314 policeman's tie.
4315 %
4316 Fresco's Discovery:
4317 If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
4318 %
4319 Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
4320 Let me clue you in;
4321 I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
4322 The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
4323 The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
4324 Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
4325 If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
4326 And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
4327 Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
4328 So are they all, all cool cats, --
4329 Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
4330 %
4331 Frisbeetarianism, n.:
4332 The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and
4333 gets stuck.
4334 %
4335 Frobnicate, v.:
4336 To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ.
4337 Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a
4338 frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
4339 sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless
4340 manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
4341 search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
4342 turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
4343 he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
4344 screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
4345 turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
4346 %
4347 Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
4348 An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to
4349 electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to
4350 FROTZ, or more commonly to FROB. Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and
4351 FROBNODULE. Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl.
4352 FROBBOTZIM, has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure
4353 via the Adventure spin-off called Zork (Dungeon). These can also be
4354 applied to non-physical objects, such as data structures.
4355 %
4356 [From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
4357 Association, in Rome]:
4358
4359 The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria
4360 and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not
4361 spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods,
4362 or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in
4363 millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have
4364 reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology
4365 engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general,
4366 president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social
4367 schizophrenia in mass genocide.
4368 %
4369 From the "Guiness Book of World Records", 1973:
4370
4371 Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and
4372 the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the
4373 Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his
4374 candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground
4375 nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts,
4376 other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not
4377 qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their
4378 being nuts (unground)."
4379 %
4380 From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
4381 convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
4382 -- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
4383 %
4384 [From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
4385 in Japan]:
4386
4387 The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
4388 MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
4389 featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
4390 against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
4391 "flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
4392 Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
4393 operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
4394
4395 And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
4396 achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
4397 HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
4398 %
4399 From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
4400 instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
4401 experience in sound:
4402
4403 5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading
4404 sound is normal for this type of connector.
4405 %
4406 From too much love of living,
4407 From hope and fear set free,
4408 We thank with brief thanksgiving,
4409 Whatever gods may be,
4410 That no life lives forever,
4411 That dead men rise up never,
4412 That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
4413 -- Swinburne
4414 %
4415 Fuch's Warning:
4416 If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well
4417 enough to travel.
4418 %
4419 Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
4420 Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
4421 %
4422 Furbling, v.:
4423 Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
4424 even when you are the only person in line.
4425 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4426 %
4427 Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
4428 -- H. H. Williams
4429 %
4430 Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
4431 %
4432 G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
4433 of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
4434 secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
4435 `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
4436 that's your chance, my boy."
4437 %
4438 Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
4439 %
4440 Garter, n.:
4441 An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
4442 stockings and desolating the country.
4443 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4444 %
4445 Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall
4446 on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
4447 -- Adventures of Asterix
4448 %
4449 Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
4450
4451 Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
4452 than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
4453 "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
4454 Obvious, isn't it?
4455 Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
4456 speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
4457 long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
4458 your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
4459 so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
4460 individuals and then grow ...
4461 Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
4462 signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
4463 everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
4464 the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
4465 backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
4466 think not, my friend, I think not.
4467 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
4468 %
4469 "Gee, Mudhead, everyone at More Science High has an
4470 extracurricular activity except you."
4471 "Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
4472 "Only to ten, Mudhead."
4473 -- The Firesign Theatre
4474 %
4475 Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.
4476 %
4477 GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
4478 You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
4479 because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
4480 for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
4481 committing incest.
4482 %
4483 GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
4484 Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while
4485 you can; the bad news will make you forget it. You will enjoy praise
4486 and respect from those around you; everybody loves a sucker. A short
4487 trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's room.
4488 %
4489 Genderplex, n.:
4490 The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
4491 determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
4492 tortoises).
4493 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4494 %
4495 Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
4496 you should.
4497 %
4498 Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
4499 handicapped.
4500 -- Elbert Hubbard
4501 %
4502 Genius, n.:
4503 A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
4504 "bright".
4505 %
4506 George Orwell 1984. Northwestern 0.
4507 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
4508 %
4509 George Orwell was an optimist.
4510 %
4511 George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to
4512 have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend.
4513 -- Ashley Cooper
4514 %
4515 Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
4516 (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
4517 direction.
4518 (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
4519 (3) The energy required to change either one of these states
4520 will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
4521 much as to make the task totally impossible.
4522 %
4523 Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
4524 %
4525 Get GUMMed
4526 --- ------
4527 The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
4528 1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
4529 the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
4530 each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
4531 chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
4532 nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
4533 days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
4534 seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
4535 friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
4536 Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
4537 "cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
4538 Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
4539 all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
4540 could tell them.
4541 -- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
4542 %
4543 Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
4544 %
4545 -- Gifts for Children --
4546
4547 This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
4548 because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
4549 and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
4550 morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
4551 exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
4552 your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
4553 Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
4554 might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
4555 me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
4556 who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
4557 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
4558 %
4559 -- Gifts for Men --
4560
4561 Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
4562 ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
4563 should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
4564 clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
4565 example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
4566 three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
4567 that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
4568 at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
4569 So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
4570 years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
4571 pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
4572
4573 If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
4574 than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
4575 of tires.
4576 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
4577 %
4578 Gimmie That Old Time Religion
4579 We will follow Zarathustra, We will worship like the Druids,
4580 Zarathustra like we use to, Dancing naked in the woods,
4581 I'm a Zarathustra booster, Drinking strange fermented fluids,
4582 And he's good enough for me! And it's good enough for me!
4583 (chorus) (chorus)
4584
4585 In the church of Aphrodite,
4586 The priestess wears a see-through nightie,
4587 She's a mighty righteous sightie,
4588 And she's good enough for me!
4589 (chorus)
4590
4591 CHORUS: Give me that old time religion,
4592 Give me that old time religion,
4593 Give me that old time religion,
4594 'Cause it's good enough for me!
4595 %
4596 Ginsberg's Theorem:
4597 (1) You can't win.
4598 (2) You can't break even.
4599 (3) You can't even quit the game.
4600
4601 Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
4602 Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
4603 meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
4604 Theorem. To wit:
4605
4606 (1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
4607 (2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
4608 (3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
4609 %
4610 Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
4611 to stand, and I will drain the world.
4612 %
4613 Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war.
4614 -- Napoleon
4615 %
4616 Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
4617 %
4618 Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
4619 a new town.
4620 %
4621 Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
4622 %
4623 Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying
4624 around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.
4625 -- Eric Clapton
4626 %
4627 Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden:
4628 Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP
4629 machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
4630 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
4631 %
4632 Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
4633 Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
4634 probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some
4635 useful work done.
4636 %
4637 Gnagloot, n.:
4638 A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
4639 impress people.
4640 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4641 %
4642 Go 'way! You're bothering me!
4643 %
4644 Go climb a gravity well!
4645 %
4646 Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
4647 be in owning a piece thereof.
4648 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
4649 %
4650 //GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
4651 %
4652 God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
4653 days and then pulled an all-nighter.
4654 %
4655 God doesn't play dice.
4656 -- Albert Einstein
4657 %
4658 "God gives burdens; also shoulders"
4659
4660 Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the
4661 end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I
4662 can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why
4663 would he lie about a thing like that?
4664 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
4665 %
4666 God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
4667 The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
4668 not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
4669 ... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
4670 smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and
4671 water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in
4672 the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
4673 night!
4674 -- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
4675 %
4676 God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
4677 %
4678 God is a polytheist.
4679 %
4680 God is Dead
4681 -- Nietzsche
4682 Nietzsche is Dead
4683 -- God
4684 Nietzsche is God
4685 -- The Dead
4686 %
4687 God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
4688 %
4689 God is real, unless declared integer.
4690 %
4691 God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the
4692 elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying
4693 other things.
4694 -- Pablo Picasso
4695 %
4696 God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
4697 -- Alfred Jarry
4698 %
4699 God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
4700 %
4701 God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
4702 %
4703 God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board
4704 -- Mark Twain
4705 %
4706 God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
4707 -- Kronecker
4708 %
4709 God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
4710 %
4711 God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
4712 -- Albert Einstein
4713 %
4714 God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.
4715 %
4716 God rest ye CS students now,
4717 Let nothing you dismay.
4718 The VAX is down and won't be up,
4719 Until the first of May.
4720 The program that was due this morn,
4721 Won't be postponed, they say.
4722
4723 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
4724 Comfort and joy,
4725 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
4726
4727 The bearings on the drum are gone,
4728 The disk is wobbling, too.
4729 We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
4730 Can't tell false from true.
4731 And now we find that we can't get
4732 At Berkeley's 4.2.
4733
4734 (chorus)
4735 %
4736 Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
4737 school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
4738 person a car.
4739 %
4740 Gold, n.:
4741 A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It
4742 is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
4743 immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
4744 hasn't done anything to them.
4745 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
4746 %
4747 Goldenstern's Rules:
4748 (1) Always hire a rich attorney.
4749 (2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
4750 %
4751 Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
4752 example.
4753 -- La Rochefoucauld
4754 %
4755 Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
4756 %
4757 Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
4758 %
4759 Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
4760 %
4761 Good day to let down old friends who need help.
4762 %
4763 Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
4764 %
4765 Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
4766 %
4767 Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
4768 %
4769 Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
4770 new lover.
4771 %
4772 Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
4773 -- George Saunders' dying words
4774 %
4775 Gordon's first law:
4776 If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing
4777 well.
4778 %
4779 Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with
4780 time travel, you never can tell.
4781 -- Doctor Who, "Androids of Tara"
4782 %
4783 Got Mole problems?
4784 Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23
4785 %
4786 Goto, n.:
4787 A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
4788 to complain about unstructured programmers.
4789 -- Ray Simard
4790 %
4791 Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
4792 -- John Updike, "Couples"
4793 %
4794 Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are
4795 different lies.
4796 %
4797 Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know
4798 any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
4799 doesn't know much.
4800 -- Will Rogers
4801 %
4802 Grabel's Law:
4803 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
4804 %
4805 Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
4806 %
4807 Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
4808 %
4809 Grandpa Charnock's Law:
4810 You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
4811 %
4812 Gravity is a myth: the Earth sucks.
4813 %
4814 Gray's Law of Programming:
4815 `_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
4816 time as `_n' tasks.
4817
4818 Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
4819 `_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks.
4820 %
4821 Great minds run in great circles.
4822 %
4823 GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917
4824
4825 On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
4826 Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
4827 off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
4828 wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
4829 mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
4830 tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
4831 stood lookout.
4832 %
4833 Green light in A.M. for new projects.
4834 Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
4835 %
4836 Greener's Law:
4837 Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
4838 %
4839 Grelb's Reminder:
4840 Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
4841 average drivers.
4842 %
4843 Grub first, then ethics.
4844 -- Bertolt Brecht
4845 %
4846 Gurmlish, n.:
4847 The red warning flag at the top of a club sandwich which
4848 prevents the person from biting into it and puncturing the roof of his
4849 mouth.
4850 -- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
4851 %
4852 Gyroscope, n.:
4853 A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
4854 free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
4855 other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
4856 mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
4857 other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
4858 offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
4859 torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
4860 -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
4861 %
4862 H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L.
4863 Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
4864 -- Maxwell Bodenheim
4865 %
4866 H. L. Mencken's Law:
4867 Those who can -- do.
4868 Those who can't -- teach.
4869
4870 Martin's Extension:
4871 Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
4872 %
4873 H: If a 'GOBLIN (HOB) waylays you,
4874 Slice him up before he slays you.
4875 Nothing makes you look a slob
4876 Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB).
4877 -- The Roguelet's ABC
4878 %
4879 Hacker's Law:
4880 The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
4881 nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
4882 %
4883 Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
4884 %
4885 Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
4886 and you would not have been informed.
4887 %
4888 Hail to the sun god
4889 He sure is a fun god
4890 Ra! Ra! Ra!
4891 %
4892 Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big
4893 enough majority in any town?
4894 -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
4895 %
4896 Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
4897 %
4898 Half-done:
4899 This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
4900 crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference
4901 between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
4902 the difference between life and death.
4903 You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
4904 there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
4905 airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
4906 Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
4907 Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
4908 about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
4909 man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
4910 Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
4911 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
4912 %
4913 Hall's Laws of Politics:
4914 (1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
4915 (2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
4916 fixed.
4917 (3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
4918 military spending, and conservatives social spending in
4919 their own districts).
4920 %
4921 Hand, n.:
4922 A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
4923 commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
4924 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4925 %
4926 Hanlon's Razor:
4927 Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
4928 stupidity.
4929 %
4930 Hanson's Treatment of Time:
4931 There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
4932 before Saturday.
4933 %
4934 Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
4935 -- Ogden Nash
4936 %
4937 Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
4938 -- Oscar Levant
4939 %
4940 Happiness, n.:
4941 An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
4942 another.
4943 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4944 %
4945 Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances?
4946 %
4947 Hardware, n.:
4948 The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
4949 %
4950 Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand
4951 convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
4952 -- Tobias Smollet
4953 %
4954 Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
4955 The Duke is fond of kittens
4956 He likes to take their insides out
4957 And use them for his mittens
4958 From "The Thirteen Clocks"
4959 %
4960 Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
4961 Advertising wondrous things.
4962 -- Tom Lehrer
4963 %
4964 Harris's Lament:
4965 All the good ones are taken.
4966 %
4967 Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
4968 Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment
4969 ruined.
4970 %
4971 Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
4972 makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
4973 famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
4974 probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
4975 have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
4976 enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
4977 attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
4978 down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
4979 just like Richard Nixon."
4980 -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
4981 %
4982 Hartley's First Law:
4983 You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
4984 on his back, you've got something.
4985 %
4986 Hartley's Second Law:
4987 Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
4988 %
4989 Harvard Law:
4990 Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
4991 temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
4992 do as it damn well pleases.
4993 %
4994 "Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
4995 "Yes, I don't have one."
4996 "Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..."
4997 -- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
4998 %
4999 Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
5000 typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
5001 keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
5002 of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
5003 not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
5004 %
5005 Has your family tried 'em?
5006
5007 POWDERMILK BISCUITS
5008
5009 Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
5010
5011 They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the
5012 strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
5013
5014 POWDERMILK BISCUITS
5015
5016 Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the
5017 biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains
5018 that indicate freshness.
5019 %
5020 Hatred, n.:
5021 A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
5022 superiority.
5023 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5024 %
5025 Have an adequate day.
5026 %
5027 Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is
5028 to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
5029 non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
5030
5031 Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This
5032 still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or
5033 only serves to blunt the warning signs.
5034
5035 Long live the revolution!
5036 Have a nice day.
5037 %
5038 Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell
5039 you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time
5040 for play?
5041 %
5042 Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs,
5043 I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container
5044 filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite
5045 sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in
5046 their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or
5047 mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is why
5048 they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week.
5049 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
5050 %
5051 "Have you lived here all your life?"
5052 "Oh, twice that long."
5053 %
5054 Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
5055 crack in your sidewalk?
5056 %
5057 Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
5058 sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
5059 -- Dr. Who
5060 %
5061 Have you reconsidered a computer career?
5062 %
5063 He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
5064 effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable
5065 perversion.
5066 -- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
5067 %
5068 He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
5069 -- Stephen Leacock
5070 %
5071 He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
5072 perfectly delightful.
5073 -- Sydney Smith
5074 %
5075 He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
5076 heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
5077 of ever behaving "normally."
5078 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
5079 %
5080 He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
5081 -- Oscar Wilde
5082 %
5083 He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
5084 -- Mark Twain
5085 %
5086 He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
5087 %
5088 He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
5089 -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
5090 %
5091 He thought he saw an albatross
5092 That fluttered 'round the lamp.
5093 He looked again and saw it was
5094 A penny postage stamp.
5095 "You'd best be getting home," he said,
5096 "The nights are rather damp."
5097 %
5098 He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
5099 -- Jonathan Swift
5100 %
5101 He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable.
5102 %
5103 He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
5104 %
5105 He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
5106 attacks democracy itself.
5107 -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
5108 %
5109 He who Laughs, Lasts.
5110 %
5111 He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ...
5112 %
5113 He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
5114 there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
5115 %
5116 He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ...
5117 %
5118 HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
5119 SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their ___OWN brains.
5120 -- Walt Kelley
5121 %
5122 Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
5123 %
5124 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
5125 of nothing.
5126 -- Redd Foxx
5127 %
5128 Heaven, n.:
5129 A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
5130 their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
5131 expound your own.
5132 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5133 %
5134 Heavy, adj.:
5135 Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
5136 %
5137 Heisenberg may have slept here.
5138 %
5139 Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
5140 -- Milton Friedman
5141 %
5142 Heller's Law:
5143 The first myth of management is that it exists.
5144
5145 Johnson's Corollary:
5146 Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
5147 organization.
5148 %
5149 "Hello," he lied.
5150 -- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent
5151 %
5152 Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
5153 %
5154 Help fight continental drift.
5155 %
5156 Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file!
5157 %
5158 Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.
5159 %
5160 Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
5161 %
5162 HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!
5163 -- E. E. CUMMINGS
5164 %
5165 Her locks an ancient lady gave
5166 Her loving husband's life to save;
5167 And men -- they honored so the dame --
5168 Upon some stars bestowed her name.
5169
5170 But to our modern married fair,
5171 Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
5172 No stellar recognition's given.
5173 There are not stars enough in heaven.
5174 %
5175 Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
5176 Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ...
5177 %
5178 Here I sit, broken-hearted,
5179 All logged in, but work unstarted.
5180 First net.this and net.that,
5181 And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
5182
5183 The boss comes by, and I play the game,
5184 Then I turn back to net.flame.
5185 Is there a cure (I need your views),
5186 For someone trapped in net.news?
5187
5188 I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
5189 'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
5190 %
5191 Here in my heart, I am Helen;
5192 I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
5193 I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
5194 I'm Salome, moon of the East.
5195
5196 Here in my soul I am Sappho;
5197 Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
5198 In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
5199 With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
5200
5201 I'm all of the glamorous ladies
5202 At whose beckoning history shook.
5203 But you are a man, and see only my pan,
5204 So I stay at home with a book.
5205 -- Dorothy Parker
5206 %
5207 Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
5208 lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
5209 your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
5210 Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
5211 pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
5212 but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
5213 important electrical lesson.
5214
5215 It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
5216 your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
5217 objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
5218 attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
5219 collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
5220 friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
5221 carpet, thus completing the circuit.
5222
5223 Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
5224 touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
5225 finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you
5226 have carpeting.
5227 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
5228 %
5229 Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
5230 month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
5231 are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
5232 The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
5233 (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
5234 tadpole".
5235 Bite the wax tadpole.
5236 There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
5237 The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
5238 hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
5239 bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
5240 but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
5241 -- John Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
5242 %
5243 Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
5244 `Psychic Wins Lottery'?
5245 -- Jay Leno
5246 %
5247 Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs,
5248 then they'd be algorithms.
5249 %
5250 Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!
5251 -- W. C. Fields
5252 %
5253 Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
5254 reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
5255 nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
5256 %
5257 "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet.
5258 As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of
5259 equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney.
5260 Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you
5261 probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of
5262 course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my
5263 experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out
5264 of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser.
5265
5266 "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our
5267 motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'"
5268 -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
5269 %
5270 Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
5271 Im Leibe dick, an Suenden reich.
5272 Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws
5273 Weil es uns duenkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
5274 We buried him today because
5275 As far as we can tell, he's dead.
5276 -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty-Sue
5277 Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
5278 "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele
5279 %
5280 Higgledy Piggledy,
5281 Hamlet of Elsinore
5282 Ruffled the critics by
5283 Dropping this bomb:
5284 "Phooey on Freud and his
5285 Psychoanalysis --
5286 Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
5287 I just loved Mom."
5288 %
5289 Hindsight is an exact science.
5290 %
5291 Hippogriff, n.:
5292 An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
5293 The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
5294 The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
5295 is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full
5296 of surprises.
5297 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5298 %
5299 Hire the morally handicapped.
5300 %
5301 His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
5302 money, he went to Southern California.
5303 %
5304 His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice.
5305 -- Foghorn Leghorn
5306 %
5307 His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier.
5308 %
5309 History is curious stuff
5310 You'd think by now we had enough
5311 Yet the fact remains I fear
5312 They make more of it every year.
5313 %
5314 History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
5315 %
5316 History, n.:
5317 Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we
5318 learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from
5319 what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long
5320 view.
5321 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
5322 %
5323 Hlade's Law:
5324 If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
5325 will find an easier way to do it.
5326 %
5327 Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
5328 Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
5329 %
5330 Hofstadter's Law:
5331 It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
5332 Hofstadter's Law into account.
5333 %
5334 Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
5335 -- Rex Reed
5336 %
5337 Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
5338 willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
5339 for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
5340 "shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
5341 centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
5342 trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
5343 because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
5344 object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
5345 Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
5346 broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
5347 a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
5348 inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
5349 same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
5350 an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
5351 these sometime around the middle of next week".
5352 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
5353 %
5354 Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories:
5355 The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.
5356 -- Chris Shaw
5357 %
5358 Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
5359 %
5360 Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
5361 -- F. M. Hubbard
5362 %
5363 Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
5364 %
5365 Honk if you love peace and quiet.
5366 %
5367 Honorable, adj.:
5368 Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
5369 bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
5370 honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
5371 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5372 %
5373 Horngren's Observation:
5374 Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
5375 %
5376 Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
5377 people.
5378 -- W. C. Fields
5379 %
5380 Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
5381 %
5382 Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
5383 -- Neil Armstrong
5384 %
5385 How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
5386 %
5387 How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
5388 %
5389 How come wrong numbers are never busy?
5390 %
5391 How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows.
5392 %
5393 How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
5394 -- Elliot, "E.T."
5395 %
5396 How doth the little crocodile
5397 Improve his shining tail,
5398 And pour the waters of the Nile
5399 On every golden scale!
5400
5401 How cheerfully he seems to grin,
5402 How neatly spreads his claws,
5403 And welcomes little fishes in,
5404 With gently smiling jaws!
5405 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
5406 %
5407 How doth the VAX's C compiler
5408 Improve its object code.
5409 And even as we speak does it
5410 Increase the system load.
5411
5412 How patiently it seems to run
5413 And spit out error flags,
5414 While users, with frustration, all
5415 Tear their clothes to rags.
5416 %
5417 How I love to watch the morn,
5418 With golden sun that shines,
5419 Up above to nicely warm
5420 These frosty toes of mine.
5421
5422 The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
5423 Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
5424 It must have blown through someone's feet,
5425 Like those of ... Caspar Weinberger.
5426 -- P. Opus (Bloom County)
5427 %
5428 How doth the VAX's C-compiler
5429 Improve its object code.
5430 And even as we speak does it
5431 Increase the system load.
5432
5433 How patiently it seems to run
5434 And spit out error flags,
5435 While users, with frustration, all
5436 Tear all their clothes to rags.
5437 %
5438 How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
5439 on.
5440 %
5441 How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
5442 None: "We'll fix it in software."
5443
5444 How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
5445 None: "We'll document it in the manual."
5446
5447 How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
5448 None: "The user can work it out."
5449 %
5450 How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
5451 carried by a waiter at a nice party?
5452
5453 Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
5454 d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell
5455 what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then
5456 say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it
5457 back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another
5458 cheese!" and so on.
5459 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
5460 %
5461 How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
5462 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
5463 who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
5464 nanocentury.
5465 -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
5466 %
5467 How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton?
5468 -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey
5469 %
5470 How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
5471 %
5472 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
5473 #1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
5474 %
5475 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
5476 #15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
5477 %
5478 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
5479 #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of you.
5480 %
5481 Howe's Law:
5482 Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
5483 %
5484 However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
5485 manner ... sulking and nausea.
5486 -- Tom K. Ryan
5487 %
5488 HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill.,
5489 motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate
5490 amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits.
5491 The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the
5492 Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the
5493 bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on
5494 the bill. Agreed to.
5495 -- Albuquerque Journal
5496 %
5497 Hug O' War
5498
5499 I will not play at tug o' war.
5500 I'd rather play at hug o' war,
5501 Where everyone hugs
5502 Instead of tugs,
5503 Where everyone giggles
5504 And rolls on the rug,
5505 Where everyone kisses,
5506 And everyone grins,
5507 And everyone cuddles,
5508 And everyone wins.
5509 -- Shel Silverstein
5510 %
5511 Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
5512 %
5513 Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
5514 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
5515 operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a urethral
5516 catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
5517 his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
5518 the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
5519 Nobel Prize.
5520 %
5521 Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
5522 %
5523 Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
5524 -- William Gilbert
5525 %
5526 Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
5527 The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
5528 to ..... to ........ uh ..............
5529 %
5530 I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a
5531 professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any
5532 other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority.
5533 -- Richard M. Nixon
5534
5535 What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
5536 -- Richard M. Nixon
5537 %
5538 I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
5539 have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
5540 This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
5541 reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
5542 buy some more.
5543 -- timw (a] zeb.USWest.COM
5544 %
5545 I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.
5546 %
5547 I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
5548 -- Paul McCracken
5549 %
5550 I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger.
5551 -- Gloria Steinem
5552 %
5553 I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.
5554 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
5555 %
5556 I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it.
5557 -- English Professor
5558 %
5559 I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
5560 great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
5561 -- Winston Churchill
5562 %
5563 I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
5564 has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
5565 -- English Professor, Ohio University
5566 %
5567 I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
5568 with an option to buy.
5569 %
5570 I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
5571 %
5572 I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person,
5573 of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell
5574 you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
5575 atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
5576 inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
5577 -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
5578 %
5579 I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of
5580 the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for
5581 you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
5582 -- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
5583 University of Tennessee at Knoxville
5584 %
5585 I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
5586 argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and
5587 steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,
5588 they don't even invite me.
5589 -- Dave Barry
5590 %
5591 I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
5592 -- G. K. Chesterton
5593 %
5594 I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
5595 -- Will Rogers
5596 %
5597 I bet the human brain is a kludge.
5598 -- Marvin Minsky
5599 %
5600 I brake for chezlogs!
5601 %
5602 I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up.
5603 -- Biff Barf
5604 %
5605 I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan
5606 prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very
5607 bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after
5608 relentless day.
5609 -- Betty MacDonald
5610 %
5611 I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
5612 %
5613 I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
5614 25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
5615 true.
5616 -- Harry S. Truman
5617 %
5618 I can resist anything but temptation.
5619 %
5620 I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
5621 -- Joe Walsh
5622 %
5623 I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
5624 -- Florence Henderson
5625 %
5626 I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can
5627 understand it.
5628 -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
5629 %
5630 I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
5631 novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
5632 -- Fred Allen
5633 %
5634 I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
5635 -- Lillian Hellman
5636 %
5637 I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
5638 of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
5639 -- F. H. Wales (1936)
5640 %
5641 I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
5642
5643 What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
5644 grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
5645 of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
5646 United States would have lost World War II."
5647 -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
5648 %
5649 "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
5650 quavering voice.
5651 "No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
5652 course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
5653 I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
5654 Elven-lore:
5655
5656 "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
5657 Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
5658 Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
5659 This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
5660 The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
5661 The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
5662 If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
5663 If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
5664 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
5665 %
5666 I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
5667 instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is
5668 standing still ...
5669 -- Steven Wright
5670 %
5671 I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
5672 dance with the cows till you come home.
5673 -- Groucho Marx
5674 %
5675 I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps
5676 the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ...
5677 -- Peter Oakley
5678 %
5679 I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.
5680 %
5681 I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The
5682 curtain was up.
5683 %
5684 I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because
5685 we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently
5686 leads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,
5687 in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had
5688 time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the
5689 library, we could call each other up:
5690
5691 You: Hello? Bob?
5692 Bob: Yes?
5693 You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you
5694 took last Thursday? Outside of Sears?
5695 Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed?
5696 You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
5697 "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait.
5698 I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
5699 and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto
5700 the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to
5701 have to get back to you.
5702 Bob: Fine.
5703 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
5704 %
5705 I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
5706 exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to
5707 minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary
5708 accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a
5709 mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the
5710 bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always
5711 different.
5712 -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
5713 %
5714 I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
5715 -- Isaac Asimov
5716 %
5717 I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
5718 with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
5719 -- Galileo Galilei
5720 %
5721 I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
5722 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
5723 %
5724 I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
5725 don't believe in astrology.
5726 -- James R. F. Quirk
5727 %
5728 I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just
5729 a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more
5730 numbers!!
5731 %
5732 I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of
5733 a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
5734 -- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
5735 %
5736 I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
5737 nominating.
5738 -- Boss Tweed
5739 %
5740 I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
5741 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
5742 %
5743 I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
5744 people waiting to abuse me.
5745 -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
5746 %
5747 I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
5748 -- Elvis Presley
5749 %
5750 "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
5751 Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
5752 till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
5753 you!'"
5754 "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
5755 objected.
5756 "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
5757 tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
5758 less."
5759 "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
5760 so many different things."
5761 "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
5762 that's all."
5763 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
5764 %
5765 I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd
5766 eat it, and I just hate it.
5767 -- Clarence Darrow
5768 %
5769 I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path.
5770 -- Ronald Mabbitt
5771 %
5772 I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
5773 streets and frighten the horses.
5774 -- Victor Hugo
5775 %
5776 I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?
5777 %
5778 "I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
5779 %
5780 I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other
5781 hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out.
5782 %
5783 I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
5784 the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is
5785 thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists
5786 broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake.
5787 Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off
5788 their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ...
5789 -- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE
5790 COMING!"
5791 %
5792 I doubt, therefore I might be.
5793 %
5794 I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
5795 on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
5796 he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual
5797 becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
5798 -- George Bernard Shaw
5799 %
5800 I drink to make other people interesting.
5801 -- George Jean Nathan
5802 %
5803 I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
5804 so I woke up from sheer boredom.
5805 %
5806 I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
5807 accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
5808 the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
5809 can't be measured in monetary terms.
5810
5811 Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
5812 that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
5813 subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
5814 someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
5815 understand his long delay.
5816 %
5817 I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words.
5818 %
5819 I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
5820 reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment.
5821 -- Gautama Buddha
5822 %
5823 I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most *__________horrifying* 20
5824 minutes of my life!
5825 %
5826 I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
5827 -- Mae West
5828 %
5829 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
5830 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
5831 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
5832 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
5833 %
5834 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
5835 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
5836 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
5837 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
5838
5839 Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
5840 My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
5841 But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
5842 And think of the places my get-up has been.
5843 -- Pete Seeger
5844 %
5845 I had this sudden vision of a klein pizza containing all the mozarella
5846 in the world.
5847 -- Peter da Silva
5848 %
5849 I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
5850 Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!
5851 -- Mary Lou Bax
5852 %
5853 I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense.
5854 %
5855 I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
5856 it's going to be up all night.
5857 -- Steven Wright
5858 %
5859 I hate quotations.
5860 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
5861 %
5862 I have a simple philosophy:
5863
5864 Fill what's empty.
5865 Empty what's full.
5866 Scratch where it itches.
5867 -- A. R. Longworth
5868 %
5869 I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
5870 any time!
5871 %
5872 I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
5873 which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'.
5874 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
5875 %
5876 I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
5877 and they never believe me.
5878 -- Camillo Di Cavour
5879 %
5880 I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
5881 -- Edgar Allan Poe
5882 %
5883 I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
5884 sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
5885 eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
5886 have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
5887 beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
5888 guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
5889 of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry.
5890 -- President Harry S. Truman
5891 %
5892 I have learned
5893 To spell hors d'oeuvres
5894 Which still grates on
5895 Some people's n'oeuvres.
5896 -- Warren Knox
5897 %
5898 I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming
5899 that I have never made one.
5900 -- James Gordon Bennett
5901 %
5902 I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
5903 make it shorter.
5904 -- Blaise Pascal
5905 %
5906 I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
5907 ____BODY!
5908 -- from "Cerebus" #82
5909 %
5910 I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
5911 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
5912 %
5913 I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
5914 -- Oscar Wilde
5915 %
5916 I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
5917 scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it.
5918 -- Steven Wright
5919 %
5920 I have to convince you, or at least snow you ...
5921 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
5922 %
5923 I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
5924 his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell
5925 beating up a child.
5926 -- Steven Wright
5927 %
5928 I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
5929 at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
5930 -- Poul Anderson
5931 %
5932 I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
5933 %
5934 I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
5935 %
5936 I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
5937 %
5938 I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
5939 -- Bill Hoest
5940 %
5941 I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
5942 %
5943 I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
5944 War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
5945 -- Albert Einstein
5946 %
5947 I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
5948 The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.
5949 -- Charles Schulz
5950 %
5951 I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
5952 -- Art Leo
5953 %
5954 I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
5955 promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want
5956 peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
5957 the way and let them have it.
5958 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
5959 %
5960 I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours.
5961 %
5962 I like your game but we have to change the rules.
5963 %
5964 I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
5965 entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils.
5966 -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
5967 %
5968 "I love to eat them Smurfies
5969 Smurfies what I love to eat
5970 Bite they ugly heads off,
5971 Nibble on they bluish feet."
5972 %
5973 I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
5974 don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the
5975 speed of light.
5976 -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
5977 %
5978 I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
5979 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
5980 %
5981 I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
5982 week sometimes to make it up.
5983 -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
5984 %
5985 I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
5986 %
5987 I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
5988 was to go away.
5989 %
5990 I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
5991 %
5992 I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
5993 -- G. B. Shaw
5994 %
5995 I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!
5996 -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
5997 %
5998 I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
5999 kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
6000 substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no
6001 restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
6002 made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
6003 powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
6004 nerve disease.
6005 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
6006 %
6007 I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
6008 %
6009 I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
6010 -- William F. Buckley
6011 %
6012 "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
6013 that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
6014 more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
6015 might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
6016 otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
6017 otherwise.'"
6018 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
6019 %
6020 I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that
6021 the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
6022 congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile
6023 so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the
6024 plumber.
6025
6026 But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such
6027 as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of
6028 the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never
6029 win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually
6030 write about, such as nose-picking.
6031 -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
6032 Political Fallout"
6033 %
6034 I really hate this damned machine
6035 I wish that they would sell it.
6036 It never does quite what I want
6037 But only what I tell it.
6038 %
6039 I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
6040 %
6041 I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
6042 they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
6043 -- Will Rogers
6044 %
6045 I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
6046 I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
6047 Bernoulli would have been content to die
6048 Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
6049 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
6050 %
6051 I sent a letter to the fish,
6052 I told them, "This is what I wish."
6053 The little fishes of the sea,
6054 They sent an answer back to me.
6055 The little fishes' answer was
6056 "We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
6057 I sent a letter back to say
6058 It would be better to obey.
6059 But someone came to me and said
6060 "The little fishes are in bed."
6061 I said to him, and I said it plain
6062 "Then you must wake them up again."
6063 I said it very loud and clear,
6064 I went and shouted in his ear.
6065 But he was very stiff and proud,
6066 He said "You needn't shout so loud."
6067 And he was very proud and stiff,
6068 He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
6069 I took a kettle from the shelf,
6070 I went to wake them up myself.
6071 But when I found the door was locked
6072 I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
6073 And when I found the door was shut,
6074 I tried to turn the handle, But ...
6075
6076 "Is that all?" asked Alice.
6077 "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
6078 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
6079 %
6080 I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
6081 -- Graffito in Los Angeles
6082 %
6083 "... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
6084 supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
6085 actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
6086 -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
6087 Points in l'Amour"
6088 %
6089 I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full
6090 house and four people died.
6091 -- Steven Wright
6092 %
6093 I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
6094 see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
6095 -- Shirley Temple
6096 %
6097 I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
6098 too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which
6099 direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After
6100 much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot
6101 tub to face is up.
6102 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
6103 %
6104 I think it is true for all _n. I was just playing it safe with _n >= 3
6105 because I couldn't remember the proof.
6106 -- Baker, Pure Math 351a
6107 %
6108 I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.
6109 %
6110 I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
6111 and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
6112 country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
6113 in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
6114 not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
6115 -- Monty Python
6116 %
6117 I think that I shall never see
6118 A billboard lovely as a tree.
6119 Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
6120 I'll never see a tree at all.
6121 -- Ogden Nash
6122 %
6123 I think that I shall never see
6124 A thing as lovely as a tree.
6125 But as you see the trees have gone
6126 They went this morning with the dawn.
6127 A logging firm from out of town
6128 Came and chopped the trees all down.
6129 But I will trick those dirty skunks
6130 And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'.
6131 %
6132 I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
6133 to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the
6134 farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
6135 into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
6136 the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
6137 off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
6138 color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
6139 out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars
6140 singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors.
6141 -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
6142 %
6143 I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
6144 ... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think
6145 we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.
6146 When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we
6147 are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was
6148 driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa
6149 Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,
6150 were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous
6151 conversation ...
6152 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
6153 %
6154 "I thought you were trying to get into shape."
6155 "I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
6156 %
6157 ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
6158 pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!
6159 -- Winston Churchill
6160 %
6161 I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in
6162 twenty minutes. It's about Russia.
6163 -- Woody Allen
6164 %
6165 I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
6166 %
6167 I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
6168 %
6169 I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
6170 %
6171 I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
6172 body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
6173 -- Emo Phillips
6174 %
6175 I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere
6176 near the place.
6177 -- Steven Wright
6178 %
6179 I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to
6180 animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for
6181 anything connected with society except that which makes the roads
6182 safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women
6183 warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
6184 -- Brendan Behan
6185 %
6186 I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
6187 Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
6188 HAW"!!'
6189 -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
6190 %
6191 I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
6192 anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is
6193 a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows
6194 up.
6195 -- Will Rogers
6196 %
6197 I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
6198 put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
6199 what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
6200 should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
6201 get off my driveway.
6202 -- Steven Wright
6203 %
6204 I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
6205 didn't know.
6206 -- Mark Twain
6207 %
6208 I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
6209 their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
6210 buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
6211 -- Emile Henry Gauvreay
6212 %
6213 I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
6214 house and four people died.
6215 -- Steven Wright
6216 %
6217 I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific.
6218 -- Steven Wright
6219 %
6220 I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
6221 it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
6222 stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
6223 I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
6224 absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
6225 developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
6226 Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
6227 temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
6228 chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
6229 the point where it would not run at all.
6230 -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
6231 Holes and the Fate of Stars"
6232 %
6233 I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
6234 questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
6235 speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
6236
6237 He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
6238 for him then.
6239 -- Steven Wright
6240 %
6241 I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
6242 the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
6243 included.
6244 -- Steven Wright
6245 %
6246 I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
6247 statues that are in all the other museums.
6248 -- Steven Wright
6249 %
6250 I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
6251 it took seven others to beat him!
6252 %
6253 I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
6254 There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work.
6255 -- Gallagher
6256 %
6257 I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
6258 always worked for me.
6259 -- Hunter S. Thompson
6260 %
6261 I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
6262 %
6263 I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
6264 to undo it.
6265 %
6266 I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat.
6267 %
6268 I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I snore.
6269 %
6270 I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in `Y.'
6271 %
6272 I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my blender.
6273 %
6274 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my garage door.
6275 %
6276 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
6277 Julian to Gregorian.
6278 %
6279 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
6280 static cling.
6281 %
6282 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered.
6283 %
6284 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
6285 cottage cheese sculpture.
6286 %
6287 I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving.
6288 %
6289 I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma transplant.
6290 %
6291 I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night.
6292 %
6293 I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV.
6294 %
6295 I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never came back.
6296 %
6297 I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to stay tuned.
6298 %
6299 I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
6300 need worrying about.
6301 %
6302 I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
6303 %
6304 I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
6305 carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
6306 I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun.
6307 -- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
6308 %
6309 I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
6310 listen to it!
6311 -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
6312 %
6313 I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
6314 Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
6315 And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
6316 And in our bound partition never part.
6317 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
6318 %
6319 I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
6320 That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood.
6321 -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
6322 %
6323 I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man.
6324 %
6325 I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
6326 %
6327 I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister.
6328 %
6329 I'm changing my name to Chrysler
6330 I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
6331 I'll tell some power broker
6332 What they did for Iacocca
6333 Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
6334 I'm changing my name to Chrysler,
6335 I'm heading for that great receiving line.
6336 When they hand a million grand out,
6337 I'll be standing with my hand out,
6338 Yessir, I'll get mine!
6339 -- Tom Paxton
6340 %
6341 I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
6342 %
6343 I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
6344 die in.
6345 -- George McGovern
6346 %
6347 I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
6348 -- Fred Allen
6349 %
6350 I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
6351 -- Spider Robinson
6352 %
6353 ... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a
6354 KOSHER DELI!!
6355 %
6356 I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
6357 -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
6358 %
6359 I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
6360 living apart.
6361 -- e. e. cummings
6362 %
6363 I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
6364 N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
6365 I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
6366 She's traversed me seven times before.
6367 And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
6368 Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
6369 I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
6370 N-ary the tree I am, I am,
6371 N-ary the tree I am.
6372 %
6373 I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
6374 It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
6375 %
6376 I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
6377 %
6378 I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
6379 -- I could be just as proud for half the money.
6380 -- Arthur Godfrey
6381 %
6382 I'm rated PG-34!!
6383 %
6384 I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL
6385 soon ...
6386 %
6387 I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
6388 (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage.
6389 -- English Professor, Providence College
6390 %
6391 I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
6392 I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
6393 In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
6394 I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
6395 -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
6396 %
6397 I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives
6398 %
6399 I've built a better model than the one at Data General
6400 For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
6401 My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
6402 My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
6403 My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
6404 You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
6405 There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
6406 My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.
6407
6408 I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
6409 There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
6410 Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
6411 I've built a better model than the one at Data General.
6412
6413 -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
6414 "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
6415 by Gilbert & Sullivan)
6416 %
6417 I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
6418 %
6419 I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was
6420 this little hole in the bottom ...
6421 -- John Croll
6422 %
6423 I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
6424 %
6425 I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
6426 -- Groucho Marx
6427 %
6428 I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
6429 on the same day.
6430 %
6431 I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer.
6432 %
6433 I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer.
6434 -- Senator Claghorn
6435 %
6436 I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab.
6437 I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate.
6438 All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week.
6439 Time to die...
6440 -- Peter Gutmann
6441 %
6442 I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
6443 And from that full meridian of my glory
6444 I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
6445 Like a bright exhalation in the evening
6446 And no man see me more.
6447 -- William Shakespeare
6448 %
6449 IBM had a PL/I,
6450 Its syntax worse than JOSS;
6451 And everywhere this language went,
6452 It was a total loss.
6453 %
6454 Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box
6455 of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
6456 %
6457 Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
6458 solitary confinement.
6459 %
6460 Idiot Box, n.:
6461 The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
6462 stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
6463 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
6464 %
6465 Idiot, n.:
6466 A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
6467 affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
6468 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6469 %
6470 If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
6471 at about 30 miles/second.
6472 -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
6473 %
6474 If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
6475 -- Roy Santoro
6476 %
6477 If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far.
6478 -- Paul White
6479 %
6480 If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus
6481 forecast is a camel's behind.
6482 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
6483 %
6484 If A equals success, then the formula is _A = _X + _Y + _Z. _X is work. _Y
6485 is play. _Z is keep your mouth shut.
6486 -- Albert Einstein
6487 %
6488 If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1
6489 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
6490 -- T. Cheatham
6491 %
6492 If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four
6493 hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where
6494 it votes guilty.
6495 -- Joseph C. Goulden
6496 %
6497 If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
6498 him up.
6499 %
6500 If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
6501 %
6502 If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have
6503 dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to
6504 maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it
6505 must drop. The law of gravity supersedes the law of golf.
6506 -- Donald A. Metz
6507 %
6508 If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
6509 attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to
6510 playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win --
6511 unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager
6512 can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?
6513 -- Sparky Anderson
6514 %
6515 If all be true that I do think,
6516 There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
6517 Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
6518 Or lest we should be by-and-by,
6519 Or any other reason why.
6520 %
6521 If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
6522 error.
6523 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
6524 %
6525 If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot
6526 platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave
6527 that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.
6528 %
6529 If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
6530 -- Paul Beatty
6531 %
6532 If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
6533 conclusion.
6534 -- William Baumol
6535 %
6536 If an S and an I and an O and a U
6537 With an X at the end spell Su;
6538 And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
6539 Pray what is a speller to do?
6540 Then, if also an S and an I and a G
6541 And an HED spell side,
6542 There's nothing much left for a speller to do
6543 But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
6544 -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
6545 %
6546 If anything can go wrong, it will.
6547 %
6548 If at first you don't succeed, give up. No use being a damn fool.
6549 %
6550 If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
6551 %
6552 If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
6553 tellers?
6554 %
6555 If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
6556 %
6557 If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
6558 %
6559 If everybody minded their own business, the world would go
6560 around a deal faster.
6561 -- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
6562 %
6563 If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
6564 %
6565 ... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
6566 the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
6567 asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
6568 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
6569 %
6570 If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three
6571 to a can.
6572 %
6573 If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
6574 %
6575 If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
6576 %
6577 If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears.
6578 %
6579 If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads.
6580 %
6581 If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
6582 green, baggy skin.
6583 %
6584 If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
6585 %
6586 If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
6587 invent it.
6588 %
6589 If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
6590 hands.
6591 %
6592 If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
6593 %
6594 If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
6595 %
6596 If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.
6597 -- Yiddish saying
6598 %
6599 If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
6600 -- Marvin Kitman
6601 %
6602 If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be
6603 replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!
6604 %
6605 If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
6606 -- Samuel Goldwyn
6607 %
6608 If I don't drive around the park,
6609 I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
6610 If I'm in bed each night by ten,
6611 I may get back my looks again.
6612 If I abstain from fun and such,
6613 I'll probably amount to much;
6614 But I shall stay the way I am,
6615 Because I do not give a damn.
6616 -- Dorothy Parker
6617 %
6618 If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
6619 %
6620 If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
6621 plantation and go home.
6622 -- Eugene P. Gallagher
6623 %
6624 If I had any humility I would be perfect.
6625 -- Ted Turner
6626 %
6627 If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
6628 -- Albert Einstein
6629 %
6630 If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
6631 shoulders of giants.
6632 -- Isaac Newton
6633
6634 In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
6635 with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
6636 -- Gerald Holton
6637
6638 If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
6639 on my shoulders.
6640 -- Hal Abelson
6641
6642 In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
6643 -- Brian K. Reid
6644 %
6645 If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
6646
6647 On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
6648 also a psychological interaction.
6649
6650 The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so
6651 friendly.
6652
6653 The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
6654 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
6655 %
6656 If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
6657 As Dame Fortune did intend,
6658 Murphy would be there to tell me
6659 The pot's at the other end.
6660 -- Bert Whitney
6661 %
6662 If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
6663 %
6664 If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
6665 %
6666 If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
6667 They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
6668 of it.
6669 -- Thomas Carlyle
6670 %
6671 If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
6672 forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
6673 just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
6674 And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
6675 pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
6676 And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
6677 think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
6678 receive Net Mail ...
6679 -- Leith (Casey) Leedom
6680 %
6681 If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
6682 %
6683 If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
6684 -- Tom Robbins
6685 %
6686 If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
6687 you've got in the house.
6688 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
6689 %
6690 If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
6691 the page number.
6692 %
6693 If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
6694 %
6695 If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
6696 little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
6697 Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
6698 -- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
6699 %
6700 If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
6701 -- Albert Einstein
6702 %
6703 If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
6704 in my name at a Swiss bank.
6705 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
6706 %
6707 If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
6708 %
6709 If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
6710 having to accomplish anything.
6711 %
6712 If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
6713 he should see how bad it is with representation.
6714 %
6715 If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
6716 arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
6717 physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
6718 entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
6719 -- Vannevar Bush
6720 %
6721 If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
6722 harder.
6723 -- Pope John Paul I
6724 %
6725 If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem.
6726 -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
6727 %
6728 If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
6729 presumably flunk it.
6730 -- Stanley Garn
6731 %
6732 If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
6733 -- Norm Schryer
6734 %
6735 If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
6736 get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
6737 See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
6738 the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
6739 that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The
6740 college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
6741 and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
6742 rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
6743 Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
6744 interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by
6745 opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
6746 himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
6747 boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
6748 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
6749 %
6750 If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
6751 -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
6752 %
6753 If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
6754 are 50-50 it will.
6755 %
6756 If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.
6757 If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.
6758 If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance
6759 will exceed all expectations.
6760 -- Reverend Chichester
6761 %
6762 If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
6763 %
6764 If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
6765 will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
6766 %
6767 If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
6768 -- Art Hoppe
6769 %
6770 If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
6771 something out of you.
6772 -- Muhammad Ali
6773 %
6774 If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
6775 %
6776 If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
6777 %
6778 If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
6779 %
6780 If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
6781 yesterday?
6782 %
6783 If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
6784 doing the thinking.
6785 -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
6786 %
6787 If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
6788 -- Laurence J. Peter
6789 %
6790 If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely
6791 %
6792 If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.
6793 %
6794 If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
6795 in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
6796 qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
6797 -- Marguerite Emmons
6798 %
6799 If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
6800 -- Ann Edwards-Duff
6801 %
6802 If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
6803 -- J. Paul Getty
6804 %
6805 If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
6806 %
6807 If you can read this, you're too close.
6808 %
6809 If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
6810 %
6811 If you can't be good, be careful.
6812 If you can't be careful, give me a call.
6813 %
6814 If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
6815 %
6816 If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
6817 -- Harry S. Truman
6818 %
6819 If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
6820 %
6821 If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
6822 %
6823 If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
6824 -- Clarence Day
6825 %
6826 If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
6827 -- Freeman Dyson
6828 %
6829 If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
6830 Lavoris in the toilet.
6831 -- Jay Leno
6832 %
6833 If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
6834 either of you for the rest of the day.
6835 %
6836 If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
6837 have to get a toehold in the public eye.
6838 %
6839 If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
6840 will.
6841 %
6842 If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
6843 will always do it.
6844 -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
6845 %
6846 If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
6847 make the rubble bounce.
6848 -- Winston Churchill
6849 %
6850 If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
6851 %
6852 If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
6853 %
6854 If you have to hate, hate gently.
6855 %
6856 If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to
6857 boot yourself in the posterior.
6858 -- A. J. Liebling, "The Press"
6859 %
6860 If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
6861 %
6862 If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
6863 -- Graham Summer
6864 %
6865 If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
6866 people die past the age of a hundred.
6867 -- George Burns
6868 %
6869 If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
6870 but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
6871 %
6872 If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
6873 -- Maslow
6874 %
6875 If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
6876 can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
6877 develop.
6878 %
6879 If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
6880 you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
6881 -- Mark Twain
6882 %
6883 If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
6884 you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
6885 ice, but no cup.
6886 %
6887 If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
6888 this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
6889 somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
6890 %
6891 If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're
6892 the sucker.
6893 %
6894 If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
6895 %
6896 If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
6897 -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
6898 %
6899 If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
6900 tomorrow!
6901 %
6902 If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
6903 payments.
6904 -- Earl Wilson
6905 %
6906 If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you
6907 don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.
6908 -- Bruce Schneier
6909 %
6910 If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
6911 -- Arthur Kasspe
6912 %
6913 If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
6914 shopping center in the world?
6915 -- Richard M. Nixon
6916 %
6917 If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
6918 be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
6919 you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw
6920 another party next year.
6921
6922 What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
6923 several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
6924 been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to
6925 avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
6926 parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
6927 having another one ...
6928
6929 If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
6930 your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
6931 through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure
6932 that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting
6933 someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
6934 -- Dave Barry
6935 %
6936 If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
6937 end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
6938 -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
6939 %
6940 If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
6941 -- A. L.
6942 %
6943 If you want divine justice, die.
6944 -- Nick Seldon
6945 %
6946 If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
6947 he gave it to.
6948 -- Dorothy Parker
6949 %
6950 If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
6951 Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
6952 statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
6953 telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
6954 titles beginning with the word "National".
6955 -- George Will
6956 %
6957 If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
6958 word you say, talk in your sleep.
6959 %
6960 If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
6961 memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it,
6962 even if they don't know what it means.
6963 -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
6964 %
6965 If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
6966 %
6967 If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
6968 tomorrow morning, sleep late.
6969 -- Henny Youngman
6970 %
6971 If you're happy, you're successful.
6972 %
6973 If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
6974 around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
6975 explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
6976 "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
6977 deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
6978 better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
6979 with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
6980 you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
6981 successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
6982 And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
6983 You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
6984 difficult can it be?"
6985 Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
6986 which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
6987 other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
6988 yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
6989 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
6990 %
6991 If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
6992 %
6993 If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
6994 -- Benjamin Disraeli
6995 %
6996 If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
6997 %
6998 If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
6999 off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?
7000 %
7001 If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
7002 -- Ronald Reagan
7003 %
7004 Ignisecond, n.:
7005 The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car
7006 door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
7007 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
7008 %
7009 Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
7010 Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
7011 Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
7012 Et le m^omerade horgrave.
7013 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
7014 %
7015 Iles's Law:
7016 There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly
7017 at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
7018 Neither will Iles.
7019 %
7020 Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
7021 land He's trying to ignore.
7022 %
7023 Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
7024 -- Jules de Gaultier
7025 %
7026 Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
7027 usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
7028 thinks of complaining.
7029 -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
7030 %
7031 Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
7032 a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
7033 storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
7034 voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
7035 What's the first question that the computer community asks?
7036
7037 "Is it PC compatible?"
7038 %
7039 Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
7040 -- Jack Paar
7041 %
7042 Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
7043 -- Edgar A. Shoaff
7044 %
7045 Impartial, adj.:
7046 Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
7047 espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
7048 conflicting opinions.
7049 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7050 %
7051 Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
7052 mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
7053 Boss is reading it.
7054 %
7055 Impossible, adj.:
7056 (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
7057 (2) I can't be bothered;
7058 (3) God can't be bothered.
7059 Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
7060 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
7061 %
7062 In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of
7063 stairs.
7064 %
7065 In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.
7066 %
7067 In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't
7068 get parts.
7069 %
7070 In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The
7071 creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across.
7072 %
7073 In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred
7074 syrup.
7075 %
7076 In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
7077 we can't control when the five year period will begin.
7078 %
7079 In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
7080 junior, what are you up to?"
7081 "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
7082 rabbit.
7083 "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
7084 "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the
7085 rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
7086 expression on his face.
7087 Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
7088 "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
7089 devour wolves."
7090 "Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?"
7091 "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes
7092 out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
7093 Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
7094 should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
7095 next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.
7096
7097 The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
7098 it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
7099 %
7100 In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
7101 Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
7102 -- Frank Mankiewicz
7103 %
7104 In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
7105 "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
7106 -- Mark Twain
7107 %
7108 In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
7109 with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call
7110 this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
7111 %
7112 In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
7113 sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All
7114 those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the
7115 devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up
7116 as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.
7117 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
7118 %
7119 In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
7120 of the risks he takes.
7121 -- Adlai Stevenson
7122 %
7123 In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
7124 incompetency
7125 -- The Peter Principle
7126 %
7127 In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
7128 are to be treated as variables.
7129 %
7130 In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
7131 nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir.
7132 -- Stuart Keate
7133 %
7134 In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
7135 at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
7136 %
7137 In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
7138 %
7139 In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
7140 will be temporarily canceled.
7141 %
7142 In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and
7143 make it better.
7144 %
7145 In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
7146 a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
7147 to get her attention.
7148 %
7149 In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
7150 in any motor vehicle.
7151 %
7152 In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
7153 -- Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
7154 %
7155 In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
7156 neighbor.
7157 %
7158 In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
7159 %
7160 In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
7161 resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
7162 inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
7163 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7164 %
7165 In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
7166 programming languages.
7167 %
7168 In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
7169 the sidewalks when a concert is on.
7170 %
7171 In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
7172 into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
7173 between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
7174 will only make it mushy.
7175 -- Mark Twain
7176 %
7177 In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
7178 pocket.
7179 %
7180 In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
7181 pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
7182 either flying or waiting to board a plane.
7183 %
7184 In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
7185 there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
7186 flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
7187 %
7188 In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
7189 to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
7190 speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
7191 %
7192 In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
7193 universe.
7194 -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
7195 %
7196 In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
7197 intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from
7198 the cares of office.
7199 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7200 %
7201 In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
7202 and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
7203 %
7204 In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying
7205 of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public
7206 view."
7207 %
7208 In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
7209 Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
7210 Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
7211 We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
7212 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
7213 %
7214 In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
7215 is over six feet in length.
7216 %
7217 In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
7218 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
7219 %
7220 In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian.
7221 %
7222 In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
7223 %
7224 In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
7225 moving automobile.
7226 %
7227 [In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
7228 could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
7229 that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
7230
7231 And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
7232 over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
7233 didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
7234 point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
7235 we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....
7236
7237 So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
7238 Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
7239 ___see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
7240 rolled back.
7241 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
7242 %
7243 In the beginning was the word.
7244 But by the time the second word was added to it,
7245 there was trouble.
7246 For with it came syntax ...
7247 -- John Simon
7248 %
7249 In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat
7250 hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am
7251 training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the
7252 net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any
7253 preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you
7254 close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be
7255 empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
7256 %
7257 In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
7258 the proper order then why can't he?
7259 %
7260 In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
7261 Dead.
7262 -- Egyptian Book of the Dead
7263 %
7264 In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
7265 -- Alan Perlis
7266 %
7267 In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
7268 a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
7269 to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
7270 forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you
7271 stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
7272 punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
7273 enough to punch you.
7274 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
7275 %
7276 In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
7277 shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the
7278 Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million
7279 three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years
7280 from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.
7281 ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
7282 wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
7283 fact.
7284 -- Mark Twain
7285 %
7286 In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
7287 drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
7288 discotheques.
7289 -- Art Linkletter
7290 %
7291 In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
7292 my advice.
7293 -- Winston Churchill
7294 %
7295 In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
7296 the supervision of a licensed engineer.
7297 %
7298 In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse
7299 along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
7300 %
7301 Incumbent, n.:
7302 Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
7303 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7304 %
7305 ... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
7306 smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
7307 not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
7308 -- Stephen Crane
7309 %
7310 Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
7311 %
7312 Individualists unite!
7313 %
7314 Infancy, n.:
7315 The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
7316 lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon
7317 afterward.
7318 -- Ambrose Bierce
7319 %
7320 Information Center, n.:
7321 A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
7322 to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
7323 %
7324 Ingrate, n.:
7325 A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
7326 indigestion.
7327 %
7328 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
7329 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
7330 %
7331 Ink, n.:
7332 A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
7333 water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
7334 intellectual crime.
7335 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7336 %
7337 Innovation is hard to schedule.
7338 -- Dan Fylstra
7339 %
7340 Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
7341 %
7342 Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
7343 salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
7344 %
7345 Interpreter, n.:
7346 One who enables two persons of different languages to
7347 understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
7348 the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
7349 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7350 %
7351 Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
7352 %
7353 I/O, I/O,
7354 It's off to disk I go,
7355 A bit or byte to read or write,
7356 I/O, I/O, I/O
7357 %
7358 INVENTORY
7359 Four be the things I am wiser to know:
7360 Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
7361
7362 Four be the things I'd been better without:
7363 Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
7364
7365 Three be the things I shall never attain:
7366 Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
7367
7368 Three be the things I shall have till I die:
7369 Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
7370 %
7371 Iron Law of Distribution:
7372 Them that has, gets.
7373 %
7374 Irrationality is the square root of all evil
7375 -- Douglas Hofstadter
7376 %
7377 Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
7378 meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
7379 soap bubble?
7380 %
7381 Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
7382 beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
7383 out, and such as are out wish to get in?
7384 -- Ralph Emerson
7385 %
7386 Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!
7387 %
7388 Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
7389 listen to weather forecasts and economists?
7390 -- Kelvin Throop III
7391 %
7392 Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
7393 tellers take economists seriously?
7394 %
7395 Issawi's Laws of Progress:
7396
7397 The Course of Progress:
7398 Most things get steadily worse.
7399
7400 The Path of Progress:
7401 A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
7402 %
7403 It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
7404 as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he
7405 had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked,
7406 "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed
7407 Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival
7408 came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer
7409 this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the
7410 Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
7411 To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's
7412 your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked,
7413 "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
7414 %
7415 It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown
7416 came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and
7417 applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I
7418 think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
7419 wits, who believe that it is a joke.
7420 -- S. A. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
7421 %
7422 It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
7423 thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
7424 drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
7425 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7426 %
7427 It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
7428 that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that
7429 one can learn."
7430 -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
7431 %
7432 It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
7433 been searching for evidence which could support this.
7434 -- Bertrand Russell
7435 %
7436 It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
7437 %
7438 It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
7439 program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
7440 organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
7441 self-critical?
7442 -- Alan Perlis
7443 %
7444 It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
7445 Urbana, Illinois.
7446 %
7447 It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will
7448 not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves
7449 and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like
7450 mature human beings ...
7451 -- Playboy, January 1983
7452 %
7453 It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
7454 pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
7455 sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
7456 -- Voltaire
7457 %
7458 It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
7459 they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
7460 that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
7461 much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
7462 had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But
7463 conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
7464 intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
7465
7466 Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
7467 destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
7468 alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
7469 misinterpreted ...
7470 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
7471 %
7472 It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
7473 coming up it.
7474 -- Henry Allen
7475 %
7476 It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
7477 One in a million, perhaps.
7478 %
7479 It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
7480 %
7481 It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
7482 benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
7483 to use either.
7484 -- Mark Twain
7485 %
7486 It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
7487 incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
7488 twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
7489 -- Rod Serling
7490 %
7491 It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
7492 lightly greased.
7493 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
7494 %
7495 It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
7496 proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community
7497 a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to
7498 treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the
7499 focus of attention, the harder the task.
7500 -- Sydney J. Harris
7501 %
7502 It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
7503 %
7504 It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
7505 %
7506 It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
7507 %
7508 It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
7509 if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
7510 people.
7511 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
7512 %
7513 It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
7514 Boulevard at one time.
7515 %
7516 It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
7517 %
7518 It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
7519 a tune.
7520 -- Woody Allen
7521 %
7522 It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
7523 ingenious.
7524 %
7525 It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
7526 desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
7527 -- Woody Allen
7528 %
7529 It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our
7530 offense consists in doubting it.
7531 -- Justice Robert H. Jackson
7532 %
7533 It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
7534 problem.
7535 %
7536 It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
7537 privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
7538 corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
7539 -- George Bernard Shaw
7540 %
7541 It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
7542 -- Gore Vidal
7543 %
7544 It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
7545 damn thing over and over.
7546 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
7547 %
7548 It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
7549 -- Elizabeth Carpenter
7550 %
7551 It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.
7552 %
7553 It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
7554 virginity could be a virtue.
7555 -- Voltaire
7556 %
7557 It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
7558 dignity.
7559 %
7560 It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared
7561 to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
7562 -- Havelock Ellis
7563 %
7564 It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
7565 students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential
7566 programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
7567 regeneration.
7568 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
7569 %
7570 It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
7571 lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
7572 high as the eagle?
7573 %
7574 It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
7575 statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
7576 glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
7577 which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
7578 day, that is the highest of arts.
7579 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
7580 %
7581 It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad
7582 crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed
7583 until the other has gone.
7584 %
7585 It is the business of little minds to shrink.
7586 -- Carl Sandburg
7587 %
7588 It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
7589 -- Hawkwind
7590 %
7591 It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for
7592 five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But
7593 it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
7594 %
7595 It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the
7596 future.
7597 %
7598 It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
7599 %
7600 It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
7601 good either if you speak when your head is empty.
7602 %
7603 It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
7604 warning to others.
7605 %
7606 It runs like _x, where _x is something unsavory
7607 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
7608 %
7609 It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
7610 flag.
7611 %
7612 It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the
7613 municipality.
7614 -- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
7615 %
7616 It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
7617 but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous.
7618 -- Robert Benchly
7619 %
7620 It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
7621 %
7622 It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot.
7623 %
7624 It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a
7625 breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was
7626 broken ...
7627 -- James Dent
7628 %
7629 It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
7630 I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I
7631 don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
7632 the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual
7633 charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
7634 novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
7635 yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable
7636 man a lifetime.
7637 -- Thomas Aldrich
7638 %
7639 It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
7640 laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
7641 thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
7642 nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
7643 for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
7644 Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
7645 under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
7646 icepacks.
7647 -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
7648 %
7649 It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like
7650 the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
7651 %
7652 It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
7653 the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
7654 %
7655 It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human
7656 nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant
7657 examples.
7658 -- Charles Dickens
7659 %
7660 It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
7661 warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
7662 two things still safe to eat.
7663 -- Robert Fuoss
7664 %
7665 It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
7666 -- Andrew Jackson
7667 %
7668 It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.
7669 -- Cheers
7670 %
7671 It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
7672 %
7673 It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
7674 -- Steven Wright
7675 %
7676 "It's a summons."
7677 "What's a summons?"
7678 "It means summon's in trouble."
7679 -- Rocky and Bullwinkle
7680 %
7681 It's a very *__UN*lucky week in which to be took dead.
7682 -- Churchy La Femme
7683 %
7684 It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
7685 %
7686 It's bad luck to be superstitious.
7687 -- Andrew W. Mathis
7688 %
7689 It's better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all.
7690 -- Marty Winch
7691 %
7692 "It's easier said than done."
7693
7694 ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
7695 said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
7696 said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
7697 done".
7698 %
7699 It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
7700 %
7701 It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
7702 being right.
7703 %
7704 It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
7705 -- Macy's
7706 %
7707 It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
7708 %
7709 It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
7710 is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It
7711 isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
7712 -- Oxford University Press, "Edpress News"
7713 %
7714 It's just a jump to the left
7715 And then a step to the right.
7716 Put your hands on your hips
7717 And pull your knees in tight.
7718 But it's the pelvic thrust
7719 That really drives you insa-a-a-a-a-ane!
7720
7721 LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
7722
7723 -- Rocky Horror Picture Show
7724 %
7725 It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
7726 -- Walt Disney
7727 %
7728 "It's Like This"
7729
7730 Even the samurai
7731 have teddy bears,
7732 and even the teddy bears
7733 get drunk.
7734 %
7735 It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
7736 direction.
7737 %
7738 It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name.
7739 %
7740 It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
7741 -- Sam Goldwyn
7742 %
7743 It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
7744 to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
7745 -- George Burns
7746 %
7747 It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
7748 -- Phil White
7749 %
7750 It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either.
7751 -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
7752 %
7753 It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
7754 -- Alexander Korda
7755 %
7756 It's not just a computer -- it's your ass.
7757 -- Cal Keegan
7758 %
7759 It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
7760 what you're taking for it...
7761 %
7762 It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
7763 the ground.
7764 -- Daniel B. Luten
7765 %
7766 It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
7767 happens.
7768 -- Woody Allen
7769 %
7770 It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
7771 -- Garfield
7772 %
7773 It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that
7774 English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many
7775 other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
7776 -- Sydney J. Harris
7777 %
7778 It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
7779 %
7780 It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
7781 %
7782 It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
7783 Devil when he is the only explanation of it.
7784 %
7785 It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which
7786 raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody
7787 not to.
7788 -- Franklin P. Jones
7789 %
7790 It's the thought, if any, that counts!
7791 %
7792 JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
7793 by Mark Isaak
7794
7795 Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
7796 character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
7797 hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
7798 are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
7799 BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
7800 to him.
7801 So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
7802 he met the traveling salesman.
7803 "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
7804 in high-level language.
7805 "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
7806 and Apples," commented Jack.
7807 "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
7808 there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
7809 Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
7810 he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
7811 started thrashing.
7812 "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
7813 kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
7814 window ...
7815 %
7816 Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
7817 No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
7818 legislature is in session.
7819 %
7820 James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
7821 indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
7822 -- Tom Stoppard
7823 %
7824 Jenkinson's Law:
7825 It won't work.
7826 %
7827 Jesus Saves,
7828 Moses Invests,
7829 But only Buddha pays Dividends.
7830 %
7831 Job Placement, n.:
7832 Telling your boss what he can do with your job.
7833 %
7834 Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
7835 %
7836 Johnson's First Law:
7837 When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
7838 most inconvenient possible time.
7839 %
7840 Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called
7841 "Bureaucracy". Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do
7842 anything loses.
7843 %
7844 Join the march to save individuality!
7845 %
7846 Jone's Law:
7847 The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
7848 to blame it on.
7849 %
7850 Jone's Motto:
7851 Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
7852 %
7853 Jones's First Law:
7854 Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
7855 endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction
7856 to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their
7857 original contribution.
7858 %
7859 Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
7860 (and nobody cares about it).
7861 -- Bill Joy 6/21/85
7862 %
7863 Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good
7864 solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires
7865 one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the
7866 winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is
7867 because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise
7868 mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political
7869 motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the
7870 whole truth.
7871 -- Stephen R. Schwambach
7872 %
7873 Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has
7874 changed.
7875 -- Irene Peter
7876 %
7877 Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
7878 %
7879 Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
7880 knows what it is.
7881 %
7882 Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
7883 get a prompt, type like hell.
7884 %
7885 Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
7886 immune to bullets.
7887 -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who"
7888 %
7889 Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
7890 of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?
7891 -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa (a] killer.DALLAS.TX.US
7892 %
7893 Just remember, it all started with a mouse.
7894 -- Walt Disney
7895 %
7896 Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
7897 twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
7898 %
7899 `Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
7900 As he landed his crew with care;
7901 Supporting each man on the top of the tide
7902 By a finger entwined in his hair.
7903
7904 'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
7905 That alone should encourage the crew.
7906 Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
7907 What I tell you three times is true.'
7908 %
7909 Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a
7910 faster rat!!!
7911 %
7912 Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven!
7913 -- Michael J. Wagner
7914 %
7915 Justice is incidental to law and order.
7916 -- J. Edgar Hoover
7917 %
7918 Justice, n.:
7919 A decision in your favor.
7920 %
7921 K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
7922 Cobol's wordy and confining;
7923 KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
7924 Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
7925 -- The Roguelet's ABC
7926 %
7927 Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to
7928 wear tail lights.
7929 %
7930 Katz' Law:
7931 Man and nations will act rationally when all other
7932 possibilities have been exhausted.
7933 %
7934 Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
7935 %
7936 Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze
7937 - Hellman's Mayonnaise
7938 %
7939 Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
7940 %
7941 Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
7942 %
7943 Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
7944 (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
7945 straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
7946 force is technically termed "car suck").
7947 (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
7948 than "Watch this!"
7949 %
7950 Keep your Eye on the Ball,
7951 Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
7952 Your Nose to the Grindstone,
7953 Your Feet on the Ground,
7954 Your Head on your Shoulders.
7955 Now ... try to get something DONE!
7956 %
7957 Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
7958 automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
7959 numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
7960 driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
7961 dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
7962 what's wrong."
7963 %
7964 Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
7965 Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
7966 and parking for the faculty.
7967 %
7968 Kids have *_____never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could
7969 travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the
7970 original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate
7971 teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
7972 grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate
7973 teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
7974 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
7975 %
7976 Kin, n.:
7977 An affliction of the blood.
7978 %
7979 Kinkler's First Law:
7980 Responsibility always exceeds authority.
7981
7982 Kinkler's Second Law:
7983 All the easy problems have been solved.
7984 %
7985 Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
7986 %
7987 Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
7988 any of its streets.
7989 %
7990 Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
7991 %
7992 Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
7993 %
7994 Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
7995 %
7996 Kleptomaniac, n.:
7997 A rich thief.
7998 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7999 %
8000 Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
8001 %
8002 Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
8003 -- Henry N. Camp
8004 %
8005 Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
8006 The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
8007 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
8008 %
8009 Labor, n.:
8010 One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
8011 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8012 %
8013 Lackland's Laws:
8014 (1) Never be first.
8015 (2) Never be last.
8016 (3) Never volunteer for anything
8017 %
8018 Lactomangulation, n.:
8019 Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
8020 that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
8021 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
8022 %
8023 Ladybug, ladybug,
8024 Look to your stern!
8025 Your house is on fire,
8026 Your children will burn!
8027 So jump ye and sing, for
8028 The very first time
8029 The four lines above
8030 Have been put into rhyme.
8031 -- Walt Kelly
8032 %
8033 Laetrile is the pits
8034 %
8035 Langsam's Laws:
8036 (1) Everything depends.
8037 (2) Nothing is always.
8038 (3) Everything is sometimes.
8039 %
8040 Larkinson's Law:
8041 All laws are basically false.
8042 %
8043 Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with
8044 was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting
8045 pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the
8046 farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
8047 sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
8048 you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
8049 What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
8050 of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
8051 the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
8052 whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
8053 Lassie filed the applications for.
8054 -- Dave Barry
8055 %
8056 Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
8057 had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to
8058 my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'
8059 -- Steven Wright
8060 %
8061 Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police
8062 record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense
8063 of humor.
8064 %
8065 Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won.
8066 %
8067 Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
8068 %
8069 Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
8070 -- Victor Borge
8071 %
8072 Law of Communications:
8073 The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
8074 between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
8075 misunderstanding.
8076 %
8077 Law of Probable Dispersal:
8078 Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
8079 distributed.
8080 %
8081 Law of Selective Gravity:
8082 An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
8083
8084 Jenning's Corollary:
8085 The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
8086 directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
8087
8088 Law of the Perversity of Nature:
8089 You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
8090 bread to butter.
8091 %
8092 Laws of Serendipity:
8093
8094 (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
8095 something.
8096 (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
8097 be engaged in making an inferior one.
8098 %
8099 Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
8100 No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
8101 approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
8102 %
8103 Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
8104 %
8105 Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
8106 everything else follows in the same way.
8107 -- Alan J. Perlis
8108 %
8109 Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
8110 %
8111 Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the
8112 fun?
8113 %
8114 Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
8115 "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
8116 unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
8117 drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he
8118 can."
8119 %
8120 Leibowitz's Rule:
8121 When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
8122 hold the hammer with both hands.
8123 %
8124 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
8125 You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are
8126 pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike
8127 honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people
8128 are thieves.
8129 %
8130 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
8131 Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
8132 Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
8133 you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of
8134 fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
8135 a sick sense of humor.
8136 %
8137 Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
8138 %
8139 Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
8140 number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash
8141 and another number.
8142 -- James Estes
8143 %
8144 Let us live!!!
8145 Let us love!!!
8146 Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
8147
8148 You first.
8149 %
8150 Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every
8151 relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you
8152 really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the
8153 end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
8154 qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and
8155 bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
8156 his back.
8157 -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
8158 %
8159 Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
8160 your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
8161 Mental Anguish. You would sue:
8162
8163 * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
8164 section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
8165 into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
8166 in there".
8167
8168 * The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
8169 cretin like yourself.
8170
8171 * Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
8172 case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
8173 a large cash settlement anyway.
8174 -- Dave Barry
8175 %
8176 Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
8177 overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of
8178 dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your
8179 tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to
8180 spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe
8181 money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will
8182 probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?
8183 It's not his money.
8184 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
8185 %
8186 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
8187
8188 Dear Sir,
8189
8190 I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
8191 to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
8192 public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
8193 in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
8194 will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
8195 agricultural industry.
8196
8197 Yours faithfully,
8198 Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
8199 Sevenoaks
8200 %
8201 Lewis's Law of Travel:
8202 The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
8203 anyone, ever.
8204 %
8205 Liar, n.:
8206 A lawyer with a roving commission.
8207 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8208 %
8209 Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
8210 -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
8211 %
8212 LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
8213 Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
8214 desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and
8215 polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
8216 %
8217 LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
8218 You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
8219 reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay.
8220 Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most
8221 Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal
8222 disease.
8223 %
8224 Lie, n.:
8225 A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
8226 discovered to date.
8227 %
8228 Lieberman's Law:
8229 Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
8230 %
8231 Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
8232 %
8233 Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
8234 %
8235 Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
8236 eat it nevertheless.
8237 -- Flaubert
8238 %
8239 Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it.
8240 %
8241 Life is like a simile.
8242 %
8243 Life is like an analogy.
8244 %
8245 Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
8246 there is nothing in it.
8247 %
8248 Life is too important to take seriously.
8249 -- Corky Siegel
8250 %
8251 Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
8252 which I disapprove.
8253 %
8254 Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility.
8255 -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
8256 %
8257 Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
8258 weren't for other people.
8259 -- Blore
8260 %
8261 Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
8262 %
8263 Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
8264 -- Marvin, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
8265 %
8266 Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
8267 sense from things she found in gift shops.
8268 -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
8269 %
8270 Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
8271 for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
8272 -- Alan McKay
8273 %
8274 Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
8275 %
8276 Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe
8277 we should think only about today.
8278 Charlie Brown:
8279 No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
8280 better.
8281 %
8282 Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
8283 -- Candice Bergen
8284 %
8285 Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
8286 around the Sun.
8287 %
8288 Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
8289 before.
8290 %
8291 Lizzie Borden took an axe,
8292 And plunged it deep into the VAX;
8293 Don't you envy people who
8294 Do all the things ___YOU want to do?
8295 %
8296 Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these
8297 interest rates, we don't need it."
8298 %
8299 Lobster:
8300 Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
8301 squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the
8302 only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to
8303 eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial
8304 before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most
8305 ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime
8306 in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its
8307 unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of
8308 the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout,
8309 "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a
8310 memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe
8311 at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot.
8312 Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be,
8313 too.
8314 -- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and
8315 Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
8316 %
8317 Lockwood's Long Shot:
8318 The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
8319 one in a million, but once would be enough.
8320 %
8321 Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____awful*.
8322 %
8323 ... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
8324 legally ... impeccable!
8325 %
8326 Logicians have but ill defined
8327 As rational the human kind.
8328 Logic, they say, belongs to man,
8329 But let them prove it if they can.
8330 -- Oliver Goldsmith
8331 %
8332 Look out! Behind you!
8333 %
8334 Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us
8335 to pay income taxes, too?
8336 -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
8337 %
8338 Loose bits sink chips.
8339 %
8340 Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying
8341 "BOOGA, BOOGA!"
8342 %
8343 Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
8344 %
8345 Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in
8346 Halstead, Kansas.
8347 %
8348 Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
8349 %
8350 Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
8351 world has ever seen.
8352 %
8353 Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
8354 -- Sigmund Freud
8355 %
8356 Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
8357 flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
8358 -- Matt Groening
8359 %
8360 Love is a word that is constantly heard,
8361 Hate is a word that is not.
8362 Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
8363 Love, I have read, is hot.
8364 But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
8365 And Love but a drug on the mart.
8366 Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
8367 But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
8368 -- Ogden Nash
8369 %
8370 Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
8371 the ideal never goes unpunished.
8372 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8373 %
8374 Love is sentimental measles.
8375 %
8376 Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
8377 -- H. L. Mencken
8378 %
8379 Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
8380 %
8381 Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
8382 -- Louise Beal
8383 %
8384 Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
8385 %
8386 Love's Drug
8387
8388 My love is like an iron wand
8389 That conks me on the head,
8390 My love is like the valium
8391 That I take before my bed,
8392 My love is like the pint of scotch
8393 That I drink when I be dry;
8394 And I shall love thee still, my dear,
8395 Until my wife is wise.
8396 %
8397 Lowery's Law:
8398 If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
8399 anyway.
8400 %
8401 LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
8402 %
8403 Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
8404 There's always one more bug.
8405 %
8406 Lunatic Asylum, n.:
8407 The place where optimism most flourishes.
8408 %
8409 Lysistrata had a good idea.
8410 %
8411 MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
8412 the smallest amount of thoughts.
8413 -- Winston Churchill
8414 %
8415 Machine-Independent, adj.:
8416 Does not run on any existing machine.
8417 %
8418 Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
8419 and play games -- but not with pleasure.
8420 -- Leo Rosten
8421 %
8422 Mad, adj.:
8423 Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
8424 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8425 %
8426 Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
8427 first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
8428 -- W. C. Fields
8429 %
8430 MAFIA, n:
8431 [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
8432 Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
8433 subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
8434 rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
8435 reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
8436 operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
8437 MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
8438 variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
8439 security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
8440 more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
8441 imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
8442 options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
8443 Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
8444 powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
8445 entire nodal aggravations.
8446 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
8447 %
8448 Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism.
8449
8450 Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
8451
8452 The two definition immediately preceding are condensed from the works
8453 of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
8454 with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
8455 knowledge.
8456 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8457 %
8458 Magnocartic, adj.:
8459 Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts.
8460 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
8461 %
8462 Magpie, n.:
8463 A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
8464 might be taught to talk.
8465 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8466 %
8467 Maier's Law:
8468 If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
8469
8470 Corollaries:
8471 (1) The bigger the theory, the better.
8472 (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
8473 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
8474 obtain a correspondence with the theory.
8475 %
8476 Main's Law:
8477 For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
8478 %
8479 Maintainer's Motto:
8480 If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
8481 %
8482 Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
8483 as one man.
8484
8485 Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
8486
8487 Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
8488 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8489 %
8490 Majority, n.:
8491 That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
8492 %
8493 Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!
8494 %
8495 Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
8496 tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It
8497 has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
8498 the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
8499 -- System V.2 administrator's guide
8500 %
8501 Malek's Law:
8502 Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
8503 %
8504 Man 1: Ask me the what the most important thing about telling a good
8505 joke is.
8506
8507 Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
8508
8509 Man 1: ______TIMING!
8510 %
8511 Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
8512 -- Lily Tomlin
8513 %
8514 Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
8515 upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
8516 -- Oscar Wilde
8517 %
8518 Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
8519 only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
8520 -- Wernher von Braun
8521 %
8522 Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
8523 -- Mark Twain
8524 %
8525 Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
8526 victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
8527 -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
8528 %
8529 Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
8530 is an enemy.
8531 -- Albert Einstein
8532 %
8533 Man, n.:
8534 An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
8535 he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
8536 occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which,
8537 however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole
8538 habitable earth and Canada.
8539 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8540 %
8541 Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
8542 Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
8543 don't think, right?"
8544 -- Dr. Who
8545 %
8546 Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
8547 dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
8548 man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
8549 air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
8550 primitive umpire.
8551
8552 What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
8553 mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
8554 -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
8555 %
8556 Manual, n.:
8557 A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a
8558 given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The
8559 information you need is in the others.
8560 -- Ray Simard
8561 %
8562 Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
8563 there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
8564 was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
8565 completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
8566 -- Walt Kelly
8567 %
8568 Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
8569 Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
8570 simple yes or no answer.
8571 %
8572 Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
8573 -- Voltaire
8574 %
8575 Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
8576 the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam
8577 dancing.
8578 -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
8579 %
8580 Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.
8581 -- Malcolm Smith
8582 %
8583 Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
8584 -- R. Drabek
8585 %
8586 Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
8587 translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something
8588 entirely different.
8589 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
8590 %
8591 Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
8592 described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can
8593 play.
8594 -- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
8595 James Blish
8596 %
8597 Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence.
8598 %
8599 Matter cannot be created or destroyed,
8600 nor can it be returned without a receipt.
8601 %
8602 Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
8603 -- Jules Feiffer
8604 %
8605 May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts.
8606 %
8607 May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
8608 %
8609 May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
8610 %
8611 May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
8612 Thousand Caramels.
8613 %
8614 Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
8615 -- R. S. Barton
8616 %
8617 Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
8618 it.
8619 %
8620 McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
8621 If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
8622 $19.95.
8623 %
8624 Meader's Law:
8625 Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
8626 everyone you know, only more so.
8627 %
8628 Meeting, n.:
8629 An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
8630 department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
8631 %
8632 Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
8633 from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
8634 Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
8635 had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
8636 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
8637 %
8638 Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
8639 it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
8640 very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
8641 tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...
8642 [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important
8643 world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the
8644 next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]
8645 ... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
8646 cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
8647 billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even
8648 more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a
8649 fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the
8650 older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and
8651 obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the
8652 window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger
8653 hotshot cells moving up from below.
8654 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
8655 %
8656 Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
8657 The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
8658 %
8659 Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
8660 The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
8661 cork makes when it is popped.
8662 %
8663 Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
8664 All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
8665 %
8666 Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
8667 Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
8668 is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can
8669 never hope to acquire it.
8670 %
8671 Menu, n.:
8672 A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
8673 %
8674 Meskimen's Law:
8675 There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
8676 do it over.
8677 %
8678 MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
8679 %
8680 Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
8681 %
8682 methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin-
8683 ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
8684 phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
8685 taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
8686 glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala-
8687 nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta-
8688 minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly-
8689 cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl-
8690 leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu-
8691 cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva-
8692 lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro-
8693 sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu-
8694 cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe-
8695 nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala-
8696 nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas-
8697 partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl-
8698 glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl-
8699 valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu-
8700 cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi-
8701 nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse-
8702 rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl-
8703 glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly-
8704 sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro-
8705 lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl-
8706 glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
8707 The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
8708 1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
8709 -- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
8710 Preposterous Words
8711 %
8712 Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
8713 %
8714 Micro Credo:
8715 Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
8716 %
8717 Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
8718 watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks.
8719 %
8720 Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
8721 out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
8722 -- Casablanca
8723 %
8724 Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
8725 Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
8726 inconsiderate."
8727 -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
8728 %
8729 Miksch's Law:
8730 If a string has one end, then it has another end.
8731 %
8732 Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
8733 -- Groucho Marx
8734 %
8735 Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
8736 -- Groucho Marx
8737 %
8738 Millihelen, adj:
8739 The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
8740 %
8741 Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
8742 themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
8743 -- Susan Ertz
8744 %
8745 Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
8746 politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum
8747 and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they
8748 are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
8749 rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all
8750 the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
8751 Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert
8752 Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
8753 Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
8754 black.
8755 -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
8756 %
8757 Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
8758 is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
8759 myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
8760 the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
8761 unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
8762 will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
8763 dead as a door-nail.
8764 %
8765 Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
8766 %
8767 Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
8768 pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
8769 %
8770 Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
8771 %
8772 Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
8773 -- Russell Baker
8774 %
8775 Misfortune, n.:
8776 The kind of fortune that never misses.
8777 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8778 %
8779 Miss, n.:
8780 A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
8781 they are in the market.
8782 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8783 %
8784 Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
8785 %
8786 Mitchell's Law of Committees:
8787 Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
8788 held to discuss it.
8789 %
8790 MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
8791
8792 Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
8793 2 cups water 2 cups sugar
8794 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
8795 Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
8796 Cinnamon
8797
8798 Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break
8799 RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar
8800 and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon
8801 juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
8802 with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top
8803 crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let
8804 steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
8805 is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
8806 -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
8807 %
8808 Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
8809 %
8810 Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked
8811 him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just
8812 last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew
8813 better.
8814 %
8815 Molecule, n.:
8816 The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished
8817 from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
8818 closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
8819 matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
8820 atom in that it is an ion ...
8821 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8822 %
8823 Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
8824 If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
8825 it wasn't worth doing.
8826 %
8827 Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
8828 %
8829 Monday, n.:
8830 In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
8831 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8832 %
8833 Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
8834 %
8835 Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
8836 %
8837 Money is the root of all wealth.
8838 %
8839 Moon, n.:
8840 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
8841 hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
8842 %
8843 Mophobia, n.:
8844 Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
8845 %
8846 MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
8847 The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
8848 Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while
8849 the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
8850 Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
8851 paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
8852 took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
8853 their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player
8854 said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a
8855 fight and the match was called by officials.
8856 %
8857 More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One
8858 path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
8859 extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
8860 -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
8861 %
8862 Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
8863 Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
8864 be out of a job.
8865 %
8866 Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
8867 because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
8868 and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
8869 eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
8870 and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
8871 female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
8872 dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven
8873 by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the
8874 truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
8875 them that it doesn't make any difference.
8876 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
8877 Teen Should Know"
8878 %
8879 Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
8880 than they do.
8881 -- Turgenev
8882 %
8883 Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
8884 -- Frank Zappa
8885 %
8886 Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
8887 -- Arnold Bennett
8888 %
8889 Mother is the invention of necessity.
8890 %
8891 Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
8892 %
8893 Mr. Cole's Axiom:
8894 The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
8895 population is growing.
8896 %
8897 "Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams)
8898 "365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old
8899 Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his
8900 pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
8901 in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
8902 in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
8903 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic
8904 computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
8905 fun to watch.
8906 -- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
8907 %
8908 Murphy's Discovery:
8909 Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
8910 women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
8911 will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in
8912 trouble!
8913 %
8914 Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
8915 work.
8916 %
8917 Murphy's Law of Research:
8918 Enough research will tend to support your theory.
8919 %
8920 Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Goedel's Theorem ...
8921 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
8922 %
8923 Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
8924 Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
8925 pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
8926 military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
8927 Esther and hustle them off to prison.
8928 They can't prove who they are because they've left their
8929 passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
8930 and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
8931 movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
8932 charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
8933 The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
8934 they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
8935 if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
8936 her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
8937 possible, and turns to Murray.
8938 "This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
8939 spits in the sergeants face.
8940 "Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
8941 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
8942 %
8943 Mustgo, n.:
8944 Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
8945 long it has become a science project.
8946 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
8947 %
8948 My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
8949 -- "Grendel", by John Gardner
8950 %
8951 My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
8952 threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.
8953 First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
8954 frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
8955 the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed
8956 forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
8957 perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
8958 the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
8959 crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a
8960 symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
8961 in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
8962 really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
8963 OK.
8964 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
8965 %
8966 My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
8967 there are three other people.
8968 -- Orson Welles
8969 %
8970 My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
8971 times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
8972 sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right
8973 through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
8974 listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
8975 log out again.
8976 %
8977 My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?
8978 -- MadameX
8979 %
8980 My love runs by like a day in June,
8981 And he makes no friends of sorrows.
8982 He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
8983 In the pathway or the morrows.
8984 He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
8985 Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
8986 My own dear love, he is all my heart --
8987 And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
8988 -- Dorothy Parker
8989 %
8990 My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
8991 And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
8992 The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
8993 And the skies are sunlit for him.
8994 As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
8995 As the fragrance of acacia.
8996 My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
8997 And I wish he were in Asia.
8998 -- Dorothy Parker
8999 %
9000 My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
9001 -- Groucho Marx
9002 %
9003 My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
9004 %
9005 My own dear love, he is strong and bold
9006 And he cares not what comes after.
9007 His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
9008 And his eyes are lit with laughter.
9009 He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
9010 Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
9011 My own dear love, he is all my world --
9012 And I wish I'd never met him.
9013 -- Dorothy Parker
9014 %
9015 My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!!
9016 -- Zippy the Pinhead
9017 %
9018 My pen is at the bottom of a page,
9019 Which, being finished, here the story ends;
9020 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
9021 But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
9022 -- Byron
9023 %
9024 My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
9025 -- Christopher Morley
9026 %
9027 My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies
9028 %
9029 Mythology, n.:
9030 The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
9031 origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
9032 from the true accounts which it invents later.
9033 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9034 %
9035 n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
9036 n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
9037 n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
9038 n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
9039 n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
9040
9041 -- C code which reverses the bits in a word.
9042 %
9043 Naeser's Law:
9044 You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
9045 damnfoolproof.
9046 %
9047 NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he
9048 says is wrong.
9049 GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
9050 will be right.
9051 -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
9052 %
9053 Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant
9054 said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
9055 time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone
9056 might steal it."
9057 %
9058 Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
9059 villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time,"
9060 said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the
9061 villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The
9062 remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he
9063 said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of
9064 my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually
9065 spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
9066 %
9067 Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
9068 serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk
9069 into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?"
9070 "Never." "Then how do you know it was me?"
9071 %
9072 Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
9073 than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the
9074 light more."
9075 %
9076 Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver
9077 pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of
9078 meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it,
9079 "Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without
9080 the recipe?"
9081 %
9082 Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
9083 conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the
9084 fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
9085 is most likely to be creamed?
9086 -- Solomon Short
9087 %
9088 Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
9089 God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
9090
9091 It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
9092 Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
9093 %
9094 Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
9095 cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
9096 -- Fran Leibowitz
9097 %
9098 Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
9099 character, give him power.
9100 -- Abraham Lincoln
9101 %
9102 Necessity is a mother.
9103 %
9104 Neckties strangle clear thinking.
9105 -- Lin Yutang
9106 %
9107 Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
9108 %
9109 Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
9110 %
9111 Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
9112 %
9113 Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.
9114 %
9115 Never drink Coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled
9116 with the chemicals in Coke produce hallucinations. People tend to
9117 change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
9118 fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
9119 have windows.
9120 %
9121 Never eat more than you can lift.
9122 -- Miss Piggy
9123 %
9124 Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
9125 %
9126 Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
9127 %
9128 Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
9129 -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
9130 %
9131 Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
9132 make it complex and wonderful.
9133 %
9134 Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
9135 -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
9136 %
9137 Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
9138 %
9139 Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a
9140 law against it by that time.
9141 %
9142 Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
9143 %
9144 Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
9145 %
9146 Never try to outstubborn a cat.
9147 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
9148 %
9149 Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
9150 -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
9151 %
9152 Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon.
9153 %
9154 Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
9155 supposed to do.
9156 -- R. A. Heinlein
9157 %
9158 New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
9159 %
9160 New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
9161 any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
9162 %
9163 New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
9164 Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
9165 %
9166 New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
9167 -- Monty Python's Big Red Book
9168 %
9169 New systems generate new problems.
9170 %
9171 New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
9172 his wife most often reminds him to act it.
9173 -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
9174 %
9175 New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.
9176 %
9177 New York's got the ways and means;
9178 Just won't let you be.
9179 -- The Grateful Dead
9180 %
9181 Newlan's Truism:
9182 An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
9183 economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
9184 %
9185 NEWS FLASH!!
9186 Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
9187 German pole-vault champion.
9188 %
9189 *** NEWSFLASH ***
9190 Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!
9191 %
9192 Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
9193 %
9194 Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
9195 A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
9196 %
9197 Next Friday will not be your lucky day.
9198 As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.
9199 %
9200 Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
9201 as an income tax refund.
9202 -- F. J. Raymond
9203 %
9204 Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
9205 -- Foghorn Leghorn
9206 %
9207 Nihilism should commence with oneself.
9208 %
9209 Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
9210 correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
9211 (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
9212 Americans call him by value.
9213 %
9214 Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
9215 Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
9216 Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
9217 Three megs for system source;
9218
9219 One disk to rule them all,
9220 One disk to bind them,
9221 One disk to hold the files
9222 And in the darkness grind 'em.
9223 %
9224 Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
9225 And tapes without any tracks;
9226 Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
9227 And tapes mixed up on the racks --
9228 Take hold of the tape
9229 And pull off the strip,
9230 And then you'll be sure
9231 Your tape drive will skip.
9232
9233 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
9234 %
9235 Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
9236 would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
9237 that much.
9238 -- Augustine
9239 %
9240 Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
9241 The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
9242 the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
9243 %
9244 Nirvana? That's the place where the powers that be and their friends
9245 hang out.
9246 -- Zonker Harris
9247 %
9248 No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
9249 absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
9250 -- Fran Leibowitz
9251 %
9252 No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
9253 camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
9254 effectively under such difficult conditions.
9255 -- Laurence J. Peter
9256 %
9257 No good deed goes unpunished.
9258 -- Clare Boothe Luce
9259 %
9260 No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
9261 eating one peanut.
9262 -- Channing Pollock
9263 %
9264 No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
9265 %
9266 No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will
9267 seriously cramp his style.
9268 %
9269 No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
9270 immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
9271 %
9272 No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
9273 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
9274 %
9275 No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.
9276 %
9277 No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
9278 system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
9279 the author.
9280 -- Chris Shaw
9281 %
9282 No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
9283 He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
9284 Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
9285 And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
9286 CHORUS:
9287 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
9288 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
9289 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
9290 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
9291 Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
9292 And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
9293 All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
9294 But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
9295 (chorus)
9296 Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
9297 The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
9298 A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
9299 But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
9300 (chorus)
9301 %
9302 No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
9303 -- C. Schulz
9304 %
9305 No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
9306 %
9307 No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
9308 occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
9309 indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
9310 occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
9311 an indication-applied occurrence.
9312 -- ALGOL 68 Report
9313 %
9314 No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper.
9315 -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
9316 taken over by Rupert Murdoch
9317 %
9318 No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
9319 -- Sherlock Holmes
9320 %
9321 No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'
9322 -- Dr. Who
9323 %
9324 Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
9325 -- Tallulah Bankhead
9326 %
9327 NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
9328 %
9329 Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
9330 %
9331 Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in
9332 order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the
9333 substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young
9334 and rob the old.
9335 -- Lewis Lapham
9336 %
9337 Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with
9338 constructive praise.
9339 %
9340 Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
9341 Negative expectations yield negative results.
9342 Positive expectations yield negative results.
9343 %
9344 Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
9345 %
9346 Noncombatant, n.:
9347 A dead Quaker.
9348 -- Ambrose Bierce
9349 %
9350 Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
9351 %
9352 Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
9353 %
9354 Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
9355 Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
9356 in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
9357 moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
9358 dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
9359 respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
9360 it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
9361 then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
9362 chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
9363 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
9364 %
9365 Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
9366 -- William Shakespeare
9367 %
9368 Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
9369 is from the wrong kind of tree.
9370 -- Professor W., EECS, George Washington University
9371 %
9372 Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
9373 of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
9374 is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
9375 unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is
9376 careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
9377 -- Woody Allen
9378 %
9379 Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
9380 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
9381 %
9382 Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
9383 %
9384 Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
9385
9386 To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
9387 light comes on.
9388 %
9389 Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
9390 -- Andrew Young
9391 %
9392 Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
9393 tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
9394 -- Nero Wolfe
9395 %
9396 Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
9397 Conscience makes egotists of us all.
9398 -- Oscar Wilde
9399 %
9400 Nothing recedes like success.
9401 -- Walter Winchell
9402 %
9403 Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
9404 -- Charlie Brown
9405 %
9406 November, n.:
9407 The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
9408 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9409 %
9410 Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
9411 %
9412 Now I lay me down to sleep
9413 I pray the double lock will keep;
9414 May no brick through the window break,
9415 And, no one rob me till I awake.
9416 %
9417 Now is the time for all good men to come to.
9418 -- Walt Kelly
9419 %
9420 Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
9421 time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
9422 to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
9423 eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
9424 the following questions:
9425
9426 (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
9427 food?
9428 (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
9429 exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
9430 (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
9431 prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
9432 double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living
9433 right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
9434 longer.)
9435
9436 That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
9437 %
9438 Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
9439 Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
9440 were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ...
9441 -- "The Begatting of a President"
9442 %
9443 Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette.
9444 -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
9445 %
9446 ... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
9447 get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
9448 the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
9449 on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
9450 children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
9451 snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
9452 to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
9453 a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
9454 outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
9455 he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
9456 Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
9457 Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
9458 kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
9459 children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
9460 quickly.
9461 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
9462 %
9463 Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
9464 tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
9465 Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
9466 plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
9467 they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
9468 Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
9469 administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
9470 you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
9471 described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
9472 interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
9473 that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
9474 This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
9475 inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
9476 so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
9477 if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
9478 direct sunlight.
9479 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
9480 %
9481 Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile.
9482 -- Karl Lehenbauer
9483 %
9484 Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
9485 normal routines, for children and adults alike.
9486 -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
9487 %
9488 Nuclear war would really set back cable.
9489 -- Ted Turner
9490 %
9491 [Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
9492 -- Edwin Meese III
9493 %
9494 Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
9495 %
9496 (null cookie; hope that's ok)
9497 %
9498 Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
9499 %
9500 O give me a home,
9501 Where the buffalo roam,
9502 Where the deer and the antelope play,
9503 Where seldom is heard
9504 A discouraging word,
9505 'Cause what can an antelope say?
9506 %
9507 O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
9508 Murphy was an optimist.
9509 %
9510 Of ______course it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
9511 fake?
9512 %
9513 Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
9514 reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
9515 amount of hot air.
9516 -- Thomas L. Martin
9517 %
9518 Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
9519 -- Plato
9520 %
9521 Of all the words of witch's doom
9522 There's none so bad as which and whom.
9523 The man who kills both which and whom
9524 Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
9525 -- Fletcher Knebel
9526 %
9527 Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
9528 tools aren't soluble in alcohol ...
9529 -- Crazy Nigel
9530 %
9531 Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
9532 %
9533 Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%.
9534 And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
9535 blazer.
9536 %
9537 Office Automation, n.:
9538 The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
9539 you would want to talk with over coffee.
9540 %
9541 Ogden's Law:
9542 The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
9543 up.
9544 %
9545 Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
9546 %
9547 Oh don't the days seem lank and long
9548 When all goes right and none goes wrong,
9549 And isn't your life extremely flat
9550 With nothing whatever to grumble at!
9551 %
9552 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
9553 I muck with indices and structs all day
9554 And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
9555 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
9556 %
9557 Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
9558 be irresponsible, too.
9559 -- Lichty & Wagner
9560 %
9561 Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
9562 And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
9563 Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
9564 Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
9565 You have not dreamed of --
9566 Wheeled and soared and swung
9567 High in the sunlit silence.
9568 Hovering there
9569 I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
9570 My eager craft through footless halls of air.
9571 Up, up along delirious, burning blue
9572 I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
9573 Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
9574 And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
9575 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
9576 Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
9577 -- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
9578 %
9579 Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
9580 %
9581 Oh, when I was in love with you,
9582 Then I was clean and brave,
9583 And miles around the wonder grew
9584 How well did I behave.
9585
9586 And now the fancy passes by,
9587 And nothing will remain,
9588 And miles around they'll say that I
9589 Am quite myself again.
9590 -- A. E. Housman
9591 %
9592 Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
9593 %
9594 OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard.
9595 -- Dr. Joy
9596 %
9597 OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
9598 %
9599 Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
9600 -- Trotsky
9601 %
9602 Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
9603 %
9604 Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
9605 %
9606 Oliver's Law:
9607 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
9608 it.
9609 %
9610 Omnibiblious, adj.:
9611 Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything.
9612 I'm omnibiblious."
9613 %
9614 OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need four GALLONS of
9615 JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O
9616 as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ...
9617 WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES?
9618 %
9619 On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
9620
9621 This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
9622 -- Wolfgang Pauli
9623 %
9624 On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
9625 nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
9626 what it does.
9627 -- Will Rogers
9628 %
9629 On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
9630 receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
9631 income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
9632 $283 on the desk before the cashier.
9633 "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
9634 route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
9635 "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
9636 business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
9637 worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
9638 %
9639 On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
9640 created jerks.
9641 -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
9642 %
9643 On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a
9644 POINT ...
9645 %
9646 On the subject of C program indentation:
9647
9648 "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
9649 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
9650 -- Blair P. Houghton
9651 %
9652 On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
9653 Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
9654 answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
9655 confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
9656 -- Charles Babbage
9657 %
9658 On-line, adj.:
9659 The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
9660 computer.
9661 %
9662 Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
9663 forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
9664 -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
9665 %
9666 Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
9667 each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
9668 choice.
9669
9670 In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
9671 called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukkah"
9672 and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
9673 passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
9674 Hanukkah!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
9675 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
9676 %
9677 Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
9678 Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
9679 Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
9680 principals or your mistress".
9681 %
9682 Once Law was sitting on the bench
9683 And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
9684 "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
9685 Nor come before me creeping.
9686 Upon your knees if you appear,
9687 'Tis plain you have no standing here."
9688
9689 Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
9690 "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
9691 "Amica curiae," she replied --
9692 "Friend of the court, so please you."
9693 "Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
9694 I never saw your face before!"
9695 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9696 %
9697 Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
9698 beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
9699 side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
9700 which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
9701 sky.
9702 -- Rainer Rilke
9703 %
9704 Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
9705 great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
9706 the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
9707 life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But
9708 one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
9709 going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I
9710 shall die of boredom."
9711 The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that
9712 current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
9713 rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
9714 But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
9715 and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
9716 Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
9717 lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
9718 And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
9719 "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the
9720 Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current
9721 said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us
9722 free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this
9723 adventure.
9724 But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
9725 the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
9726 %
9727 Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
9728 us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
9729 the smaller prime numbers.
9730
9731 2: The Odd Prime --
9732 It's the only even prime, therefore it's odd. QED.
9733 3: The True Prime --
9734 Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
9735 31: The Arbitrary Prime --
9736 Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime
9737 in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91
9738 received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
9739 next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
9740 at all.
9741
9742 Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
9743 derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
9744 true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
9745 %
9746 ... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
9747 with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
9748 shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
9749 advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
9750 shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
9751 them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
9752 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
9753 %
9754 Once, adv.:
9755 Enough.
9756 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9757 %
9758 One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
9759 somebody's listening.
9760 -- Franklin P. Jones
9761 %
9762 "One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."
9763
9764 Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
9765 The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
9766 -- Chuq Von Rospach
9767 %
9768 One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
9769 %
9770 One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
9771 how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
9772 -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
9773 %
9774 One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell
9775 the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald
9776 announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to
9777 a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The
9778 captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth
9779 -- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin,
9780 "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if
9781 I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!"
9782 "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
9783 %
9784 One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
9785 when well oiled.
9786 %
9787 One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
9788 never have to stop and answer the phone.
9789 %
9790 One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
9791 -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
9792 %
9793 One learns to itch where one can scratch.
9794 -- Ernest Bramah
9795 %
9796 One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
9797 one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
9798 produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
9799 represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
9800 many ...
9801 -- Anthony Chevins
9802 %
9803 One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
9804 %
9805 One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
9806 will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
9807 I'll tell you."
9808 %
9809 One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
9810 %
9811 One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
9812 from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at
9813 least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts
9814 are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but
9815 when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
9816 -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
9817 %
9818 One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
9819 do and always a clever thing to say.
9820 -- Will Durant
9821 %
9822 One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
9823 lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
9824 their C programs.
9825 -- Robert Firth
9826 %
9827 One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
9828 create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________somebody has to buy
9829 retail."
9830 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
9831 %
9832 One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
9833 enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
9834 Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
9835 years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
9836 Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
9837 language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
9838 students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
9839 interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
9840 its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
9841 VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
9842 It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
9843 run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
9844 will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
9845 With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
9846 quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
9847 VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
9848 documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
9849 difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
9850 is that it's all there.
9851 -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
9852 %
9853 One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
9854 seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best
9855 way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
9856 fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
9857 disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
9858 %
9859 The Seventh Commandments for Technicians
9860 Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
9861 fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in
9862 other ways.
9863 %
9864 The First Commandment for Technicians:
9865 Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
9866 capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
9867 untechnician-like manner.
9868 %
9869 One Page Principle:
9870 A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
9871 paper cannot be understood.
9872 -- Mark Ardis
9873 %
9874 One planet is all you get.
9875 %
9876 One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
9877 manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
9878 they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's
9879 say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
9880 study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
9881 sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
9882 strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
9883 rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also
9884 be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.
9885 Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
9886 Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
9887 millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
9888 support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that
9889 your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
9890 of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
9891 already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
9892 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
9893 %
9894 One reason why George Washington
9895 Is held in such veneration:
9896 He never blamed his problems
9897 On the former Administration.
9898 -- George O. Ludcke
9899 %
9900 One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
9901 %
9902 One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
9903 %
9904 One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
9905 sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of
9906 sheer terror.
9907 -- W. K. Hartmann
9908 %
9909 One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
9910 new model.
9911 %
9912 One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
9913 %
9914 One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
9915 at the stake while the votes were being counted.
9916 -- Thomas B. Reed
9917 %
9918 One-Shot Case Study, n.:
9919 The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
9920 it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes
9921 green.
9922 %
9923 Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
9924 %
9925 Only God can make random selections.
9926 %
9927 Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to
9928 use the editorial "we."
9929 %
9930 Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
9931 %
9932 Optimization hinders evolution.
9933 %
9934 Oregano, n.:
9935 The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
9936 %
9937 Oregon, n.:
9938 Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
9939 night.
9940 %
9941 Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
9942 Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
9943 -- Mike Adams
9944 %
9945 Osborn's Law:
9946 Variables won't; constants aren't.
9947 %
9948 Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.
9949 %
9950 Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
9951 they charge fifteen cents for them.
9952 %
9953 Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the
9954 office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
9955 were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of
9956 juice. But only *__he* had a lollipop.
9957
9958 He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"
9959
9960 Her reply:
9961
9962 "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it
9963 means to be a programmer."
9964 %
9965 Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
9966 Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
9967 In kernel as it is in user!
9968 %
9969 Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
9970 -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
9971 %
9972 ... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
9973 Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
9974 thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
9975 somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
9976 on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
9977 a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
9978 -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
9979 %
9980 Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it.
9981 -- Alex Schure
9982 %
9983 Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
9984 -- General Omar N. Bradley
9985 %
9986 OUTCONERR
9987 Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
9988 Did logzerneg the ifthen block
9989 All kludgy were the function flows
9990 And subroutines adhoc.
9991
9992 Beware the runtime-bug my friend
9993 squrooneg, the false goto
9994 Beware the infiniteloop
9995 And shun the inprectoo.
9996 %
9997 Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
9998 it's too dark to read.
9999 -- Groucho Marx
10000 %
10001 Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
10002 I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
10003 %
10004 Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
10005 %
10006 Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
10007 %
10008 Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
10009 %
10010 Ozman's Laws:
10011 (1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
10012 won't.
10013 (2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
10014 make.
10015 (3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
10016 (4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
10017 %
10018 Painting, n.:
10019 The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
10020 exposing them to the critic.
10021 -- Ambrose Bierce
10022 %
10023 panic: can't find /
10024 %
10025 panic: kernel trap (ignored)
10026 %
10027 Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much
10028 better.
10029 -- Laurie Anderson
10030 %
10031 Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
10032 %
10033 Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
10034 %
10035 Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
10036 %
10037 Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
10038 criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
10039 -- D. J. Hicks
10040 %
10041 Pardo's First Postulate:
10042 Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
10043 fattening.
10044
10045 Arnold's Addendum:
10046 Everything else causes cancer in rats.
10047 %
10048 Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
10049 %
10050 Parker's Law:
10051 Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
10052 %
10053 Parkinson's Fifth Law:
10054 If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good
10055 bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
10056 %
10057 Parkinson's Fourth Law:
10058 The number of people in any working group tends to increase
10059 regardless of the amount of work to be done.
10060 %
10061 Parsley
10062 is gharsley.
10063 -- Ogden Nash
10064 %
10065 Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
10066 %
10067 Pascal is not a high-level language.
10068 -- Steven Feiner
10069 %
10070 Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat.
10071 -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340
10072 %
10073 Pascal Users:
10074 To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
10075 death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed.
10076 %
10077 Pascal, n.:
10078 A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
10079 his grave if he knew about it.
10080 %
10081 Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
10082 -- Eric Hoffer
10083 %
10084 Patageometry, n.:
10085 The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
10086 under brain transplants.
10087 %
10088 Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
10089 %
10090 Paul's Law:
10091 In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
10092 save.
10093 %
10094 Paul's Law:
10095 You can't fall off the floor.
10096 %
10097 Peace, n.:
10098 In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
10099 periods of fighting.
10100 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10101 %
10102 Peanut Blossoms
10103
10104 4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
10105 4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
10106 4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
10107 8 eggs 4 tsp. soda
10108 4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
10109
10110 Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
10111 sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
10112 Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
10113 hell of a lot.
10114 %
10115 Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
10116 Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
10117 it.
10118 %
10119 Pedaeration, n.:
10120 The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
10121 sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
10122 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
10123 %
10124 Penguin Trivia #46:
10125 Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
10126 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
10127 %
10128 People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
10129 -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10130 %
10131 People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
10132 the future.
10133 %
10134 People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
10135 -- Ken Kesey
10136 %
10137 People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
10138 %
10139 People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better
10140 press than people who are just funny and smart.
10141 -- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
10142 %
10143 People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
10144 slept in a room with a single mosquito.
10145 %
10146 People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
10147 haven't what they want that they don't want it.
10148 -- Ogden Nash
10149 %
10150 People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
10151 Benjamin Franklin said it first.
10152 %
10153 People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
10154 %
10155 People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they
10156 did yesterday.
10157 %
10158 Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
10159 "Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
10160 -- Aelius Donatus
10161 %
10162 Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
10163 %
10164 Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
10165 when there is no longer anything to take away.
10166 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
10167 %
10168 Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
10169 %
10170 Peter's Law of Substitution:
10171 Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
10172 themselves.
10173 %
10174 Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
10175 exciting Camden, New Jersey.
10176 %
10177 Philogeny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogeny.
10178 %
10179 Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
10180 -- John Keats
10181 %
10182 Pick another fortune cookie.
10183 %
10184 Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
10185 hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
10186 sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ...
10187 %
10188 Pig, n.:
10189 An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
10190 by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
10191 inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
10192 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10193 %
10194 PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
10195 You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
10196 followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your
10197 associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack
10198 confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible
10199 things to small animals.
10200 %
10201 PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
10202 Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
10203 American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as
10204 nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will
10205 probably get run over by a bus.
10206 %
10207 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
10208
10209 (7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
10210 but a steady left tail light. This means
10211
10212 (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
10213 to call the problem to the driver's attention.
10214 (b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
10215 (c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
10216 (d) the driver is from out of town.
10217
10218 The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
10219 countries to signal turns.
10220 %
10221 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
10222
10223 (8) Pedestrians are
10224
10225 (a) irrelevant.
10226 (b) communists.
10227 (c) a nuisance.
10228 (d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
10229
10230 The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
10231 totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
10232 %
10233 Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
10234 -- Don Marquis
10235 %
10236 PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
10237 solution set.
10238 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
10239 %
10240 Plaese porrf raed.
10241 -- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
10242 %
10243 Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
10244 because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
10245 couldn't compete successfully with poets.
10246 -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
10247 Shell"
10248 %
10249 Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them.
10250 %
10251 Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.
10252 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
10253 %
10254 Please ignore previous fortune.
10255 %
10256 Please take note:
10257 %
10258 Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas"
10259 until you are told that those rooms are "punched out". Once punched
10260 out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
10261 and such.
10262 -- N. Meyrowitz
10263 %
10264 Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
10265 %
10266 Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
10267 requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
10268 into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
10269 problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
10270 radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
10271 plumbing works.
10272 A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
10273 except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
10274 it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
10275 and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
10276 all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
10277 kill you.
10278 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
10279 %
10280 PLUNDERER'S THEME
10281 (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
10282
10283 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
10284 If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
10285 Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
10286 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
10287 %
10288 Pohl's law:
10289 Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
10290 %
10291 Police: Good evening, are you the host?
10292 Host: No.
10293 Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
10294 Host: About the drugs?
10295 Police: No.
10296 Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
10297 Police: No, the noise.
10298 Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
10299 or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
10300 background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
10301 The neighbors?
10302 Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
10303 complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
10304 ask the host to quiet things down?
10305 Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagen bug with primitive
10306 religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
10307 room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
10308 lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
10309 onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
10310 down.
10311 %
10312 Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
10313 all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
10314 %
10315 Politician, n.:
10316 An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
10317 organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the
10318 agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared
10319 with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
10320 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10321 %
10322 Politician, n.:
10323 From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or
10324 "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence
10325 "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
10326 -- Martin Pitt
10327 %
10328 Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
10329 where there is no river.
10330 -- Nikita Khrushchev
10331 %
10332 Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart enough
10333 to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
10334 %
10335 Polymer physicists are into chains.
10336 %
10337 Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
10338 Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The
10339 white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
10340 it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
10341 name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with
10342 laughter, singing
10343
10344 Half a pound of tuppenny rice
10345 Half a pound of treacle
10346 That's the way the chimney smokes
10347 Pope Goestheveezl
10348
10349 The square was finally cleared by armed carabinieri with tears of
10350 laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for
10351 hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
10352 Hans Neizant B"ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"oln in 1653.
10353 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
10354 %
10355 Portable, adj.:
10356 Survives system reboot.
10357 %
10358 Positive, adj.:
10359 Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
10360 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10361 %
10362 Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
10363 %
10364 Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
10365 -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
10366 %
10367 Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
10368 %
10369 Power, n:
10370 The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
10371 %
10372 Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
10373 more time for dreaming.
10374 -- J. P. McEvoy
10375 %
10376 Predestination was doomed from the start.
10377 %
10378 President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
10379 forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
10380 %
10381 President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the
10382 vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
10383 -- The Washington Post
10384 %
10385 Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
10386 %
10387 Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
10388 It's on the other side.
10389 %
10390 [Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
10391 to see him work.
10392 -- Winston Churchill
10393 %
10394 Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
10395 %
10396 Probable-Possible, my black hen,
10397 She lays eggs in the Relative When.
10398 She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
10399 Because she's unable to postulate how.
10400 -- Frederick Winsor
10401 %
10402 Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have
10403 orgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, which
10404 is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime.
10405 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
10406 Teen Should Know"
10407 %
10408 Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
10409 encryption standard and they came up with ...
10410 Student: EBCDIC!
10411 %
10412 Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
10413 Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on
10414 his exam. Newell has now tossed five shutouts this quarter. Newell's
10415 earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
10416 %
10417 Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
10418 build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
10419 to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
10420 -- Rich Cook
10421 %
10422 Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
10423
10424 This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction
10425 techniques are very popular; even the military used them.
10426
10427 SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
10428
10429 We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
10430 for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
10431 as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
10432 trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We
10433 can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
10434 about _n.
10435 QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
10436 %
10437 Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
10438 SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
10439 (1) Horses have an even number of legs.
10440 (2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
10441 (3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
10442 legs for a horse.
10443 (4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
10444 (5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.
10445
10446 Topics to be covered in future issues include proof by:
10447 Intimidation
10448 Gesticulation (handwaving)
10449 "Try it; it works"
10450 Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
10451 Blatant assertion
10452 Changing all the 2's to _n's
10453 Mutual consent
10454 Lack of a counterexample, and
10455 "It stands to reason"
10456 %
10457 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
10458
10459 BBW Branch Both Ways
10460 BEW Branch Either Way
10461 BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full
10462 BH Branch and Hang
10463 BMR Branch Multiple Registers
10464 BOB Branch On Bug
10465 BPO Branch on Power Off
10466 BST Backspace and Stretch Tape
10467 CDS Condense and Destroy System
10468 CLBR Clobber Register
10469 CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately
10470 CM Circulate Memory
10471 CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming
10472 CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip
10473 CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
10474 %
10475 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
10476
10477 DC Divide and Conquer
10478 DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key
10479 DO Divide and Overflow
10480 EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator
10481 EPI Execute Programmer Immediately
10482 EROS Erase Read Only Storage
10483 EXCE Execute Customer Engineer
10484 HCF Halt and Catch Fire
10485 IBP Insert Bug and Proceed
10486 INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out])
10487 PBC Print and Break Chain
10488 PDSK Punch Disk
10489 %
10490 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
10491
10492 PI Punch Invalid
10493 POPI Punch Operator Immediately
10494 PVLC Punch Variable Length Card
10495 RASC Read And Shred Card
10496 RPM Read Programmers Mind
10497 RSSC Reduce Speed, Step Carefully (for improved accuracy)
10498 RTAB Rewind Tape and Break
10499 RWDSK Rewind Disk
10500 RWOC Read Writing On Card
10501 SCRBL Scribble to disk - faster than a write
10502 SLC Search for Lost Chord
10503 SPSW Scramble Program Status Word
10504 SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk
10505 STROM Store in Read Only Memory
10506 TDB Transfer and Drop Bit
10507 WBT Water Binary Tree
10508 %
10509 Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
10510 than the both put together.
10511 %
10512 Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
10513 three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
10514 %
10515 Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
10516 anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
10517 -- H. L. Mencken
10518 %
10519 Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves
10520 to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way
10521 to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the
10522 cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in
10523 fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a
10524 lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of
10525 the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
10526 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
10527 %
10528 Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
10529 %
10530 Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
10531 %
10532 Put no trust in cryptic comments.
10533 %
10534 Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
10535 -- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
10536 %
10537 Putt's Law:
10538 Technology is dominated by two types of people:
10539 Those who understand what they do not manage.
10540 Those who manage what they do not understand.
10541 %
10542 Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
10543 A: One per person.
10544 %
10545 Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
10546 A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
10547 %
10548 Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat ?
10549 A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
10550 %
10551 Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat?
10552 A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
10553
10554 Q: How long does it take?
10555 A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've
10556 brought with them.
10557
10558 Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
10559 A: They replace your generator.
10560 %
10561 Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10562 A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb
10563 itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
10564 reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
10565 maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
10566 %
10567 Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb
10568 in San Francisco?
10569 A: Both of them.
10570 %
10571 Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to do a logical right shift?
10572 A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
10573 %
10574 Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a job?
10575 A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
10576 %
10577 Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
10578 A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
10579 Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
10580 the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
10581 of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
10582 of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
10583 %
10584 Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10585 A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
10586 light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
10587 plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer
10588 prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb
10589 assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
10590 %
10591 Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10592 A: One and a half.
10593 %
10594 Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
10595 A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
10596 to the earlier joke.
10597 %
10598 Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
10599 A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
10600 Californians trying to share the experience.
10601 %
10602 Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
10603 A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
10604 with brightly colored machine tools.
10605 %
10606 Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
10607 A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
10608 of the way.
10609 %
10610 Q: What's a light-year?
10611 A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
10612 %
10613 Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
10614 A: Because it was on the other side.
10615 %
10616 Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
10617 A: To stamp out forest fires.
10618
10619 Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
10620 A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
10621 %
10622 Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
10623 A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
10624 %
10625 Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What
10626 should I do?
10627
10628 A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on
10629 believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be
10630 the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No
10631 time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if
10632 somebody else has made the correction.
10633
10634 And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're
10635 the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have
10636 to inform the whole net right away!
10637
10638 -- Brad Templeton, "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions
10639 on Netiquette"
10640 %
10641 Quality Control, n.:
10642 The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
10643 a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
10644 %
10645 Question:
10646 Man Invented Alcohol,
10647 God Invented Grass.
10648 Who do you trust?
10649 %
10650 Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
10651 %
10652 Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
10653 %
10654 Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
10655
10656 (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
10657 %
10658 Quigley's Law:
10659 Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
10660 atttempt to use it.
10661 %
10662 QUOTE OF THE DAY:
10663
10664 `
10665
10666 %
10667 Qvid me anxivs svm?
10668 %
10669 QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]:
10670 1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69
10671 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [colloq.] one
10672 thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [anat.] a
10673 painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [slang]
10674 person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert.
10675 -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.
10676 %
10677 Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
10678 %
10679 Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
10680 I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
10681 computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
10682 store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
10683 all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all
10684 the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are
10685 they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current
10686 rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
10687 Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be
10688 impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying
10689 goes, giving away the store?
10690 -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
10691 %
10692 Ray's Rule of Precision:
10693 Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
10694 %
10695 Razors pain you;
10696 Rivers are damp;
10697 Acids stain you;
10698 And drugs cause cramp.
10699 Guns aren't lawful;
10700 Nooses give;
10701 Gas smells awful;
10702 You might as well live.
10703 -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926
10704 %
10705 Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
10706 the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
10707 with pictures.
10708 %
10709 Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
10710 Congress. But I repeat myself.
10711 -- Mark Twain
10712 %
10713 Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic
10714 value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is
10715 much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice
10716 this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA.
10717 %
10718 Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware
10719 has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing
10720 machines are so poor at I/O.
10721 %
10722 Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are
10723 so long they can't afford the disk space.
10724 %
10725 Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
10726 in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
10727 %
10728 Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker
10729 with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they
10730 hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for
10731 applications.)
10732 %
10733 Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
10734 on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
10735 sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
10736 %
10737 Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured
10738 programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-
10739 trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
10740 clear desks.
10741 %
10742 Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
10743 doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell
10744 quiche.
10745 %
10746 Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it
10747 should be hard to understand.
10748 %
10749 Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the
10750 illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how
10751 much good it did them.
10752 %
10753 Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
10754 you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
10755 wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
10756 spring up in the middle of the machine room.
10757 %
10758 Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write
10759 in BASIC after reaching puberty.
10760 %
10761 Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress
10762 freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who
10763 wear white socks.
10764 %
10765 Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who
10766 can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
10767 %
10768 Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
10769 %
10770 Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
10771 functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
10772 %
10773 Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
10774 This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
10775 computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
10776 %
10777 Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
10778 greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
10779 moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
10780 systems could be virtual at *___all* levels. They would like personal
10781 computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
10782 DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
10783 Correctness Verification Aid packages.
10784 %
10785 Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the
10786 job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like
10787 using an undocumented external procedure.
10788 %
10789 Real Time, adj.:
10790 Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
10791 and then.
10792 %
10793 Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
10794 afraid to break your face.
10795 %
10796 Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
10797 down the system for days.
10798 %
10799 Real Users hate Real Programmers.
10800 %
10801 Real Users know your home telephone number.
10802 %
10803 Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
10804 program doesn't deliver it.
10805 %
10806 Real Users never use the Help key.
10807 %
10808 Real World, The n.:
10809 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may
10810 be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
10811 programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
10812 to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
10813 tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5.
10814 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
10815 "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
10816 pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
10817 of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
10818 deceased person.
10819 %
10820 Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
10821 %
10822 Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
10823 %
10824 Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
10825 -- Patrick Sky
10826 %
10827 Reality is for people who lack imagination.
10828 %
10829 Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
10830 %
10831 Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
10832 -- Alvy Ray Smith
10833 %
10834 Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"
10835 -- Philip K. Dick
10836 %
10837 Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!
10838 %
10839 Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
10840 being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
10841 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
10842 %
10843 Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
10844 lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
10845 but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
10846 Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3
10847 recessions.
10848 %
10849 Reclaimer, spare that tree!
10850 Take not a single bit!
10851 It used to point to me,
10852 Now I'm protecting it.
10853 It was the reader's CONS
10854 That made it, paired by dot;
10855 Now, GC, for the nonce,
10856 Thou shalt reclaim it not.
10857 %
10858 "Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
10859 Candy
10860 Is dandy
10861 But liquor
10862 Is quicker.
10863 -- Ogden Nash
10864 %
10865 "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe
10866 again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
10867 which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
10868 spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
10869 starfield surrounding the ship.
10870
10871 "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC
10872 announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they
10873 are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been
10874 intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and
10875 transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
10876 Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
10877 -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
10878 %
10879 Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
10880 If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
10881 %
10882 Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
10883 -- Anatole France
10884 %
10885 Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it.
10886 -- Dave Barry
10887 %
10888 Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
10889 worse in Cleveland.
10890 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
10891 %
10892 Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good
10893 offense!
10894 %
10895 Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
10896 %
10897 Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
10898 %
10899 Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
10900 -- Dave Butler
10901 %
10902 Renning's Maxim:
10903 Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
10904 %
10905 Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
10906 Civilization?
10907 Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
10908 %
10909 Reporter, n.:
10910 A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
10911 tempest of words.
10912 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10913 %
10914 REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
10915
10916 SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
10917 the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
10918 carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
10919 I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
10920 of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
10921 do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
10922 ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
10923 need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
10924 career by being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
10925 that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
10926 can't help it.
10927 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
10928 %
10929 Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
10930 -- Wernher von Braun
10931 %
10932 Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
10933 another chance later on.
10934 %
10935 Review Questions
10936
10937 (1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
10938 and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
10939 he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
10940 Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
10941
10942 (2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
10943 twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
10944 every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
10945 his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
10946
10947 (3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
10948 the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
10949 pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
10950 Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
10951 %
10952 Rhode's Law:
10953 When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
10954 circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
10955 empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred,
10956 induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always
10957 for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage,
10958 material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or
10959 none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed,
10960 proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably,
10961 universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it
10962 becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
10963 %
10964 Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
10965 -- Steven Wright
10966 %
10967 Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
10968 Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
10969 reject the proposal.
10970 %
10971 Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
10972 -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo"
10973 %
10974 ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
10975 MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
10976 door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
10977 %
10978 Rudin's Law:
10979 If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it
10980 every time.
10981 %
10982 Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
10983 Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
10984 be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person
10985 shall be deemed to be a cat.
10986 %
10987 Rule of Creative Research:
10988 (1) Never draw what you can copy.
10989 (2) Never copy what you can trace.
10990 (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
10991 %
10992 Rule of Defactualization:
10993 Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
10994 %
10995 Rule of Feline Frustration:
10996 When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
10997 content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
10998 %
10999 Rule of the Great:
11000 When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
11001 thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
11002 %
11003 Rules for Academic Deans:
11004 (1) HIDE!!!!
11005 (2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
11006 -- Father Damian C. Fandal
11007 %
11008 Rules for driving in New York:
11009 (1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
11010 (2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers
11011 on.
11012 (3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
11013 intersection.
11014 %
11015 RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
11016 (1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
11017 (2) Never leave the table hungry.
11018 (3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
11019 (4) Enjoy your food.
11020 (5) Enjoy your companion's food.
11021 (6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
11022 accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
11023 (7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
11024 for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
11025 brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
11026 (8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
11027 (9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
11028 can always eat it later.
11029 (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
11030 (11) Avoid blue food.
11031 -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
11032 %
11033 Rules:
11034 (1) The boss is always right.
11035 (2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
11036 %
11037 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
11038 Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.
11039
11040 (1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs,
11041 ants.
11042 (2) Something is missing in your personal relationships.
11043 (3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
11044 (4) You have a hard time getting a waiter.
11045 (5) Exotic birds flock around you.
11046 (6) People ignore you at parties.
11047 (7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
11048 (8) You no longer get off on cocaine.
11049 %
11050 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
11051 (1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
11052 bomb; use the stairs.
11053 (2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
11054 the ground.
11055 (3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
11056 (4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
11057 psychological problems.
11058 (5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to
11059 recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed
11060 potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
11061 (6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs
11062 will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
11063 (7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
11064 (8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
11065 staggering illegally.
11066 (9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
11067 sanitary due to limited circulation.
11068 (10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
11069 D-Day.
11070 %
11071 SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
11072 You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
11073 tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority
11074 of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People
11075 laugh at you a great deal.
11076 %
11077 San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
11078 -- Herb Caen
11079 %
11080 San Francisco, n.:
11081 Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
11082 %
11083 Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
11084 -- Mark Harrold
11085 %
11086 Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
11087 He must be a communist.
11088 And a beard and long hair,
11089 Must be a pacifist.
11090
11091 What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
11092 -- Arlo Guthrie
11093 %
11094 Satellite Safety Tip #14:
11095 If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
11096 %
11097 Sattinger's Law:
11098 It works better if you plug it in.
11099 %
11100 Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
11101 Is like being nowhere at all,
11102 All through the day how the hours rush by,
11103 You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
11104 -- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
11105 %
11106 Sauron is alive in Argentina!
11107 %
11108 Save energy: be apathetic.
11109 %
11110 Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
11111 %
11112 Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
11113 %
11114 Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I
11115 ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.
11116 -- Steven Wright
11117 %
11118 SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
11119 -- Ken Thompson
11120 %
11121 Schapiro's Explanation:
11122 The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's
11123 because they use more manure.
11124 %
11125 Schizophrenia beats being alone.
11126 %
11127 Schlattwhapper, n.:
11128 The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
11129 hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
11130 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11131 %
11132 Schnuffel, n.:
11133 A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in
11134 mixed company.
11135 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11136 %
11137 Schwiggle, n.:
11138 The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a
11139 pencil.
11140 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11141 %
11142 Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
11143 of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
11144 is not necessarily science.
11145 -- Henri Poincar'e
11146 %
11147 Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
11148 %
11149 Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
11150 -- William Buckley
11151
11152 %
11153 SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
11154 You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
11155 achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
11156 ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.
11157 %
11158 Scott's first Law:
11159 No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
11160 %
11161 Scott's second Law:
11162 When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
11163 to have been wrong in the first place.
11164
11165 Corollary:
11166 After the correction has been found in error, it will be
11167 impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
11168 %
11169 Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
11170 Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
11171 Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
11172 Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
11173 Spock: Affirmative.
11174 Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
11175 Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
11176 %
11177 Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
11178 %
11179 Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
11180 Presidency.
11181 -- Richard Nixon
11182 %
11183 Second Law of Business Meetings:
11184 If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
11185 will pick the wrong one.
11186
11187 Corollary:
11188 If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
11189 wrong, anyway.
11190 %
11191 Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
11192 In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
11193 multiline message byte.
11194 In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
11195 must be sent passive true.
11196 The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
11197 (1) The ANRS if DAV is false
11198 (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
11199 (a) The LADS is active
11200 (b) Nor LACS is active
11201
11202 -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
11203 Programmable Instrumentation
11204 %
11205 Security check: INTRUDER ALERT!
11206 %
11207 Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
11208 She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
11209 Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
11210 Silently scheming,
11211 Sightlessly seeking
11212 Some savage, spectacular suicide.
11213 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
11214 %
11215 See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ...
11216 %
11217 Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
11218 Ice Cream cures all ills.
11219 %
11220 Self Test for Paranoia:
11221 You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
11222 your own fault.
11223 %
11224 Seminars, n.:
11225 From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
11226 %
11227 Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
11228 notify you if the record has pornographic material or
11229 material glorifying violence?"
11230 Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
11231 Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
11232 legs on the album cover is good indication that it's
11233 not for little Johnny."
11234
11235 -- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock
11236 lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985
11237 %
11238 Senate, n.:
11239 A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
11240 misdemeanors.
11241 -- Ambrose Bierce
11242 %
11243 Serenity through viciousness.
11244 %
11245 Serocki's Stricture:
11246 Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
11247 %
11248 Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
11249 %
11250 "Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated
11251 thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY
11252 advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
11253 "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly.
11254 "Too proud?" the other enquired.
11255 Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"
11256 she said, "that one can't help growing older."
11257 "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With
11258 proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
11259 -- Lewis Carroll
11260 %
11261 Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
11262 big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
11263 reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's
11264 build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up
11265 like crabgrass all over the United States.
11266 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
11267 %
11268 Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke.
11269 %
11270 Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
11271 -- Swami X
11272 %
11273 Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
11274 -- M. C. Reed
11275 %
11276 Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
11277 it's one of the best.
11278 -- Woody Allen
11279 %
11280 Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
11281 A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
11282 temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
11283 A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagogue
11284 functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
11285 A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
11286 middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be
11287 bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
11288 The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
11289 am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
11290 he's nobody!"
11291 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
11292 %
11293 Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
11294 during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
11295 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
11296 Teen Should Know"
11297 %
11298 Shaw's Principle:
11299 Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
11300 want to use it.
11301 %
11302 She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.
11303 -- Gypsy Rose Lee
11304 %
11305 She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
11306 -- Mark Twain
11307 %
11308 She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them
11309 were bad.
11310 %
11311 She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
11312 have poured on a waffle ...
11313 %
11314 She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
11315 you should hear me play piano.'
11316 -- Morrisey
11317 %
11318 She's genuinely bogus.
11319 %
11320 Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
11321 taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
11322 excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
11323 -- Samuel Johnson
11324 %
11325 SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
11326 POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
11327 %
11328 Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
11329 playing golf with his boss.
11330 %
11331 Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
11332 %
11333 Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
11334 -- from the Brown University Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
11335 %
11336 Silverman's Law:
11337 If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
11338 %
11339 Simon's Law:
11340 Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
11341 %
11342 Since I hurt my pendulum
11343 My life is all erratic.
11344 My parrot, who was cordial,
11345 Is now transmitting static.
11346 The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
11347 The cat keeps doing poo.
11348 The only thing that keeps me sane
11349 Is talking to my shoe.
11350 -- My Shoe
11351 %
11352 Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
11353 alive.
11354 -- John Sloan
11355 %
11356 Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
11357 -- Bob "Mountain" Beck
11358 %
11359 [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
11360 vices I admire.
11361 -- Winston Churchill
11362 %
11363 Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
11364 Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
11365 excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
11366 This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally
11367 examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published
11368 Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
11369 printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry
11370 comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
11371 no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
11372 %
11373 Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
11374 That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
11375 or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should
11376 have gotten.
11377 %
11378 Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
11379 to work.
11380 %
11381 Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
11382 when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
11383 apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I
11384 neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
11385 tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they
11386 were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
11387 souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a
11388 testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
11389 chains.
11390 -- Frederick Douglass
11391 %
11392 Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
11393 (1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
11394 check.
11395 (2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
11396 (3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
11397 attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
11398 attracted to dark objects.
11399 %
11400 Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...
11401 %
11402 Slurm, n.:
11403 The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
11404 it sits in the dish too long.
11405 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11406 %
11407 Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
11408 -- Fletcher Knebel
11409 %
11410 Snacktrek, n.:
11411 The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
11412 returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
11413 materialized.
11414 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11415 %
11416 So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
11417 your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
11418 hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
11419 array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
11420
11421 ... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
11422 were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
11423 that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
11424 toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
11425 made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
11426 format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
11427 -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
11428 Revolution"
11429 %
11430 So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
11431 praise of intelligence.
11432 -- Bertrand Russell
11433 %
11434 ... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
11435 who wish to tyranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
11436 and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
11437 and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
11438 -- Voltarine de Cleyre
11439 %
11440 So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
11441 With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
11442 maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
11443 corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
11444 flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
11445 it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
11446 I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
11447 the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
11448 Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
11449 I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
11450 heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
11451 unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
11452 up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
11453 opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
11454 our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
11455 the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
11456 cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
11457 these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
11458 into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
11459 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
11460 %
11461 So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
11462 pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
11463 its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
11464 imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
11465 and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
11466 and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
11467 gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
11468 -- Samuel Foote
11469 %
11470 ... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
11471 procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
11472 to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
11473 sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
11474 documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
11475 listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
11476 documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
11477 under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
11478 effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
11479 scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
11480 in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
11481 thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
11482 then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
11483 dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all
11484 along.
11485 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
11486 %
11487 So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway?
11488 And why can't he ever remember his Bible?
11489 %
11490 Sodd's Second Law:
11491 Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
11492 bound to occur.
11493 %
11494 Software, n.:
11495 Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
11496 %
11497 Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
11498 %
11499 Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
11500 -- Ed Howe
11501 %
11502 Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
11503 celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
11504 stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
11505 "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
11506 of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
11507 government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
11508 Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
11509 billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
11510 it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
11511 thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
11512 the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
11513 and go to a mall.
11514 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
11515 %
11516 Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
11517 people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
11518 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
11519 %
11520 Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only
11521 one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
11522 %
11523 Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
11524 them on the head.
11525 %
11526 Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic.
11527 %
11528 Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
11529 you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
11530 worse.
11531 -- Avery
11532 %
11533 Some points to remember [about animals]:
11534
11535 (1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
11536 hippopotamuses;
11537 (2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
11538 front of your clothes;
11539 (3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
11540 you have just kicked.
11541 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
11542 %
11543 Some primal termite knocked on wood.
11544 And tasted it, and found it good.
11545 And that is why your Cousin May
11546 Fell through the parlor floor today.
11547 -- Ogden Nash
11548 %
11549 Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand
11550 progress.
11551 %
11552 Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
11553 progress.
11554 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
11555 %
11556 Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
11557 pens will multiply instead of disappear.
11558 %
11559 Someone will try to honk your nose today.
11560 %
11561 Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
11562 the only ashtray.
11563 %
11564 Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
11565 -- Lily Tomlin
11566 %
11567 "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
11568 Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
11569 intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
11570 and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
11571 best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
11572 we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
11573
11574 "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
11575 -- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
11576 %
11577 Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
11578 %
11579 Song Title of the Week:
11580 "They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
11581 in me."
11582 %
11583 Sooner or later you must pay for your sins.
11584 (Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune).
11585 %
11586 Sorry, no fortune this time.
11587 %
11588 Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
11589 %
11590 Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
11591 bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
11592 road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
11593 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
11594 %
11595 Spare no expense to save money on this one.
11596 -- Samuel Goldwyn
11597 %
11598 Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
11599 If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
11600 if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question
11601 back at him.
11602 %
11603 Speak roughly to your little boy,
11604 And beat him when he sneezes:
11605 He only does it to annoy
11606 Because he knows it teases.
11607
11608 Wow! wow! wow!
11609
11610 I speak severely to my boy,
11611 And beat him when he sneezes:
11612 For he can thoroughly enjoy
11613 The pepper when he pleases!
11614
11615 Wow! wow! wow!
11616 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
11617 %
11618 Speak roughly to your little VAX,
11619 And boot it when it crashes;
11620 It knows that one cannot relax
11621 Because the paging thrashes!
11622
11623 Wow! Wow! Wow!
11624
11625 I speak severely to my VAX,
11626 And boot it when it crashes;
11627 In spite of all my favorite hacks
11628 My jobs it always thrashes!
11629
11630 Wow! Wow! Wow!
11631 %
11632 Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
11633 %
11634 Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
11635 -- Dave Millman
11636 %
11637 Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
11638 sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
11639 cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free
11640 the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a
11641 bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
11642 controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
11643 passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same
11644 memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well,
11645 no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously
11646 designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
11647 %
11648 Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
11649
11650 With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
11651 He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
11652 And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
11653 As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
11654 Helpless users with projects due
11655 Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
11656
11657 Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
11658 Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
11659
11660 * VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
11661 * DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
11662 -- Curtis Jackson
11663 %
11664 Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
11665 these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
11666 to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
11667 communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
11668 on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
11669 life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
11670 communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____least
11671 he can do is to Shut Up!
11672 -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
11673 %
11674 Speed is subsittute fo accurancy.
11675 %
11676 Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
11677 The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
11678 number of times you have looked at it.
11679 %
11680 Spelling is a lossed art.
11681 %
11682 Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
11683 %
11684 Spirtle, n.:
11685 The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
11686 your eye.
11687 -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
11688 %
11689 Spouse, n.:
11690 Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
11691 wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
11692 %
11693 Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
11694 drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'ee of bat guano; and the
11695 greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
11696 take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
11697 -- Harlan Ellison
11698 %
11699 Stay away from flying saucers today.
11700 %
11701 Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
11702 %
11703 Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
11704 %
11705 Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
11706 Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
11707 another drink.
11708 %
11709 Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
11710 Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
11711 handle.
11712 %
11713 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
11714 %
11715 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
11716 Now, if they'd only take a bath ...
11717 %
11718 Stult's Report:
11719 Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
11720 fight the solutions.
11721 %
11722 Stupid, n.:
11723 Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
11724 %
11725 Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
11726 %
11727 Sturgeon's Law:
11728 90% of everything is crud.
11729 %
11730 Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
11731 editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
11732 -- Mark Twain
11733 %
11734 Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
11735 before it is understood.
11736 %
11737 Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
11738 %
11739 Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
11740 without his duck ...
11741 %
11742 (Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
11743
11744 To code the impossible code,
11745 To bring up a virgin machine,
11746 To pop out of endless recursion,
11747 To grok what appears on the screen,
11748
11749 To right the unrightable bug,
11750 To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
11751 To mount the unmountable magtape,
11752 To stop the unstoppable crash!
11753 %
11754 Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
11755 %
11756 Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
11757 %
11758 Support your local police force -- steal!!
11759 %
11760 Support your local Search and Rescue unit -- get lost.
11761 %
11762 Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
11763 %
11764 Surprise due today. Also the rent.
11765 %
11766 Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
11767 %
11768 Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type
11769 in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
11770 the room is punishable under law:
11771
11772 Name #
11773
11774
11775 %
11776 Swahili, n.:
11777 The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions.
11778 -- Johnny Hart
11779 %
11780 Sweater, n.:
11781 A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
11782 %
11783 Swipple's Rule of Order:
11784 He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
11785 %
11786 Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
11787 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
11788 %
11789 Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
11790 infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
11791 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
11792 %
11793 _
11794 _ / \ o
11795 / \ | | o o o
11796 | | | | _ o o o o
11797 | \_| | / \ o o o
11798 \__ | | | o o
11799 | | | | ______ ~~~~ _____
11800 | |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__
11801 | ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\
11802 | | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " )
11803 | | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
11804 | | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\
11805 | | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\
11806 // | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\
11807 // ( ) / / \` \__ \\
11808 //-------------------------------------------------------------\\
11809
11810 Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
11811 start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
11812 then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
11813 music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
11814 -- H. S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
11815 %
11816 T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
11817 He don't rock, and he don't roll;
11818 Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
11819 He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
11820 -- The Roguelet's ABC
11821 %
11822 Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
11823 hole in his head.
11824 %
11825 Tact, n.:
11826 The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
11827 %
11828 Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
11829 %
11830 Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
11831 enough cheese.
11832 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
11833 %
11834 Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
11835 %
11836 Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
11837 needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
11838 -- Kipling
11839 %
11840 Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit
11841 back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
11842 beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
11843 drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
11844 nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
11845 and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
11846 Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
11847 no need to improve ...
11848 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
11849 %
11850 Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
11851 your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
11852 and they'll call you crazy.
11853 -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
11854 %
11855 Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
11856 -- Euripides
11857 %
11858 Talkers are no good doers.
11859 -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
11860 %
11861 Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
11862 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
11863 %
11864 TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
11865 You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
11866 determination and work like hell. Most people think you are
11867 stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.
11868 %
11869 Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
11870 the tree."
11871 -- Russell Long
11872 %
11873 Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
11874 out of the market.
11875 %
11876 Taxes, n.:
11877 Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
11878 an extension.
11879 %
11880 Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when they
11881 grows up, they will never be able to edge their car onto a freeway.
11882 %
11883 Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
11884 %
11885 Technological progress has merely provided us
11886 with more efficient means for going backwards.
11887 -- Aldous Huxley
11888 %
11889 Telephone, n.:
11890 An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
11891 advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
11892 -- Ambrose Bierce
11893 %
11894 Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
11895 Is those things arms, or is they legs?
11896 I marvel at thee, Octopus;
11897 If I were thou, I'd call me us.
11898 -- Ogden Nash
11899 %
11900 Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
11901 writing.
11902 -- R. Geis
11903 %
11904 Terence, this is stupid stuff:
11905 You eat your victuals fast enough;
11906 There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
11907 To see the rate you drink your beer.
11908 But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
11909 It gives a chap the belly-ache.
11910 The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
11911 It sleeps well the horned head:
11912 We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
11913 To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
11914 Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
11915 Your friends to death before their time.
11916 Moping, melancholy mad:
11917 Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.
11918 -- A. E. Housman
11919 %
11920 Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
11921 surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
11922 hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
11923 hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother.
11924 -- Len Cool, "American Pie"
11925 %
11926 Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
11927 pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
11928 until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
11929 ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
11930 because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
11931 fact, for he merely said:
11932
11933 "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
11934 it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
11935 because it is impossible."
11936
11937 Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
11938 philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
11939 -- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
11940
11941 (Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
11942 %
11943 Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
11944 %
11945 Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
11946 %
11947 Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
11948 one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
11949 -- J. Finnegan, USC.
11950 %
11951 Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
11952 -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
11953 %
11954 That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver.
11955 -- Foghorn Leghorn
11956 %
11957 That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
11958 -- Moliere
11959 %
11960 That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
11961 %
11962 That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
11963 -- Dorothy Parker
11964 %
11965 The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
11966 %
11967 The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
11968 people who want some.
11969 -- Dwight MacDonald
11970 %
11971 The Abrams' Principle:
11972 The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
11973 %
11974 The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
11975 -- Thomas Jefferson
11976 %
11977 The Advertising Agency Song:
11978
11979 When your client's hopping mad,
11980 Put his picture in the ad.
11981 If he still should prove refractory,
11982 Add a picture of his factory.
11983 %
11984 The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
11985 someone with it.
11986 -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340
11987 %
11988 ... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
11989 consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
11990 of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
11991 listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
11992 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
11993 %
11994 The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas
11995 River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little
11996 Rock.
11997 %
11998 The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
11999 Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
12000 and color, but also on ability.
12001 -- T. Lehrer
12002 %
12003 The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
12004 -- Bill Murray
12005 %
12006 The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
12007 in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
12008 Declaration not for that, but for future use.
12009 -- Abraham Lincoln
12010 %
12011 The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m.
12012 %
12013 The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
12014 average man can see better than he can think.
12015 %
12016 The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
12017 people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried
12018 anything.
12019 -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
12020 %
12021 The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
12022 cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
12023 difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
12024 which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
12025 here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
12026 RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you
12027 want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking
12028 lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
12029 squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
12030 and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
12031 his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
12032 neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
12033 lots.
12034 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
12035 %
12036 The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit
12037 called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in
12038 writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would
12039 be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices
12040 immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a
12041 bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special
12042 Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of
12043 paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty
12044 would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.
12045 The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to
12046 emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood
12047 Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
12048 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
12049 %
12050 The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
12051 but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
12052 %
12053 The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
12054 -- W. C. Fields
12055 %
12056 The best defense against logic is ignorance.
12057 %
12058 The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
12059 %
12060 "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
12061 blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
12062 You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
12063 night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
12064 love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
12065 know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only
12066 one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what
12067 wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
12068 never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
12069 dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a
12070 lot of things there are to learn."
12071 -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
12072 %
12073 The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
12074 is a match.
12075 -- Will Rogers
12076 %
12077 The bigger the theory the better.
12078 %
12079 The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
12080 time.
12081 -- Merrick Furst
12082 %
12083 The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss
12084 Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
12085
12086 It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been
12087 known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and,
12088 in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two
12089 under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of
12090 people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a
12091 city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking
12092 umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of
12093 activity that frightens the horses on the street ...
12094 %
12095 The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch.
12096 %
12097 The bogosity meter just pegged.
12098 %
12099 The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
12100 in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
12101 %
12102 The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
12103 To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
12104 program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and
12105 convert to the next higher units.
12106 %
12107 The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be.
12108 Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in
12109 automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
12110 -- Art Buchwald
12111 %
12112 The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
12113 bureaucracy.
12114 %
12115 The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
12116 flexibility and power of assembly language with the readability
12117 of assembly language.
12118 %
12119 The camel has a single hump;
12120 The dromedary two;
12121 Or else the other way around.
12122 I'm never sure. Are you?
12123 -- Ogden Nash
12124 %
12125 The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
12126 greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
12127 inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
12128 party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
12129 -- H. L. Mencken
12130 %
12131 The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.
12132 -- G. Fitch
12133 %
12134 The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
12135 at the steam fitters' picnic.
12136 %
12137 The chief cause of problems is solutions.
12138 -- Eric Sevareid
12139 %
12140 The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
12141 -- Alfred Adler
12142 %
12143 The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will
12144 walk carefully.
12145 -- Russian Proverb
12146 %
12147 The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
12148 %
12149 The Computer made me do it.
12150 %
12151 The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
12152 -- Alan Perlis
12153 %
12154 The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his
12155 memos.
12156 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
12157 %
12158 The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other
12159 subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up
12160 every bird watcher in the country.
12161 -- John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972
12162 %
12163 The Consultant's Curse:
12164 When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him
12165 what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong
12166 medicine, and is normally only required once.
12167 %
12168 The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
12169 none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
12170 Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
12171 Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
12172 talked about.
12173 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
12174 %
12175 The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
12176 %
12177 The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
12178 %
12179 The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to
12180 eat.
12181 -- John McNulty
12182 %
12183 The Crown is full of it!
12184 -- Nate Harris, 1775
12185 %
12186 The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should
12187 therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could
12188 hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to
12189 declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war,
12190 then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press.
12191 Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
12192 -- William Ellery Channing
12193 %
12194 The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
12195 %
12196 The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
12197 us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
12198 Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
12199 %
12200 The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
12201 %
12202 The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
12203 %
12204 The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
12205 into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him
12206 out again, it would be a calamity.
12207 -- Benjamin Disraeli
12208 %
12209 The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
12210 requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
12211 -- Robert Heinlein
12212 %
12213 The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
12214 following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
12215
12216 "I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
12217 Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
12218 Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
12219 "Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
12220 Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
12221 Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
12222 Macaroons are ____very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
12223 goyish. Lime soda is ____very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
12224 Jews won't go near them ..."
12225 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
12226 %
12227 The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
12228 a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
12229 %
12230 The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
12231 really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
12232 -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
12233 %
12234 The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show
12235 off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
12236 next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
12237 duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
12238 duck and returned it to his master.
12239 "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
12240 "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."
12241 %
12242 The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
12243 and owns the worm farm.
12244 -- Travis McGee
12245 %
12246 The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
12247 %
12248 The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
12249 add ten percent.
12250 %
12251 The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
12252 weather forecasters.
12253 -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
12254 %
12255 The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
12256 Compute' -- I forget which.
12257 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12258 %
12259 The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
12260 civilization.
12261 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
12262 %
12263 The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
12264 symposium to follow.
12265 %
12266 The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
12267 their children to speak it.
12268 -- G. B. Shaw
12269 %
12270 The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a
12271 remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
12272 -- Ambrose Bierce
12273 %
12274 The fact that it works is immaterial.
12275 -- L. Ogborn
12276 %
12277 The faster we go, the rounder we get.
12278 -- The Grateful Dead
12279 %
12280 The Fifth Rule:
12281 You have taken yourself too seriously.
12282 %
12283 The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
12284 -- Abbie Hoffman
12285 %
12286 The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
12287 Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
12288 tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
12289 forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
12290 fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
12291 threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked
12292 suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
12293 foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
12294 one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with
12295 dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found
12296 drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
12297 and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have
12298 thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
12299 of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left
12300 in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
12301 crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave
12302 Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
12303 a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
12304 throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
12305 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
12306 %
12307 The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
12308 management is that success equals skill.
12309 -- Robert Heller
12310 %
12311 The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
12312 child, was propounded to me by my father:
12313 "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
12314 whistles?"
12315 I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
12316 gave up.
12317 "A herring," said my father.
12318 "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
12319 "So hang it there."
12320 "But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
12321 "Paint it."
12322 "But a herring isn't wet."
12323 "If it's just painted it's still wet."
12324 "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
12325 doesn't whistle!!"
12326 "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
12327 hard."
12328 -- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
12329 %
12330 The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
12331 hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do.
12332 -- McCloctnik the Lucid
12333 %
12334 The First Rule of Program Optimization:
12335 Don't do it.
12336
12337 The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
12338 Don't do it yet.
12339 -- Michael Jackson
12340 %
12341 The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
12342 The second, a trick.
12343 Later, it's a well-established technique!
12344 -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics
12345 %
12346 The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
12347 Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
12348
12349 As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
12350 logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
12351 appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
12352 four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
12353 . . .
12354 Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
12355 blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
12356 parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
12357 of the hyper-cube.
12358 %
12359 The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
12360 a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
12361 %
12362 The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.
12363 -- Dave Barry
12364 %
12365 The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
12366 number of your kids by 32 teeth.
12367 %
12368 The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
12369 chance.
12370 %
12371 The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
12372 %
12373 The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
12374 center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
12375 Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
12376 End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
12377 %
12378 The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled
12379 today.
12380 %
12381 The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
12382 least until we've finished building it.
12383 %
12384 The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
12385 The goal of nature is to build better mice.
12386 %
12387 The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him
12388 love and he invented marriage.
12389 %
12390 THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
12391 The one who has the gold makes the rules.
12392 %
12393 The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
12394 make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
12395 have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
12396 man in the bonds of Hell.
12397 -- St. Augustine
12398 %
12399 The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
12400 to be good.
12401 %
12402 "The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")
12403
12404 On the good ship Enterprise
12405 Every week there's a new surprise
12406 Where the Romulans lurk
12407 And the Klingons often go berserk.
12408
12409 Yes, the good ship Enterprise
12410 There's excitement anywhere it flies
12411 Where Tribbles play
12412 And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.
12413
12414 See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
12415 Mr. Spock is at his side.
12416 The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
12417 It gets fried, scattered far and wide.
12418
12419 It's the good ship Enterprise
12420 Heading out where danger lies
12421 And you live in dread
12422 If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
12423 -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
12424 %
12425 The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
12426 statistics. These are raised to the _nth degree, the cube roots are
12427 extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
12428 displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
12429 case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
12430 down anything he damn well pleases.
12431 -- Sir Josiah Stamp
12432 %
12433 The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
12434 who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
12435 -- Benjamin Franklin
12436 %
12437 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
12438 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
12439 courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk
12440 clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods
12441 of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
12442 Hedgehog Eater.
12443 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
12444 %
12445 The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
12446 of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
12447 -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
12448 %
12449 The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
12450 -- Albert Einstein
12451 %
12452 The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a
12453 custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the
12454 contrary, nohow.
12455 %
12456 The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
12457 You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
12458 %
12459 The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
12460 thinkers.
12461 %
12462 The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
12463 which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
12464 least 5000 years old."
12465 %
12466 The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
12467 lists of "Ten Best".
12468 -- H. Allen Smith
12469 %
12470 The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
12471 has gills through which it can see.
12472 -- Monty Python
12473 %
12474 The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
12475 capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
12476 %
12477 The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
12478 protein -- it rejects it.
12479 -- P. Medawar
12480 %
12481 The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can
12482 remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider
12483 struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in
12484 spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and
12485 wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head
12486 off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe.
12487 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
12488 %
12489 The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
12490 -- Mark Twain
12491 %
12492 The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
12493 procession but carrying a banner.
12494 -- Mark Twain
12495 %
12496 The idea is to die young as late as possible.
12497 -- Ashley Montague
12498 %
12499 The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
12500 devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
12501 where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with
12502 sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,
12503 consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than
12504 have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones
12505 repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist
12506 of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic
12507 devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
12508 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
12509 %
12510 The identical is equal to itself, since it is different.
12511 -- Franco Spisani
12512 %
12513 The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
12514 -- Henry Kissinger
12515 %
12516 The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
12517 has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
12518 when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
12519 -- Will Rogers
12520 %
12521 The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
12522 point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
12523 important thing to people.
12524 -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
12525 %
12526 The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
12527 number of participants.
12528 -- Adam Walinsky
12529 %
12530 The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
12531 by the number of people in the group.
12532 %
12533 The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
12534 information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
12535 dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
12536 real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
12537
12538 So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
12539 pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
12540 consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
12541 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
12542 %
12543 The Kennedy Constant:
12544 Don't get mad -- get even.
12545 %
12546 The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
12547 %
12548 The ladies men admire, I've heard,
12549 Would shudder at a wicked word.
12550 Their candle gives a single light;
12551 They'd rather stay at home at night.
12552 They do not keep awake till three,
12553 Nor read erotic poetry.
12554 They never sanction the impure,
12555 Nor recognize an overture.
12556 They shrink from powders and from paints ...
12557 So far, I've had no complaints.
12558 -- Dorothy Parker
12559 %
12560 The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a
12561 word processor," I replied, "They used to say the same thing about
12562 drugs."
12563 -- Roy Blount, Jr.
12564 %
12565 The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
12566 law free.
12567 -- Henry David Thoreau
12568 %
12569 The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
12570 poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
12571 bread.
12572 -- Anatole France
12573 %
12574 The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all
12575 men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the
12576 universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we
12577 presently imagine we own.
12578 -- H. G. Wells
12579 %
12580 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
12581
12582 SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
12583 Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
12584 Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
12585 with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
12586 END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
12587 a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
12588 they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
12589 the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
12590 %
12591 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
12592
12593 This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
12594 an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
12595 to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
12596 %
12597 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL
12598
12599 SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
12600 Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
12601 compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
12602 coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
12603 sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
12604 compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
12605 infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
12606 %
12607 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE
12608
12609 Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
12610 unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
12611 are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
12612 SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
12613 parties.
12614 %
12615 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C-
12616
12617 This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he
12618 submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is
12619 best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the
12620 language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code
12621 statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very
12622 similar to COBOL.
12623 %
12624 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18a: FIFTH
12625
12626 FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
12627 refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and
12628 JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and
12629 BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY,
12630 CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
12631
12632 The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
12633 financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include
12634 VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH
12635 and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers
12636 who end up using this language.
12637 %
12638 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
12639
12640 Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
12641 Descartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
12642 language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
12643 and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
12644 spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
12645 ours."
12646
12647 The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have
12648 almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the
12649 organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to
12650 exist.
12651 %
12652 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL
12653 From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley,
12654 VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry.
12655
12656 Here is a sample program:
12657 LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
12658 IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND
12659 VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN
12660 FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
12661 DO*WAH - (DITTY**2)
12662 BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
12663 SURE
12664 LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
12665 REALLY
12666 LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW)
12667 IM*SURE
12668 GOTO THE MALL
12669
12670 When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message:
12671
12672 GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!
12673 %
12674 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
12675
12676 This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
12677 Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
12678 the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
12679
12680 The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
12681 while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
12682 because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
12683 Perrier.
12684
12685 Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
12686 and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
12687 case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
12688 message:
12689 "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
12690 you find the time to try it again?"
12691 %
12692 The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
12693 train.
12694 %
12695 The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
12696 %
12697 The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
12698 much sleep.
12699 -- Woody Allen
12700 %
12701 The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
12702 -- Henry Kissinger
12703 %
12704 The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
12705 we could with both of them.
12706 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
12707 %
12708 The makers may make
12709 And the users may use,
12710 But the fixers must fix
12711 With but minimal clues
12712 %
12713 The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
12714 crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
12715 one has ever been.
12716 -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
12717 %
12718 The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
12719 will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
12720 -- Mark Twain
12721 %
12722 The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
12723 soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
12724 when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
12725 %
12726 ... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ...
12727 -- Dave Barry
12728 %
12729 The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
12730 %
12731 The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
12732 klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
12733
12734 "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
12735
12736 "How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
12737 %
12738 The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
12739 devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
12740 -- Lew Mammel, Jr.
12741 %
12742 The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might
12743 be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the
12744 law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was
12745 guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples
12746 Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking
12747 Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality
12748 of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive
12749 power.
12750 -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
12751 Thinking."
12752 %
12753 The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
12754 -- Laurence J. Peter
12755 %
12756 The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
12757 -- Nicol Williamson
12758 %
12759 The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
12760 %
12761 The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
12762 %
12763 The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
12764 lower the mailing cost.
12765 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
12766 %
12767 The more laws and order are made prominent,
12768 the more thieves and robbers there will be.
12769 -- Lao Tsu
12770 %
12771 The more things change, the more they stay insane.
12772 %
12773 The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
12774 is right.
12775 %
12776 The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
12777 -- Andy Warhol
12778 %
12779 The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
12780 to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
12781 -- Theodore H. White
12782 %
12783 The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
12784 discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
12785 -- Isaac Asimov
12786 %
12787 The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
12788 %
12789 ... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!!
12790 %
12791 "... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
12792 "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
12793 feel interested.
12794 "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
12795 vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
12796 Aged Man.'"
12797 "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
12798 Alice corrected herself.
12799 "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
12800 called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
12801 "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time
12802 completely bewildered.
12803 "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
12804 "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
12805 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
12806 %
12807 The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
12808 1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert.
12809 -- D. Letterman
12810 %
12811 The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
12812 Support your right to bare arms!
12813 %
12814 The net of law is spread so wide,
12815 No sinner from its sweep may hide.
12816 Its meshes are so fine and strong,
12817 They take in every child of wrong.
12818 O wondrous web of mystery!
12819 Big fish alone escape from thee!
12820 -- James Jeffrey Roche
12821 %
12822 The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
12823 hope I don't get run over again.
12824 %
12825 The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
12826 in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
12827
12828 But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
12829 whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
12830 -- Matthew 5:37
12831 %
12832 The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
12833 Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country.
12834 The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive
12835 and running the country ...
12836 -- Robert J. Woodhead
12837 %
12838 The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
12839 choose from.
12840 -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
12841 %
12842 The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
12843 80-column card.
12844 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
12845 %
12846 The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should
12847 serve the state is essentially a Communist notion ... In a free society
12848 these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their
12849 function is to serve as checks upon the state.
12850 -- Alan Barth
12851 %
12852 The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are
12853 correct.
12854 -- Ralph Hartley
12855 %
12856 The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly
12857 analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their
12858 occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve
12859 these problems when called upon.
12860
12861 However, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
12862 remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
12863 %
12864 The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
12865 Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,
12866 Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate
12867 Planning."
12868 %
12869 The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
12870 %
12871 The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
12872 brings wisdom.
12873 -- H. L. Mencken
12874 %
12875 The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader
12876 catch his own breath.
12877 -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
12878 %
12879 The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
12880 to cringe.
12881 %
12882 The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
12883 `social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
12884 -- Ernest Rutherford
12885 %
12886 The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
12887 and take a rest.
12888 %
12889 The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon.
12890 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
12891 Over and Over"
12892 %
12893 The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it.
12894 %
12895 The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber
12896 has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,
12897 finished, and put inside boxes.
12898 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
12899 %
12900 The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.
12901 It is never any use to oneself.
12902 -- Oscar Wilde
12903 %
12904 The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
12905 -- Hegel
12906
12907 I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
12908 long view.
12909 -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
12910 %
12911 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
12912 -- Oscar Wilde
12913 %
12914 The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
12915 until 5 or 6 p.m.
12916 %
12917 The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
12918 -- Niels Bohr
12919 %
12920 The optimum committee has no members.
12921 -- Norman Augustine
12922 %
12923 The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
12924 went back in time.
12925 -- Steven Wright
12926 %
12927 The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
12928 it isn't here.
12929 -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
12930 %
12931 The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
12932 were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
12933 -- H. L. Mencken
12934 %
12935 The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the
12936 Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a
12937 large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress'
12938 it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the
12939 apparatus for a spectator sport.
12940
12941 The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for
12942 castrating pigs during Sunday service.
12943 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
12944 %
12945 The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
12946 Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
12947 Let others think his heart is big,
12948 I think it stupid of the Pig.
12949 -- Ogden Nash
12950 %
12951 The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
12952 swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
12953 batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
12954 center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
12955 his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
12956 -- Dizzy Dean
12957 %
12958 The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
12959 -- David Lardner
12960 %
12961 The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish
12962 to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it
12963 is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of
12964 courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own
12965 preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper
12966 social function of expressing true distaste.
12967 -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to
12968 Excruciatingly Correct Behavior"
12969 %
12970 The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often.
12971 %
12972 The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
12973 Were each of them once a kiddie.
12974 A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
12975 Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
12976 -- Ogden Nash
12977 %
12978 The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his
12979 brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is
12980 Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
12981 -- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
12982 %
12983 The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
12984 they might force their beliefs on us.
12985 -- Mario Cuomo
12986 %
12987 The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
12988 warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by
12989 changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped
12990 marker.
12991 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
12992 %
12993 The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
12994 constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
12995 appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
12996 statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
12997 also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
12998 -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
12999 %
13000 The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
13001 voters to win the next election.
13002 %
13003 The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO"
13004 represents the secondary theme:
13005
13006 Law Enforcement Officials
13007
13008 The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
13009
13010 Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
13011
13012 -- M. Gallaher
13013 %
13014 ... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
13015 other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
13016 charity we can only call "inhuman."
13017 -- R. A. Lafferty
13018 %
13019 The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
13020 stupidity of your action.
13021 %
13022 The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
13023 Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
13024 using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
13025 Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
13026 etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
13027 bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
13028 of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
13029 developed cancer.
13030 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
13031 %
13032 The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
13033 to erase it.
13034 -- Glaser and Way
13035 %
13036 The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get
13037 results.
13038
13039 The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
13040 problems in order to get results.
13041
13042 The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy
13043 problems in order to get results.
13044 %
13045 The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
13046 pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
13047 -- Elizabeth Taylor
13048 %
13049 The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
13050 %
13051 The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
13052 outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
13053 mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once
13054 tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
13055 the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
13056 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13057 %
13058 "The pyramid is opening!"
13059 "Which one?"
13060 "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
13061 -- The Firesign Theatre, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
13062 Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
13063 %
13064 The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
13065 "My brain is paged out to my liver"
13066 %
13067 The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is
13068 it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
13069 that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of
13070 industrial waste?
13071 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
13072 %
13073 The rain it raineth on the just
13074 And also on the unjust fella,
13075 But chiefly on the just, because
13076 The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
13077 --Lord Bowen
13078 %
13079 The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
13080 cursed.
13081 %
13082 The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
13083 %
13084 The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",
13085 which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape
13086 Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil
13087 Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like.
13088 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
13089 %
13090 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
13091 persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
13092 progress depends on the unreasonable man.
13093 -- George Bernard Shaw
13094 %
13095 The revolution will not be televised.
13096 %
13097 The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
13098 -- Emerson
13099 %
13100 The rhino is a homely beast,
13101 For human eyes he's not a feast.
13102 Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
13103 I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
13104 -- Ogden Nash
13105 %
13106 The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This
13107 means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
13108 %
13109 The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
13110 and to his imagination for his facts.
13111 -- Sheridan
13112 %
13113 The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
13114 -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
13115 %
13116 The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
13117 House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
13118 you have and what rights you have not got.
13119 -- J. Parnell Thomas
13120 %
13121 The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
13122 sloppy analysis!
13123 %
13124 The Roman Rule
13125 The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
13126 one who is doing it.
13127 %
13128 The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
13129 his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
13130 one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
13131 take it too seriously.
13132 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13133 %
13134 The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
13135 give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
13136 -- Jane Bryant Quinn
13137 %
13138 "The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
13139 %
13140 The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
13141 showed that all had these things in common:
13142
13143 (1) They all had moderate appetites.
13144 (2) They all came from middle class homes
13145 (3) All but two of them were dead.
13146 %
13147 The scum also rises.
13148 -- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
13149 %
13150 The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
13151 respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones
13152 from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
13153 milestones are lifted.
13154 -- George Bernard Shaw
13155 %
13156 The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
13157 as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
13158 The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
13159 the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in
13160 twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
13161
13162 "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
13163 everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
13164 fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one --
13165 and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
13166
13167 "How?" demanded Fafhrd.
13168
13169 Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
13170 -- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
13171 %
13172 The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land.
13173 %
13174 The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
13175 -- Noelie Alito
13176 %
13177 The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:
13178 The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going
13179 in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long
13180 way.)
13181 -- Dan Roddick
13182 %
13183 The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
13184 and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
13185 activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
13186 neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
13187 %
13188 The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
13189 money.
13190 -- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon"
13191 %
13192 The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!
13193 %
13194 The sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you will be
13195 able to correct them.
13196 -- Nicolaides
13197 %
13198 The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
13199 %
13200 The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
13201 readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
13202 some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
13203 reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
13204 the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
13205 known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
13206 Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
13207 of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
13208 psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
13209 Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
13210 these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
13211 further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
13212 something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
13213 the Russians.
13214 -- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
13215 %
13216 The STAR WARS Song
13217 Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
13218
13219 I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
13220 Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
13221 S-O-D-A soda
13222 I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
13223 I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
13224 Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
13225
13226 Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
13227 A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
13228 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
13229 Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
13230 How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
13231 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
13232 %
13233 The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
13234 %
13235 The steady state of disks is full.
13236 -- Ken Thompson
13237 %
13238 THE STORY OF CREATION
13239 or
13240 THE MYTH OF URK
13241
13242 In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
13243 and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
13244 was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
13245 registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
13246 and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
13247 Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
13248 and there was morning, one interrupt.
13249 -- Rico Tudor
13250 %
13251 The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make
13252 them unsafe.
13253 -- Mayor Frank Rizzo
13254 %
13255 The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
13256 is an emerging underachiever.
13257 %
13258 The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant
13259 biology.
13260 %
13261 The subspace _W inherits the other 8 properties of _V. And there aren't
13262 even any property taxes.
13263 -- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
13264 %
13265 The sum of the Universe is zero.
13266 %
13267 The sun was shining on the sea,
13268 Shining with all his might:
13269 He did his very best to make
13270 The billows smooth and bright --
13271 And this was very odd, because it was
13272 The middle of the night.
13273 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
13274 %
13275 The superfluous is very necessary.
13276 -- Voltaire
13277 %
13278 The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
13279 -- Mark Twain
13280 %
13281 The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
13282 authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
13283 the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
13284 the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
13285 radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
13286 as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
13287 receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
13288 Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
13289 heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
13290 the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
13291 heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
13292 radiation, (_H/_E)^4 = 50, where _E is the absolute temperature of the
13293 earth (-300K), gives _H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
13294 cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
13295 fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
13296 burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
13297 that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
13298 have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
13299 -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
13300 %
13301 The Third Law of Photography:
13302 If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
13303 when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark
13304 leaks out.
13305 %
13306 The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
13307
13308 The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
13309 The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break
13310 even.
13311 The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
13312 %
13313 The Three Major Kind of Tools
13314
13315 * Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
13316 jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
13317 manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
13318 bludgeons, and truncheons.)
13319
13320 * Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
13321
13322 * Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
13323 greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
13324 (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
13325 any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
13326 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
13327 %
13328 The trouble with a kitten is that
13329 When it grows up, it's always a cat
13330 -- Ogden Nash
13331 %
13332 The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
13333 %
13334 The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
13335 it.
13336 -- Franklin P. Jones
13337 %
13338 The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
13339 more important to do.
13340 %
13341 The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
13342 appreciates how difficult it was.
13343 %
13344 The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths.
13345 -- Ken Kesey
13346 %
13347 The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
13348 -- Lenny Bruce
13349 %
13350 The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.
13351 And vice versa.
13352 %
13353 The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
13354 Which practically conceal its sex.
13355 I think it clever of the turtle
13356 In such a fix to be so fertile.
13357 -- Ogden Nash
13358 %
13359 The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
13360 %
13361 The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
13362 annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
13363 -- Oscar Wilde
13364 %
13365 The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
13366 "100 percent American"...
13367 -- U. S. Army (1945)
13368 %
13369 The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
13370 everybody and still nobody likes him.
13371 -- Jim Samuels
13372 %
13373 The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be
13374 broken.
13375 %
13376 The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
13377 combination is locked up in the safe.
13378 -- Peter DeVries
13379 %
13380 The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
13381 Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
13382 to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his
13383 decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
13384 %
13385 The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
13386 religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
13387 from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
13388 yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
13389 world put together.
13390 -- Sir Peter Medawar
13391 %
13392 The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
13393 regarded as a criminal offense.
13394 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
13395 %
13396 The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
13397 the worst cigars.
13398 -- H. L. Mencken
13399 %
13400 The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
13401 prejudice.
13402 -- Mark Twain
13403 %
13404 The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
13405 Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
13406 to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
13407 be one of the facts that needs altering.
13408 -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
13409 %
13410 The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
13411 it's just a tired feeling:
13412 %
13413 The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
13414 %
13415 The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
13416 that would be clearly understood.
13417 -- Alexander Haig
13418 %
13419 The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
13420 with a large fortune.
13421 %
13422 THE WOMBAT
13423
13424 The wombat lives across the seas,
13425 Among the far Antipodes.
13426 He may exist on nuts and berries,
13427 Or then again, on missionaries;
13428 His distant habitat precludes
13429 Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
13430 But I would not engage the wombat
13431 In any form of mortal combat.
13432 %
13433 The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
13434 %
13435 The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
13436 %
13437 The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
13438 %
13439 The world's as ugly as sin,
13440 And almost as delightful.
13441 -- Frederick Locker-Lampson
13442 %
13443 The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
13444 four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
13445 the answers.
13446 %
13447 Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
13448
13449 He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
13450 then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
13451 market.
13452
13453 If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
13454 not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
13455
13456 Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
13457 Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
13458 Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
13459 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
13460 %
13461 Then here's to the City of Boston,
13462 The town of the cries and the groans.
13463 Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
13464 And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
13465 -- Franklin Pierce Adams
13466 %
13467 THEORY
13468 Into love and out again,
13469 Thus I went and thus I go.
13470 Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
13471 Well and bitterly I know
13472 All the songs were ever sung,
13473 All the words were ever said;
13474 Could it be, when I was young,
13475 Someone dropped me on my head?
13476 -- Dorothy Parker
13477 %
13478 There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
13479 %
13480 There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
13481 and praiseworthy ...
13482 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
13483 %
13484 There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own
13485 cats.
13486 %
13487 There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axis
13488 are chosen correctly.
13489 %
13490 There are no games on this system.
13491 %
13492 There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
13493 existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
13494 marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
13495 engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
13496 obviously impossible.
13497 -- Richard Davisson
13498 %
13499 There are people so addicted to exaggeration
13500 that they can't tell the truth without lying.
13501 -- Josh Billings
13502 %
13503 There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
13504 vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
13505 -- Gloria Steinem
13506 %
13507 There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
13508 someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
13509 Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
13510 Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
13511 every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
13512 this?
13513 Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
13514 centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___you
13515 can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
13516 forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
13517 -- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
13518 even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
13519 why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
13520 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
13521 %
13522 There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
13523 plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
13524 and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
13525 don't we all?
13526 %
13527 There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
13528 and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated
13529 pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving
13530 them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you
13531 stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your
13532 intelligence.
13533 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
13534 %
13535 There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
13536 -- Disraeli
13537 %
13538 There are three possibilities:
13539 Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from the sun;
13540 there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or
13541 someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
13542 %
13543 There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
13544 offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
13545 a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
13546 of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
13547 affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
13548 When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
13549 Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
13550 -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
13551 %
13552 There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
13553 engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far
13554 the more certain.
13555 -- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
13556 %
13557 There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
13558 the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many
13559 facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next
13560 fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent
13561 Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
13562 Factor; that's engineering.
13563 %
13564 There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I
13565 can't remember.
13566 -- Italo Svevo
13567 %
13568 There are three ways to get something done:
13569 (1) Do it yourself.
13570 (2) Hire someone to do it for you.
13571 (3) Forbid your kids to do it.
13572 %
13573 There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
13574 someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
13575 %
13576 There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is
13577 one of them.
13578 %
13579 There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
13580 the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
13581 sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
13582 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
13583 %
13584 There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
13585 sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
13586 -- Woody Allen
13587 %
13588 There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
13589 make is so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
13590 other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
13591 deficiencies.
13592 -- C. A. R. Hoare
13593 %
13594 There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
13595 other is to read Pope.
13596 -- Oscar Wilde
13597 %
13598 There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
13599 works.
13600 %
13601 There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
13602 suitable application of high explosives.
13603 %
13604 There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
13605 -- R. W. Gerard
13606 %
13607 There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
13608 -- Henry Kissinger
13609 %
13610 There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
13611 than 100.
13612 -- Steele's Law
13613 %
13614 There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
13615 nothing about.
13616 %
13617 There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an
13618 opinion.
13619 -- Anatole France
13620 %
13621 There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
13622 paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
13623 %
13624 There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
13625 %
13626 There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
13627 tied during the month of April.
13628 %
13629 There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
13630 -- Walt Disney
13631 %
13632 There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor,
13633 Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and
13634 love of the Fatherland.
13635 -- Adolf Hitler
13636 %
13637 There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
13638 what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
13639 disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
13640 inexplicable.
13641
13642 There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
13643
13644 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
13645 %
13646 There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
13647 -- Arthur C. Clarke
13648 %
13649 There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
13650 -- Mark Twain
13651 %
13652 There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
13653 tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
13654 abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
13655 war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
13656 of course.
13657 -- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
13658 %
13659 There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
13660 -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, World Future Society
13661 Convention, 1977
13662 %
13663 There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
13664 -- G. B. Shaw
13665 %
13666 There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
13667 %
13668 There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
13669 %
13670 There is no time like the pleasant.
13671 %
13672 There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
13673 doing.
13674 %
13675 There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY.
13676 There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS I'm very probably wrong.
13677 %
13678 "There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
13679 said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat. "And yet just
13680 a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable
13681 question," said Nasrudin. "I could have answered it if I had been
13682 there." "Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
13683 the middle of the night?'"
13684 %
13685 There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the
13686 ocean level wouldn't cure.
13687 -- Ross MacDonald
13688 %
13689 There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
13690 that is not being talked about.
13691 -- Oscar Wilde
13692 %
13693 There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
13694 returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
13695 -- Mark Twain
13696 %
13697 There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
13698 -- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
13699 %
13700 There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
13701 left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
13702 Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
13703 started debating who should be allowed to stay.
13704
13705 The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
13706 over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
13707 would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley
13708 said, "Look! We're not solving anything like this! The only fair
13709 thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
13710 votes.
13711 %
13712 There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
13713 both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
13714 talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
13715 during the trial.
13716 -- David Letterman
13717 %
13718 There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
13719 the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
13720 digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
13721 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the
13722 transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
13723 stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
13724 feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
13725 systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
13726 first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
13727 satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
13728 telephone business?
13729 %
13730 There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not
13731 a fence.
13732 %
13733 There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
13734 %
13735 There's little in taking or giving,
13736 There's little in water or wine:
13737 This living, this living, this living,
13738 Was never a project of mine.
13739 Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
13740 The gain of the one at the top,
13741 For art is a form of catharsis,
13742 And love is a permanent flop,
13743 And work is the province of cattle,
13744 And rest's for a clam in a shell,
13745 So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
13746 Would you kindly direct me to hell?
13747 -- Dorothy Parker
13748 %
13749 There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our
13750 whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
13751 -- Walt Kelly
13752 %
13753 There's no future in time travel.
13754 %
13755 There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
13756 -- Dr. Who
13757 %
13758 There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
13759 any worse.
13760 %
13761 There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
13762 %
13763 There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
13764 working for you.
13765 -- Will Rodgers
13766 %
13767 There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and
13768 dead armadillos.
13769 -- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
13770 %
13771 There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them
13772 won't aggravate.
13773 %
13774 There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
13775 what it is I'll get married again.
13776 -- Clint Eastwood
13777 %
13778 There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
13779 becoming an endangered synthetic.
13780 -- Lily Tomlin
13781 %
13782 "These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
13783 "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
13784 "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
13785 out of MEGATON MAN!"
13786 %
13787 These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
13788 used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
13789 %
13790 They also surf who only stand on waves.
13791 %
13792 They make a desert and call it peace.
13793 -- Tacitus (55?-120?)
13794 %
13795 They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
13796 always spell better than they pronounce.
13797 -- Mark Twain
13798 %
13799 They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
13800 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
13801 -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
13802 %
13803 They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!
13804 %
13805 They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results
13806 About a month before. Their hair began to curl
13807 The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it
13808 But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL.
13809
13810 He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this
13811 To pass where they had failed For it must ever be
13812 And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest
13813 The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me.
13814
13815 My notion was to start again
13816 Ignoring all they'd done
13817 We quickly turned it into code
13818 To see if it would run.
13819 %
13820 They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
13821 %
13822 They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult to like.
13823 -- Avon
13824 %
13825 Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
13826 %
13827 Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
13828 %
13829 Think big. Pollute the Mississippi.
13830 %
13831 Think honk if you're a telepath.
13832 %
13833 Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
13834 %
13835 Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer
13836 crashes.
13837 %
13838 Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
13839 %
13840 "Thirty days hath Septober,
13841 April, June, and no wonder.
13842 all the rest have peanut butter
13843 except my father who wears red suspenders."
13844 %
13845 This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
13846 %
13847 This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need,
13848 please use the program "________randchar". This program generates random
13849 characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
13850 something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be
13851 more profound than THIS program has ever been.
13852 %
13853 This fortune intentionally not included.
13854 %
13855 This fortune is false.
13856 %
13857 This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
13858 %
13859 This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
13860 regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
13861 %
13862 This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT DOG.
13863 -- Bob Violence
13864 %
13865 This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
13866 actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
13867 %
13868 This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
13869 because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
13870 which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has
13871 "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the
13872 consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any
13873 rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for
13874 oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill
13875 Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers
13876 over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These
13877 innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been
13878 passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
13879 amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do
13880 apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,
13881 and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
13882 -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
13883 %
13884 This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
13885 %
13886 This is for all ill-treated fellows
13887 Unborn and unbegot,
13888 For them to read when they're in trouble
13889 And I am not.
13890 -- A. E. Housman
13891 %
13892 This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
13893 to one.
13894 -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
13895 %
13896 This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
13897 %
13898 THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
13899
13900 If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
13901 contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
13902 without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
13903 contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
13904 can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
13905 for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
13906 difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
13907 and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
13908 "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before
13909 you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
13910 Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
13911 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
13912 Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
13913 more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
13914 %
13915 This is the ____LAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
13916 %
13917 This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
13918 power of computers:
13919
13920 Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
13921 the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
13922 minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
13923 results are that one should eat each day:
13924
13925 1/2 chicken
13926 1 egg
13927 1 glass of skim milk
13928 27 heads of lettuce.
13929 -- Rev. Adrian Melott
13930 %
13931 This is the story of the bee
13932 Whose sex is very hard to see
13933
13934 You cannot tell the he from the she
13935 But she can tell, and so can he
13936
13937 The little bee is never still
13938 She has no time to take the pill
13939
13940 And that is why, in times like these
13941 There are so many sons of bees.
13942 %
13943 This is your fortune.
13944 %
13945 This land is full of trousers!
13946 this land is full of mausers!
13947 And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
13948 -- The Firesign Theatre
13949 %
13950 This land is made of mountains,
13951 This land is made of mud,
13952 This land has lots of everything,
13953 For me and Elmer Fudd.
13954
13955 This land has lots of trousers,
13956 This land has lots of mousers,
13957 And pussycats to eat them
13958 When the sun goes down.
13959 %
13960 This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life,
13961 you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
13962 to go.
13963 %
13964 This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
13965 %
13966 This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
13967 great force.
13968 -- Dorothy Parker
13969 %
13970 This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
13971 the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
13972 solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
13973 largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
13974 which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
13975 paper that were unhappy.
13976 -- Douglas Adams
13977 %
13978 This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
13979 something child-like.
13980 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
13981 %
13982 This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
13983 student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
13984
13985 One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
13986 Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
13987 computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
13988 which identifies errors in the original program.
13989 %
13990 This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
13991 -- Douglas Hofstadter
13992 %
13993 ... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives
13994 as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as
13995 determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people
13996 buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s
13997 couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three
13998 weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available,
13999 they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent
14000 restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of
14001 excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going
14002 off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have
14003 a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli.
14004 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
14005 %
14006 This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
14007 %
14008 Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
14009 rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
14010 than he does.
14011 As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
14012 it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
14013 sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
14014 consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
14015 being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
14016 The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
14017 do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
14018 honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
14019 be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
14020 relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
14021 Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
14022 This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
14023 -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
14024 from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
14025 and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
14026 %
14027 Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those
14028 of us who do.
14029 %
14030 Those who can't write, write manuals.
14031 %
14032 Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
14033 %
14034 Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics.
14035 -- French Proverb
14036 %
14037 Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
14038 -- Henry Spencer
14039 %
14040 Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
14041 for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
14042 -- Aristotle
14043 %
14044 Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often
14045 surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
14046 -- Mark B. Cohen
14047 %
14048 Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
14049 %
14050 Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
14051 will make violent revolution inevitable.
14052 -- John F. Kennedy
14053 %
14054 Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
14055 men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
14056 without the roar of its many waters.
14057 -- Frederick Douglass
14058 %
14059 Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
14060 the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
14061 Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
14062 whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
14063 fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
14064 more about the matter than the others.
14065 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14066 %
14067 Time flies like an arrow
14068 Fruit flies like a banana
14069 %
14070 Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
14071 %
14072 Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so.
14073 -- Ford Prefect
14074 %
14075 Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
14076 once.
14077 %
14078 'Tis the dream of each programmer,
14079 Before his life is done,
14080 To write three lines of APL,
14081 And make the damn things run.
14082 %
14083 (to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
14084 Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
14085 Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
14086 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
14087 Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
14088 Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
14089 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
14090 And we've also found Just flip one switch
14091 When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
14092 You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
14093 in a flash.
14094 Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
14095 Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
14096 And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
14097 %
14098 To A Quick Young Fox:
14099 Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
14100 Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
14101 Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
14102 Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
14103 -- Lazy Dog
14104 %
14105 To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
14106 %
14107 To be is to do.
14108 -- I. Kant
14109 To do is to be.
14110 -- A. Sartre
14111 Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
14112 -- F. Flintstone
14113 %
14114 To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
14115 this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
14116 offer in response is based on information available to make no such
14117 statement.
14118 %
14119 To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
14120 call it the target.
14121 %
14122 To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
14123 %
14124 To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System
14125 %
14126 To err is human, to moo bovine.
14127 %
14128 To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
14129 -- B. Duggan
14130 %
14131 To generalize is to be an idiot.
14132 -- William Blake
14133 %
14134 To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
14135 men, two of them absent.
14136 %
14137 To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
14138 -- Thomas Edison
14139 %
14140 To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
14141 -- Robert Heller
14142 %
14143 To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
14144 %
14145 To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide
14146 a test load.
14147 %
14148 To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
14149 system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
14150 inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
14151 precision and flexibility may be just as dysfunctional in novel,
14152 uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
14153 well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
14154 of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
14155 secure ecological niche.
14156 -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
14157 %
14158 To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
14159 telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
14160 computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
14161 in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
14162 lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
14163
14164 Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
14165 suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
14166 computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
14167 one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
14168 break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
14169 incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
14170 an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
14171 pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
14172 loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
14173 and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
14174 -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
14175 Phones?"
14176 %
14177 To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?
14178 %
14179 To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
14180 -- Woody Allen
14181 %
14182 Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
14183 %
14184 Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
14185 %
14186 Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
14187 %
14188 Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
14189 %
14190 Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
14191 %
14192 Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
14193
14194 And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
14195 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
14196 %
14197 Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
14198 cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
14199 spectacular adventure starring ... Tippy, the Wonder Dog.
14200 -- Bob & Ray
14201 %
14202 Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
14203 except in major motion pictures.
14204 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14205 %
14206 Toilet Toup'ee, n.:
14207 Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
14208 creating endless annoyance to male users.
14209 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
14210 %
14211 Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
14212 %
14213 Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
14214 %
14215 Too clever is dumb.
14216 -- Ogden Nash
14217 %
14218 Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
14219 -- Mae West
14220 %
14221 Too much of everything is just enough.
14222 -- Bob Wier
14223 %
14224 Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
14225 briefcases.
14226 -- Governor Jerry Brown
14227 %
14228 Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
14229 10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
14230 9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
14231 8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
14232 7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
14233 Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
14234 assurance people in its wake.
14235 6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
14236 - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
14237 5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
14238 4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
14239 3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
14240 are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
14241 2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
14242 original Klingon.
14243 1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it!
14244 Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
14245 %
14246 Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the
14247 earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century.
14248 As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help.
14249 Please...
14250
14251 CONSERVE GRAVITY
14252
14253 Follow these simple suggestions:
14254
14255 (1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
14256 (2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
14257 (3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like
14258 curling.
14259 (4) Avoid showers ... take baths instead.
14260 (5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big
14261 pile.
14262 (6) Stop flipping pancakes
14263 %
14264 Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
14265 %
14266 Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful, wealthy, and live
14267 in eucalyptus trees.
14268 %
14269 Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
14270 -- Henrik Tikkanen
14271 %
14272 Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
14273 -- Mark Twain
14274 %
14275 Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
14276 %
14277 Truthful, adj.:
14278 Dumb and illiterate.
14279 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14280 %
14281 Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
14282 -- Charles Schulz
14283 %
14284 Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.
14285 %
14286 Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
14287 is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written
14288 in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and
14289 pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer),
14290 defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the
14291 absolutely perfect future.
14292 -- Amrom Katz
14293 %
14294 Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
14295 %
14296 Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
14297 specification is that it should run noiselessly.
14298 %
14299 Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
14300 -- Alan Watts
14301 %
14302 Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____yell into keyboard.
14303 %
14304 Turnaucka's Law:
14305 The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
14306 electrical cord.
14307 %
14308 Tussman's Law:
14309 Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
14310 %
14311 TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
14312 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
14313 %
14314 'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
14315 Did gyre and gimble in their cave
14316 All mimsy was the CS-VAX
14317 And Cory raths outgrabe.
14318
14319 "Beware the software rot, my son!
14320 The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
14321 Beware the broken pipe, and shun
14322 The frumious system crash!"
14323 %
14324 'Twas the Night before Crisis
14325
14326 'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
14327 Not a program was working not even a browse.
14328 The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
14329 Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
14330 The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
14331 While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
14332 When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
14333 I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
14334 And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
14335 But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
14336 More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
14337 And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
14338 On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
14339 On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
14340 His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
14341 From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
14342 A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
14343 Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
14344 %
14345 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
14346 preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
14347 throughout our place of residence,
14348 Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
14349 possessors of this potential, including that
14350 species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
14351 Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
14352 edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
14353 Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
14354 imminent visitation from an eccentric
14355 philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
14356 is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
14357 %
14358 Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
14359 -- Walt Kelly
14360 %
14361 Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
14362 -- Howard Kandel
14363 %
14364 Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man
14365 said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The
14366 second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his
14367 chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded
14368 only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the
14369 courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.
14370 If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is
14371 dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and
14372 must pay three silver pieces."
14373 %
14374 Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
14375 %
14376 Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
14377 I forget the second.
14378 %
14379 Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
14380 %
14381 U: There's a U -- a Unicorn!
14382 Run right up and rub its horn.
14383 Look at all those points you're losing!
14384 UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
14385 -- The Roguelet's ABC
14386 %
14387 "Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."
14388
14389 (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
14390 -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
14391 %
14392 UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
14393 %
14394 "Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
14395
14396 "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
14397 right?"
14398 -- MacNelley, "Shoe"
14399 %
14400 Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
14401 Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
14402 hammer or get a splinter in it.
14403 %
14404 Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
14405 just man is also a prison.
14406 %
14407 Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
14408 can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
14409 %
14410 Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
14411 Superiority is recessive.
14412 %
14413 Unfair animal names:
14414
14415 -- tsetse fly -- bullhead
14416 -- booby -- duck-billed platypus
14417 -- sapsucker -- Clarence
14418 -- Gary Larson
14419 %
14420 United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
14421 Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
14422 all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
14423 all the patriots of every persuasion.
14424
14425 Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
14426 world.
14427 -- Isaac Asimov
14428 %
14429 Universe, n.:
14430 The problem.
14431 %
14432 University, n.:
14433 Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
14434 usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
14435 fix it, and ...
14436 %
14437 unix soit qui mal y pense
14438 %
14439 UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
14440 Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
14441 -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
14442 %
14443 Unnamed Law:
14444 If it happens, it must be possible.
14445 %
14446 Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
14447 twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
14448 -- H. L. Mencken
14449 %
14450 Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
14451 %
14452 User n.:
14453 A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
14454 %
14455 USER, n.:
14456 The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
14457 -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
14458 %
14459 Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
14460 -- S. C. Johnson
14461 %
14462 Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
14463 opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
14464 -- Doug Larson
14465 %
14466 Vail's Second Axiom:
14467 The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
14468 amount of work already completed.
14469 %
14470 Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ...
14471 Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ...
14472 -- Tom Chapin
14473 %
14474 Van Roy's Law:
14475 An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
14476 %
14477 Vanilla, adj.:
14478 Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food,
14479 very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
14480 extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply
14481 "vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot
14482 and sour won ton soup.
14483 %
14484 Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
14485 (1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
14486 once.
14487 (2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
14488 points.
14489 %
14490 Veni, Vidi, Visa.
14491 %
14492 "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past
14493 year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley
14494 reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
14495 artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue
14496 moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
14497 Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the
14498 entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the
14499 sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
14500
14501 "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
14502
14503 "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made
14504 good copy."
14505 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
14506 %
14507 Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
14508 %
14509 Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
14510 Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
14511 waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
14512 %
14513 Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
14514 -- Salvor Hardin
14515 %
14516 Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the
14517 yard.
14518 %
14519 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14520 Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
14521 ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
14522 morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
14523 wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
14524 that old underwear you own.
14525 %
14526 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14527 You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
14528 sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and
14529 sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus
14530 drivers.
14531 %
14532 "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
14533 %
14534 Virtue is its own punishment.
14535 %
14536 Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
14537 from where you left them to where you can't find them.
14538 %
14539 Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.
14540 %
14541 VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.
14542 %
14543 Vote anarchist.
14544 %
14545 Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
14546 TAX-DEFERRED!
14547 %
14548 VYARZERZOMANIMORORSEZASSEZANSERAREORSES?
14549 %
14550
14551 *** System shutdown message from root ***
14552
14553 System going down in 60 seconds
14554
14555
14556 %
14557 Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
14558 -- Mark Twain
14559 %
14560 Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
14561 1st customer: "I'll have tea."
14562 2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
14563 (Waiter exits, returns)
14564 Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
14565 %
14566 Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
14567 %
14568 War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
14569 -- Charles Edward Montague
14570 %
14571 War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
14572 %
14573 WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
14574
14575 Firings will continue until morale improves.
14576 %
14577 WARNING:
14578 Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
14579 mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on
14580 your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war.
14581 %
14582 Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
14583 those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking
14584 up.
14585 -- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
14586 %
14587 Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.
14588 %
14589 Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
14590 -- John F. Kennedy
14591 %
14592 Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
14593 %
14594 Wasting time is an important part of living.
14595 %
14596 Watson's Law:
14597 The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
14598 number and significance of any persons watching it.
14599 %
14600 We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
14601 divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being
14602 correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
14603 -- Niels Bohr
14604 %
14605 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
14606 -- Oscar Wilde
14607 %
14608 We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
14609 -- Winston Churchill
14610 %
14611 We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
14612 -- Whole Earth Catalog
14613 %
14614 We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
14615 -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
14616 %
14617 We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
14618 socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The
14619 bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say
14620 socialism?
14621 -- Fidel Castro
14622 %
14623 We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
14624 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
14625 %
14626 We are upping our standards ... so up yours.
14627 -- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988
14628 %
14629 We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
14630 %
14631 We can predict everything, except the future.
14632 %
14633 We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
14634 deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
14635 -- James E. Day, Postmaster General
14636 %
14637 We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
14638 -- Vroomfondel
14639 %
14640 We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
14641 %
14642 We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a
14643 fish.
14644 %
14645 We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
14646 hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights!
14647 %
14648 We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
14649 -- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
14650 %
14651 We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
14652 hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
14653 mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
14654 our grave singing Haleleuia ...
14655 -- Monty Python
14656 %
14657 We have met the enemy, and he is us.
14658 -- Walt Kelly
14659 %
14660 We have only two things to worry about: That things will never get
14661 back to normal, and that they already have.
14662 %
14663 We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
14664 hands for masturbation.
14665 -- Lily Tomlin
14666 %
14667 We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
14668 official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death
14669 Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish
14670 you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that
14671 said "ELECTROCUTION".
14672
14673 Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your
14674 teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
14675 process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a
14676 couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways
14677 out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste
14678 stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom
14679 floor, which is how the police would find you.
14680
14681 You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
14682 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
14683 %
14684 We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all
14685 purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start
14686 with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the
14687 playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is
14688 best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can
14689 buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.
14690 -- Alan M. Turing
14691 %
14692 We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
14693 respect their good judgement.
14694 %
14695 We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
14696 no matter how self-seeking.
14697 -- F. G. Withington
14698 %
14699 We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago
14700 people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.
14701 For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had
14702 to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare
14703 fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with
14704 primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how
14705 ugly paneling is to begin with.
14706 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
14707 %
14708 We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
14709 friends are trying to kill us.
14710 %
14711 We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.
14712 But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle
14713 Haggard song at a French restaurant. ...
14714 I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
14715 her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I
14716 had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone
14717 told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was
14718 lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he
14719 fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing
14720 what men must do. ...
14721 "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible
14722 sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew
14723 not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a
14724 quiet and peace I will never forget.
14725 "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
14726 tollway belle's for thee."
14727 The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was
14728 a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I
14729 poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
14730 -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
14731 Competition
14732 %
14733 We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
14734 technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
14735 %
14736 We will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
14737 we will cry over things we used to laugh &
14738 our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
14739 creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
14740 in the end a summer with wild winds &
14741 new friends will be.
14742 %
14743 We wish you a Hare Krishna
14744 We wish you a Hare Krishna
14745 We wish you a Hare Krishna
14746 And a Sun Myung Moon!
14747 -- Maxwell Smart
14748 %
14749 We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later.
14750 %
14751 We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
14752 the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
14753 you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
14754 in his bowl full of jelly.
14755 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
14756 %
14757 We're only in it for the volume.
14758 -- Black Sabbath
14759 %
14760 We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
14761 of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
14762 but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
14763 -- Andy Rooney
14764 %
14765 Weiler's Law:
14766 Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
14767 %
14768 Weinberg's First Law:
14769 Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
14770 %
14771 Weinberg's Principle:
14772 An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
14773 sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
14774 %
14775 Weinberg's Second Law:
14776 If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
14777 then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
14778 %
14779 Weiner's Law of Libraries:
14780 There are no answers, only cross references.
14781 %
14782 Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if
14783 you run out of food.
14784 -- Dean McLaughlin
14785 %
14786 Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
14787 lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
14788 governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the
14789 reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top
14790 contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men
14791 will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the
14792 most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and
14793 appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday
14794 morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit
14795 interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a
14796 guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through
14797 the entire show without answering a single question ...
14798 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
14799 %
14800 Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
14801 back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
14802 or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
14803 they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
14804 -- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
14805 %
14806 Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can*
14807 you believe?!
14808 -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
14809 %
14810 Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
14811 And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
14812 I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
14813 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
14814
14815 If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
14816 Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
14817 'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
14818 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
14819
14820 On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
14821 But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
14822 Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
14823 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
14824 -- Core Dumped Blues
14825 %
14826 "Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
14827
14828 "Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
14829 coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
14830 -- Dr. Who
14831 %
14832 "Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is
14833 no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five
14834 hundred."
14835 -- The Mahabharata
14836 %
14837 Westheimer's Discovery:
14838 A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
14839 couple of hours in the library.
14840 %
14841 Wethern's Law:
14842 Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
14843 %
14844 "What are we going to do?"
14845
14846 "Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking for
14847 something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
14848 short initiation period."
14849 %
14850 "What are you doing?"
14851
14852 "Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something
14853 that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short
14854 initiation period."
14855 %
14856 What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
14857 %
14858 "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
14859 teenager asked her mother.
14860 "Encouragement, dear," she replied.
14861 %
14862 What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
14863 %
14864 What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
14865 %
14866 What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
14867 %
14868 What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
14869 %
14870 What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
14871 that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our
14872 country. Nice try anyway, George.
14873 -- D. J. on KSFO/KYA
14874 %
14875 What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
14876 entrance?
14877 %
14878 What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
14879 in his footsteps?
14880 %
14881 What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower
14882 stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed
14883 barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character
14884 from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of
14885 while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our
14886 dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up
14887 powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the
14888 bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any
14889 one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact
14890 lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where
14891 you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",
14892 if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with
14893 that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;
14894 they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to
14895 flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
14896 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
14897 %
14898 What I tell you three times is true.
14899 %
14900 What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
14901 sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
14902 with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
14903 came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
14904 parties.
14905 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14906 %
14907 What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
14908 %
14909 What I've done, of course, is total garbage.
14910 -- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
14911 %
14912 What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
14913 definitely overpaid for my carpet.
14914 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
14915 %
14916 What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's
14917 worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
14918 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
14919 %
14920 What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
14921 -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
14922 %
14923 What is mind? No matter.
14924 What is matter? Never mind.
14925 -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
14926 %
14927 What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
14928 computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
14929 and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
14930 %
14931 "What is the Nature of God?"
14932
14933 CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
14934 1 QT. SOUR CREAM
14935 1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT
14936 1/2 CUT CHIVES.
14937 STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.
14938
14939 "I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
14940 -- Bloom County
14941 %
14942 What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?
14943 -- Bertolt Brecht
14944 %
14945 What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
14946 which is the exact opposite.
14947 -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
14948 %
14949 What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
14950 %
14951 What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
14952 to compare it with.
14953 %
14954 What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
14955 It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
14956 and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
14957 and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes,
14958 women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
14959 mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
14960 and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
14961 -- Susan Gordon
14962 %
14963 What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
14964 -- Ursula K. LeGuin
14965 %
14966 What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
14967 %
14968 What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
14969 %
14970 What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
14971 %
14972 What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
14973 %
14974 What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
14975 %
14976 What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
14977 %
14978 What this country needs is a good five cent nickel.
14979 %
14980 What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
14981 %
14982 What this world needs is a good five-dollar plasma weapon.
14983 %
14984 What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
14985 -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
14986 %
14987 What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which
14988 nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday
14989 Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-
14990 launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just
14991 remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual
14992 process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still
14993 be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed.
14994 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14995 %
14996 What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
14997 %
14998 What's another word for Thesaurus?
14999 -- Steven Wright
15000 %
15001 "What's that thing?"
15002 "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
15003 computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
15004 it does. We call it a two-by-four."
15005 -- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
15006 %
15007 What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
15008 -- Dr. Who
15009 %
15010 Whatever became of eternal truth?
15011 %
15012 Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
15013 cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils
15014 as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding
15015 hundred dollar bills."
15016 -- Herb Caen
15017 %
15018 Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
15019 nailed down.
15020 -- Collis P. Huntingdon
15021 %
15022 Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches!
15023 -- Mom
15024 %
15025 When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
15026 money is.
15027 -- Robespierre
15028 %
15029 When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
15030 thing," it's the money.
15031 -- Kim Hubbard
15032 %
15033 When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
15034 loop?
15035 %
15036 When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
15037 not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
15038 travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
15039 -- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
15040 %
15041 When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
15042 sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
15043 relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
15044 -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
15045 %
15046 When all other means of communication fail, try words.
15047 %
15048 When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
15049 tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?
15050 -- Reuben Flagg
15051 %
15052 When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
15053 the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
15054 -- Vine Deloria, Jr.
15055 %
15056 When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I
15057 think it was a Tuesday.
15058 %
15059 When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
15060 guarantee them.
15061 %
15062 When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
15063 parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if
15064 I'm leaving.
15065 -- Steven Wright
15066 %
15067 When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
15068 year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire
15069 winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.
15070 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15071 %
15072 When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
15073 ladies, and, of course, the goat.
15074 %
15075 When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
15076 I'm beginning to believe it.
15077 -- Clarence Darrow
15078 %
15079 When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you
15080 take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come
15081 and get you."
15082 -- Jerry Lewis
15083 %
15084 When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
15085 firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'
15086 -- Steven Wright
15087 %
15088 When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
15089 the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
15090 -- Woody Allen
15091 %
15092 When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an
15093 act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A
15094 group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a
15095 six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things
15096 together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ...
15097 Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective
15098 responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military
15099 establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have
15100 been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
15101 together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
15102 -- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
15103 %
15104 When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
15105 or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
15106 cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
15107 go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
15108 -- Mark Twain
15109 %
15110 When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
15111 %
15112 When in doubt, tell the truth.
15113 -- Mark Twain
15114 %
15115 When in doubt, use brute force.
15116 -- Ken Thompson
15117 %
15118 When in panic, fear and doubt,
15119 Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
15120 %
15121 When love is gone, there's always justice.
15122 And when justice is gone, there's always force.
15123 And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
15124 Hi, Mom!
15125 -- Laurie Anderson
15126 %
15127 When Marriage is Outlawed,
15128 Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
15129 %
15130 When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
15131 results.
15132 -- Calvin Coolidge
15133 %
15134 When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony
15135 concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years --
15136 and I find I mind it less and less."
15137 -- Louise Andrews Kent
15138 %
15139 When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
15140 for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
15141 your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
15142 -- Daniel B. Luten
15143 %
15144 When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
15145 say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
15146 %
15147 When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
15148 -- Jon Carroll
15149 %
15150 When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
15151 modify the problem, not the remedy.
15152 %
15153 When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
15154 the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
15155 nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____that.
15156 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
15157 %
15158 When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is
15159 metaphysics.
15160 -- Voltaire
15161 %
15162 When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
15163 stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
15164 from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
15165 were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
15166 corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
15167 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
15168 %
15169 When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
15170 plane will fly.
15171 -- Donald Douglas
15172 %
15173 When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
15174 insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
15175 required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
15176 exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
15177 -- George Bernard Shaw
15178 %
15179 When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
15180 not hereditary.
15181 -- Thomas Paine
15182 %
15183 When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
15184 except our fingertips will have been singed.
15185 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
15186 %
15187 When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
15188 investigation of a topic, it is well to have the answer firmly in hand,
15189 so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
15190 swayed, directly to the goal.
15191 -- Amrom Katz
15192 %
15193 When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
15194 %
15195 When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
15196 %
15197 When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
15198 -- Harry S. Truman
15199 %
15200 When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
15201 clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
15202 to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
15203 In a way, the next move is up to him.
15204 -- R. A. Lafferty
15205 %
15206 When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
15207 -- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war
15208 %
15209 When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
15210 asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
15211 know the answer either.
15212 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
15213 %
15214 When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
15215 -- The Wall Street Journal
15216 %
15217 When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the
15218 impression you will make.
15219 %
15220 When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
15221 Wretched, bored, dejected; only
15222 Here's the rub, my darling dear
15223 I feel the same when you are near.
15224 -- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"
15225 %
15226 When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
15227 %
15228 Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
15229 -- Dave Parnas
15230 %
15231 Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
15232 see it tried on him personally.
15233 -- A. Lincoln
15234 %
15235 Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
15236 -- Oscar Wilde
15237 %
15238 Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
15239 you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
15240 Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
15241 -- Mark Twain
15242 "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
15243 %
15244 Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
15245 to reform.
15246 -- Mark Twain
15247 %
15248 WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
15249
15250 Oh, dear, where can the matter be
15251 When it's converted to energy?
15252 There is a slight loss of parity.
15253 Johnny's so long at the fair.
15254 %
15255 Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
15256 is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
15257 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
15258 %
15259 Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
15260 %
15261 Whether you can hear it or not
15262 The Universe is laughing behind your back
15263 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
15264 %
15265 Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
15266 %
15267 While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
15268 admission to someone else.
15269 %
15270 While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
15271 The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
15272 While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
15273 And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
15274 Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
15275 The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
15276 -- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
15277 November 26, 1792
15278 %
15279 While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
15280 %
15281 While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
15282 keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
15283 -- Edward Stevenson
15284 %
15285 While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
15286 form of misery.
15287 %
15288 While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
15289 %
15290 While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
15291 correctness never does.
15292 %
15293 While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very
15294 reassuring to know that it's still there.
15295 %
15296 While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
15297 safe, for you can watch both of his.
15298 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15299 %
15300 Whistler's Law:
15301 You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
15302 charge.
15303 %
15304 Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
15305 Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ...
15306 %
15307 Who made the world I cannot tell;
15308 'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
15309 My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
15310 I never soiled with such a deed.
15311 -- A. E. Housman
15312 %
15313 Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?
15314 %
15315 Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
15316 %
15317 Who's on first?
15318 %
15319 "Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
15320 -- George Ade
15321 %
15322 Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
15323 %
15324 Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
15325 %
15326 Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
15327 have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing.
15328 -- Ian Shoales
15329 %
15330 Why be a man when you can be a success?
15331 -- Bertolt Brecht
15332 %
15333 Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we
15334 have?
15335 %
15336 Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
15337 %
15338 Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
15339 avoid responsibility with?
15340 %
15341 Why did the Roman Empire collapse?
15342 What is the Latin for office automation?
15343 %
15344 Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
15345 %
15346 Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
15347 there must be a beverage.
15348 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15349 %
15350 Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps and California have
15351 more lawyers?
15352
15353 New Jersey had first choice.
15354 %
15355 Why don't elephants eat penguins ?
15356
15357 Because they can't get the wrappers off ...
15358 %
15359 Why I Can't Go Out With You:
15360
15361 I'd LOVE to, but ...
15362 -- I have to floss my cat.
15363 -- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
15364 -- I need to spend more time with my blender.
15365 -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
15366 -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
15367 -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
15368 -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
15369 -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
15370 -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
15371 -- I have some really hard words to look up.
15372 -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
15373 -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
15374 %
15375 Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
15376 because we are not the person involved
15377 -- Mark Twain
15378 %
15379 Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
15380 %
15381 Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
15382 -- Lily Tomlin
15383 %
15384 Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
15385 you knowing nothing?
15386 -- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
15387 %
15388 Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
15389 Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
15390 children open their old-fashioned presents.
15391
15392 Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
15393
15394 You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
15395 falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
15396
15397 Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
15398 with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
15399 and I get this cretin TOP?"
15400
15401 Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
15402
15403 You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
15404
15405 Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
15406 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15407 %
15408 Why was I born with such contemporaries?
15409 -- Oscar Wilde
15410 %
15411 Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
15412 No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
15413 when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
15414 direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
15415 -- John L. Shelton
15416 %
15417 Wiker's Law:
15418 Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
15419 %
15420 William Safire's Rules for Writers:
15421
15422 Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never
15423 be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to
15424 agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
15425 out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
15426 of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
15427 not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
15428 conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
15429 sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
15430 close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
15431 words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
15432 must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
15433 linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
15434 metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
15435 be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
15436 writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
15437 the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
15438 viable alternatives.
15439 %
15440 Williams and Holland's Law:
15441 If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
15442 statistical methods.
15443 %
15444 Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
15445 it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
15446 %
15447 Wit, n.:
15448 The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
15449 ... by leaving it out.
15450 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15451 %
15452 With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
15453 try to be a fraud and a half.
15454 -- Otto von Bismarck
15455 %
15456 With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
15457 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
15458 %
15459 With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
15460 build a nuclear balm?
15461 %
15462 With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
15463 miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
15464 still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
15465 such thing as progress.
15466 -- Ransom K. Ferm
15467 %
15468 With trembling hands he unfurled the ancient cracked parchment,
15469 this was the place, it had to be. Uncertainly he began to mumble the
15470 chant "rdbms, sql, third normal formal form, java, table, scalable".
15471 Something moved... From outside they heard a scream and a thud.
15472 The sales department had awoken.
15473 %
15474 Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
15475 %
15476 Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
15477 (1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
15478 (2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
15479 (3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
15480 (4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
15481 VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
15482 (5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
15483 -- Rich Kulawiec
15484 %
15485 Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
15486 you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
15487 down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
15488 tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
15489 long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
15490 there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
15491 come back.
15492
15493 Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
15494 when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
15495 Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
15496 cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
15497 heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
15498 beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
15499 and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
15500 although their insurance rates went way up.
15501 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15502 %
15503 Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
15504 We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage
15505 any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you
15506 should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are,
15507 and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
15508 bargained for.
15509 %
15510 Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs.
15511 %
15512 World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
15513 dress code!
15514 %
15515 Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
15516 August. The lines are the shortest, though.
15517 -- Steve Rubenstein
15518 %
15519 Worst Month of the Year:
15520 February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
15521 you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't
15522 get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
15523 -- Steve Rubenstein
15524 %
15525 Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
15526 From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
15527 in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs
15528 damage my videotapes?"
15529 %
15530 Worst Vegetable of the Year:
15531 The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next
15532 year.
15533 -- Steve Rubenstein
15534 %
15535 "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
15536
15537 "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
15538 -- Lewis Carroll
15539 %
15540 Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
15541 and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer
15542 if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
15543 and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
15544 and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
15545 %
15546 Write-Protect Tab, n.:
15547 A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
15548 left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error
15549 message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the
15550 momentary inconvenience.
15551 -- Robb Russon
15552 %
15553 Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
15554 -- Frank Zappa
15555 %
15556 "Wrong," said Renner.
15557
15558 "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
15559 the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
15560 %
15561 X-rated movies are all alike -- the only thing they leave to the
15562 imagination is the plot.
15563 %
15564 Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
15565 %
15566 Xerox never comes up with anything original.
15567 %
15568 XIIdigitation, n.:
15569 The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made
15570 by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.
15571 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15572 %
15573 "Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
15574 goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
15575 their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating
15576 unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
15577 doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
15578 -- Stephen C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
15579 %
15580 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
15581 fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic
15582 operators together.
15583 -- Steve Higgins
15584 %
15585 Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
15586 %
15587 Year, n.:
15588 A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
15589 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15590 %
15591 Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
15592 %
15593 Yes, but which self do you want to be?
15594 %
15595 Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog.
15596 Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog.
15597 Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
15598 -- Snoopy
15599 %
15600 Yesterday upon the stair
15601 I met a man who wasn't there.
15602 He wasn't there again today --
15603 I think he's from the CIA.
15604 %
15605 Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
15606 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
15607 %
15608 Yinkel, n.:
15609 A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
15610 will notice.
15611 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15612 %
15613 You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
15614 %
15615 You are here:
15616 ***
15617 ***
15618 *********
15619 *******
15620 *****
15621 ***
15622 *
15623
15624 But you're not all there.
15625 %
15626 "You are old, Father William," the young man said,
15627 "All your papers these days look the same;
15628 Those William's would be better unread --
15629 Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
15630
15631 "In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
15632 "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
15633 But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
15634 Made it pointless to think any more."
15635 %
15636 "You are old, father William," the young man said,
15637 "And your hair has become very white;
15638 And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
15639 Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
15640
15641 "In my youth," father William replied to his son,
15642 "I feared it might injure the brain;
15643 But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
15644 Why, I do it again and again."
15645 -- Lewis Carroll
15646 %
15647 "You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
15648 That your lectures bore people to death.
15649 Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
15650 Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
15651
15652 "I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
15653 Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
15654 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
15655 Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
15656 %
15657 "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
15658 For anything tougher than suet;
15659 Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
15660 Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
15661
15662 "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
15663 And argued each case with my wife;
15664 And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
15665 Has lasted the rest of my life."
15666 -- Lewis Carroll
15667 %
15668 "You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
15669 And there isn't one language you like;
15670 Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
15671 Have you thought about taking a hike?"
15672
15673 "Since I never write programs," his father replied,
15674 "Every language looks equally bad;
15675 Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
15676 And don't realize that they've been had."
15677 %
15678 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
15679 And have grown most uncommonly fat;
15680 Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
15681 Pray what is the reason of that?"
15682
15683 "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
15684 "I kept all my limbs very supple
15685 By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
15686 Allow me to sell you a couple?"
15687 -- Lewis Carroll
15688 %
15689 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
15690 And make errors few people could bear;
15691 You complain about everyone's English but yours --
15692 Do you really think this is quite fair?"
15693
15694 "I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
15695 "But my stature these days is so great
15696 That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
15697 And to stop me it's now far too late."
15698 %
15699 "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
15700 That your eye was as steady as ever;
15701 Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
15702 What made you so awfully clever?"
15703
15704 "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
15705 Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
15706 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
15707 Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
15708 -- Lewis Carroll
15709 %
15710 You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
15711 %
15712 You are the only person to ever get this message.
15713 %
15714 You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
15715 this sort of trash.
15716 %
15717 You buttered your bread, now lie in it!
15718 %
15719 You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
15720 incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
15721 Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
15722 to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because
15723 nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
15724 they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
15725 some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
15726
15727 The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
15728 pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear
15729 safety glasses.
15730 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15731 %
15732 You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
15733 doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on.
15734 -- Hepler, Systems Design 182
15735 %
15736 You can create your own opportunities this week.
15737 Blackmail a senior executive.
15738 %
15739 You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
15740 Why do you find that funny?
15741 -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350, University of Washington
15742 %
15743 You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
15744 can with just a kind word.
15745 -- Bumper Sticker
15746 %
15747 You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have,
15748 for instance.
15749 -- Franklin P. Jones
15750 %
15751 You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
15752 %
15753 You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
15754 the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
15755 -- Alan Perlis
15756 %
15757 You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
15758 %
15759 You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
15760 decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
15761 over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
15762 -- F. Allen
15763 %
15764 You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
15765 supercomputers.
15766 -- Steven Feiner
15767 %
15768 You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
15769 %
15770 You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename.
15771 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
15772 %
15773 You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
15774 %
15775 You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
15776 -- Steven Wright
15777 %
15778 You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
15779 -- Booker T. Washington
15780 %
15781 You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
15782 %
15783 You can't make a program without broken egos.
15784 %
15785 You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
15786 enough worrying about what's happening now.
15787 -- Lauren Bacall
15788 %
15789 You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten.
15790 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
15791 Over and Over"
15792 %
15793 You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.
15794 -- Dagwood Bumstead
15795 %
15796 You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
15797 %
15798 You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
15799 %
15800 You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
15801 %
15802 You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
15803 and last month in advance.
15804 %
15805 You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
15806 doubt.
15807 -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
15808 %
15809 You do not have mail.
15810 %
15811 You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
15812 -- J. D. Salinger
15813 %
15814 You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting
15815 needles.
15816 -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
15817 %
15818 You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
15819 The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
15820 which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
15821 tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
15822 names. Here's the complete text:
15823
15824 "(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
15825 "(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
15826 "(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
15827 send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
15828 THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
15829 household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
15830 you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
15831 NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
15832
15833 The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
15834 money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
15835 form.
15836 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
15837 %
15838 You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
15839 %
15840 You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
15841
15842 This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
15843
15844 You are permanently confused.
15845 -- Dave Decot
15846 %
15847 You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
15848 metal objects which are not fastened down.
15849 %
15850 You have junk mail.
15851 %
15852 You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
15853 wrinkled.
15854 %
15855 You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
15856 %
15857 You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
15858 you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
15859 %
15860 You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
15861 anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
15862 you can always change the channel.
15863 -- Jim Ignatowski
15864 %
15865 You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
15866 -- S. Rickly Christian
15867 %
15868 You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
15869 -- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
15870 %
15871 You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
15872 friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
15873 %
15874 You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
15875 %
15876 "You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
15877 airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
15878 deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
15879 when I was young!"
15880 "Why, what did she tell you?"
15881 "I don't know, I didn't listen!"
15882 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
15883 %
15884 You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
15885 %
15886 You may be recognized soon. Hide.
15887 %
15888 You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
15889 is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
15890 -- Sydney Harris
15891 %
15892 You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with
15893 him.
15894 -- Ed Howe
15895 %
15896 You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
15897 -- Alfred Kahn
15898 %
15899 You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
15900 success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
15901 or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
15902 party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
15903 -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
15904 %
15905 You might have mail.
15906 %
15907 You might have had mail.
15908 %
15909 You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
15910 proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
15911 %
15912 You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll
15913 be dead.
15914 %
15915 You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
15916 reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
15917 the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
15918 independence.
15919 -- Charles A. Beard
15920 %
15921 You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
15922 beach.
15923 %
15924 You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were
15925 you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
15926 yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
15927 company.
15928 -- J. Wellington Wells
15929 %
15930 You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
15931 %
15932 You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
15933 know how seldom they do.
15934 -- Olin Miller
15935 %
15936 You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
15937 if they are dead.
15938 %
15939 You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
15940 about 10^12 to 1.
15941 -- Ernest Rutherford
15942 %
15943 You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
15944 freedom and liberty.
15945 -- Henrik Ibsen
15946 %
15947 You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
15948 contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
15949 houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
15950 scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
15951 summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
15952 you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
15953 sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
15954 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15955 %
15956 You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name,
15957 another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and
15958 another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
15959 such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
15960 many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
15961 If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
15962 should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
15963 for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
15964 because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
15965 chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
15966
15967 In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his
15968 hemorrhoids.
15969 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
15970 %
15971 You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
15972 plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture.
15973 -- Business Professor, University of Georgia
15974 %
15975 You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
15976 %
15977 YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF
15978 PAPER SHUFFLING!
15979
15980 Mr. TAA of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be
15981 a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel
15982 really important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."
15983
15984 Mr. MARC had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
15985 to was a dead-end job as a engineer. Now I have a promising future and
15986 make really big Zorkmids."
15987
15988 MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
15989 you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.
15990
15991 SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
15992 %
15993 You too can wear a nose mitten.
15994 %
15995 You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
15996 %
15997 You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
15998 a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
15999 %
16000 You will be surprised by a loud noise.
16001 %
16002 You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
16003 %
16004 You will feel hungry again in another hour.
16005 %
16006 You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door
16007 mayonnaise salesman.
16008 %
16009 You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the
16010 Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
16011 parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
16012 -- Sherlock Holmes
16013 %
16014 You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
16015 %
16016 You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to
16017 worry.
16018 %
16019 You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
16020 taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
16021 minute and a huff.
16022 -- Groucho Marx
16023 %
16024 You'll never be the man your mother was!
16025 %
16026 You're at the end of the road again.
16027 %
16028 You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
16029 %
16030 You're never too old to become younger.
16031 -- Mae West
16032 %
16033 You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
16034 -- Dean Martin
16035 %
16036 You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
16037 %
16038 You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
16039 %
16040 You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.
16041 -- Gary Giddens
16042 %
16043 "You've got to think about tomorrow!"
16044
16045 "TOMORROW! I haven't even prepared for *_________yesterday* yet!"
16046 %
16047 Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
16048 thing he tells you.
16049 %
16050 Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
16051 from enjoying it.
16052 %
16053 Your fault: core dumped
16054 %
16055 Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that
16056 bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a
16057 chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home
16058 electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit
16059 breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires
16060 until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can
16061 damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change
16062 your fuses regularly.
16063 Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This
16064 sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more
16065 often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case
16066 you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not
16067 sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a
16068 fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed
16069 electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession,
16070 such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette
16071 table, etc.
16072 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
16073 %
16074 Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
16075 %
16076 Your lucky color has faded.
16077 %
16078 Your lucky number has been disconnected.
16079 %
16080 Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
16081 %
16082 Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
16083 %
16084 Yow! Am I having fun yet?
16085 -- Zippy the Pinhead
16086 %
16087 YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!
16088 %
16089 Zero Defects, n.:
16090 The result of shutting down a production line.
16091 %
16092 Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
16093 since I first called my brother's father dad.
16094 -- William Shakespeare, "King John"
16095 %
16096 Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
16097 People are always available for work in the past tense.
16098 %
16099 THE LAST BUG
16100
16101 "But you're out of your mind," It still wasn't perfect,
16102 They said with a shrug. As year followed year,
16103 "The customer's happy; And strangers would comment,
16104 What's one little bug?" "Is that guy still here?"
16105
16106 But he was determined. He died at the console,
16107 The others went home. Of hunger and thirst.
16108 He spread out the program, Next day he was buried,
16109 Deserted, alone. Face down, nine-edge first.
16110
16111 The cleaning men came, And the last bug in sight,
16112 The whole room was cluttered An ant passing by,
16113 With memory-dumps, punch cards. Saluted his tombstone,
16114 "I'm close," he muttered. And whispered, "Nice try."
16115
16116 The mumbling got louder,
16117 Simple deduction,
16118 "I've got it, it's right,
16119 Just change one instruction."
16120 %
16121 Speaking of the philosophy involved in moving humanity into space:
16122
16123 Furniture will be a largely obsolete concept. Take for example the dresser my
16124 mom bought for me when I was a kid. I still have it, and by the standards of
16125 its era, it's an admirable household fixture. It is a massive construction of
16126 maple wood, expertly joined with cunningly fit pieces, fitted and glued with
16127 the strength of iron. It is set with massive brass fixtures, and looks today
16128 -- discounting the dust -- as new as the day it was purchased, a quarter
16129 century ago. So far, so good; a fine piece of furniture, you might say. But
16130 let's look at it objectively, as a machine, as an object with a purpose. Here
16131 sit a hundred pounds of hardwood with a compressive strength of 1500 psi,
16132 jointed by an expert craftsman into a rigid box that would easily support a
16133 bull elephant. And what is the sole purpose of this massive crate, this
16134 monument to a dead tree? -- it holds my socks.
16135
16136 Not only is it blind engineering overkill of epic proportions, it is also an
16137 environmental disaster. The home to generations of squirrels, a sentinel post
16138 for falcons, an autumnal banner of golden glory, a living creature, was chopped
16139 down to enshrine some underwear. This, my friends, is no way to run a planet.
16140 -- Marshall T. Savage, from The Millennial Project:
16141 Colonizing the Galaxy -- In Eight Easy Steps
16142 %
16143 Nearly every software professional has heard the term spaghetti code as a
16144 pejorative description for complicated, difficult to understand, and impossible
16145 to maintain, software. However, many people may not know the other two
16146 elements of the complete Pasta Theory of Software.
16147
16148 Lasagna code is used to describe software that has a simple, understandable,
16149 and layered structure. Lasagna code, although structured, is unfortunately
16150 monolithic and not easy to modify. An attempt to change one layer conceptually
16151 simple, is often very difficult in actual practice.
16152
16153 The ideal software structure is one having components that are small and
16154 loosely coupled; this ideal structure is called ravioli code. In ravioli
16155 code, each of the components, or objects, is a package containing some meat
16156 or other nourishment for the system; any component can be modified or replaced
16157 without significantly affecting other components.
16158
16159 We need to go beyond the condemnation of spaghetti code to the active
16160 encouragement of ravioli code.
16161 -- Raymond J. Rubey, in a letter to the editor of Crosstalk
16162 magazine
16163 %
16164 63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
16165 ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
16166 now there's 63,005 bugs in the code!!
16167 %
16168 "It's not very common in Crowthorne"
16169