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5 -- Gifts for Children --
7 This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
8 because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
9 and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
10 morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
11 exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
12 your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
13 Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
14 might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
15 me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
16 who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
17 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
21 Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
22 ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
23 should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
24 clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
25 example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
26 three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
27 that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
28 at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
29 So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
30 years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
31 pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
33 If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
34 than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
36 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
39 Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!
43 Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
44 schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
45 spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
46 rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und
47 vatch das blinkenlights!!!
53 In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
54 of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
55 -- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
59 Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
60 to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
61 "fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
66 The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
67 1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
68 the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
69 each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
70 chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
71 nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
72 days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
73 seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
74 friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
75 Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
76 "cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
77 Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
78 all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
80 -- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
82 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
84 (7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
85 but a steady left tail light. This means
87 (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
88 to call the problem to the driver's attention.
89 (b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
90 (c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
91 (d) the driver is from out of town.
93 The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
94 countries to signal turns.
96 Pittsburgh Driver's Test
103 (d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
105 The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
106 totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
108 Has your family tried 'em?
112 Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
114 They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the
115 strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
119 Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the
120 biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains
121 that indicate freshness.
123 THE STORY OF CREATION
127 In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
128 and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
129 was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
130 registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
131 and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
132 Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
133 and there was morning, one interrupt ...
136 A Severe Strain on the Credulity
138 As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
139 parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
140 is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one
141 considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
142 begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really
143 starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
144 maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
145 Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
146 of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
147 re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
148 against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the
149 knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
150 -- New York Times Editorial, 1920
154 If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
155 across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
159 There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
160 would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
162 Another Glitch in the Call
163 ------- ------ -- --- ----
164 (Sung to the tune of the classic Pink Floyd song.)
166 We don't need no indirection
167 We don't need no flow control
168 No data typing or declarations
169 Did you leave the lists alone?
171 Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
174 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
175 All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
177 Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
179 (1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
180 (2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
183 (5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
184 Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
185 (6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
186 book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
187 bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
192 Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
193 And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
194 Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
196 Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
197 And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
198 Know what to kiss -- and when.
199 Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
201 Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
202 Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
203 And despite the changing fortunes of time,
204 There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
206 You are a fluke of the universe ...
207 You have no right to be here.
208 Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
209 Is laughing behind your back.
213 (Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
215 Double bucky, you're the one!
216 You make my keyboard lots of fun
217 Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
219 Control and Meta side by side,
220 Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
221 Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
223 Double bucky, left and right
224 OR'd together, outta sight!
225 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
226 Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
227 Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
229 -- Guy L. Steele, Jr., (C) 1978
231 Gimmie That Old Time Religion
232 We will follow Zarathustra, We will worship like the Druids,
233 Zarathustra like we use to, Dancing naked in the woods,
234 I'm a Zarathustra booster, Drinking strange fermented fluids,
235 And he's good enough for me! And it's good enough for me!
238 In the church of Aphrodite,
239 The priestess wears a see-through nightie,
240 She's a mighty righteous sightie,
241 And she's good enough for me!
244 CHORUS: Give me that old time religion,
245 Give me that old time religion,
246 Give me that old time religion,
247 'Cause it's good enough for me!
250 The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
251 Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while
252 the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
253 Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
254 paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
255 took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
256 their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player
257 said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a
258 fight and the match was called by officials.
261 Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
262 Did logzerneg the ifthen block
263 All kludgy were the function flows
264 And subroutines adhoc.
266 Beware the runtime-bug my friend
267 squrooneg, the false goto
268 Beware the infiniteloop
269 And shun the inprectoo.
271 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
272 Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.
274 (1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs,
276 (2) Something is missing in your personal relationships.
277 (3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
278 (4) You have a hard time getting a waiter.
279 (5) Exotic birds flock around you.
280 (6) People ignore you at parties.
281 (7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
282 (8) You no longer get off on cocaine.
284 Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
285 (1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
286 bomb; use the stairs.
287 (2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
289 (3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
290 (4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
291 psychological problems.
292 (5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to
293 recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed
294 potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
295 (6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs
296 will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
297 (7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
298 (8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
299 staggering illegally.
300 (9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
301 sanitary due to limited circulation.
302 (10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
305 The Three Major Kind of Tools
307 * Tools for hitting things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
308 jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
309 manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
310 bludgeons, and truncheons.)
312 * Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
314 * Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
315 greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
316 (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
317 any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
318 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
320 (to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
321 Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
322 Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
323 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
324 Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
325 Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
326 And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
327 And we've also found Just flip one switch
328 When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
329 You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
331 Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
332 Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
333 And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
335 'Twas the Night before Crisis
337 'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
338 Not a program was working not even a browse.
339 The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
340 Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
341 The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
342 While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
343 When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
344 I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
345 And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
346 But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
347 More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
348 And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
349 On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
350 On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
351 His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
352 From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
353 A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
354 Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
356 William Safire's Rules for Writers:
358 Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never
359 be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to
360 agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
361 out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
362 of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
363 not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
364 conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
365 sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
366 close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
367 words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
368 must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
369 linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
370 metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
371 be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
372 writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
373 the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
376 A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
379 For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
380 to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
381 be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
382 would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
383 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
384 same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
385 "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
386 Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
387 with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
388 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
389 Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
390 ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
391 ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
392 Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
393 hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
396 \a\a\a\a *** System shutdown message from root ***
398 System going down in 60 seconds
402 "... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
403 "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
405 "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
406 vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
408 "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
409 Alice corrected herself.
410 "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
411 called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
412 "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time
413 completely bewildered.
414 "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
415 "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
416 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
418 A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
419 eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality
420 test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
421 Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
422 the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
424 A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
425 about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their
426 arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
427 the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
428 Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
429 incredible surgical feat."
430 The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the
431 Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
432 that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an
434 The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
435 "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
437 A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
438 first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
439 "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
440 and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
441 "But the collar is up around my ears!"
442 "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
443 little more ... that's it."
444 "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
445 "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
446 go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
447 So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
448 street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
449 "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
450 "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
451 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
453 A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his
454 novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how
455 insignificant," said the master.
457 "Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
459 "It is," came the reply.
461 "Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
463 "It is even in a video game," said the master.
465 "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
467 The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The
468 lesson is over for today," he said.
469 -- "The Tao of Programming"
471 A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
472 the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
473 pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
474 nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
475 "If what?" asked the composer.
476 "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
478 A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
479 removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
480 doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
481 amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
482 limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
483 larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
485 An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
486 building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
487 bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
490 A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
491 upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
492 "That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
494 As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
495 he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
497 After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
498 Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
499 and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
501 "This is true," He replied.
502 "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
503 "What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
504 right to make his laws?"
505 "Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
508 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
510 An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He
511 knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
513 As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
514 embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away
515 to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished,
516 and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
517 that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
518 This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
519 When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
520 confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
521 and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
522 are particular and not generalizable.
523 The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
524 all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
525 one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
526 -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
528 An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
529 in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
530 "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
531 you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
532 an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
533 hour seems like a minute."
534 The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
535 moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
536 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
538 "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
539 asked the father of his little son.
542 Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
543 took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
545 One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
546 there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
547 "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
548 commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
549 Purpose in Life, anyway?"
550 Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
551 Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
552 Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
553 Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
554 -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
558 Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
559 A medley of extemporanea;
560 And love is thing that can never go wrong;
561 And I am Marie of Roumania.
564 Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
566 Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
567 Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
568 Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
569 Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!
571 Don't we know archaic barrel,
572 Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
573 Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
574 Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
577 During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
578 were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a
579 red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
580 "Hey, you almost hit my wife."
581 "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a
582 shot at mine, over there."
584 Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
585 called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
586 have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
587 most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
588 time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
589 have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
590 although God alone knows why it would want to.
591 The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
592 direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
593 have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
594 direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
595 harmful electron buildup in the wires.
596 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
598 Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
599 mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
600 "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
601 how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
602 "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
603 So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
604 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
606 Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
607 other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
608 the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
610 Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
611 to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
612 Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
613 piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
614 Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
615 inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
616 other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
617 placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
618 the little hammers strike.
619 Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
620 their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
621 Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
623 You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
624 you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
625 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
629 Say my love is easy had,
630 Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
631 Say I am too often sad --
632 Still behold me at your side.
634 Say I'm neither brave nor young,
635 Say I woo and coddle care,
636 Say the devil touched my tongue --
637 Still you have my heart to wear.
639 But say my verses do not scan,
640 And I get me another man!
643 "For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
644 of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."
650 "Gee, Mudhead, everyone at Morse Science High has an
651 extracurricular activity except you."
652 "Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
653 "Only to ten, Mudhead."
654 -- The Firesign Theatre
656 GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917
658 On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
659 Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
660 off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
661 wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
662 mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
663 tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
666 Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
667 month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
668 are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
669 The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
670 (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
672 Bite the wax tadpole.
673 There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
674 The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
675 hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
676 bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
677 but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
678 -- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle
680 Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
681 willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
682 for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
683 "shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
684 centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
685 trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
686 because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
687 object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
688 Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
689 broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
690 a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the
691 inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
692 same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
693 an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
694 these sometime around the middle of next week".
695 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
697 How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
698 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
699 who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
701 -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
705 I will not play at tug o' war.
706 I'd rather play at hug o' war,
709 Where everyone giggles
710 And rolls on the rug,
711 Where everyone kisses,
713 And everyone cuddles,
717 Human thinking can skip over a great deal, leap over small
718 misunderstandings, can contain ifs and buts in untroubled corners of
719 the mind. But the machine has no corners. Despite all the attempts to
720 see the computer as a brain, the machine has no foreground or
721 background. It can be programmed to behave as if it were working with
722 uncertainty, but -- underneath, at the code, at the circuits -- it
723 cannot simultaneously do something and withhold for later something that
724 remains unknown. In the painstaking working out of the specification,
725 line by code line, the programmer confronts an awful, inevitable truth:
726 The ways of human and machine understanding are disjunct.
727 -- Ellen Ullman, "Close to the Machine"
729 "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
731 "No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
732 course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
733 I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
736 "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
737 Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
738 Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
739 This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
740 The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
741 The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
742 If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
743 If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
744 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
746 I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because
747 we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently
748 leads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,
749 in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had
750 time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the
751 library, we could call each other up:
755 You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you
756 took last Thursday? Outside of Sears?
757 Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed?
758 You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
759 "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait.
760 I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
761 and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto
762 the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to
763 have to get back to you.
765 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
767 "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
768 Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
769 till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
771 "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
773 "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
774 tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
776 "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
777 so many different things."
778 "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
780 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
782 "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
783 that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
784 more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
785 might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
786 otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
788 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
790 If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
791 around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
792 explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
793 "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
794 deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
795 better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
796 with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
797 you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
798 successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
799 And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
800 You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
801 difficult can it be?"
802 Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
803 which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
804 other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
805 yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
806 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
808 In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
809 junior, what are you up to?"
810 "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
812 "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible! No one
813 will publish such rubbish!"
814 "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the
815 rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
816 expression on his face.
817 Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
818 "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
820 "Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?"
821 "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes
822 out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
823 Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
824 should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
825 next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.
827 The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
828 it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
831 Four be the things I am wiser to know:
832 Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
834 Four be the things I'd been better without:
835 Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
837 Three be the things I shall never attain:
838 Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
840 Three be the things I shall have till I die:
841 Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
843 It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
844 laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
845 thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
846 nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
847 for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
848 Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
849 under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
851 -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
853 Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
854 character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
855 hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
856 are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
857 BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
859 So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
860 he met the traveling salesman.
861 "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
862 in high-level language.
863 "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
864 and Apples," commented Jack.
865 "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
866 there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
867 Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
868 he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
870 "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
871 kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
873 -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack"
877 My love is like an iron wand
878 That conks me on the head,
879 My love is like the valium
880 That I take before my bed,
881 My love is like the pint of scotch
882 That I drink when I be dry;
883 And I shall love thee still, my dear,
884 Until my wife is wise.
886 Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
887 Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
888 pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
889 military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
890 Esther and hustle them off to prison.
891 They can't prove who they are because they've left their
892 passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
893 and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
894 movement... Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
895 charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
896 The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
897 they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
898 if they have any last requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
899 her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
900 possible, and turns to Murray.
901 "This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
902 spits in the sergeants face.
903 "Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
904 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
906 No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider
910 Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
911 tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
912 Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
913 plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
914 they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
915 Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
916 administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
917 you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
918 described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
919 interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
920 that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
921 This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
922 inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
923 so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
924 if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
926 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
928 On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
929 receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
930 income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
931 $283 on the desk before the cashier.
932 "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
933 route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
934 "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
935 business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
936 worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
938 Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
939 great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
940 the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
941 life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But
942 one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
943 going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I
944 shall die of boredom."
945 The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that
946 current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
947 rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
948 But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
949 and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
950 Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
951 lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
952 And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
953 "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the
954 Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current
955 said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us
956 free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this
958 But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
959 the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
961 One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
962 enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
963 Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
964 years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
965 Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
966 language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
967 students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
968 interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
969 its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
970 VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
971 It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
972 run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
973 will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
974 With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
975 quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
976 VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
977 documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
978 difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
979 is that it's all there.
980 -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
982 Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
983 requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
984 into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
985 problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
986 radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
988 A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
989 except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
990 it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
991 and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
992 all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
994 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
996 "Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
1003 "Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated
1004 thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY
1005 advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
1006 "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly.
1007 "Too proud?" the other enquired.
1008 Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"
1009 she said, "that one can't help growing older."
1010 "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With
1011 proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
1012 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking-Glass"
1014 So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
1015 With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
1016 maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
1017 corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
1018 flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
1019 it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
1020 I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
1021 the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
1022 Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
1023 I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
1024 heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
1025 unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
1026 up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
1027 opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
1028 our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
1029 the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
1030 cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
1031 these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
1032 into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
1033 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
1035 "The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")
1037 On the good ship Enterprise
1038 Every week there's a new surprise
1039 Where the Romulans lurk
1040 And the Klingons often go berserk.
1042 Yes, the good ship Enterprise
1043 There's excitement anywhere it flies
1045 And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.
1047 See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
1048 Mr. Spock is at his side.
1049 The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
1050 It gets fried, scattered far and wide.
1052 It's the good ship Enterprise
1053 Heading out where danger lies
1054 And you live in dread
1055 If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
1056 -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
1058 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
1060 SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
1061 Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
1062 Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
1063 with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
1064 END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
1065 a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
1066 they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
1067 the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
1069 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
1071 This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
1072 an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
1073 to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
1075 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL
1077 SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
1078 Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
1079 compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
1080 coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
1081 sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
1082 compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
1083 infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
1085 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE
1087 Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
1088 unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
1089 are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
1090 SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
1093 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C-
1095 This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he
1096 submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is
1097 best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the
1098 language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code
1099 statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very
1102 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18a: FIFTH
1104 FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
1105 refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and
1106 JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and
1107 BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY,
1108 CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
1110 The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
1111 financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include
1112 VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH,
1113 THUNDERBIRD, RIPPLE and HOUSERED. The latter is a favorite of frustrated
1114 FORTH programmers who end up using this language.
1116 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
1118 Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
1119 Descartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
1120 language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
1121 and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
1122 spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
1125 The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have
1126 almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the
1127 organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to
1130 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL
1131 From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley,
1132 VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry.
1134 Here is a sample program:
1135 LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
1136 IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND
1137 VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN
1138 FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
1140 BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
1142 LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
1144 LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW)
1148 When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message:
1150 GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!
1152 THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
1154 This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
1155 Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
1156 the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
1158 The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
1159 while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
1160 because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
1163 Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
1164 and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
1165 case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
1167 "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
1168 you find the time to try it again?"
1170 The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
1171 klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
1173 "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
1175 "How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
1177 The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the
1178 Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a
1179 large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress'
1180 it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the
1181 apparatus for a spectator sport.
1183 The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for
1184 castrating pigs during Sunday service.
1185 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1187 The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
1188 as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
1189 The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
1190 the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in
1191 twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
1193 "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
1194 everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
1195 fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one --
1196 and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
1198 "How?" demanded Fafhrd.
1200 Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
1201 -- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
1205 The wombat lives across the seas,
1206 Among the far Antipodes.
1207 He may exist on nuts and berries,
1208 Or then again, on missionaries;
1209 His distant habitat precludes
1210 Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
1211 But I would not engage the wombat
1212 In any form of mortal combat.
1215 Into love and out again,
1216 Thus I went and thus I go.
1217 Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
1218 Well and bitterly I know
1219 All the songs were ever sung,
1220 All the words were ever said;
1221 Could it be, when I was young,
1222 Someone dropped me on my head?
1225 There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
1226 someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
1227 Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
1228 Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
1229 every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
1231 Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
1232 centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___
\b\b\byou
1233 can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
1234 forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
1235 -- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
1236 even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
1237 why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
1238 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
1240 Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
1241 rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
1243 As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
1244 it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
1245 sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
1246 consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
1247 being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
1248 The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
1249 do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
1250 honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
1251 be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
1252 relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
1253 Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
1254 This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
1255 -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. on Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
1256 from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
1257 and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
1259 To A Quick Young Fox:
1260 Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
1261 Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
1262 Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
1263 Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
1266 "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past
1267 year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley
1268 reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
1269 artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue
1270 moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
1271 Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the
1272 entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the
1273 sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
1274 "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
1275 "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made
1277 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
1279 WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
1281 Firings will continue until morale improves.
1283 We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.
1284 But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle
1285 Haggard song at a French restaurant. ...
1286 I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
1287 her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I
1288 had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone
1289 told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was
1290 lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he
1291 fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing
1292 what men must do. ...
1293 "Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible
1294 sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew
1295 not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a
1296 quiet and peace I will never forget.
1297 "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
1298 tollway belle's for thee."
1299 The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was
1300 a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I
1301 poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
1302 -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
1305 "What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
1306 teenager asked her mother.
1307 "Encouragement, dear," she replied.
1309 "What's that thing?"
1310 "Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
1311 computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
1312 it does. We call it a two-by-four."
1313 -- Jeff MacNelly, "Shoe"
1315 When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
1316 clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
1317 to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
1318 In a way, the next move is up to him.
1321 "You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
1322 airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
1323 deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
1325 "Why, what did she tell you?"
1326 "I don't know, I didn't listen!"
1327 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
1329 YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF
1332 Mr. TAA of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be
1333 a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel
1334 really important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."
1336 Mr. MARC had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
1337 to was a dead-end job as a engineer. Now I have a promising future and
1338 make really big Zorkmids."
1340 MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
1341 you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.
1343 SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
1345 You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the
1346 Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
1347 parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
1350 Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that
1351 bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a
1352 chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home
1353 electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit
1354 breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires
1355 until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can
1356 damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change
1357 your fuses regularly.
1358 Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This
1359 sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more
1360 often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case
1361 you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not
1362 sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a
1363 fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed
1364 electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession,
1365 such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette
1367 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
1375 | | | | ______ ~~~~ _____
1376 | |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__
1377 | ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\
1378 | | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " )
1379 | | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
1380 | | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\
1381 | | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\
1382 // | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\
1383 // ( ) / / \` \__ \\
1384 //-------------------------------------------------------------\\
1386 Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
1387 start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
1388 then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
1389 music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
1390 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
1392 n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
1393 n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
1394 n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
1395 n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
1396 n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
1398 -- C code which reverses the bits in a word.
1400 n = (n & 0x55555555) + ((n & 0xaaaaaaaa) >> 1);
1401 n = (n & 0x33333333) + ((n & 0xcccccccc) >> 2);
1402 n = (n & 0x0f0f0f0f) + ((n & 0xf0f0f0f0) >> 4);
1403 n = (n & 0x00ff00ff) + ((n & 0xff00ff00) >> 8);
1404 n = (n & 0x0000ffff) + ((n & 0xffff0000) >> 16);
1406 -- C code which counts the bits in a word.
1408 " ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
1409 pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!"
1410 -- Winston Churchill
1412 ... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you
1413 have turned into a pile of dust.
1415 ... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
1416 was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
1419 "... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
1421 -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
1423 "... all the modern inconveniences ..."
1426 "... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
1430 ... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
1432 ... And malt does more than Milton can
1433 To justify God's ways to man
1436 "... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
1438 -- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
1441 ... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
1444 ... bleakness... desolation... plastic forks...
1445 -- Zippy the Pinhead
1447 ... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
1448 easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
1449 and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
1450 upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
1451 without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
1452 on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
1453 was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
1454 sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
1455 human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
1456 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
1458 ... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
1459 intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
1460 we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
1461 that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
1462 of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard
1463 example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
1464 makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
1465 whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
1466 finite or an infinite number.
1467 -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
1469 ... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
1472 ... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___
\b\b\bdid* quote anybody in this
1473 business, it probably would be gibberish.
1476 Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
1478 ... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
1479 and you would not have been informed.
1481 " I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
1482 instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is
1486 "... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
1487 supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
1488 actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
1489 -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
1492 ... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
1493 the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
1494 asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
1495 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1497 ... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a
1500 ... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
1501 smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
1502 not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
1505 ... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
1506 legally ... impeccable!
1508 ... My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
1511 ... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
1512 get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
1513 the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
1514 on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
1515 children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
1516 snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
1517 to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
1518 a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
1519 outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
1520 he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
1521 Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
1522 Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
1523 kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
1524 children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
1526 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
1528 ... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
1529 with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
1530 shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
1531 advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
1532 shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
1533 them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
1534 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
1536 "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
1537 lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
1541 ... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
1542 Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
1543 thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
1544 somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
1545 on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
1546 a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
1547 -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
1549 ... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
1550 who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
1551 and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
1552 and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
1553 -- Voltarine de Cleyre
1555 ... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
1556 procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
1557 to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
1558 sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
1559 documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
1560 listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
1561 documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
1562 under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
1563 effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
1564 scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
1565 in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
1566 thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
1567 then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
1568 dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all
1570 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
1572 ... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
1573 consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
1574 of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
1575 listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
1576 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
1578 "... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..."
1581 ... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!!
1583 ... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
1584 other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
1585 charity we can only call "inhuman."
1588 ... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives
1589 as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as
1590 determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people
1591 buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s
1592 couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three
1593 weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available,
1594 they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent
1595 restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of
1596 excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going
1597 off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have
1598 a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli.
1599 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
1601 !07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
1603 (1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
1604 (2) Great generals are forewarned.
1605 (3) Forewarned is forearmed.
1606 (4) Four is an even number.
1607 (5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
1608 (6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
1610 Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
1612 (1) Everything depends.
1613 (2) Nothing is always.
1614 (3) Everything is sometimes.
1616 100 buckets of bits on the bus
1618 Take one down, short it to ground
1619 FF buckets of bits on the bus
1621 FF buckets of bits on the bus
1623 Take one down, short it to ground
1624 FE buckets of bits on the bus
1628 $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
1629 which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
1630 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
1632 10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
1634 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
1635 (1) Scarecrow for centipedes
1639 (5) Self-piercing earrings
1642 (8) Prosthetic dog claws
1646 (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
1650 1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
1653 186,282 miles per second:
1655 It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
1657 2180, U.S. History question:
1658 What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what
1659 office did he later hold?
1661 3 syncs represent the trinity -- init, the child and the eternal zombie
1662 process. In doing 3, you're paying homage to each and I think such
1663 traditions are important in this shallow, mercurial business we find
1665 -- Jordan K. Hubbard
1669 355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
1672 43rd Law of Computing:
1673 Anything that can go wr
1674 fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
1676 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
1677 The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
1680 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
1681 The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
1682 Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
1684 77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
1686 ------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
1687 --- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
1688 ------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
1689 ---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop the
1690 ---X--- (9) GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates to
1691 --- --- (8) nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
1693 Nine in the second place means:
1694 The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
1696 Six in the third place means:
1697 In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue
1698 Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
1700 99 blocks of crud on the disk,
1702 You patch a bug, and dump it again:
1703 100 blocks of crud on the disk!
1705 100 blocks of crud on the disk,
1707 You patch a bug, and dump it again:
1708 101 blocks of crud on the disk! ...
1710 A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
1711 responsibility at the other.
1713 A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
1716 A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out
1720 A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
1721 and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
1724 A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it
1725 adds up to be real money.
1726 -- Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
1728 A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
1730 A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
1732 A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
1734 A bore is someone who persists in holding his
1735 own views after we have enlightened him with ours.
1737 A budget is just a method of worrying
1738 before you spend money, as well as afterward.
1740 A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich
1741 and votes from the poor to protect them from each other.
1743 A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
1745 A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not
1746 mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty
1747 trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
1750 A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
1752 A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit
1753 will approach you soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie.
1755 A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
1756 won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
1759 A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
1762 A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
1764 -- Mark Twain quoting Professor Winchester,
1765 "The Disappearance of Literature"
1767 A closed mouth gathers no foot.
1769 A computer, to print out a fact,
1770 Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
1771 But this output can be
1772 No more than debris,
1773 If the input was short of exact.
1776 A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
1778 A CONS is an object which cares.
1781 A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it
1782 is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
1784 A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
1787 A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
1788 damned things is ample.
1791 A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
1794 A crusader's wife slipped from the garrison
1795 And had an affair with a Saracen.
1796 She was not oversexed,
1797 Or jealous or vexed,
1798 She just wanted to make a comparison.
1800 A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen
1804 A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
1806 A day without sunshine is like night.
1808 A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur
1811 A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
1812 you will look forward to the trip.
1814 A diva who specializes in risqu'
\be arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
1816 A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
1819 A dozen, a gross, and a score,
1820 Plus three times the square root of four,
1822 Plus five times eleven,
1823 Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
1825 A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
1826 Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
1827 Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
1828 with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the
1829 Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly
1830 pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while
1831 simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick
1832 Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
1834 A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
1836 -- Winston Churchill
1838 A fool must now and then be right by chance.
1840 A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block
1841 of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an
1844 A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
1845 superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
1846 -- George Bernard Shaw
1848 A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
1851 "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
1852 dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
1853 -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
1855 A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
1858 A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than
1859 he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
1860 favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
1861 facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
1864 A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
1866 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
1868 A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
1869 A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
1870 But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\bthat _
\b_
\b_
\bhad _
\b_
\bto _
\b_
\b_
\b_
\bmean _
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\b_
\bsomething*.
1871 -- S. Morgenstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
1873 A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
1876 A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
1877 Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific
1878 game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have
1879 traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there,
1880 preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
1883 A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and
1884 placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or
1885 rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results
1886 from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball
1887 and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the
1888 ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical phenomena.
1891 A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
1892 into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
1893 hope of greening the landscape of idea.
1896 A good sysadmin always carries around a few feet of fiber. If he ever
1897 gets lost, he simply drops the fiber on the ground, waits ten minutes,
1898 then asks the backhoe operator for directions.
1899 -- Bill Bradford <mrbill@mrbill.net>
1901 A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
1902 rearranging their prejudices.
1905 A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
1908 A hypothetical paradox:
1909 What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security
1910 team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of
1911 Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
1914 A is for AMY who fell down the stairs, B is for BASIL assaulted by bears.
1915 C is for CLARA who wasted away, D is for DESMOND thrown out of a sleigh.
1916 E is for ERNEST who choked on a peach, F is for FANNY sucked dry by a leech.
1917 G is for GEORGE smothered under a rug, H is for HECTOR done in by a thug.
1918 I is for IDA who drowned in a lake, J is for JAMES who took lye by mistake.
1919 K is for KATE who was struck with an axe, L is for LEO who swallowed some tacks.
1920 M is for MAUD who was swept out to sea, N is for NEVILLE who died of ennui.
1921 O is for OLIVE run through with an awl, P is for PRUE trampled flat in a brawl.
1922 Q is for QUENTIN who sank in a mire, R is for RHODA consumed by a fire.
1923 S is for SUSAN who perished of fits, T is for TITUS who flew into bits.
1924 U is for UNA who slipped down a drain, V is for VICTOR squashed under a train.
1925 W is for WINNIE embedded in ice, X is for XERXES devoured by mice.
1926 Y is for YORICK whose head was knocked in, Z is for ZILLAH who drank too much gin.
1927 -- Edward Gorey, "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"
1929 A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
1931 A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
1934 A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
1936 A lady with one of her ears applied
1937 To an open keyhole heard, inside,
1938 Two female gossips in converse free --
1939 The subject engaging them was she.
1940 "I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
1941 That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
1942 As soon as no more of it she could hear
1943 The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
1944 "I will not stay," she said with a pout,
1945 "To hear my character lied about!"
1948 A language that doesn't affect the way you
1949 think about programming is not worth knowing.
1952 A language that doesn't have everything is
1953 actually easier to program in than some that do.
1954 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
1956 A large number of installed systems work by fiat.
1957 That is, they work by being declared to work.
1960 A Law of Computer Programming:
1961 Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
1962 will find that programmers cannot write in English.
1964 A limerick packs laughs anatomical
1965 Into space that is quite economical.
1966 But the good ones I've seen
1967 So seldom are clean,
1968 And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
1970 A LISP programmer knows the value of everything,
1971 but the cost of nothing.
1974 A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
1975 -- H. H. Munroe a.k.a. Saki, "The Square Egg" (1924)
1977 A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
1979 A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any
1982 A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in
1983 his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and
1984 exceptional ability in that particular field."
1986 A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
1989 A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking,
1990 and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks.
1993 A man said to the Universe:
1995 "However," replied the Universe,
1996 "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation."
1999 A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
2001 A mathematician is a device for converting coffee into theorems.
2004 A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
2005 on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
2006 game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
2007 pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
2008 along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
2009 heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
2010 around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
2011 direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
2012 paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
2013 colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
2014 fall over gently onto their backs.
2015 -- Audubon Society Magazine
2017 [From the BBC, 2001-02-02:
2018 For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
2019 monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as Lynx
2020 helicopters passed overhead.
2021 "Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
2022 said team leader Dr. Richard Stone.
2023 "As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
2024 calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
2025 with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
2027 The conclusion, said Dr. Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
2028 (1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects" on
2031 A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out
2032 on loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed
2033 loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom
2034 do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
2036 A new dramatist of the absurd
2037 Has a voice that will shortly be heard.
2038 I learn from my spies
2039 He's about to devise
2040 An unprintable three-letter word.
2043 If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
2044 If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
2045 It is an ice cream koan.
2047 A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
2048 Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a `round tuit'
2049 now has no excuse for further procrastination.
2051 A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies
2052 insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the
2053 right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
2055 A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the
2056 rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
2058 A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
2059 "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
2062 A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power
2063 off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly:
2064 "You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
2065 understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off
2066 and on. The machine worked.
2068 A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
2070 A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
2073 A penny saved is ridiculous.
2075 A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
2077 A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
2080 A pig is a jolly companion,
2081 Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
2082 A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
2083 Though mountains may topple and tilt.
2084 When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
2085 When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
2086 Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
2087 You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
2088 You'll never go wrong with a pig!
2089 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
2091 A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
2092 -- The Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Sumatra"
2094 A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
2096 And the Master answered:
2097 It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
2098 It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
2099 It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to
2100 City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
2101 to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
2103 And that is Fate? said the priest.
2105 Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
2107 That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know
2108 what Freight was too.
2109 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
2111 A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
2113 A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
2114 of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
2115 series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric
2116 precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
2117 inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
2118 accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
2119 for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
2120 defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
2121 information in the first place.
2122 -- IEEE Grid news magazine
2124 A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
2125 your wife will give you for free.
2127 A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
2128 too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
2129 was intended for her preservation.
2132 A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
2133 "you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
2134 the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
2135 to make a travesty of the game.
2138 A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results
2139 blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.
2142 A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.
2144 A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:
2146 Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying,
2147 "Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny
2148 bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the
2149 lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and
2150 breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the
2151 Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of
2152 the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt
2153 thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then
2154 proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being
2155 the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand
2156 Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight,
2158 -- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
2160 A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
2161 that the system works.
2163 A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
2166 A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
2167 objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
2168 scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
2169 concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
2170 dimensional objects ...
2172 A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
2173 not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized
2176 A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
2177 contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
2178 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2180 A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will
2181 keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those
2182 that are worth committing.
2185 A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least the end of the blackboard.
2188 A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
2191 A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
2195 A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
2196 Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
2197 true," asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as
2198 Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt
2199 shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
2201 A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
2203 A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
2204 undreamed of by its author.
2207 A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
2208 Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
2209 other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
2210 new versions of their own innards!
2213 A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
2215 A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
2216 and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
2217 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2219 A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
2222 A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
2225 A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
2227 A university is what a college becomes
2228 when the faculty loses interest in students.
2231 A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
2232 -- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
2234 A UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
2235 Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
2236 She found a good way
2237 To combine work and play:
2238 She sells C shells by the seashore.
2240 A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
2242 -- Tennessee Williams
2244 A very intelligent turtle
2245 Found programming UNIX a hurdle
2246 The system, you see,
2247 Ran as slow as did he,
2248 And that's not saying much for the turtle.
2250 A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
2253 A witty saying proves nothing.
2256 A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets
2259 A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to
2260 admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact
2261 remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one
2262 reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It
2263 is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of
2264 using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these
2265 matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times.
2266 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
2268 A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe
2272 An organization for drunks who drive
2274 \a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\aAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
\a
2275 You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
2277 Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
2279 About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
2282 Absence makes the heart go wander.
2285 Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
2289 A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
2290 himself from the sphere of exaction.
2291 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2294 A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
2296 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2299 A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
2301 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2303 Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
2304 because the stakes are so low.
2308 A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
2310 -- Foolish Dictionary
2312 Accidents cause History.
2314 If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
2315 Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
2316 have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
2317 could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
2318 the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
2319 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2321 According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person
2322 shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
2323 fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
2324 of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
2327 According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least
2330 According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
2331 -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
2333 According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
2336 According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
2339 According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to
2340 live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came
2341 in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much.
2342 Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime.
2346 A bagpipe with pleats.
2349 The vice of being right.
2351 Acid -- better living through chemistry.
2353 Acid absorbs 47 times its own weight in excess Reality.
2356 A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well
2358 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2360 Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
2362 Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
2363 everyone glued in their seats!"
2364 Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
2367 Actor: So what do you do for a living?
2368 Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
2369 dishes for Chinese restaurants.
2370 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
2372 Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
2375 Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
2376 Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
2378 -- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
2381 Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
2382 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2385 The stage between puberty and adultery.
2387 "Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
2392 To venerate expectantly.
2393 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2396 One old enough to know better.
2398 Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
2399 way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
2402 Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
2403 then at least be aseptic.
2405 After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
2406 It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
2407 more advanced than the lichen family.
2408 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
2411 After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
2413 After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not
2414 for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
2415 simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
2418 After an instrument has been assembled,
2419 extra components will be found on the bench.
2421 After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
2422 names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
2423 Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted
2424 many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi
2425 Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
2426 different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
2427 developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
2428 attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led
2429 to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today,
2430 skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
2431 injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
2432 hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
2433 that it sinks like a stone.
2434 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
2436 "After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
2437 the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
2438 cost to others, to win advancement."
2441 After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
2443 After living in New York, you trust nobody,
2444 but you believe everything. Just in case.
2446 After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
2447 cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
2451 That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
2454 Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a
2457 Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
2461 That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
2462 still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise
2466 Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
2469 For all dreams are not equal,
2470 some exit to nightmare
2471 most end with the dreamer
2473 But at least one must be lived ... and died.
2475 Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
2477 "Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
2478 Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact
2479 that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately
2480 unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep
2481 up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers."
2482 -- An analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
2484 Air is water with holes in it.
2486 Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
2487 -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
2489 Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
2490 telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
2491 York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
2492 And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
2493 receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
2496 (1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
2498 (2) Always be backlit.
2499 (3) Sit down whenever possible.
2501 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
2502 Aleph-null bottles of beer,
2503 You take one down, and pass it around,
2504 Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
2506 Alex Haley was adopted!
2508 Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
2511 Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
2512 them keeps paying for it.
2515 All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
2519 All extremists should be taken out and shot.
2521 All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
2526 Smoke a friend today.
2528 All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
2530 All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
2533 All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
2534 by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
2536 All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
2537 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
2539 All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
2543 All my friends and I are crazy.
2544 That's the only thing that keeps us sane.
2546 All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
2550 All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
2551 -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., "The Book of Bokonon"
2553 All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
2557 All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
2559 All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
2561 All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
2562 every organism to live beyond its income.
2563 -- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
2565 All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
2566 -- Ernest Rutherford
2568 All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right
2572 All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
2574 All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
2575 too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
2576 subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
2577 can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
2578 Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
2579 decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
2581 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
2583 All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
2587 All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
2588 the government in less than a second.
2591 All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
2594 All the world's a VAX,
2595 And all the coders merely butchers;
2596 They have their exits and their entrails;
2597 And one int in his time plays many widths,
2598 His sizeof being _
\bN bytes. At first the infant,
2599 Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
2600 And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
2601 And shining morning face, creeping like slug
2602 Unwillingly to school.
2603 -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
2605 All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
2606 and all theoretical chemists know it.
2607 -- Richard P. Feynman
2609 All things are possible, except skiing thru a revolving door.
2611 All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money,
2612 it's for fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
2615 All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
2617 All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
2618 infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
2622 All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
2623 upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
2624 visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
2625 informing, stimulating and ennobling.
2629 In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
2630 their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
2631 separately plunder a third.
2632 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2636 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2638 Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
2639 Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
2642 Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
2644 Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
2645 mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
2646 any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
2647 to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
2648 Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
2649 serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
2650 same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
2651 that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
2652 penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
2653 running the post office.
2654 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
2656 Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
2657 reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the
2658 day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable
2659 interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on
2660 pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin,
2661 and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
2662 Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous
2663 material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the
2664 management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion
2665 the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical
2667 -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
2669 Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back.
2671 Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
2673 "Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
2676 Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
2679 Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
2680 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2682 Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
2685 America may be unique in being a country which has leapt
2686 from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
2689 America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
2690 until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
2691 changed its name to "America".
2692 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
2694 American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective
2695 employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for
2696 employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference
2697 between the men's room and the women's room without having little
2698 pictures on the doors.
2699 -- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
2701 Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
2703 An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
2704 people refuse to see it.
2705 -- James Michener, "Space"
2707 An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize
2708 the president but is always polite to traffic cops.
2710 An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to
2711 New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but
2712 not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
2715 An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
2717 An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
2719 An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree
2720 murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's
2721 mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border.
2722 Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the
2723 suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a
2724 murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
2726 An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
2727 really care to know.
2729 An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
2731 An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
2733 An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded
2734 summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your
2735 arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey
2736 responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
2738 An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
2741 An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He
2742 wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is
2743 advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and
2744 Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in
2745 incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
2748 "The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
2749 discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
2750 to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
2751 things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
2752 parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
2753 timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
2754 doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
2755 Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
2756 school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
2757 successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
2758 they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha."
2759 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
2761 An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
2763 An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
2764 eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
2766 -- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
2768 An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
2770 An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge.
2772 Anarchy may not be the best form of government,
2773 but it's better than no government at all.
2775 And as we stand on the edge of darkness
2776 Let our chant fill the void
2777 That others may know
2779 In the land of the night
2783 -- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
2785 And I heard Jeff exclaim,
2786 As they strolled out of sight,
2787 "Merry Christmas to all --
2788 You take credit cards, right?"
2789 -- "Outsiders" comic
2791 And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
2793 And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
2794 fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
2795 looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One
2796 approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
2797 is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
2798 of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
2799 gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this
2800 procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
2801 youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
2803 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
2805 "...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
2808 And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a
2809 horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
2810 columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory,
2811 ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
2813 -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
2815 And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
2816 a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
2817 tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets
2818 tragedy face to face, we have politics.
2819 -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland,
2820 "Root Crops and Ground Cover"
2822 Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
2823 Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _____
\b\b\b\b\bneeds heroes.
2824 -- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
2826 Angels we have heard on High
2827 Tell us to go out and Buy.
2830 Ankh if you love Isis.
2833 To grease a king or other great functionary already
2834 sufficiently slippery.
2835 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
2837 Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
2839 Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
2840 television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
2841 and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
2842 offers whiter teeth *___
\b\b\band* fresher breath.
2843 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
2846 Anthony's Law of Force:
2847 Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
2849 Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
2850 Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
2851 corner of the workshop.
2854 On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
2858 The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
2860 Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
2863 Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
2864 representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
2865 representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
2866 capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
2869 Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
2872 Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that
2873 this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a
2876 Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
2879 Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche
2880 -- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance,
2881 my grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off
2882 the fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was
2886 Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
2889 Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger
2892 Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
2893 exactly the point of most pressure.
2896 Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
2899 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
2902 Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
2905 Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
2908 Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
2909 -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
2911 Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
2913 Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the
2914 sight of a police car is probably parked.
2916 Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
2918 Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
2919 supposed to be doing at the moment.
2922 Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
2925 Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with
2928 Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
2929 is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
2930 make messes in the house.
2931 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
2933 Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
2936 Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
2939 Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President
2940 should on no account be allowed to do the job.
2941 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
2943 Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
2944 tried taking candy from a baby.
2947 Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
2949 Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
2950 price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
2951 means the price went way up.
2953 Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
2955 Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
2957 Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution.
2960 A concise, clever statement.
2962 A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
2963 -- James Alexander Thom
2965 APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of
2966 the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of
2968 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
2970 APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I
2971 can't read any of them.
2975 Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off
2977 -- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
2979 AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
2980 You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
2981 You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to
2982 be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same
2983 mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid.
2985 Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
2986 Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
2987 general can be said."
2989 ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
2990 FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
2994 Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
2995 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
2997 ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
2998 You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You
2999 are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are
3002 Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
3007 To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle.
3009 Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
3010 (1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
3011 (2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
3012 (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
3015 Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
3016 measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
3017 imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
3018 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
3020 Art is anything you can get away with.
3023 Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
3026 Arthur's Laws of Love:
3027 (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
3028 remind them of someone else.
3029 (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
3030 delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
3033 Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
3035 As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
3036 interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
3037 perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
3038 "that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ...
3039 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
3041 As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
3042 certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I
3043 became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can
3047 As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
3048 certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
3051 As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
3054 As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
3055 Feeling worse and worser,
3056 There I met a C.R.T.
3057 And it drop't me a cursor.
3060 Phosphors light on you!
3061 If I had fifty hours a day
3062 I'd spend them all at you.
3063 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
3065 As I was passing Project MAC,
3066 I met a Quux with seven hacks.
3067 Every hack had seven bugs;
3068 Every bug had seven manifestations;
3069 Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
3070 Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
3071 How many losses at Project MAC?
3073 As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
3074 industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free
3075 speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to
3076 myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a
3077 real American talk like that.
3078 -- Frank Hague, 1896-1956
3080 As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
3082 As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
3083 fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
3085 -- Oscar Wilde, "Intentions"
3087 As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
3089 As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs;
3090 a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
3091 -- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
3094 As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
3095 wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
3096 to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
3097 that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
3098 finding mistakes in my own programs.
3099 -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
3101 As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
3102 so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
3105 As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
3106 is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
3107 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
3109 As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free
3112 As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
3113 memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
3114 to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
3115 E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
3116 -- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
3118 As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
3119 interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
3120 Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
3121 out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
3122 Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
3123 organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,
3124 birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never
3125 see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
3126 stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
3127 with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are
3128 talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
3129 highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
3130 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
3133 As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull
3134 your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.
3135 The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along
3136 with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall
3137 from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all
3138 over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of
3139 a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the
3140 spider is suing you for damages.
3142 As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
3144 ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
3146 Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
3147 one went to Harvard).
3150 Ask not for whom the Bell tolls, and you
3151 will pay only the station-to-station rate.
3154 Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
3156 Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ...
3157 if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee.
3159 Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
3162 "Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
3163 woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it,
3164 she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'"
3168 The masculine of "lass".
3170 Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve.
3171 Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be
3172 strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum.
3173 Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check
3177 "At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
3178 Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
3179 under the exhaust of a bus until he revived."
3181 At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
3182 not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
3183 it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
3184 -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
3186 At first, I just did it on weekends. With a few friends, you know...
3187 We never wanted to hurt anyone. The girls loved it. We'd all sit
3188 around the computer and do a little UNIX. It was just a kick. At
3189 least that's what we thought. Then it got worse.
3191 It got so I'd have to do some UNIX during the weekdays. After a
3192 while, I couldn't even wake up in the morning without having that
3193 crave to go do UNIX. Then it started affecting my job. I would just
3194 have to do it during my break. Maybe a `grep' or two, maybe a little
3195 `more'. I eventually started doing UNIX just to get through the day.
3196 Of course, it screwed up my mind so much that I couldn't even
3197 function as a normal person.
3199 I'm lucky today, I've overcome my UNIX problem. It wasn't easy. If
3200 you're smart, just don't start. Remember, if any weirdo offers you
3205 At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
3206 challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
3207 -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
3209 "At least they're ___________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bEXPERIENCED incompetents"
3211 At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
3212 thumb with a hammer.
3215 At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
3216 find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
3219 Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
3222 Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
3223 -- Winston Churchill
3225 Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
3226 depths they were once able to plumb.
3230 A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
3232 Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
3233 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
3235 Avoid reality at all costs.
3237 Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
3238 we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
3239 -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
3242 A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
3244 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3247 1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually
3248 intermittently. 2. adj.: Failing hardware or software. "This
3249 bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on
3250 obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the
3251 bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS,
3254 Bagdikian's Observation:
3255 Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
3256 newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a
3259 Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
3260 A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
3263 Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
3266 The removal of bruises on a banana.
3267 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3269 Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
3272 An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
3275 Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
3276 floor -- especially in the dark.
3279 An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
3281 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3283 Barth's Distinction:
3284 There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
3285 types, and those who don't.
3287 Baruch's Observation:
3288 If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
3290 Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high
3294 Basic is a high level languish.
3295 APL is a high level anguish.
3297 BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of "Scientific Creationism."
3300 A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
3301 that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
3304 The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water
3305 faucet is turned on to a certain point.
3306 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3308 Be a better psychiatrist and the world
3309 will beat a psychopath to your door.
3311 BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...)
3313 Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
3314 get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
3316 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
3318 Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
3320 Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
3323 Be different: conform.
3325 Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy!
3326 Things won't get any better so get used to it.
3328 Be security conscious -- National Defense is at stake.
3330 Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
3332 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
3334 Bees are very busy souls
3335 They have no time for birth controls
3336 And that is why in times like these
3337 There are so many Sons of Bees.
3340 A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
3341 you won't have to watch commercials.
3343 Behold the warranty -- the bold print
3344 giveth and the fine print taketh away.
3346 Beifeld's Principle:
3347 The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
3348 receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is
3349 already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better
3350 looking and richer male friend.
3352 "Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
3354 Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
3356 Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
3357 (1) Houses are for people to live in.
3358 (2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
3359 (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
3361 Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
3364 Berkeley had what we called "copycenter," which is "take it down
3365 to the copy center and make as many copies as you want."
3368 Besides the device, the box should contain:
3369 * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
3370 * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets
3371 and two club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
3373 YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram cable.
3375 IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
3376 spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
3377 that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
3378 without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
3381 WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
3382 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
3384 Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.
3386 Better dead than mellow.
3391 santa claus <north pole >town
3393 cat /etc/passwd >list
3396 cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
3397 cat list | grep nice >giftlist
3398 santa claus <north pole >town
3402 who | egrep 'bad|good'
3403 for (goodness sake) {
3407 Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
3408 Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
3409 Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
3410 great effort pushing boulders into a single word.
3412 It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
3413 Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
3414 equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
3415 destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
3416 both Parliament and Party.
3418 It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
3419 planets, this may be the first message received from us.
3420 -- The Realist, November, 1964
3422 Beware of bugs in the above code;
3423 I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
3426 Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
3428 Beware of low-flying butterflies.
3430 Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
3431 -- Leonard Brandwein
3433 Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
3434 drip under pressure.
3436 "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
3437 finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
3438 murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
3439 their ignorance the hard way."
3440 -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., "Cat's Cradle"
3442 Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything
3443 is possible but nothing of interest is easy.
3446 Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
3448 Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
3452 Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
3456 The first and direst of all disasters.
3457 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3459 Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
3462 The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
3464 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3466 Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
3469 Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles,
3470 for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
3474 Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
3476 Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
3479 Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
3482 Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
3483 plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has
3484 it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was
3485 arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept
3486 throwing up on them.
3489 If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
3491 Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
3492 Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
3493 vividly manifests their lack of progress.
3495 Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
3496 Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
3498 BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
3501 You always find something in the last place you look.
3504 A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
3508 A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
3509 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3512 (1) When in charge, ponder.
3513 (2) When in trouble, delegate.
3514 (3) When in doubt, mumble.
3517 According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
3518 the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
3519 in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
3523 Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
3524 finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
3526 Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry
3527 that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
3528 straightened out for a crowbar.
3531 Boy, life takes a long time to live.
3535 A noise with dirt on it.
3537 Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
3538 when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
3541 Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
3544 Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the
3545 unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
3546 (gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend
3547 to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
3548 -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking
3552 If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
3553 committee -- that will do them in.
3555 Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
3556 When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
3557 easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have
3560 Brain fried -- Core dumped
3563 The apparatus with which we think that we think.
3564 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3566 Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
3567 To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
3568 error in an opponent.
3569 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3571 Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
3572 since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
3573 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3576 A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
3577 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3579 Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
3580 revitalize the corner saloon.
3583 The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of
3584 Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by
3585 Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further
3586 believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the
3587 Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in
3588 the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your
3589 head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth.
3590 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
3592 Broad-mindedness, n.:
3593 The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
3595 Brontosaurus Principle:
3596 Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
3597 in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when
3598 this occurs, they are an endangered species.
3599 -- Thomas K. Connellan
3602 Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
3603 discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it
3607 Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
3610 1: Kill by nailing onto style(9); "David O'Brien was brucified"
3611 2: Annoy constantly by reminding of potential improvements
3612 [syn: {torment}, {rag}, {tantalize}, {bedevil}, {dun},
3614 3: Fix problems that were indicated in an earlier brucification
3615 (of one of the two other meanings).
3616 The word 'brucify' originally comes from the style-reviews of Bruce
3617 Evans of the FreeBSD project, but is now also sometimes used for
3618 reviews just done in his spirit.
3621 A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
3622 intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
3625 Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
3628 An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
3629 programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
3632 Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
3636 Small living things that small living boys throw on small
3639 BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the
3641 GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?"
3642 BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive..."
3643 -- Jay Ward , "Rocky and Bullwinkle"
3646 All the parts falling off this car are
3647 of the very finest British manufacture.
3650 A person who cuts red tape sideways.
3654 A politician who has tenure.
3656 Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise.
3658 Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
3659 (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
3661 (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
3662 (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
3664 (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
3667 "But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations
3670 But I don't like Spam!!!!
3672 But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
3673 system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
3674 analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
3676 "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers"
3678 "But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
3679 to the nearest gas station."
3681 But scientists, who ought to know
3682 Assure us that it must be so.
3683 Oh, let us never, never doubt
3684 What nobody is sure about.
3687 But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
3688 Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
3689 But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
3690 -- Mark "The Bard" Twain
3692 But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
3693 was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
3694 education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
3695 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
3696 American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
3697 invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
3698 invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
3699 adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
3700 electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
3701 electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
3702 part) sends it right back to the customer again.
3704 This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
3705 of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
3706 very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
3707 In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
3708 States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
3709 ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
3711 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
3713 But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
3714 place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
3715 Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a
3716 kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
3717 poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I
3718 explained yet about the bytes?
3720 "But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
3723 Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
3724 Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
3725 Less dear than army ants in apple pies
3726 Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
3727 Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
3728 Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
3729 They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
3730 Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
3731 Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
3732 And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
3733 Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
3734 Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
3735 Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
3736 Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
3738 By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
3739 completely overwhelm you.
3741 "By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.
3742 In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others
3743 as it is to invent. (R. Emerson)"
3744 -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
3745 (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
3746 [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
3747 misconstrue all these misquotations?!?" Ed.]
3749 "By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
3750 to suspect 'Hungry' ..."
3751 -- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
3753 By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I
3757 Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
3758 point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
3759 fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
3760 often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
3761 from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
3762 that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____
\b\b\b\b\bthere. They often
3763 wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
3765 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
3768 A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more
3769 like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or
3770 anything else. It is either the best language available to the art
3775 A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
3777 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3779 Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.
3780 -- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
3783 When all else fails, read the instructions.
3785 California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
3789 From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or
3790 Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or
3791 "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
3794 Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
3797 "Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
3798 Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
3800 Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
3801 -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
3803 Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
3807 Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
3811 Canada Bill Jones's Motto:
3812 It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
3814 Canada Bill Jones's Supplement:
3815 A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.
3817 Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp.
3818 It's 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage.
3819 -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
3821 Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
3822 Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
3823 A root or two, a torus and a node:
3824 The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
3825 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
3827 CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
3828 You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
3829 problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things
3830 off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare
3831 recipients are Cancer people.
3834 The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true
3835 story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some
3836 annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a
3837 point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and
3838 eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used
3839 the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking.
3840 Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
3841 Stallman: "What did he say?"
3842 Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
3844 CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
3845 You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
3846 much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
3847 importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
3848 they tend to take root and become trees.
3850 Captain Penny's Law:
3851 You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
3852 the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
3854 Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
3855 expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
3856 complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
3857 planning to reduce the time it takes.
3859 Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
3860 trousers that don't match.
3862 Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
3863 The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
3864 dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
3865 putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
3866 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
3869 Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
3871 Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
3872 -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"
3874 Caution: Breathing may be hazardous to your health.
3876 CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
3878 Cecil, you're my final hope
3879 Of finding out the true Straight Dope
3880 For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
3881 But none of my cats are at all like that.
3882 This unusual animal (so it is said)
3883 Is simultaneously alive and dead!
3884 What I don't understand is just why he
3885 Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
3886 My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
3887 In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
3888 If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
3889 And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
3890 But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
3891 Then I will *___
\b\b\band* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
3892 -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
3893 of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
3895 Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
3897 Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
3898 center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation
3899 works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
3900 -- Kelvin Throop III
3902 Census Taker to Housewife:
3903 Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many?
3905 Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
3906 Jaka: Look, Cerebus -- Jaka has to tell you ... something
3907 Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
3910 Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
3911 -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
3913 Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
3914 walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
3915 then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
3916 health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
3917 not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
3918 only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
3919 others who have tried it.
3920 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
3922 Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
3923 but it's very funny --
3924 Did you ever try buying them without money?
3927 Character Density, n.:
3928 The number of very weird people in the office.
3931 The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and
3932 ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his
3936 Any cook who swears in French.
3939 Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
3941 Chemistry is applied theology.
3942 -- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
3944 Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
3947 Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
3949 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
3950 Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
3951 headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
3952 -- Chicago Reader 3/27/81
3954 Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
3955 The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
3956 for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will
3957 cheerfully baste you.
3958 -- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
3960 Chicken Little only has to be right once.
3962 Chicken Little was right.
3965 An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
3966 cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure
3967 is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
3968 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
3970 Children are natural mimics who act like their parents
3971 despite every effort to teach them good manners.
3973 Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're
3974 going to catch you in next.
3975 -- Franklin P. Jones
3977 Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
3978 And that's what parents were created for.
3981 Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually
3982 repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
3984 Chism's Law of Completion:
3985 The amount of time required to complete a government project is
3986 precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
3988 Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
3989 When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
3991 Chivalry, Schmivalry!
3992 Roger the thief has a
3995 Folks who are reading are
3997 Always Forgetting to
3998 Guard their own bac ...
4001 A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
4003 Churchill's Commentary on Man:
4004 Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
4005 time he will pick himself up and continue on.
4008 A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in
4012 The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
4013 covers the floors of movie theaters.
4014 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
4017 A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
4018 which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.
4021 Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like
4022 shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
4025 Cleanliness is next to impossible.
4027 Cleveland still lives. God ____
\b\b\b\bmust be dead.
4030 Yes, I spent a week there one day.
4032 Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
4034 Clothes make the man.
4035 Naked people have little or no influence on society.
4038 COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
4040 Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
4042 Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
4043 "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
4044 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4046 Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong.
4050 You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
4053 Coincidences are spiritual puns.
4057 When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
4060 When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
4064 A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
4065 other fellow can spell.
4067 College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
4068 faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
4069 the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
4070 legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
4074 Colvard's Logical Premises:
4075 All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it
4078 Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
4079 This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
4083 Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
4085 Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
4086 And every vector dreams of matrices.
4087 Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
4088 It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
4089 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
4091 Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
4092 Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
4093 Their indices bedecked from one to _
\bn,
4094 Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
4095 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
4098 Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
4099 such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
4102 Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
4103 The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
4106 A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
4107 decide that nothing can be done.
4111 (1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
4112 (2) Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this
4113 stamps you as being wise.
4114 (3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the
4116 (4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
4117 (5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you
4118 popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for.
4120 Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to
4121 be appointed to do the work.
4123 Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at
4124 different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
4127 Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
4130 Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
4133 Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness
4134 of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
4137 Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
4139 Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
4142 Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
4144 Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
4147 Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
4148 the world that just don't add up.
4150 Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more
4151 than the estimate the job will cost.
4153 Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
4157 Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
4160 Condense soup, not books!
4162 Confession is good for the soul only in the sense
4163 that a tweed coat is good for dandruff.
4166 Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
4168 Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
4169 would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
4170 you undoubtedly will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
4171 maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
4172 OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
4173 UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
4174 IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
4175 WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND
4176 SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,
4177 RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
4178 RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
4179 FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
4180 -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
4182 Connector Conspiracy, n:
4183 [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the
4184 KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of
4185 manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything)
4186 to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old
4187 stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive
4190 Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
4193 Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
4196 Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
4198 Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
4201 Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich.
4202 -- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones]
4204 Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
4205 give it back to them.
4207 "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
4208 if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
4209 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
4211 "Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
4212 technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."
4215 A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
4216 is called the listener.
4219 In any organization there will always be one person who knows
4222 This person must be fired.
4225 The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
4226 visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
4228 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4231 In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
4233 Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a
4234 muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can
4238 Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job
4239 is to enforce the law and fight crime.
4240 -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
4243 A place where they dispense with justice.
4247 One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
4248 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4250 Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with
4251 nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
4252 -- Wernher von Braun
4254 Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
4258 A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
4260 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4263 If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
4267 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
4269 "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
4270 eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
4271 business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation."
4275 A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
4276 as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
4277 out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
4278 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4281 One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
4284 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
4286 Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
4288 Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
4289 Allen Gwinn: "Yours is."
4292 The time when men of reason go to bed.
4293 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4295 Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
4297 %DCL-E-MEMBAD, bad memory
4298 -SYSTEM-F-VMSPDGERS, pudding between the ears
4300 Dealing with failure is easy:
4301 Work hard to improve.
4302 Success is also easy to handle:
4303 You've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve.
4306 I just want *___
\b\b\bone* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
4307 the other hand", again.
4310 My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
4311 elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between
4312 courses, is all right. Which is correct?
4315 For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
4316 economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this
4317 principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now
4318 than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners
4322 Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
4326 Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
4329 Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part
4330 of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old
4331 will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a
4332 commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as
4333 "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a
4334 table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always
4335 says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Doesn't that really mean,
4336 "Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this
4337 complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim
4338 if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a
4342 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
4344 Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
4346 Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business
4347 signs to alert the reader that an "S" is coming up at the end of a
4348 word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
4349 ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when
4350 creating hand-lettered small-business signs is that you should put
4351 quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT
4352 DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
4353 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
4355 Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
4357 Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
4360 Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
4362 Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.
4364 Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
4366 Death is only a state of mind.
4368 Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.
4370 Death to all fanatics!
4373 The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
4374 before the music stopped.
4376 Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really
4377 overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene
4378 language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the
4379 judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when
4380 addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
4381 -- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing
4384 "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
4385 marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a
4386 theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
4387 those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
4392 [Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
4393 mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will
4394 come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear
4395 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
4397 #define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
4398 #define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
4399 - (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
4400 - (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
4402 -- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
4404 Definitions of hardware and software for dummies:
4406 Hardware is what you kick;
4407 Software is what you curse.
4410 The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
4412 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4414 Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
4416 Demand the establishment of the government
4417 in its rightful home at Disneyland.
4419 Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than
4421 -- George Bernard Shaw
4423 Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
4424 aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
4427 Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
4428 incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
4429 -- George Bernard Shaw
4431 Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
4434 Democracy is also a form of worship.
4435 It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
4438 Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
4441 Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
4442 are right more than half of the time.
4446 A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass
4447 meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy.
4448 Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
4449 Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
4450 whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion,
4451 prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
4452 Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
4453 -- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932),
4456 Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
4457 board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
4460 A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
4461 coins out of one's pockets.
4462 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4464 Despising machines to a man,
4465 The Luddites joined up with the Klan,
4466 And ride out by night
4467 In a sheeting of white
4468 To lynch all the robots they can.
4469 -- C. M. and G. A. Maxson
4471 Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will
4472 be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over
4474 -- The Anarchist Cookbook
4477 If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
4480 Did I say 2? I lied.
4482 Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
4483 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4485 Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined
4486 them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction?
4490 That no-one ever reads these things?
4492 Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
4493 that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states:
4495 "Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and
4500 "Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
4501 conventional thing to happen to him."
4502 -- John Barrymore's dying words
4505 To stop sinning suddenly.
4508 Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
4510 Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
4511 Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
4513 Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
4516 Disc space -- the final frontier!
4518 Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my
4519 employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely
4520 coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is
4521 non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the
4522 absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.
4523 The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for
4524 the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal,
4525 non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
4527 Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be
4531 Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
4534 A different color or shape than our competitors.
4537 A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
4538 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4540 District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape
4541 injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any
4542 damage inflicted on the vehicle.
4544 Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
4546 Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
4548 Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
4550 Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon.
4552 Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
4555 "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
4558 Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
4559 Violators will be prosecuted.
4560 (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
4562 Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
4564 Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
4568 Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
4570 Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
4572 Do you have lysdexia?
4574 Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
4575 the time to take the dirt out of them?
4577 "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
4578 "Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
4579 "I've never done anything illegal before."
4580 "I thought you said you were an accountant!"
4582 Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
4583 when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
4586 Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
4587 be good because the programmers hate it so much.
4589 Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
4591 Don: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she
4593 W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
4594 bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
4595 sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia.
4596 Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
4597 W. C.: It's almost impossible.
4598 -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
4599 E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
4601 Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
4603 Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
4606 Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
4608 Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
4611 "Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
4612 sincerely, extremely dangerously.
4614 They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
4615 They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They
4616 used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used
4617 finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used
4618 fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints.
4619 They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile.
4620 They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help.
4621 They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And
4622 what the hell, they caught him.
4624 -- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the
4627 Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
4629 Don't feed the bats tonight.
4631 Don't get even -- get odd!
4633 Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly
4634 misleading. Debug only code.
4637 "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes
4638 you nothing. It was here first."
4641 Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
4643 Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
4645 Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.
4647 Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
4649 Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
4651 Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.
4653 Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
4655 Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
4657 Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
4658 it today you can do it again tomorrow.
4660 Don't say "yes" until I finish talking.
4663 Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.
4667 Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
4670 Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
4673 Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out of it alive.
4675 Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
4677 "Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
4680 Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
4682 -- The Old Farmer's Almanac
4684 "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
4685 good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
4688 Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already
4689 tomorrow in Australia.
4692 Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
4693 busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
4695 Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
4697 Double-Blind Experiment, n.:
4698 An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
4699 fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a
4700 strong belief in the tooth fairy.
4702 Down with categorical imperative!
4704 Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
4706 Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
4707 The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
4710 Drink Canada Dry! You might not succeed, but it *__
\b\bis* fun trying.
4712 Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
4714 Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!
4717 If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
4718 yourself as part of the problem.
4721 Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
4723 Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
4724 it holds the universe together ...
4727 Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
4728 has been discontinued.
4730 Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
4731 and captain of your soul.
4733 Due to lack of disk space, this fortune database has been
4736 During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
4737 times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_
\a~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_
\a~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o
4739 "Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
4740 nothing whatever to do with it."
4741 -- W. Somerset Maugham
4746 Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
4747 months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is
4748 an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
4750 Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
4752 /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
4754 Earth is a beta site.
4756 Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
4759 Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
4760 Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the
4761 cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of
4762 the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this
4763 means the puzzle is solved.
4766 Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work.
4768 Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
4769 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
4772 Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
4774 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
4776 Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy
4777 would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it
4781 Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
4782 percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
4785 Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
4788 Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
4791 Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
4792 -- Bullwinkle J. Moose
4794 Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
4797 Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
4798 people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
4799 comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
4800 the "nog" comes from.
4802 To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine, gin and, if they are in
4805 Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
4806 of being a damned fool.
4810 A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
4811 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
4813 Ehrman's Commentary:
4814 (1) Things will get worse before they get better.
4815 (2) Who said things would get better?
4817 Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
4818 -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
4821 Sits at the keyboard
4822 And waits for a line on the screen
4826 That will make the machine do some more.
4829 All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
4830 All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
4832 Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
4835 Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
4837 Elevators smell different to midgets.
4839 Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
4840 Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
4841 can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
4843 Encyclopedia Salesmen:
4844 Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police
4845 and tell them your house is being burgled.
4846 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
4848 Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
4849 Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
4850 -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
4852 Entropy isn't what it used to be.
4854 Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
4855 otherwise require harder thinking.
4859 When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
4860 something his wife can beat him at.
4862 Equal bytes for women.
4864 Error in operator: add beer
4866 Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
4867 Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
4868 Und aller-m"
\bumsige Burggoven
4869 Dir mohmen R"
\bath ausgraben.
4870 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
4872 Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
4876 Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
4877 were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed
4878 from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
4879 ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
4882 Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
4886 "Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit
4890 "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
4891 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
4893 Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
4894 States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only two cents a
4897 Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
4898 just how busy they are?
4900 Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
4901 exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."
4902 All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with
4903 spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about:
4904 Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please
4905 take her right now. No. How about: Would you like to take something?
4906 My wife is available. No. How about ..."
4907 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
4909 Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
4911 Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
4913 Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this
4916 "Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one
4917 idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's
4918 sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
4919 of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two
4920 highly-motivated, caustic twits."
4921 -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
4923 Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
4924 signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
4925 fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
4926 spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
4927 genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
4928 of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
4929 humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
4930 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
4932 Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
4934 Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
4935 front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
4936 odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
4937 and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
4938 legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
4939 there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
4940 of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
4941 color"], that does not exist.
4943 Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
4944 -- Frank Moore Colby
4946 Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
4948 Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
4951 "Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95."
4953 Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
4954 -- Miguel de Cervantes
4956 "Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the
4957 richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work."
4960 Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an
4963 It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
4965 Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
4966 instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
4967 program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
4969 Every program has two purposes -- one for which it was written and
4970 another for which it wasn't.
4972 Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
4974 Every solution breeds new problems.
4976 Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
4977 guarantee of eventual success.
4979 Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
4981 Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
4984 Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
4985 -- Edsger W. Dijkstra
4987 Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
4989 Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
4990 taught how ___
\b\b\bnot to. So it is with the great programmers.
4992 Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to
4995 Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
4996 formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
4997 scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
4998 wholly unconcerned with what ____
\b\b\b\bdoes exist. Indeed, the banality of
4999 existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
5000 discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
5001 problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
5002 mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
5003 one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
5005 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
5007 Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____
\b\b\b\bdoes anything about it.
5009 Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
5010 no one we know belongs.
5012 Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being
5013 that a belch is more satisfying.
5016 Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about
5018 -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
5019 June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
5021 Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
5023 Everything you know is wrong!
5025 Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
5026 obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
5027 solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
5028 There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
5030 -- R. Buckminster Fuller
5032 Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike the office water cooler.
5034 Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
5036 Excellent day to have a rotten day.
5038 Excellent time to become a missing person.
5040 Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
5041 acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
5042 -- W. Somerset Maugham
5044 Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
5046 Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do
5050 Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
5052 Expense Accounts, n.:
5053 Corporate food stamps.
5055 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
5058 Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
5059 when you make it again.
5060 -- Franklin P. Jones
5062 Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and
5063 the instruction afterward.
5065 Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
5068 Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
5070 Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
5073 Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides.
5075 Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules:
5077 NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
5079 To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully
5080 cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand
5081 corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and
5082 address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) --
5083 to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower
5084 left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card
5085 below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
5086 computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
5087 SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card
5088 (without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the
5089 Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
5090 disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print
5091 this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and
5092 completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
5094 F: When into a room I plunge, I
5095 Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI.
5096 Then I linger, darkly brooding
5097 On the poison they're exuding.
5098 -- The Roguelet's ABC
5100 f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
5102 f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
5104 F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
5106 Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
5109 A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
5111 Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
5112 without looking to see whether the seeds move.
5115 That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be
5119 A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
5120 religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
5121 have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
5123 Familiarity breeds attempt.
5125 Families, when a child is born
5126 Want it to be intelligent.
5127 I, through intelligence,
5128 Having wrecked my whole life,
5129 Only hope the baby will prove
5130 Ignorant and stupid.
5131 Then he will crown a tranquil life
5132 By becoming a Cabinet Minister
5136 Conspicuously miserable.
5142 (1) Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
5143 (2) Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
5144 (3) What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
5145 (4) We won't need reservations.
5146 (5) It's always sunny there this time of the year.
5147 (6) Don't worry, it's not loaded.
5148 (7) They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
5149 (8) Don't worry! Women love it!
5152 (1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
5153 (2) "You and what army?"
5154 (3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
5157 Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
5158 Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
5159 Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
5160 utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
5161 forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
5162 are a pretty neat idea ...
5163 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
5165 Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
5171 Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ...
5173 Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children,
5176 Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
5177 If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
5180 If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
5183 Fifth Law of Procrastination:
5184 Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
5185 there is nothing important to do.
5187 Fifty flippant frogs
5188 Walked by on flippered feet
5189 And with their slime they made the time
5192 Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North
5196 Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
5198 Finagle's First Law:
5199 If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
5201 Finagle's Fourth Law:
5202 Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
5205 Finagle's Second Law:
5206 No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
5207 someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it
5208 happened according to his own pet theory.
5210 Finagle's Third Law:
5211 In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
5212 beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
5215 (1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
5216 (2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
5217 don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
5219 Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture
5221 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
5223 Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
5225 Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
5228 Functionality breeds Contempt.
5230 Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less:
5232 "Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..."
5234 Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to:
5237 Baffled Greek, Michigan
5239 First, a few words about tools.
5241 Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of
5242 the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously
5243 injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If
5244 you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look
5245 particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for
5246 granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
5247 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
5249 First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
5250 Machines that piss people off get murdered.
5253 First Law of Bicycling:
5254 No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
5257 First Law of Procrastination:
5258 Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
5259 for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed
5262 First Law of Socio-Genetics:
5263 Celibacy is not hereditary.
5265 First Rule of History:
5266 History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
5269 First things first -- but not necessarily in that order.
5270 -- The Doctor, "Doctor Who"
5272 Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
5275 Flappity, floppity, flip
5276 The mouse on the m"
\bobius strip;
5279 In a chronodimensional skip.
5281 FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
5282 the little hand is on the ...
5285 There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
5286 the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
5288 Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
5289 husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my
5292 "Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
5293 a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."
5295 "No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them
5296 in my burette ... We must call a copper."
5298 Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
5299 said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
5302 "We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
5303 dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can
5304 catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
5305 activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
5306 -- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
5309 [From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
5310 "a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]
5311 1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
5312 problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
5313 using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic
5314 doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for
5315 wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A
5316 thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's
5317 Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce
5318 flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate
5319 (a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
5320 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
5323 When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
5324 world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
5326 Flying saucers on occasion
5327 Show themselves to human eyes.
5328 Aliens fume, put off invasion
5329 While they brand these tales as lies.
5332 Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the
5333 fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the
5334 driver's brain is in a fog.
5336 See also "Idiot Lights".
5338 Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
5339 -- Walt Kelly, "Putluck Pogo"
5341 For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
5343 For a good time, call (510) 642-9483
5345 For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a
5348 For an adequate time call 555-3321.
5350 For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
5351 always old-fashioned.
5353 For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
5357 For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
5360 For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
5362 For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire
5363 life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days
5364 now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets
5365 when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch
5366 in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have
5367 the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which
5368 means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are
5369 advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are
5370 the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their
5371 names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot
5372 ("part of this complete breakfast").
5373 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
5375 For perfect happiness, remember two things:
5376 (1) Be content with what you've got.
5377 (2) Be sure you've got plenty.
5379 For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
5380 "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
5381 -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
5384 For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
5386 "For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
5387 a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with
5388 computers altogether?"
5391 For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they
5395 "For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
5396 phone calls taper off."
5399 For what it's worth, if you -can- get Michelle Pfeiffer to model
5400 a latex daemon suit for the catalog, I strongly suggest you do.
5401 Breasts can sell anything. Shiny red latex body suits start
5403 -- Brian McGroarty <bvmcg@yahoo.com>
5405 For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
5406 I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
5407 But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
5408 Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
5409 -- Justin Richardson
5411 For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
5414 A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their
5415 destitution of conscience.
5417 Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
5419 fortune: CPU time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
5421 FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS! #6
5423 RAZORBACK: Paul Harbride, 1984, 2 hours 25 min.
5424 One of the great Australian films of the early 1980's, and
5425 arguably the best movie ever made about a large, man-eating
5426 hog. Some violence. With Gregory Harrison.
5428 Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
5429 sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
5431 Oh, and have a nice day!
5432 -- Bryce Nesbitt '84
5434 fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
5436 I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
5437 "Hey you, get off my plate"
5440 Fortune's Fictitious Country Song Title of the Week:
5441 "How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?"
5443 Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):
5445 Don't Write On Walls!
5449 You want I should type?
5451 Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
5452 No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this
5453 State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed
5454 with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females
5455 weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it
5456 apply to female horses.
5458 Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
5459 Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an
5460 impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
5461 clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
5462 exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
5464 DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
5465 having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
5466 HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
5467 DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter
5468 is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
5469 large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
5470 amounts of fertilization ...
5471 HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many
5472 teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
5474 Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week:
5476 Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.
5478 FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS #14
5480 Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
5481 liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert and
5482 light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything
5483 drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
5485 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18:
5488 A: No, I'm divorced.
5489 Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
5490 A: A lot of things I didn't know about.
5492 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19:
5494 Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
5495 A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
5497 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29:
5499 THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present
5500 information and prejudice from your minds, if you have
5503 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32:
5505 Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
5506 A: I will be three months November 8th.
5507 Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
5509 Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
5511 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:
5513 Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
5515 Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears?
5516 A: Picking them up in the air.
5517 Q: Where was the dog at this time?
5518 A: Attached to the ears.
5520 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3:
5522 Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were
5523 able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to
5524 go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with
5526 MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.
5528 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:
5530 Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
5532 Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
5534 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:
5536 Q: What is your name?
5537 A: Ernestine McDowell.
5538 Q: And what is your marital status?
5541 Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
5543 Q: What happened then?
5544 A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify
5549 Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
5550 The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
5551 instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
5554 Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
5555 except study for that instructor's course.
5557 Fourth Law of Revision:
5558 It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
5559 interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
5561 Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not
5562 almost one, it is damn near zero.
5565 Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a
5569 If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
5571 Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
5573 I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
5574 The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
5575 The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
5576 Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
5577 If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
5578 And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
5579 Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
5580 So are they all, all cool cats, --
5581 Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
5583 Frisbeetarianism, n.:
5584 The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and
5588 To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ.
5589 Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a
5590 frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
5591 sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless
5592 manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
5593 search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
5594 turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
5595 he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
5596 screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
5597 turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
5599 Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
5600 An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to
5601 electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to
5602 FROTZ, or more commonly to FROB. Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and
5603 FROBNODULE. Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl.
5604 FROBBOTZIM, has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure
5605 via the Adventure spin-off called Zork (Dungeon). These can also be
5606 applied to non-physical objects, such as data structures.
5608 From a Tru64 patch description:
5610 Fixes a bug that causes a panic due to software error
5612 [From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
5613 Association, in Rome]:
5615 The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria
5616 and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not
5617 spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods,
5618 or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in
5619 millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have
5620 reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology
5621 engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general,
5622 president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social
5623 schizophrenia in mass genocide.
5625 From the "Guiness Book of World Records", 1973:
5627 Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and
5628 the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the
5629 Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his
5630 candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground
5631 nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts,
5632 other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not
5633 qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their
5634 being nuts (unground)."
5636 From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
5637 convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
5638 -- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
5640 [From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
5643 The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
5644 MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
5645 featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
5646 against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
5647 "flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
5648 Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
5649 operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
5651 And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
5652 achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
5653 HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
5655 From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
5656 instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
5657 experience in sound:
5659 5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading
5660 sound is normal for this type of connector.
5662 From too much love of living,
5663 From hope and fear set free,
5664 We thank with brief thanksgiving,
5665 Whatever gods may be,
5666 That no life lives forever,
5667 That dead men rise up never,
5668 That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
5672 If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well
5675 Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
5676 Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
5679 Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
5680 even when you are the only person in line.
5681 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
5683 Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
5686 Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
5688 G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
5689 of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
5690 secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
5691 `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
5692 that's your chance, my boy."
5694 Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
5697 An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
5698 stockings and desolating the country.
5699 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
5701 Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall
5702 on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
5703 -- Adventures of Asterix
5705 Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
5707 Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
5708 than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
5709 "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
5711 Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
5712 speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
5713 long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
5714 your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
5715 so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
5716 individuals and then grow ...
5717 Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
5718 signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
5719 everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
5720 the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
5721 backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
5722 think not, my friend, I think not.
5723 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
5725 Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.
5727 GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
5728 You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
5729 because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
5730 for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
5733 GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
5734 Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while
5735 you can; the bad news will make you forget it. You will enjoy praise
5736 and respect from those around you; everybody loves a sucker. A short
5737 trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's room.
5740 The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
5741 determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
5743 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
5745 Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
5748 Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
5753 A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
5756 George Orwell 1984. Northwestern 0.
5757 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
5759 George Orwell was an optimist.
5761 George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to
5762 have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend.
5765 Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
5766 (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
5768 (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
5769 (3) The energy required to change either one of these states
5770 will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
5771 much as to make the task totally impossible.
5773 Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
5775 Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
5779 (2) You can't break even.
5780 (3) You can't even quit the game.
5782 Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
5783 Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
5784 meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
5787 (1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
5788 (2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
5790 (3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the
5793 Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
5794 to stand, and I will drain the world.
5796 Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war.
5799 Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
5801 Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
5804 Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
5806 "Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying
5807 around, I'd rather lie around. No contest."
5810 Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden:
5811 Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP
5812 machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
5813 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
5815 Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
5816 Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
5817 probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some
5821 A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
5823 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
5825 Go climb a gravity well!
5827 Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
5828 be in owning a piece thereof.
5829 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
5831 Go 'way! You're bothering me!
5833 God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
5834 days and then pulled an all-nighter.
5836 God doesn't play dice.
5839 "God gives burdens; also shoulders"
5841 Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the
5842 end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I
5843 can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why
5844 would he lie about a thing like that?
5845 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
5847 God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
5848 The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
5849 not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
5850 ... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
5851 smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and
5852 water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in
5853 the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
5855 -- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
5857 God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
5859 God is a polytheist.
5868 God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's!
5870 God is real, unless declared integer.
5872 God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the
5873 elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying
5877 God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
5880 God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
5882 God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
5884 God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
5887 God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
5890 God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
5892 God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
5895 God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.
5897 God rest ye CS students now,
5898 Let nothing you dismay.
5899 The VAX is down and won't be up,
5900 Until the first of May.
5901 The program that was due this morn,
5902 Won't be postponed, they say.
5904 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
5906 Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
5908 The bearings on the drum are gone,
5909 The disk is wobbling, too.
5910 We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
5911 Can't tell false from true.
5912 And now we find that we can't get
5917 Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
5918 school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
5922 A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It
5923 is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
5924 immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
5925 hasn't done anything to them.
5926 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
5928 Goldenstern's Rules:
5929 (1) Always hire a rich attorney.
5930 (2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
5932 Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
5936 Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
5938 Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
5940 Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
5942 Good day to let down old friends who need help.
5944 Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
5946 Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
5948 Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
5950 Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
5953 "Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored."
5954 -- George Saunders' dying words
5957 If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing
5960 Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with
5961 time travel, you never can tell.
5962 -- Doctor Who, "Androids of Tara"
5964 //GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
5967 Call Avogadro at 6.02 x 10^23.
5970 A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
5971 to complain about unstructured programmers.
5974 Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
5975 -- John Updike, "Couples"
5977 Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are
5980 Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know
5981 any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
5986 2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
5988 Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
5990 Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
5992 Grandpa Charnock's Law:
5993 You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
5995 Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
5997 Gray's Law of Programming:
5998 `_
\bn+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
5999 time as `_
\bn' tasks.
6001 Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
6002 `_
\bn+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_
\bn' trivial tasks.
6004 Great minds run in great circles.
6006 Green light in A.M. for new projects.
6007 Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
6010 Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
6013 Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
6016 Grub first, then ethics.
6020 The red warning flag at the top of a club sandwich which
6021 prevents the person from biting into it and puncturing the roof of his
6023 -- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
6026 A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
6027 free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
6028 other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
6029 mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
6030 other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
6031 offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
6032 torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
6033 -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
6035 H: If a 'GOBLIN (HOB) waylays you,
6036 Slice him up before he slays you.
6037 Nothing makes you look a slob
6038 Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB).
6039 -- The Roguelet's ABC
6041 H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L.
6042 Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
6043 -- Maxwell Bodenheim
6045 H. L. Mencken's Law:
6046 Those who can -- do.
6047 Those who can't -- teach.
6050 Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
6053 The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
6054 nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
6056 Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
6059 He sure is a fun god
6062 Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big
6063 enough majority in any town?
6064 -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
6066 Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
6069 This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
6070 crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference
6071 between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
6072 the difference between life and death.
6073 You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
6074 there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
6075 airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
6076 Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
6077 Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
6078 about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
6079 man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
6080 Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
6081 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
6083 Hall's Laws of Politics:
6084 (1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
6085 (2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
6087 (3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
6088 military spending, and conservatives social spending in
6089 their own districts).
6092 A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
6093 commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
6094 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6097 Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
6100 Hanson's Treatment of Time:
6101 There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
6104 Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
6107 Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
6111 An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
6113 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6115 Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances?
6118 The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
6120 Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
6121 The Duke is fond of kittens
6122 He likes to take their insides out
6123 And use them for his mittens
6126 Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
6127 Advertising wondrous things.
6130 Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand
6131 convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
6134 Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
6135 Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment
6139 All the good ones are taken.
6141 Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
6142 makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
6143 famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
6144 probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
6145 have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
6146 enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
6147 attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
6148 down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
6149 just like Richard Nixon."
6150 -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
6152 Hartley's First Law:
6153 You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
6154 on his back, you've got something.
6156 Hartley's Second Law:
6157 Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
6160 Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
6161 temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
6162 do as it damn well pleases.
6164 "Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
6165 "Yes, I don't have one."
6166 "Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..."
6167 -- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
6169 Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
6170 typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
6171 keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
6172 of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
6173 not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
6176 A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
6178 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6180 Have an adequate day.
6182 Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is
6183 to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
6184 non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
6186 Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This
6187 still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or
6188 only serves to blunt the warning signs.
6190 Long live the revolution!
6193 Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell
6194 you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time
6197 Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs,
6198 I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container
6199 filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite
6200 sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in
6201 their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or
6202 mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything, which is why
6203 they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week.
6204 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
6206 "Have you lived here all your life?"
6207 "Oh, twice that long."
6209 Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
6210 crack in your sidewalk?
6212 Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
6213 sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
6216 Have you reconsidered a computer career?
6218 HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
6219 SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their ___
\b\b\bOWN brains.
6222 "He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
6223 effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable
6225 -- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
6227 He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
6230 He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
6231 perfectly delightful.
6234 He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
6235 heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
6236 of ever behaving "normally."
6237 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
6239 He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
6242 He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
6245 He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
6247 He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
6248 -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
6250 He thought he saw an albatross
6251 That fluttered 'round the lamp.
6252 He looked again and saw it was
6253 A penny postage stamp.
6254 "You'd best be getting home," he said,
6255 "The nights are rather damp."
6257 He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
6260 "He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him
6263 "He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both
6266 He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
6267 attacks democracy itself.
6268 -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
6270 He who Laughs, Lasts.
6272 Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
6274 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
6279 A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
6280 their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
6282 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6285 Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
6287 Heisenberg may have slept here.
6289 Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
6293 The first myth of management is that it exists.
6295 Johnson's Corollary:
6296 Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
6300 -- Don Carpenter, quoting a Hollywood agent
6302 Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
6304 HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!
6307 Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
6309 Help fight continental drift.
6311 Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file!
6313 Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.
6315 Her locks an ancient lady gave
6316 Her loving husband's life to save;
6317 And men -- they honored so the dame --
6318 Upon some stars bestowed her name.
6320 But to our modern married fair,
6321 Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
6322 No stellar recognition's given.
6323 There are not stars enough in heaven.
6325 "Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
6326 Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ..."
6328 Here I sit, broken-hearted,
6329 All logged in, but work unstarted.
6330 First net.this and net.that,
6331 And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
6333 The boss comes by, and I play the game,
6334 Then I turn back to net.flame.
6335 Is there a cure (I need your views),
6336 For someone trapped in net.news?
6338 I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
6339 'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
6341 Here in my heart, I am Helen;
6342 I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
6343 I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"
\bel;
6344 I'm Salome, moon of the East.
6346 Here in my soul I am Sappho;
6347 Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
6348 In me R'
\becamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
6349 With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
6351 I'm all of the glamorous ladies
6352 At whose beckoning history shook.
6353 But you are a man, and see only my pan,
6354 So I stay at home with a book.
6357 Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
6358 lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
6359 your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
6360 Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
6361 pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
6362 but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
6363 important electrical lesson.
6365 It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
6366 your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
6367 objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
6368 attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
6369 collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
6370 friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
6371 carpet, thus completing the circuit.
6373 Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
6374 touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
6375 finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you
6377 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
6379 "Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline
6380 like `Psychic Wins Lottery'?"
6383 "He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ..."
6385 He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
6386 there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
6388 "He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..."
6390 Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs,
6391 then they'd be algorithms.
6393 "Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
6396 "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet.
6397 As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of
6398 equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney.
6399 Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you
6400 probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of
6401 course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my
6402 experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out
6403 of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser.
6405 "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our
6406 motto is: `It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'"
6407 -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
6409 Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
6410 reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
6411 nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
6413 Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
6414 Im Leibe dick, an Suenden reich.
6415 Wir haben ihn ins Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws
6416 Weil es uns duenkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
6417 We buried him today because
6418 As far as we can tell, he's dead.
6419 -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty
6420 Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
6421 "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter
6426 Ruffled the critics by dropping this bomb:
6427 "Phooey on Freud and his Psychoanalysis --
6428 Oedipus, Shmoedipus, I just loved Mom."
6430 Hindsight is an exact science.
6433 An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
6434 The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
6435 The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
6436 is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full
6438 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6440 Hire the morally handicapped.
6442 "His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
6443 money, he went to Southern California."
6445 His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice.
6448 His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier.
6450 History is curious stuff
6451 You'd think by now we had enough
6452 Yet the fact remains I fear
6453 They make more of it every year.
6456 Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we
6457 learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from
6458 what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long
6460 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
6462 History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
6465 If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
6466 will find an easier way to do it.
6468 Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
6469 Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get
6473 It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
6474 Hofstadter's Law into account.
6476 Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
6479 Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories:
6480 The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.
6483 Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
6485 Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
6488 Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
6490 Honk if you love peace and quiet.
6493 Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
6494 bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
6495 honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
6496 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
6498 Horngren's Observation:
6499 Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
6501 Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
6505 Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
6507 Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
6510 How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
6512 How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
6514 How come wrong numbers are never busy?
6516 How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows.
6518 How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
6521 How doth the little crocodile
6522 Improve his shining tail,
6523 And pour the waters of the Nile
6524 On every golden scale!
6526 How cheerfully he seems to grin,
6527 How neatly spreads his claws,
6528 And welcomes little fishes in,
6529 With gently smiling jaws!
6530 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
6532 How doth the VAX's C compiler
6533 Improve its object code.
6534 And even as we speak does it
6535 Increase the system load.
6537 How patiently it seems to run
6538 And spit out error flags,
6539 While users, with frustration, all
6540 Tear their clothes to rags.
6542 How doth the VAX's C-compiler
6543 Improve its object code.
6544 And even as we speak does it
6545 Increase the system load.
6547 How patiently it seems to run
6548 And spit out error flags,
6549 While users, with frustration, all
6550 Tear all their clothes to rags.
6552 How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
6555 How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
6556 None: "We'll fix it in software."
6558 How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
6559 None: "We'll document it in the manual."
6561 How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
6562 None: "The user can work it out."
6564 "How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
6565 carried by a waiter at a nice party?"
6567 Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
6568 d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell
6569 what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then
6570 say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it
6571 back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another
6573 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
6575 How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to
6577 -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey
6579 How to become a sysop:
6580 I grew a beard, started wearing only t-shirts and jeans, and
6581 developed a surly attitude. The group accepted me, and I've
6582 never worked a full day in my life since then.
6585 How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
6587 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
6588 #1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
6590 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
6591 #15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
6593 HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
6594 #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of
6598 Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
6600 However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
6601 manner ... sulking and nausea.
6604 HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill.,
6605 motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate
6606 amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits.
6607 The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the
6608 Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the
6609 bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on
6610 the bill. Agreed to.
6611 -- Albuquerque Journal
6613 Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
6615 Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
6616 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
6617 operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a urethral
6618 catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
6619 his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
6620 the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
6623 Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
6625 Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
6628 Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
6629 The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
6630 to ..... to ........ uh ..............
6632 I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a
6633 professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any
6634 other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority.
6637 What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
6640 I am a PC technician - however, this has unfortunately caused my
6641 computer to be running Win98.
6642 -- seen on a FreeBSD mailing-list
6644 "I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
6645 have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
6646 This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
6647 reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
6649 -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
6651 "I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person,
6652 of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell
6653 you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
6654 atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
6655 inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering."
6656 -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
6658 I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.
6660 "I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
6663 "I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger."
6666 I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.
6667 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
6669 "I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
6670 -- English Professor
6672 I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
6673 great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
6674 -- Winston Churchill
6676 I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
6677 has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
6678 -- Professor Lowd, English, Ohio University
6680 I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
6681 with an option to buy.
6683 "I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater."
6685 "I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of
6686 the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for
6687 you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway."
6688 -- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
6689 University of Tennessee at Knoxville
6691 "I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
6692 argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and
6693 steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,
6694 they don't even invite me."
6697 "I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean."
6700 "I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat."
6703 "I bet the human brain is a kludge."
6706 I brake for chezlogs!
6708 I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up.
6711 I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan
6712 prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very
6713 bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after
6717 I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
6719 "I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
6720 25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
6724 "I can resist anything but temptation."
6726 "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
6729 I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
6730 of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
6731 -- F. H. Wales (1936)
6733 I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
6735 What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
6736 grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
6737 of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
6738 United States would have lost World War II."
6739 -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
6741 "I can't complain, but sometimes I still do."
6744 "I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling."
6745 -- Florence Henderson
6747 I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can
6749 -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
6751 I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
6752 novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
6755 I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
6756 dance with the cows till you come home.
6759 "I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps
6760 the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ..."
6763 "I didn't know it was impossible when I did it."
6765 I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The
6768 I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
6769 exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to
6770 minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary
6771 accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a
6772 mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the
6773 bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always
6775 -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
6777 "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them."
6780 "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
6781 with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use."
6784 "I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should."
6785 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
6787 "I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
6788 don't believe in astrology."
6789 -- James R. F. Quirk
6791 I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just
6792 a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more
6795 I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of
6796 a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
6797 -- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
6799 I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
6803 "I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
6804 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
6806 "I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
6807 people waiting to abuse me."
6808 -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
6810 I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
6813 "I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd
6814 eat it, and I just hate it."
6817 "I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
6820 I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
6821 streets and frighten the horses.
6824 "I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?"
6826 "I don't think so," said Ren'
\be Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
6828 "I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other
6829 hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out."
6831 I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
6832 the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is
6833 thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists
6834 broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake.
6835 Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off
6836 their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ...
6837 -- Dave Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE
6840 I doubt, therefore I might be.
6842 "I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
6843 on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
6844 he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual
6845 becoming, with a goal in front and not behind."
6846 -- George Bernard Shaw
6848 "I drink to make other people interesting."
6849 -- George Jean Nathan
6851 I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
6852 so I woke up from sheer boredom.
6854 I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
6855 accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
6856 the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
6857 can't be measured in monetary terms.
6859 Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
6860 that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
6861 subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
6862 someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
6863 understand his long delay.
6865 "I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words."
6867 "I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
6868 reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
6871 I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most *__________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bhorrifying* 20
6874 I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
6877 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
6878 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
6879 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
6880 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
6882 I get up each morning, gather my wits.
6883 Pick up the paper, read the obits.
6884 If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
6885 So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
6887 Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
6888 My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
6889 But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
6890 And think of the places my get-up has been.
6893 I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
6894 Moore show I heard the word "damn"!
6897 "I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense."
6899 "I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
6900 it's going to be up all night."
6903 "I hate quotations."
6904 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
6906 I have a simple philosophy:
6910 Scratch where it itches.
6913 "I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
6916 "I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
6917 which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'."
6918 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
6920 I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
6921 and they never believe me.
6922 -- Camillo Di Cavour
6924 I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
6927 "I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
6928 sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
6929 eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
6930 have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
6931 beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
6932 guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
6933 of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry."
6937 To spell hors d'oeuvres
6938 Which still grates on
6939 Some people's n'oeuvres.
6942 "I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming
6943 that I have never made one."
6944 -- James Gordon Bennett
6946 "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
6950 I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
6952 -- from "Cerebus" #82
6954 "I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer."
6955 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
6957 "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best."
6960 "I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
6961 scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it.
6964 "I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..."
6965 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
6967 "I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
6968 his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell
6969 beating up a child."
6972 I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
6973 at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
6976 "I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere."
6978 "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."
6980 I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
6982 "I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
6985 I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
6987 "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
6988 War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
6991 "I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
6992 The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building."
6995 "I like being single. I'm always there when I need me."
6998 I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
6999 promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want
7000 peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
7001 the way and let them have it.
7002 -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
7004 "I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours."
7006 "I like your game but we have to change the rules."
7008 "I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
7009 entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."
7010 -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
7012 "I love to eat them Smurfies
7013 Smurfies what I love to eat
7014 Bite they ugly heads off,
7015 Nibble on they bluish feet."
7017 "I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
7018 don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the
7020 -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
7022 "I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
7023 -- Ashleigh Brilliant
7025 I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
7026 Where it bubbles all the time like a giant cabinet soda
7028 I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
7029 I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
7030 Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
7032 Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
7033 A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
7034 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
7035 Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
7036 How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
7037 Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
7038 -- The STAR WARS Song, to "Lola", by the Kinks
7040 "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
7041 week sometimes to make it up."
7042 -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
7044 I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
7046 "I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
7049 "I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like."
7051 I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
7052 -- George Bernard Shaw
7054 "I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
7055 -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
7057 "I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
7058 kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
7059 substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no
7060 restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
7061 made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
7062 powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
7064 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
7066 I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
7068 "I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral
7070 -- William F. Buckley
7072 I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that
7073 the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
7074 congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile
7075 so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the
7078 But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such
7079 as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of
7080 the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never
7081 win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually
7082 write about, such as nose-picking.
7083 -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
7086 I really hate this damned machine
7087 I wish that they would sell it.
7088 It never does quite what I want
7089 But only what I tell it.
7091 "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person."
7093 I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
7094 they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
7097 I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
7098 I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
7099 Bernoulli would have been content to die
7100 Had he but known such _
\ba-squared cos 2(phi)!
7101 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
7103 I sent a letter to the fish,
7104 I told them, "This is what I wish."
7105 The little fishes of the sea,
7106 They sent an answer back to me.
7107 The little fishes' answer was
7108 "We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
7109 I sent a letter back to say
7110 It would be better to obey.
7111 But someone came to me and said
7112 "The little fishes are in bed."
7113 I said to him, and I said it plain
7114 "Then you must wake them up again."
7115 I said it very loud and clear,
7116 I went and shouted in his ear.
7117 But he was very stiff and proud,
7118 He said "You needn't shout so loud."
7119 And he was very proud and stiff,
7120 He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
7121 I took a kettle from the shelf,
7122 I went to wake them up myself.
7123 But when I found the door was locked
7124 I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
7125 And when I found the door was shut,
7126 I tried to turn the handle, But ...
7128 "Is that all?" asked Alice.
7129 "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
7130 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
7132 I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
7133 -- Graffito in Los Angeles
7135 "I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full
7136 house and four people died."
7139 "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
7140 see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph."
7143 I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
7144 too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which
7145 direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After
7146 much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot
7148 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
7150 "I think it is true for all _
\bn. I was just playing it safe with _
\bn >= 3
7151 because I couldn't remember the proof."
7152 -- Baker, Pure Math 351a
7154 "I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it."
7156 I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
7157 and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
7158 country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
7159 in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
7160 not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
7163 I think that I shall never see
7164 A billboard lovely as a tree.
7165 Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
7166 I'll never see a tree at all.
7169 I think that I shall never see
7170 A thing as lovely as a tree.
7171 But as you see the trees have gone
7172 They went this morning with the dawn.
7173 A logging firm from out of town
7174 Came and chopped the trees all down.
7175 But I will trick those dirty skunks
7176 And write a brand new poem called "Trunks".
7178 "I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
7179 to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the
7180 farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
7181 into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
7182 the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
7183 off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
7184 color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
7185 out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars
7186 singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors."
7187 -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
7189 I think the world would be a more peaceful place if people
7190 could just keep their fingers out of the fortune files.
7191 -- Jordan K. Hubbard
7193 I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
7194 ... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think
7195 we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.
7196 When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we
7197 are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was
7198 driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa
7199 Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,
7200 were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous
7202 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
7204 "I thought you were trying to get into shape."
7205 "I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
7207 I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in
7208 twenty minutes. It's about Russia.
7211 I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
7213 "I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance."
7215 "I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure."
7217 "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
7218 body. Then I realized who was telling me this."
7221 I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere
7225 I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to
7226 animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for
7227 anything connected with society except that which makes the roads
7228 safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women
7229 warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
7232 "I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
7233 Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
7235 -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
7237 I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
7238 anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is
7239 a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows
7243 "I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
7244 put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
7245 what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
7246 should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
7247 get off my driveway."
7250 "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
7254 I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
7255 their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
7256 buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
7257 -- Emile Henry Gauvreay
7259 "I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
7260 house and four people died."
7263 "I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything
7267 I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
7268 it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
7269 stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
7270 I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
7271 absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
7272 developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
7273 Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
7274 temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
7275 chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
7276 the point where it would not run at all.
7277 -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
7278 Holes and the Fate of Stars"
7280 "I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
7281 questions, I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
7282 speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
7284 He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
7288 "I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
7289 the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
7293 "I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
7294 statues that are in all the other museums."
7297 I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
7298 it took seven others to beat him!
7300 "I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
7301 There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work."
7304 "I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
7305 always worked for me."
7306 -- Hunter S. Thompson
7309 Its syntax worse than JOSS;
7310 And everywhere this language went,
7311 It was a total loss.
7313 "I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous."
7315 "I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
7318 "I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."
7320 "I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I
7323 "I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in
7326 "I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my
7329 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my
7332 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
7333 Julian to Gregorian."
7335 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
7338 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
7340 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
7341 cottage cheese sculpture."
7343 "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
7345 "I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."
7347 "I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma
7350 "I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."
7352 "I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never
7355 "I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to stay
7358 "I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
7359 need worrying about."
7361 "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."
7363 Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box
7364 of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
7366 Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
7367 solitary confinement.
7370 The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
7371 stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
7372 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
7375 A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
7376 affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
7377 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
7379 If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
7382 If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
7383 at about 30 miles/second.
7384 -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
7386 "If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far."
7389 If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus
7390 forecast is a camel's behind.
7393 If A equals success, then the formula is _
\bA = _
\bX + _
\bY + _
\bZ. _
\bX is work. _
\bY
7394 is play. _
\bZ is keep your mouth shut.
7397 If a group of _
\bN persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _
\bN-1
7398 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
7401 If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four
7402 hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where
7404 -- Joseph C. Goulden
7406 If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
7409 If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
7411 If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have
7412 dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to
7413 maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it
7414 must drop. The law of gravity supersedes the law of golf.
7417 "If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
7418 attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to
7419 playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win --
7420 unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager
7421 can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?"
7424 If all be true that I do think,
7425 There be five reasons why one should drink;
7426 Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
7427 Or lest we should be by-and-by,
7428 Or any other reason why.
7430 If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
7432 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
7434 If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot
7435 platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave
7436 that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.
7438 If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
7441 If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
7445 If an S and an I and an O and a U
7446 With an X at the end spell Su;
7447 And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
7448 Pray what is a speller to do?
7449 Then, if also an S and an I and a G
7450 And an HED spell side,
7451 There's nothing much left for a speller to do
7452 But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
7453 -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
7455 If anything can go wrong, it will.
7457 If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool.
7459 If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
7461 If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
7464 If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
7466 If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
7468 If everybody minded their own business, the world would go
7469 around a deal faster.
7470 -- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
7472 If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
7474 If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three
7477 If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
7479 If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
7481 If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit
7484 If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their
7487 If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
7490 If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
7492 If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
7495 If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
7498 If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
7500 If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
7502 "If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
7505 If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
7508 "If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be
7509 replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!"
7511 If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
7514 If I don't drive around the park,
7515 I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
7516 If I'm in bed each night by ten,
7517 I may get back my looks again.
7518 If I abstain from fun and such,
7519 I'll probably amount to much;
7520 But I shall stay the way I am,
7521 Because I do not give a damn.
7524 If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
7526 If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
7527 plantation and go home.
7528 -- Eugene P. Gallagher
7530 If I had any humility I would be perfect.
7533 If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
7536 If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
7537 shoulders of giants.
7540 In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
7541 with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
7544 If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
7548 In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
7551 If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
7553 On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
7554 also a psychological interaction.
7556 The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so
7559 The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
7560 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
7562 If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
7563 As Dame Fortune did intend,
7564 Murphy would be there to tell me
7565 The pot's at the other end.
7568 If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
7570 If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
7572 If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
7573 They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
7577 "If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
7578 forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
7579 just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
7580 And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
7581 pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
7582 And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
7583 think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
7584 receive Net Mail ..."
7585 -- Leith (Casey) Leedom
7587 If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
7589 If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
7592 If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
7593 you've got in the house.
7594 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
7596 If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
7599 If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
7601 "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
7602 little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
7603 Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
7604 -- Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)
7606 If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
7609 If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
7610 in my name at a Swiss bank.
7611 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
7613 If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
7615 If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
7616 having to accomplish anything.
7618 If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
7619 he should see how bad it is with representation.
7621 If preceded by a '-' , the timezone shall be east of the Prime
7622 Meridian; otherwise, it shall be west (which may be indicated by
7623 an optional preceding '+' ).
7626 The "+" or "-" indicates whether the time-of-day is ahead of
7627 (i.e., east of) or behind (i.e., west of) Universal Time.
7630 If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
7631 arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
7632 physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
7633 entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
7636 If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
7640 "If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."
7641 -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
7643 If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
7644 presumably flunk it.
7647 If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
7650 If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
7651 get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
7652 See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
7653 the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
7654 that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The
7655 college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
7656 and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
7657 rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
7658 Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
7659 interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by
7660 opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
7661 himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
7662 boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
7663 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
7665 "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for
7667 -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
7669 If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
7672 If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If
7673 the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the
7674 bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will
7675 exceed all expectations.
7676 -- Reverend Chichester
7678 If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
7680 If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
7681 will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
7683 If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
7686 If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
7687 something out of you.
7690 If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
7692 If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
7694 If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
7696 If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
7699 If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
7701 -- Lyndon Baines Johnson
7703 If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
7704 -- Laurence J. Peter
7706 "If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely."
7708 "If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage."
7710 If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
7711 in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
7712 qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
7713 -- Marguerite Emmons
7715 If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
7718 "If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
7721 If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
7723 If you can read this, you're too close.
7725 If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
7727 If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
7730 If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, give me a
7733 If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
7735 If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
7737 If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
7739 If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
7742 If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
7745 "If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do:
7746 Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet."
7749 If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
7750 either of you for the rest of the day.
7752 "If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
7753 have to get a toehold in the public eye."
7755 If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
7758 If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
7760 -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
7762 If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
7763 make the rubble bounce.
7764 -- Winston Churchill
7766 If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
7768 If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
7770 If you have to hate, hate gently.
7772 If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to
7773 boot yourself in the posterior.
7774 -- A. J. Liebling, "The Press"
7776 If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
7778 If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
7781 If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
7782 people die past the age of a hundred.
7785 If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
7786 but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
7788 If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
7791 If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
7792 can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
7795 If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
7796 you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
7799 If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
7800 you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
7803 If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
7804 this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
7805 somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
7807 If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're
7810 If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
7812 If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker,
7813 It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock.
7814 Or some joker who is slicker,
7815 Will trick you of your liquor,
7816 If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock.
7818 If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
7819 -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
7821 If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
7824 If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
7828 If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
7831 If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
7832 shopping center in the world?
7835 If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
7836 be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
7837 you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw
7838 another party next year.
7840 What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
7841 several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
7842 been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to
7843 avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
7844 parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
7845 having another one ...
7847 If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
7848 your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
7849 through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure
7850 that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting
7851 someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
7854 If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
7855 end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
7856 -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
7858 If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
7861 If you want divine justice, die.
7864 If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
7868 If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
7869 Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
7870 statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
7871 telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
7872 titles beginning with the word "National".
7875 If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
7876 word you say, talk in your sleep.
7878 "If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
7879 memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it,
7880 even if they don't know what it means."
7881 -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
7883 If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
7885 If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
7886 tomorrow morning, sleep late.
7889 If you're happy, you're successful.
7891 If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
7893 If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
7894 -- Benjamin Disraeli
7896 If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
7898 "If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round
7899 it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the
7902 If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
7906 The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car
7907 door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
7908 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
7910 Il brilgue: les t^
\boves libricilleux
7911 Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
7912 Enm^
\bim'
\bes sont les gougebosquex,
7913 Et le m^
\bomerade horgrave.
7914 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
7917 There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly
7918 at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
7921 "I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
7922 carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
7923 I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun."
7926 I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
7928 -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
7930 I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
7931 Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
7932 And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
7933 And in our bound partition never part.
7934 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
7936 "I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
7937 That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood."
7938 -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
7940 Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
7941 land He's trying to ignore.
7943 "I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from
7946 I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
7948 "I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my
7951 I'm changing my name to Chrysler
7952 I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
7953 I'll tell some power broker
7954 What they did for Iacocca
7955 Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
7956 I'm changing my name to Chrysler,
7957 I'm heading for that great receiving line.
7958 When they hand a million grand out,
7959 I'll be standing with my hand out,
7960 Yessir, I'll get mine!
7963 I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
7965 "I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
7969 I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
7972 I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
7975 "I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?"
7976 -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
7978 I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
7982 I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
7983 N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
7984 I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
7985 She's traversed me seven times before.
7986 And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
7987 Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
7988 I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
7989 N-ary the tree I am, I am,
7990 N-ary the tree I am.
7991 Stolen from Paul Revere and the Raiders
7993 "I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
7994 It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get."
7996 "I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday
7999 I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
8000 -- I could be just as proud for half the money.
8005 "I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____
\b\b\b\bREAL
8008 "I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
8009 (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage."
8010 -- English Professor, Providence College
8012 "I'm sorry, but after reading this thread, I'm having a hard time
8013 coming up with an explanation for this nonsense which doesn't involve
8014 you being a dumbass."
8015 -- Bill Paul <wpaul@FreeBSD.org>
8017 I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
8018 I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
8019 In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
8020 I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
8021 -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
8023 "I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's
8026 Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
8027 -- Jules de Gaultier
8029 "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
8030 usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
8031 thinks of complaining."
8032 -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
8034 Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
8035 a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
8036 storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
8037 voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
8038 What's the first question that the computer community asks?
8040 "Is it PC compatible?"
8042 Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
8045 Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
8049 Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
8050 espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
8051 conflicting opinions.
8052 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8054 Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
8055 mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
8059 (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
8060 (2) I can't be bothered;
8061 (3) God can't be bothered.
8062 Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
8063 -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
8065 In 1750 Isaac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of
8068 In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled
8071 In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't
8074 In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The
8075 creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across.
8077 In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred
8080 In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
8081 we can't control when the five year period will begin.
8083 In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
8084 Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
8087 In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
8088 "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
8091 In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
8092 with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call
8093 this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
8095 In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
8096 of the risks he takes.
8099 In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
8100 sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All
8101 those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the
8102 devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up
8103 as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.
8104 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
8106 In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
8108 -- The Peter Principle
8110 In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
8111 are to be treated as variables.
8113 "In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
8114 nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir."
8117 In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
8118 at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
8120 In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
8122 In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
8123 will be temporarily canceled.
8125 In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and
8128 In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
8129 a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
8130 to get her attention.
8132 In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
8133 in any motor vehicle.
8135 "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable."
8136 -- Winston Churchill, on General Montgomery
8138 In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
8141 In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
8143 In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
8144 resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
8145 inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
8146 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8148 In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
8149 programming languages.
8151 In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
8152 the sidewalks when a concert is on.
8154 In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
8155 into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
8156 between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
8157 will only make it mushy.
8160 In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
8163 In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
8164 pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
8165 either flying or waiting to board a plane.
8167 In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
8168 there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
8169 flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
8171 In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
8172 to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
8173 speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
8175 "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
8177 -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
8179 In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
8180 intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from
8181 the cares of office.
8182 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8184 In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
8185 and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
8187 In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying
8188 of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public
8191 In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
8192 Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
8193 Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
8194 We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
8195 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
8197 In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
8198 is over six feet in length.
8200 In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
8201 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
8203 "In short, _
\bN is Richardian if, and only if, _
\bN is not Richardian."
8205 In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
8207 In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
8210 [In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
8211 could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
8212 that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
8214 And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
8215 over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
8216 didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
8217 point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
8218 we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ...
8220 So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
8221 Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
8222 ___
\b\b\bsee the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
8224 -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
8226 In the beginning was the word.
8227 But by the time the second word was added to it,
8229 For with it came syntax ...
8232 In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat
8233 hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am
8234 training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the
8235 net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any
8236 preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you
8237 close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be
8238 empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
8240 In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
8241 the proper order then why can't he?
8243 In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
8245 -- Egyptian Book of the Dead
8247 In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
8250 In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
8251 a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
8252 to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
8253 forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you
8254 stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
8255 punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
8256 enough to punch you.
8257 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
8259 In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
8260 shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the
8261 Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million
8262 three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years
8263 from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.
8264 ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
8265 wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
8269 In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
8270 drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
8274 In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
8276 -- Winston Churchill
8278 In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
8279 the supervision of a licensed engineer.
8281 In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse
8282 along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
8285 Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
8286 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8288 Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
8290 Individualists unite!
8293 The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
8294 lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon
8298 Information Center, n.:
8299 A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
8300 to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
8303 A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
8306 Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
8307 -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
8310 A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
8311 water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
8313 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8315 Innovation is hard to schedule.
8318 Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
8320 Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
8321 salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
8324 One who enables two persons of different languages to
8325 understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
8326 the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
8327 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8329 Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
8331 Iron Law of Distribution:
8332 Them that has, gets.
8334 Irrationality is the square root of all evil.
8335 -- Douglas Hofstadter
8337 Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
8338 meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
8341 Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
8342 beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
8343 out, and such as are out wish to get in?
8344 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
8346 Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!
8348 Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
8349 listen to weather forecasts and economists?
8350 -- Kelvin Throop III
8352 Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
8353 tellers take economists seriously?
8355 Issawi's Laws of Progress:
8357 The Course of Progress:
8358 Most things get steadily worse.
8360 The Path of Progress:
8361 A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
8363 It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
8364 as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he
8365 had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked,
8366 "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed
8367 Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival
8368 came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer
8369 this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the
8370 Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
8371 To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's
8372 your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked,
8373 "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
8375 It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown
8376 came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and
8377 applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I
8378 think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
8379 wits, who believe that it is a joke.
8380 -- S. A. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
8382 It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
8383 thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
8384 drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
8385 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8387 It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
8388 that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____
\b\b\b\bonly* by amusing oneself that
8390 -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
8392 It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
8393 been searching for evidence which could support this.
8396 It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
8398 It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
8399 program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
8400 organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
8404 It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
8407 It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will
8408 not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves
8409 and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like
8410 mature human beings ...
8411 -- Playboy, January 1983
8413 It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
8414 pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
8415 sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
8418 It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
8419 they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
8420 that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
8421 much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
8422 had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But
8423 conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
8424 intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.
8426 Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
8427 destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
8428 alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
8430 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
8432 It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
8436 It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
8437 One in a million, perhaps.
8439 It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark.
8441 It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
8442 benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
8446 It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
8447 incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
8448 twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
8451 It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
8453 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
8455 It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
8456 proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community
8457 a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to
8458 treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the
8459 focus of attention, the harder the task.
8462 It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice
8465 It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
8467 It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct
8470 It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
8471 if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
8473 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
8475 It is hard to predict, in particular about the future.
8476 -- Robert Storm Petersen
8478 It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
8479 Boulevard at one time.
8481 It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
8483 It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
8487 It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
8490 It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
8491 desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
8494 It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our
8495 offense consists in doubting it.
8496 -- Justice Robert H. Jackson
8498 It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
8501 It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
8502 privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
8503 corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
8504 -- George Bernard Shaw
8506 It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
8509 It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
8510 damn thing over and over.
8511 -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
8513 It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
8514 -- Elizabeth Carpenter
8516 It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.
8518 It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
8519 virginity could be a virtue.
8522 It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
8525 It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared
8526 to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
8529 It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
8530 lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
8533 It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
8534 statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
8535 glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
8536 which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
8537 day, that is the highest of arts.
8538 -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
8540 It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad
8541 crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed
8542 until the other has gone.
8544 It is the business of little minds to shrink.
8547 It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
8550 It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for
8551 five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But
8552 it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
8554 It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
8556 It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
8557 good either if you speak when your head is empty.
8559 It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
8562 "It runs like _
\bx, where _
\bx is something unsavory"
8563 -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
8565 It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
8568 It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the
8570 -- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
8572 It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
8573 but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous.
8576 It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
8578 It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set
8581 It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a
8582 breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was
8586 "It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
8587 I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I
8588 don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
8589 the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual
8590 charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
8591 novelty ... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
8592 yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable
8596 It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like
8597 the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
8599 It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
8600 the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
8602 It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human
8603 nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant
8607 It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
8608 warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
8609 two things still safe to eat.
8612 It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
8615 It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.
8618 It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
8620 It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
8625 "It means summon's in trouble."
8626 -- Rocky and Bullwinkle
8628 It's a very *__
\b\bUN*lucky week in which to be took dead.
8631 It's always a long day; 86400 doesn't fit into a short.
8633 It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
8635 It's bad luck to be superstitious.
8638 It's better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all.
8641 "It's easier said than done."
8643 ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
8644 said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
8645 said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
8648 It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
8650 It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
8653 "It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an
8657 It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
8659 It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is.
8660 If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't
8661 our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
8662 -- Oxford University Press, "Edpress News"
8664 It's just a jump to the left
8665 And then a step to the right.
8666 Put your hands on your hips
8667 You bring your knees in tight.
8668 But it's the pelvic thrust
8669 That really drives you insa-a-a-a-a-ane!
8671 LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
8673 -- Rocky Horror Picture Show
8675 "It's kind of fun to do the impossible."
8682 and even the teddy bears
8685 It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
8688 "It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name."
8690 It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
8693 It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
8694 to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
8697 It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
8700 "It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
8701 -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
8703 It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
8706 "It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."
8709 It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
8710 what you're taking for it...
8712 It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
8716 It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
8720 It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
8723 It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that
8724 English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many
8725 other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
8728 It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
8730 It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
8732 It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
8733 Devil when he is the only explanation for it.
8735 It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which
8736 raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody
8738 -- Franklin P. Jones
8740 It's the thought, if any, that counts!
8742 I've built a better model than the one at Data General
8743 For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
8744 My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
8745 My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
8746 My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
8747 You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
8748 There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
8749 My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.
8751 I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
8752 There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
8753 Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
8754 I've built a better model than the one at Data General.
8756 -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
8757 "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
8758 by Gilbert & Sullivan)
8760 I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
8762 I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was
8763 this little hole in the bottom ...
8766 I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
8768 I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
8771 I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
8774 "I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer."
8776 "I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer"
8779 I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
8780 And from that full meridian of my glory
8781 I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
8782 Like a bright exhalation in the evening
8783 And no man see me more.
8784 -- William Shakespeare
8786 Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
8787 No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
8788 legislature is in session.
8790 James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
8791 indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
8799 But only Buddha pays Dividends.
8802 Telling your boss what he can do with your job.
8804 Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
8806 Johnson's First Law:
8807 When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
8808 most inconvenient possible time.
8810 Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called
8811 "Bureaucracy". Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do
8814 Join the march to save individuality!
8817 The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
8821 Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
8824 Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
8825 endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction
8826 to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their
8827 original contribution.
8829 Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
8830 (and nobody cares about it).
8833 Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good
8834 solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires
8835 one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the
8836 winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is
8837 because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise
8838 mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political
8839 motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the
8841 -- Stephen R. Schwambach
8843 Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has
8847 Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
8850 Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
8852 Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
8853 get a prompt, type like hell.
8855 Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
8857 -- Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, "Doctor Who"
8859 "Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
8860 of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?"
8861 -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
8863 "Just remember, it all started with a mouse."
8866 Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
8867 twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
8869 `Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
8870 As he landed his crew with care;
8871 Supporting each man on the top of the tide
8872 By a finger entwined in his hair.
8874 `Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
8875 That alone should encourage the crew.
8876 Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
8877 What I tell you three times is true.'
8879 Just think -- blessed SCSI cables! Do a big enough sacrifice and create
8880 a +5 blessed SCSI cable of connectivity.
8883 Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a
8886 Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven!
8887 -- Michael J. Wagner
8889 Justice is incidental to law and order.
8893 A decision in your favor.
8895 K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
8896 Cobol's wordy and confining;
8897 KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
8898 Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
8899 -- The Roguelet's ABC
8901 Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to
8905 Man and nations will act rationally when all other
8906 possibilities have been exhausted.
8908 Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
8910 Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze
8911 -- Hellman's Mayonnaise
8913 Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
8915 Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
8917 Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
8918 (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
8919 straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
8920 force is technically termed "car suck").
8921 (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
8924 Keep your Eye on the Ball,
8925 Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
8926 Your Nose to the Grindstone,
8927 Your Feet on the Ground,
8928 Your Head on your Shoulders.
8929 Now ... try to get something DONE!
8931 Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
8932 automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
8933 numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
8934 driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
8935 dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
8938 Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
8939 Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
8940 and parking for the faculty.
8942 Kids have *_____
\b\b\b\b\bnever* taken guidance from their parents. If you could
8943 travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the
8944 original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate
8945 teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
8946 grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate
8947 teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
8948 -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
8952 An affliction of the blood.
8954 Kinkler's First Law:
8955 Responsibility always exceeds authority.
8957 Kinkler's Second Law:
8958 All the easy problems have been solved.
8960 Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
8962 Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
8965 Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
8967 Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
8969 Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
8971 Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within.
8975 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8977 Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
8979 Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
8982 Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
8983 The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
8984 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
8987 One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
8988 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
8993 (3) Never volunteer for anything.
8995 Lactomangulation, n.:
8996 Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
8997 that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
8998 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
9002 Your house is on fire,
9003 Your children will burn!
9004 So jump ye and sing, for
9006 The four lines above
9007 Have been put into rhyme.
9010 Laetrile is the pits.
9013 (1) Everything depends.
9014 (2) Nothing is always.
9015 (3) Everything is sometimes.
9018 All laws are basically false.
9020 Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with
9021 was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting
9022 pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the
9023 farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
9024 sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
9025 you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
9026 What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
9027 of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
9028 the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
9029 whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
9030 Lassie filed the applications for.
9033 "Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
9034 had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to
9035 my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'"
9038 "Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police
9039 record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense
9042 Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won.
9044 Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
9046 "Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
9049 Law of Communications:
9050 The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
9051 between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
9054 Law of Probable Dispersal:
9055 Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
9058 Law of Selective Gravity:
9059 An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
9061 Jenning's Corollary:
9062 The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
9063 directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
9065 Law of the Perversity of Nature:
9066 You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
9069 Laws of Serendipity:
9071 (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
9073 (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
9074 be engaged in making an inferior one.
9076 Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
9077 No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
9078 approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
9080 Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
9082 Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
9083 everything else follows in the same way.
9086 Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
9088 Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the
9091 Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
9092 "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
9093 unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
9094 drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he
9098 When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
9099 hold the hammer with both hands.
9101 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
9102 You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are
9103 pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike
9104 honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people
9107 LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
9108 Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
9109 Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
9110 you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of
9111 fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
9112 a sick sense of humor.
9114 Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
9116 "Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
9117 number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash
9118 and another number."
9123 Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
9127 Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every
9128 relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you
9129 really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the
9130 end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
9131 qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and
9132 bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
9134 -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
9136 Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
9137 your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
9138 Mental Anguish. You would sue:
9140 * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
9141 section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
9142 into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
9145 * The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
9146 cretin like yourself.
9148 * Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
9149 case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
9150 a large cash settlement anyway.
9153 Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
9154 overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of
9155 dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your
9156 tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to
9157 spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe
9158 money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will
9159 probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?
9161 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
9163 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
9167 I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
9168 to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
9169 public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
9170 in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
9171 will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
9172 agricultural industry.
9175 Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
9178 Lewis's Law of Travel:
9179 The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
9183 A lawyer with a roving commission.
9184 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9186 Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
9187 -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
9189 LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
9190 Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
9191 desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and
9192 polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
9194 LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
9195 You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
9196 reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay.
9197 Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most
9198 Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal
9202 A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
9206 Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
9208 Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
9210 Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
9212 "Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
9213 eat it nevertheless."
9216 "Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it."
9218 Life is like a simile.
9220 Life is like an analogy.
9222 Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
9223 there is nothing in it.
9225 "Life is too important to take seriously."
9228 "Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
9229 -- Marvin, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
9231 "Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
9232 which I disapprove."
9234 "Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility"
9235 -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
9237 Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
9238 weren't for other people.
9241 Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
9244 Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
9245 sense from things she found in gift shops.
9246 -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
9248 Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
9249 for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
9252 Limericks are art forms complex,
9253 Their topics run chiefly to sex.
9254 They usually have virgins,
9255 And masculine urgin's,
9256 And other erotic effects.
9258 Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
9259 Kennedy exactly one hundred years later in 1946.
9261 Lincoln was elected president in November 1860.
9262 Kennedy in November 1960.
9264 Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy who urged him not to go to
9266 Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln who advised against his going
9269 Booth shot Lincoln in a theatre and ran off into a warehouse.
9270 Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and ran off into a theatre.
9272 Lincoln was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson.
9273 Kennedy was succeeded by a Southerner named Johnson.
9275 The first Johnson was born in 1808.
9276 The second Johnson was born in 1908.
9278 -- Alistair Cooke, "Letter From America", 26nov2001
9280 Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
9282 Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe
9283 we should think only about today.
9285 No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
9288 Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
9291 Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
9294 Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
9297 Lizzie Borden took an axe,
9298 And plunged it deep into the VAX;
9299 Don't you envy people who
9300 Do all the things ___
\b\b\bYOU want to do?
9302 Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these
9303 interest rates, we don't need it."
9306 Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
9307 squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the
9308 only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to
9309 eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial
9310 before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most
9311 ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime
9312 in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its
9313 unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of
9314 the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout,
9315 "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a
9316 memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe
9317 at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot.
9318 Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be,
9320 -- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and
9321 Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
9323 Lockwood's Long Shot:
9324 The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
9325 one in a million, but once would be enough.
9327 Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____
\b\b\b\b\bawful*.
9329 Logicians have but ill defined
9330 As rational the human kind.
9331 Logic, they say, belongs to man,
9332 But let them prove it if they can.
9335 Look out! Behind you!
\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a\a
9337 Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us
9338 to pay income taxes, too?
9339 -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
9341 Loose bits sink chips.
9343 Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying
9346 Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
9348 Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in
9351 Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
9353 Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
9354 world has ever seen.
9356 Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
9359 "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
9360 flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come."
9361 -- Matt Groening, "Love is Hell"
9363 Love is a word that is constantly heard,
9364 Hate is a word that is not.
9365 Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
9366 Love, I have read, is hot.
9367 But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
9368 And Love but a drug on the mart.
9369 Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
9370 But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
9373 "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real
9374 with the ideal never goes unpunished."
9375 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
9377 Love is sentimental measles.
9379 Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
9382 Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
9384 Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
9387 Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up
9391 If it jams -- force it.
9392 If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.
9394 LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
9396 Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
9397 There's always one more bug.
9400 The place where optimism most flourishes.
9402 Lysistrata had a good idea.
9404 "MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
9405 the smallest amount of thoughts."
9406 -- Winston Churchill
9408 Machine-Independent, adj.:
9409 Does not run on any existing machine.
9411 Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
9412 and play games -- but not with pleasure.
9416 Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ...
9417 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9419 Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
9420 first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
9424 [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
9425 Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
9426 subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
9427 rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
9428 reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
9429 operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
9430 MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
9431 variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
9432 security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
9433 more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
9434 imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
9435 options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
9436 Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
9437 powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
9438 entire nodal aggravations.
9439 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
9441 Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism.
9443 Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
9445 The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works
9446 of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
9447 with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
9449 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9452 Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping
9454 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
9457 A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
9458 might be taught to talk.
9459 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9462 If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed
9464 -- N. R. Maier, "American Psychologist", March 1960
9467 (1) The bigger the theory, the better.
9468 (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
9469 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
9470 obtain a correspondence with the theory.
9473 For every action there is an equal and opposite government
9477 If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
9479 Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
9482 Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
9484 Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
9485 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9488 That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
9490 Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!
9492 Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
9493 tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It
9494 has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
9495 the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
9496 -- System V.2 administrator's guide
9499 Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
9501 Man 1: Ask me. "What is the most important thing about telling a good
9504 Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
9506 Man 1: ______
\b\b\b\b\b\bTIMING!
9508 "Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain."
9511 Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
9512 upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
9515 Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
9516 only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
9517 -- Wernher von Braun
9519 Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
9522 Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
9523 victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
9524 -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
9527 An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
9528 he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
9529 occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which,
9530 however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole
9531 habitable earth and Canada.
9532 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9534 Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
9538 Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
9539 Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
9540 don't think, right?"
9543 Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
9544 dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
9545 man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
9546 air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
9549 What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
9550 mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
9551 -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
9554 A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a
9555 given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The
9556 information you need is in the others.
9559 Many years ago in a period commonly known as Next Friday Afternoon,
9560 there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
9561 was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
9562 completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
9565 Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
9566 Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
9567 simple yes or no answer.
9569 Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
9572 Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
9573 the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam
9575 -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
9577 Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.
9580 Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
9583 Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
9584 translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something
9586 -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
9588 Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
9589 described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can
9591 -- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
9594 "Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
9596 Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a
9599 Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
9602 May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts.
9604 May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
9606 May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
9608 May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
9611 Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
9614 Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
9617 McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
9618 If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
9622 Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
9623 everyone you know, only more so.
9626 An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
9627 department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
9629 Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
9630 from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
9631 Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
9632 had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
9633 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
9635 Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
9636 The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
9638 Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
9639 The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
9640 cork makes when it is popped.
9642 Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
9643 All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
9645 Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
9646 Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
9647 is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can
9648 ever hope to acquire it.
9650 Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
9651 it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
9652 very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
9653 tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...
9654 [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important
9655 world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the
9656 next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]
9657 ... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
9658 cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
9659 billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even
9660 more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a
9661 fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the
9662 older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and
9663 obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the
9664 window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger
9665 hotshot cells moving up from below.
9666 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
9669 A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
9672 There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
9675 MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
9677 Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
9679 methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin-
9680 ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
9681 phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
9682 taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
9683 glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala-
9684 nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta-
9685 minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly-
9686 cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl-
9687 leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu-
9688 cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva-
9689 lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro-
9690 sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu-
9691 cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe-
9692 nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala-
9693 nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas-
9694 partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl-
9695 glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl-
9696 valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu-
9697 cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi-
9698 nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse-
9699 rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl-
9700 glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly-
9701 sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro-
9702 lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl-
9703 glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
9704 The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
9705 1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
9706 -- Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
9709 Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
9712 Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
9714 "Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
9715 watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks."
9717 Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
9718 out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
9719 -- Signor Ferrari, "Casablanca" (1942)
9721 Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
9722 Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
9724 -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
9727 If a string has one end, then it has another end.
9729 Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
9732 Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
9736 The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
9738 Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
9739 themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
9742 Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
9743 politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum
9744 and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they
9745 are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
9746 rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all
9747 the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
9748 Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert
9749 Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
9750 Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
9752 -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
9754 Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
9755 is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
9756 myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
9757 the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
9758 unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
9759 will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
9760 dead as a door-nail.
9762 Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
9764 Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
9765 pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
9767 Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
9769 Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
9773 The kind of fortune that never misses.
9774 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9777 A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
9778 they are in the market.
9779 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9781 Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
9783 Mitchell's Law of Committees:
9784 Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
9787 MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
9789 Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
9790 2 cups water 2 cups sugar
9791 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
9792 Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
9795 Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break
9796 RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar
9797 and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon
9798 juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
9799 with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top
9800 crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let
9801 steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
9802 is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
9803 -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
9805 Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
9807 Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked
9808 him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just
9809 last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew
9813 The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished
9814 from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
9815 closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
9816 matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
9817 atom in that it is an ion ...
9818 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9820 Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
9821 If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
9822 it wasn't worth doing.
9824 Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
9827 In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
9828 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
9830 Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
9832 Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
9834 Money is the root of all wealth.
9837 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
9838 hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
9841 Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
9843 More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One
9844 path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
9845 extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
9846 -- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
9848 Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
9849 Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
9852 Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
9853 because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
9854 and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
9855 eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
9856 and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
9857 female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
9858 dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven
9859 by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the
9860 truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
9861 them that it doesn't make any difference.
9862 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
9865 Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
9869 Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
9872 Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
9875 Mother is the invention of necessity.
9877 Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
9880 The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
9881 population is growing.
9883 "Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams)
9884 "365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old
9885 Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his
9886 pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
9887 in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
9888 in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
9889 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic
9890 computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
9892 -- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
9895 Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
9896 women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
9897 will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in
9900 Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
9903 Murphy's Law of Research:
9904 Enough research will tend to support your theory.
9906 "Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ..."
9907 -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
9910 Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
9911 long it has become a science project.
9912 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
9914 My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
9915 -- The Dragon to Grendel, in John Gardner's "Grendel"
9917 My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
9918 threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.
9919 First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
9920 frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
9921 the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed
9922 forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
9923 perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
9924 the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
9925 crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a
9926 symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
9927 in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
9928 really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
9930 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
9932 "My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
9933 there are three other people."
9936 My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
9937 times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
9938 sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right
9939 through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
9940 listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
9943 "My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?"
9946 My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
9947 And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
9948 The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
9949 And the skies are sunlit for him.
9950 As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
9951 As the fragrance of acacia.
9952 My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
9953 And I wish he were in Asia.
9954 -- Dorothy Parker, part 2
9956 My love runs by like a day in June,
9957 And he makes no friends of sorrows.
9958 He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
9959 In the pathway or the morrows.
9960 He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
9961 Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
9962 My own dear love, he is all my heart --
9963 And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
9964 -- Dorothy Parker, part 3
9966 My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been
9970 My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
9972 My own dear love, he is strong and bold
9973 And he cares not what comes after.
9974 His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
9975 And his eyes are lit with laughter.
9976 He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
9977 Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
9978 My own dear love, he is all my world --
9979 And I wish I'd never met him.
9980 -- Dorothy Parker, part 1
9982 "My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling
9984 -- Zippy the Pinhead
9986 My pen is at the bottom of a page,
9987 Which, being finished, here the story ends;
9988 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
9989 But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
9992 My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
9993 -- Christopher Morley
9995 "My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
9998 The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
9999 origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
10000 from the true accounts which it invents later.
10001 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10004 You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
10007 NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he
10009 GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
10011 -- George Bernard Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
10013 Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant
10014 said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
10015 time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone
10018 Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
10019 villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time,"
10020 said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the
10021 villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The
10022 remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he
10023 said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was `Get out of
10024 my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually
10025 spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
10027 Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
10028 serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk
10029 into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?"
10030 "Never." "Then how do you know it was me?"
10032 Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
10033 than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the
10036 Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver
10037 pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of
10038 meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it,
10039 "Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without
10042 Natives who beat drums to drive off evil spirits are objects of
10043 scorn to smart Americans who blow horns to break up traffic jams.
10044 -- Mary Ellen Kelly
10046 Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
10047 conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the
10048 fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
10049 is most likely to be creamed?
10052 Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
10053 God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
10055 It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
10056 Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
10058 Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
10059 cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
10062 Nearly all men can stand adversity, but
10063 if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
10066 Necessity is a mother.
10068 Neckties strangle clear thinking.
10071 Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
10073 Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
10075 Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
10077 Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.
10079 Never drink coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled
10080 with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to
10081 change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
10082 fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
10085 Never eat more than you can lift.
10088 Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
10090 Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
10092 Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
10093 -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
10095 Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
10096 make it complex and wonderful.
10098 Never offend people with style when you can offend them with
10100 -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
10102 Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
10104 Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a
10105 law against it by that time.
10107 Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
10109 Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
10111 Never try to outstubborn a cat.
10112 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
10114 Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
10115 -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
10117 "Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon."
10119 Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
10121 -- Robert A. Heinlein
10123 New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
10125 New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
10126 any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
10128 New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
10129 Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
10131 New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
10132 -- Monty Python's Big Red Book
10134 New systems generate new problems.
10136 New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
10137 his wife most often reminds him to act it.
10138 -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
10140 New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.
10142 New York's got the ways and means;
10143 Just won't let you be.
10144 -- The Grateful Dead
10147 An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
10148 economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
10151 Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
10152 German pole-vault champion.
10154 Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
10156 Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
10157 A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
10159 Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
10160 have a lucky day this year.
10162 Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
10163 as an income tax refund.
10166 Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
10169 Nihilism should commence with oneself.
10171 Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
10172 correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
10173 (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
10174 Americans call him by value.
10176 Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
10177 Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
10178 Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
10179 Three megs for system source;
10181 One disk to rule them all,
10182 One disk to bind them,
10183 One disk to hold the files
10184 And in the darkness grind 'em.
10186 Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
10187 And tapes without any tracks;
10188 Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
10189 And tapes mixed up on the racks --
10190 Take hold of the tape
10191 And pull off the strip,
10192 And then you'll be sure
10193 Your tape drive will skip.
10195 -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
10197 "Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
10198 would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
10202 Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
10203 The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
10204 the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
10206 Nirvana? That's the place where the powers that be and their friends
10210 No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
10211 absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
10214 No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
10215 camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
10216 effectively under such difficult conditions.
10217 -- Laurence J. Peter
10219 "No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'"
10222 No good deed goes unpunished.
10223 -- Clare Boothe Luce
10225 No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
10227 -- Channing Pollock
10229 No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
10231 No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will
10232 seriously cramp his style.
10234 No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
10235 immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
10237 No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
10238 -- Eleanor Roosevelt
10240 No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.
10242 No one has a higher opinion of him than he has.
10243 -- Greg Lehey, FreeBSDcon 1999
10245 No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
10246 system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
10250 No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
10251 He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
10252 Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
10253 And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
10255 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
10256 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
10257 Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
10258 And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
10259 Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
10260 And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
10261 All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
10262 But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
10264 Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
10265 The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
10266 A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
10267 But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
10270 No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
10273 No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
10275 "No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
10276 occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
10277 indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
10278 occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
10279 an indication-applied occurrence."
10282 No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper.
10283 -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
10284 taken over by Rupert Murdoch
10286 Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
10287 -- Tallulah Bankhead
10289 NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
10291 Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
10293 Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in
10294 order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the
10295 substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young
10299 Nobody wants constructive criticism.
10300 It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise.
10306 Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
10308 Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
10309 Negative expectations yield negative results.
10310 Positive expectations yield negative results.
10312 Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
10314 Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
10316 Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
10317 Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
10318 in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
10319 moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
10320 dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
10321 respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
10322 it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
10323 then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
10324 chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
10325 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
10327 Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
10328 -- William Shakespeare
10330 "Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
10331 is from the wrong kind of tree."
10332 -- Professor W., EECS, George Washington University
10334 Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
10335 of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
10336 is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
10337 unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is
10338 careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
10341 Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
10342 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
10344 Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
10346 Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
10348 To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
10351 Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
10354 Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
10355 tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
10358 Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
10359 Conscience makes egotists of us all.
10362 Nothing recedes like success.
10365 Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
10369 The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
10370 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10372 Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
10374 Now I lay me down to sleep
10375 I pray the double lock will keep;
10376 May no brick through the window break,
10377 And, no one rob me till I awake.
10379 Now is the time for all good men to come to.
10382 Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
10383 time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
10384 to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
10385 eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
10386 the following questions:
10388 (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
10390 (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
10391 exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
10392 (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
10393 prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
10394 double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living
10395 right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
10398 That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
10400 "Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
10401 Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
10402 were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..."
10403 -- "The Begatting of a President"
10405 "Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a
10407 -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
10409 [Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
10412 "Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile."
10415 "Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
10416 normal routines, for children and adults alike."
10417 -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
10419 "Nuclear war would really set back cable."
10422 Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
10424 (null cookie; hope that's ok)
10426 Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're
10430 Where the buffalo roam,
10431 Where the deer and the antelope play,
10432 Where seldom is heard
10433 A discouraging word,
10434 'Cause what can an antelope say?
10436 Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
10437 reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
10439 -- Thomas L. Martin
10441 Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
10444 Of all the words of witch's doom
10445 There's none so bad as which and whom.
10446 The man who kills both which and whom
10447 Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
10450 "Of ______
\b\b\b\b\b\bcourse it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
10453 "Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
10454 tools aren't soluble in alcohol ..."
10457 Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
10459 Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%.
10460 And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
10463 Office Automation, n.:
10464 The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
10465 you would want to talk with over coffee.
10468 The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
10471 Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
10473 Oh don't the days seem lank and long
10474 When all goes right and none goes wrong,
10475 And isn't your life extremely flat
10476 With nothing whatever to grumble at!
10478 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
10479 I muck with indices and structs all day
10480 And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
10481 Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
10483 Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
10484 be irresponsible, too.
10487 Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
10488 And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
10489 Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
10490 Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
10491 You have not dreamed of --
10492 Wheeled and soared and swung
10493 High in the sunlit silence.
10495 I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
10496 My eager craft through footless halls of air.
10497 Up, up along delirious, burning blue
10498 I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
10499 Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
10500 And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
10501 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
10502 Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
10503 -- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
10505 Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
10507 Oh, when I was in love with you,
10508 Then I was clean and brave,
10509 And miles around the wonder grew
10510 How well did I behave.
10512 And now the fancy passes by,
10513 And nothing will remain,
10514 And miles around they'll say that I
10515 Am quite myself again.
10518 Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
10520 "OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
10523 OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
10525 Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
10528 Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
10530 Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
10533 Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
10536 Omnibiblious, adj.:
10537 Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything.
10540 OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need four GALLONS of
10541 JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O
10542 as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ...
10543 WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES?
10545 On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
10547 "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
10550 On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
10551 nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
10555 On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
10559 On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
10561 -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
10563 On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a
10566 On the subject of C program indentation:
10568 "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
10569 indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
10570 -- Blair P. Houghton
10572 "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
10573 Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
10574 answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
10575 confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."
10578 Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
10579 forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
10580 -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
10584 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10586 Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
10587 each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
10590 In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
10591 called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukkah"
10592 and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
10593 passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
10594 Hanukkah!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
10595 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
10597 Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
10598 Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
10599 Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
10600 principals or your mistress".
10602 Once Law was sitting on the bench
10603 And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
10604 "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
10605 Nor come before me creeping.
10606 Upon your knees if you appear,
10607 'Tis plain you have no standing here."
10609 Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
10610 "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
10611 "Amica curiae," she replied --
10612 "Friend of the court, so please you."
10613 "Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
10614 I never saw your face before!"
10615 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10617 Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
10618 beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
10619 side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
10620 which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
10624 Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
10625 us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
10626 the smaller prime numbers.
10628 2: The Odd Prime --
10629 It's the only even prime, therefore it's odd. QED.
10630 3: The True Prime --
10631 Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
10632 31: The Arbitrary Prime --
10633 Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime
10634 in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91
10635 received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
10636 next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
10639 Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
10640 derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
10641 true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
10643 One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
10644 somebody's listening.
10645 -- Franklin P. Jones
10647 "One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."
10649 Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
10650 The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
10651 -- Chuq Von Rospach
10653 One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
10654 how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
10655 -- Professor Charles P. Issawi
10657 One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
10659 One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell
10660 the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald
10661 announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to
10662 a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The
10663 captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth
10664 -- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin,
10665 "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if
10666 I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!"
10667 "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
10669 One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
10672 One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
10673 never have to stop and answer the phone.
10675 One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
10676 -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
10678 One learns to itch where one can scratch.
10681 One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
10682 one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
10683 produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
10684 represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
10688 One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
10690 One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
10691 will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
10694 One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
10696 One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
10697 from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at
10698 least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts
10699 are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but
10700 when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
10701 -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
10703 One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
10704 do and always a clever thing to say.
10707 One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
10708 create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\bsomebody has to buy
10710 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
10712 One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
10713 seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best
10714 way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
10715 fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
10716 disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
10718 One Page Principle:
10719 A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
10720 paper cannot be understood.
10723 One planet is all you get.
10725 One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
10726 manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
10727 they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's
10728 say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
10729 study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
10730 sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
10731 strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
10732 rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also
10733 be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.
10734 Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
10735 Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
10736 millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
10737 support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that
10738 your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
10739 of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
10740 already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
10741 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
10743 One reason why George Washington
10744 Is held in such veneration:
10745 He never blamed his problems
10746 On the former Administration.
10747 -- George O. Ludcke
10749 One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
10751 One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh
10754 "One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
10755 sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of
10759 One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
10762 One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
10764 One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
10765 at the stake while the votes were being counted.
10768 One-Shot Case Study, n.:
10769 The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
10770 it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes
10774 The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
10777 Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
10779 Only God can make random selections.
10781 Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to
10782 use the editorial "we."
10784 Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
10786 Optimization hinders evolution.
10789 The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
10792 Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
10795 Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry
10796 is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
10800 Variables won't; constants aren't.
10802 Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.
10804 O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
10805 Murphy was an optimist.
10807 Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
10808 they charge fifteen cents for them.
10810 Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the
10811 office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
10812 were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of
10813 juice. But only *_
\b_
\bhe* had a lollipop.
10815 He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"
10819 "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it
10820 means to be a programmer."
10822 Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
10823 Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
10824 In kernel as it is in user!
10826 Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
10827 -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
10829 "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it."
10832 Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
10833 -- General Omar N. Bradley
10835 "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
10836 it's too dark to read."
10839 Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
10840 I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
10842 Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
10844 Overflow on /dev/null: please empty the bit bucket.
10846 Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
10849 (1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
10851 (2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
10853 (3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
10854 (4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
10857 The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
10858 exposing them to the critic.
10861 panic: can't find /
10863 panic: kernel trap (ignored)
10865 Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much
10869 Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
10871 Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
10873 Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
10875 Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
10876 criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
10879 Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
10881 Pardo's First Postulate:
10882 Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
10886 Everything else causes cancer in rats.
10889 Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
10891 Parkinson's Fifth Law:
10892 If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good
10893 bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
10895 Parkinson's Fourth Law:
10896 The number of people in any working group tends to increase
10897 regardless of the amount of work to be done.
10903 Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
10905 "Pascal is not a high-level language."
10908 "Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat."
10909 -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340
10912 A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
10913 his grave if he knew about it.
10916 To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
10917 death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed.
10919 Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
10923 The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
10924 under brain transplants.
10926 Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
10929 In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
10933 You can't fall off the floor.
10936 In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
10937 periods of fighting.
10938 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
10942 4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
10943 4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
10944 4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
10946 4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
10948 Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
10949 sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
10950 Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
10953 Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
10954 Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
10958 The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
10959 sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
10960 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
10962 Penguin Trivia #46:
10963 Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
10964 -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
10966 People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
10967 -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
10969 People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
10972 "People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense."
10975 People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
10977 People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better
10978 press than people who are just funny and smart.
10979 -- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
10981 People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
10982 slept in a room with a single mosquito.
10984 People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
10985 haven't what they want that they don't want it.
10988 People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
10989 Benjamin Franklin said it first.
10991 People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
10993 People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they
10996 Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
10997 "Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
11000 Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
11002 Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
11003 when there is no longer anything to take away.
11004 -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
11006 Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
11008 Peter Wemm Murphy Field, n.:
11009 A field of abnormally frequent and severe Murphy's Law events
11010 emanating from Mr. Peter Wemm. The field was first discovered and
11011 identified in Denmark during the initial FreeBSD SMP development.
11012 Mr. Wemm was residing in Australia at the time.
11014 Peter's Law of Substitution:
11015 Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
11018 Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
11019 exciting Camden, New Jersey.
11021 Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny.
11023 Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
11026 Pick another fortune cookie.
11028 "Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
11029 hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
11030 sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..."
11033 An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
11034 by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
11035 inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
11036 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11038 PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
11039 You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
11040 followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your
11041 associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack
11042 confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible
11043 things to small animals.
11045 PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
11046 Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
11047 American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as
11048 nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will
11049 probably get run over by a bus.
11051 Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
11055 -- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
11057 Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
11058 because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
11059 couldn't compete successfully with poets.
11060 -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
11063 Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill
11066 Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic
11068 -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
11070 Please ignore previous fortune.
11074 Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas"
11075 until you are told that those rooms are "punched out". Once punched
11076 out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
11080 Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
11083 (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
11085 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
11086 If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
11087 Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
11088 Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
11091 Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
11093 Police: Good evening, are you the host?
11095 Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
11096 Host: About the drugs?
11098 Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
11099 Police: No, the noise.
11100 Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
11101 or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
11102 background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
11104 Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
11105 complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
11106 ask the host to quiet things down?
11107 Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagen bug with primitive
11108 religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
11109 room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
11110 lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
11111 onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
11114 Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
11115 all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
11118 An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
11119 organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the
11120 agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared
11121 with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
11122 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11125 From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or
11126 "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence
11127 "polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
11130 Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
11131 where there is no river.
11132 -- Nikita Khrushchev
11134 Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart enough
11135 to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
11137 Polymer physicists are into chains.
11139 Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
11140 Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The
11141 white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
11142 it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
11143 name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with
11145 Half a pound of tuppenny rice
11146 Half a pound of treacle
11147 That's the way the chimney smokes
11149 The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of
11150 laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for
11151 hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
11152 Hans Neizant B"
\bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"
\boln in 1653.
11153 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
11156 Survives system reboot.
11159 Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
11160 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11162 Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
11164 Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
11165 -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
11167 Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
11169 Power corrupts. Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.
11173 The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
11175 Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
11176 more time for dreaming.
11179 Predestination was doomed from the start.
11181 President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
11182 forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
11184 President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the
11185 vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
11186 -- The Washington Post
11188 Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
11190 Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
11191 It's on the other side.
11193 [Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
11195 -- Winston Churchill
11197 Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
11199 Probable-Possible, my black hen,
11200 She lays eggs in the Relative When.
11201 She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
11202 Because she's unable to postulate how.
11203 -- Frederick Winsor
11205 Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have
11206 orgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, which
11207 is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime.
11208 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
11211 Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
11212 encryption standard and they came up with ...
11215 Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
11216 Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on
11217 his exam. Newell has now tossed five shutouts this quarter. Newell's
11218 earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
11220 Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
11221 build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
11222 to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
11225 Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
11227 This technique is used on equations with "_
\bn" in them. Induction
11228 techniques are very popular, even the military used them.
11230 SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
11232 We know it's true for _
\bn equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
11233 for every natural number less than _
\bn. _
\bN is arbitrary, so we can take _
\bn
11234 as large as we want. If _
\bn is sufficiently large, the case of _
\bn+1 is
11235 trivially equivalent, so the only important _
\bn are _
\bn less than _
\bn. We
11236 can take _
\bn = _
\bn (from above), so it's true for _
\bn+1 because it's just
11238 QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
11240 Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
11241 SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
11242 (1) Horses have an even number of legs.
11243 (2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
11244 (3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
11246 (4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
11247 (5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.
11249 Topics to be covered in future issues include proof by:
11251 Gesticulation (handwaving)
11253 Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
11255 Changing all the 2's to _
\bn's
11257 Lack of a counterexample, and
11258 "It stands to reason"
11260 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
11262 BBW Branch Both Ways
11263 BEW Branch Either Way
11264 BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full
11266 BMR Branch Multiple Registers
11268 BPO Branch on Power Off
11269 BST Backspace and Stretch Tape
11270 CDS Condense and Destroy System
11271 CLBR Clobber Register
11272 CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately
11273 CM Circulate Memory
11274 CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming
11275 CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip
11276 CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
11278 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
11280 DC Divide and Conquer
11281 DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key
11282 DO Divide and Overflow
11283 EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator
11284 EPI Execute Programmer Immediately
11285 EROS Erase Read Only Storage
11286 EXCE Execute Customer Engineer
11287 HCF Halt and Catch Fire
11288 IBP Insert Bug and Proceed
11289 INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out])
11290 PBC Print and Break Chain
11293 Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
11296 POPI Punch Operator Immediately
11297 PVLC Punch Variable Length Card
11298 RASC Read And Shred Card
11299 RPM Read Programmers Mind
11300 RSSC Reduce Speed, Step Carefully (for improved accuracy)
11301 RTAB Rewind Tape and Break
11303 RWOC Read Writing On Card
11304 SCRBL Scribble to disk - faster than a write
11305 SLC Search for Lost Chord
11306 SPSW Scramble Program Status Word
11307 SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk
11308 STROM Store in Read Only Memory
11309 TDB Transfer and Drop Bit
11310 WBT Water Binary Tree
11312 "Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
11313 than the both put together."
11315 Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
11316 three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
11318 Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
11319 anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
11322 Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves
11323 to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way
11324 to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the
11325 cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in
11326 fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a
11327 lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of
11328 the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
11329 -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
11331 Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
11333 Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
11335 Put no trust in cryptic comments.
11337 Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
11338 -- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
11341 Technology is dominated by two types of people:
11342 Those who understand what they do not manage.
11343 Those who manage what they do not understand.
11345 Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
11348 Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
11349 A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
11351 Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat?
11352 A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
11354 Q: How long does it take?
11355 A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've
11358 Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
11359 A: They replace your generator.
11361 Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11362 A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb
11363 itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
11364 reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
11365 maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
11367 Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb
11371 Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to do a logical right shift?
11372 A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
11374 Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a job?
11375 A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
11377 Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
11378 A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
11379 Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
11380 the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
11381 of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
11382 of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
11384 Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11385 A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
11386 light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
11387 plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer
11388 prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb
11389 assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
11391 Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11394 Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
11395 A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
11396 to the earlier joke.
11398 Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
11399 A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
11400 Californians trying to share the experience.
11402 Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
11403 A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
11404 with brightly colored machine tools.
11406 Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
11407 A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
11410 Q: What's a light-year?
11411 A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
11413 Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
11414 A: Because it was on the other side.
11416 Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
11417 A: To stamp out forest fires.
11419 Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
11420 A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
11422 Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
11423 A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
11425 Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What
11428 A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on
11429 believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be
11430 the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No
11431 time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if
11432 somebody else has made the correction.
11434 And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're
11435 the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have
11436 to inform the whole net right away!
11438 -- Brad Templeton, "Emily Postnews Answers Your
11439 Questions on Netiquette"
11441 Quality Control, n.:
11442 The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
11443 a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
11446 Man Invented Alcohol,
11447 God Invented Grass.
11450 Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
11452 Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
11454 Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
11456 (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
11459 Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
11467 Qvid me anxivs svm?
11469 QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]:
11470 1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69
11471 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [colloq.] one
11472 thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [anat.] a
11473 painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [slang]
11474 person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert.
11475 -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.
11477 Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
11479 Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
11480 I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
11481 computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
11482 store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
11483 all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all
11484 the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are
11485 they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current
11486 rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
11487 Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be
11488 impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying
11489 goes, giving away the store?
11490 -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
11492 Ray's Rule of Precision:
11493 Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
11498 And drugs cause cramp.
11499 Guns aren't lawful;
11502 You might as well live.
11503 -- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926
11506 A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
11507 the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately
11508 described with pictures.
11510 Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
11511 Congress. But I repeat myself.
11514 Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic
11515 value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is
11516 much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice
11517 this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA.
11519 Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware
11520 has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing
11521 machines are so poor at I/O.
11523 Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are
11524 so long they can't afford the disk space.
11526 Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
11527 in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
11529 Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker
11530 with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they
11531 hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for
11534 Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
11535 on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
11536 sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
11538 Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured
11539 programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-
11540 trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
11543 Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
11544 doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell
11547 Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it
11548 should be hard to understand.
11550 Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the
11551 illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how
11552 much good it did them.
11554 Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
11555 you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
11556 wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
11557 spring up in the middle of the machine room.
11559 Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write
11560 in BASIC after reaching puberty.
11562 Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress
11563 freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who
11566 Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who
11567 can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
11569 Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
11571 Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
11572 functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
11574 Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
11575 This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
11576 computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
11578 Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
11579 greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
11580 moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
11581 systems could be virtual at *___
\b\b\ball* levels. They would like personal
11582 computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
11583 DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
11584 Correctness Verification Aid packages.
11586 Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the
11587 job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like
11588 using an undocumented external procedure.
11591 Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
11594 Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
11595 afraid to break your face.
11597 Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
11598 down the system for days.
11600 Real Users hate Real Programmers.
11602 Real Users know your home telephone number.
11604 Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
11605 program doesn't deliver it.
11607 Real Users never use the Help key.
11609 Real World, The n.:
11610 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may
11611 be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
11612 programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
11613 to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
11614 tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5.
11615 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
11616 "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
11617 pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
11618 of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
11621 Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
11623 Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
11625 Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
11628 Reality is for people who lack imagination.
11630 Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
11632 Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
11635 "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away".
11638 "Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
11640 Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
11641 being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
11642 -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
11644 Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
11645 lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
11646 but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
11647 Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3
11650 Reclaimer, spare that tree!
11651 Take not a single bit!
11652 It used to point to me,
11653 Now I'm protecting it.
11654 It was the reader's CONS
11655 That made it, paired by dot;
11656 Now, GC, for the nonce,
11657 Thou shalt reclaim it not.
11659 "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe
11660 again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
11661 which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
11662 spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
11663 starfield surrounding the ship.
11665 "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC
11666 announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they
11667 are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been
11668 intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and
11669 transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
11670 Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
11671 -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
11673 Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
11674 If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
11676 Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
11679 Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it.
11682 Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
11685 Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good
11688 Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
11690 Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
11691 worse in Cleveland.
11692 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
11694 Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
11697 Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
11700 A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
11702 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
11704 REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
11706 SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
11707 the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
11708 carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
11709 I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
11710 of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
11711 do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
11712 ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
11713 need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
11714 career by being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
11715 that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
11717 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
11719 Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
11721 Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
11723 Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
11724 -- Wernher von Braun
11726 Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
11727 another chance later on.
11731 (1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
11732 and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
11733 he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
11734 Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
11736 (2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
11737 twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
11738 every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
11739 his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
11741 (3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
11742 the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
11743 pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
11744 Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
11747 When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
11748 circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
11749 empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred,
11750 induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always
11751 for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage,
11752 material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or
11753 none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed,
11754 proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably,
11755 universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it
11756 becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
11758 "Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time."
11761 Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
11762 Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
11763 reject the proposal.
11765 ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
11766 MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
11767 door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
11769 Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
11770 -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With
11774 If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it
11777 Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
11778 Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
11779 be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person
11780 shall be deemed to be a cat.
11782 Rule of Creative Research:
11783 (1) Never draw what you can copy.
11784 (2) Never copy what you can trace.
11785 (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
11787 Rule of Defactualization:
11788 Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
11790 Rule of Feline Frustration:
11791 When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
11792 content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
11795 When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
11796 thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
11799 (1) The boss is always right.
11800 (2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
11802 Rules for Academic Deans:
11804 (2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
11805 -- Father Damian C. Fandal
11807 Rules for driving in New York:
11808 (1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
11809 (2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers
11811 (3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
11814 RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
11815 (1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
11816 (2) Never leave the table hungry.
11817 (3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
11818 (4) Enjoy your food.
11819 (5) Enjoy your companion's food.
11820 (6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
11821 accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
11822 (7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
11823 for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
11824 brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
11825 (8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
11826 (9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
11827 can always eat it later.
11828 (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
11829 (11) Avoid blue food.
11830 -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
11832 SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
11833 You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
11834 tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority
11835 of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People
11836 laugh at you a great deal.
11838 San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
11842 Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
11844 Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
11847 Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
11848 He must be a communist.
11849 And a beard and long hair,
11850 Must be a pacifist.
11852 What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
11855 Satellite Safety Tip #14:
11856 If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
11859 It works better if you plug it in.
11861 Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
11862 Is like being nowhere at all,
11863 All through the day how the hours rush by,
11864 You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
11865 -- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
11867 Sauron is alive in Argentina!
11869 Save energy: be apathetic.
11871 Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
11873 Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
11875 Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I
11876 ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.
11879 SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
11882 Schapiro's Explanation:
11883 The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's
11884 because they use more manure.
11886 Schizophrenia beats being alone.
11888 Schlattwhapper, n.:
11889 The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
11890 hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
11891 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11894 A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in
11896 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11899 The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a
11901 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
11903 Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
11904 of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
11905 is not necessarily science.
11906 -- Henri Poincar'
\be
11908 Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
11910 Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
11911 -- William F. Buckley
11914 SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
11915 You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
11916 achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
11917 ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.
11920 No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
11922 Scott's second Law:
11923 When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
11924 to have been wrong in the first place.
11927 After the correction has been found in error, it will be
11928 impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
11930 Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
11931 Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
11932 Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
11933 Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
11934 Spock: Affirmative.
11935 Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
11936 Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
11938 Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
11940 Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
11942 -- Richard M. Nixon
11944 Second Law of Business Meetings:
11945 If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
11946 will pick the wrong one.
11949 If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
11952 Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
11953 In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
11954 multiline message byte.
11955 In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
11956 must be sent passive true.
11957 The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
11958 (1) The ANRS if DAV is false
11959 (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
11960 (a) The LADS is active
11961 (b) Nor LACS is active
11963 -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
11964 Programmable Instrumentation
11966 Security check:
\a\a\aINTRUDER ALERT!
11968 Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
11969 She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
11970 Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
11972 Sightlessly seeking
11973 Some savage, spectacular suicide.
11974 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
11976 "See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ...
11979 Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
11980 Ice Cream cures all ills.
11982 Self Test for Paranoia:
11983 You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
11987 From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
11989 Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
11990 notify you if the record has pornographic material or
11991 material glorifying violence?"
11992 Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
11993 Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
11994 legs on the album cover is good indication that it's
11995 not for little Johnny."
11997 -- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock
11998 lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985
12001 A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
12005 Serenity through viciousness.
12007 Serocki's Stricture:
12008 Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
12010 Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
12012 Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
12013 big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
12014 reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's
12015 build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up
12016 like crabgrass all over the United States.
12017 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
12019 Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke.
12021 Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
12024 Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
12027 Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
12028 it's one of the best.
12031 Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
12032 A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
12033 temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
12034 A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagogue
12035 functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
12036 A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
12037 middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be
12038 bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
12039 The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
12040 am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
12042 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
12044 Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
12045 during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
12046 -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
12050 Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
12053 "She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
12056 She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
12059 She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them
12062 She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
12063 have poured on a waffle ...
12065 "She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
12066 you should hear me play piano.'"
12069 "Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
12070 taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
12071 excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
12074 She's genuinely bogus.
12076 SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
12077 POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
12079 Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
12080 playing golf with his boss.
12082 Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
12084 Signals don't kill programs. Programs kill programs.
12086 Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
12087 -- from the Brown University Security Crime Prevention
12091 If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
12094 Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
12096 Since I hurt my pendulum
12097 My life is all erratic.
12098 My parrot, who was cordial,
12099 Is now transmitting static.
12100 The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
12101 The cat keeps doing poo.
12102 The only thing that keeps me sane
12103 Is talking to my shoe.
12106 Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
12110 Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
12111 -- Bob "Mountain" Beck
12113 [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
12115 -- Winston Churchill
12117 Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
12118 Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
12119 excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
12120 This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally
12121 examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published
12122 Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
12123 printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry
12124 comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
12125 no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
12127 Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
12128 That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
12129 or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should
12132 Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
12135 Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
12136 when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
12137 apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I
12138 neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
12139 tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they
12140 were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
12141 souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a
12142 testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
12144 -- Frederick Douglass
12146 Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
12147 (1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
12149 (2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
12150 (3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
12151 attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
12152 attracted to dark objects.
12154 Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...
12157 The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
12158 it sits in the dish too long.
12159 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
12161 Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
12165 The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
12166 returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
12168 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
12170 So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
12171 your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
12172 hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
12173 array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
12175 ... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
12176 were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
12177 that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
12178 toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
12179 made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
12180 format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
12181 -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
12184 So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
12185 praise of intelligence.
12186 -- Bertrand Russell
12188 "So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
12189 pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
12190 its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
12191 imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
12192 and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
12193 and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
12194 gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
12197 So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever
12198 remember his Bible?
12201 Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
12205 Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
12207 Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
12209 Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
12212 Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
12213 celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
12214 stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
12215 "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
12216 of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
12217 government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
12218 Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
12219 billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
12220 it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
12221 thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
12222 the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
12224 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
12226 Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
12227 people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
12228 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
12230 Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only
12231 one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
12233 Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
12236 Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic.
12238 Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
12239 you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
12243 Some points to remember [about animals]:
12245 (1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
12247 (2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
12248 front of your clothes;
12249 (3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
12250 you have just kicked.
12251 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
12253 Some primal termite knocked on wood.
12254 And tasted it, and found it good.
12255 And that is why your Cousin May
12256 Fell through the parlor floor today.
12259 Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand
12262 Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
12264 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12266 Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
12267 pens will multiply instead of disappear.
12269 Someone will try to honk your nose today.
12271 "Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
12274 Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
12277 Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
12279 "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
12280 Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
12281 intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
12282 and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
12283 best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
12284 we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
12286 "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
12287 -- Ray Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
12289 Song Title of the Week:
12290 "They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
12293 Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already
12294 paid may disregard this fortune).
12296 Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
12298 Sorry, no fortune this time.
12300 Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
12301 bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
12302 road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
12303 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
12305 "Spare no expense to save money on this one."
12308 Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
12309 If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
12310 if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question
12313 Speak roughly to your little boy,
12314 And beat him when he sneezes:
12315 He only does it to annoy
12316 Because he knows it teases.
12320 I speak severely to my boy,
12321 And beat him when he sneezes:
12322 For he can thoroughly enjoy
12323 The pepper when he pleases!
12326 -- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
12328 Speak roughly to your little VAX,
12329 And boot it when it crashes;
12330 It knows that one cannot relax
12331 Because the paging thrashes!
12335 I speak severely to my VAX,
12336 And boot it when it crashes;
12337 In spite of all my favorite hacks
12338 My jobs it always thrashes!
12342 Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
12344 Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
12347 Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
12348 sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
12349 cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free
12350 the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a
12351 bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
12352 controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
12353 passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same
12354 memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well,
12355 no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously
12356 designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
12358 Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
12360 With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
12361 He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
12362 And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
12363 As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
12364 Helpless users with projects due
12365 Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
12367 Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
12368 Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
12370 * VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
12371 * DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
12374 Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
12375 these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
12376 to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
12377 communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
12378 on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
12379 life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
12380 communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____
\b\b\b\b\bleast
12381 he can do is to Shut Up!
12382 -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
12384 "Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
12386 Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
12387 The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
12388 number of times you have looked at it.
12390 Spelling is a lossed art.
12392 Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
12395 The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
12397 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
12400 Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
12401 wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
12403 "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
12404 drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'
\bee of bat guano; and the
12405 greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
12406 take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
12409 Stay away from flying saucers today.
12411 Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
12413 Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
12415 Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
12416 Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
12419 Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
12420 Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
12423 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
12425 Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
12429 Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
12430 fight the solutions.
12433 Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
12435 Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
12438 90% of everything is crud.
12440 Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
12441 editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
12444 Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
12445 before it is understood.
12447 Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
12449 Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
12450 without his duck ...
12452 (Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
12454 To code the impossible code,
12455 To bring up a virgin machine,
12456 To pop out of endless recursion,
12457 To grok what appears on the screen,
12459 To right the unrightable bug,
12460 To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
12461 To mount the unmountable magtape,
12462 To stop the unstoppable crash!
12464 Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
12466 Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
12468 Support your local police force -- steal!!
12470 Support your local Search and Rescue unit -- get lost.
12472 Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
12474 Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type
12475 in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
12476 the room is punishable under law:
12480 Surprise due today. Also the rent.
12482 Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
12485 The language used by the National Enquirer to print their
12490 A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
12492 Swipple's Rule of Order:
12493 He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
12495 Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
12496 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12498 System/3! System/3!
12499 See how it runs! See how it runs!
12500 Its monitor loses so totally!
12501 It runs all its programs in RPG!
12502 It's made by our favorite monopoly!
12505 Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
12506 infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
12507 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12509 T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
12510 He don't rock, and he don't roll;
12511 Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
12512 He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
12513 -- The Roguelet's ABC
12515 Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
12519 The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
12521 Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
12523 Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
12525 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
12527 Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
12529 Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
12530 needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
12533 Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit
12534 back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
12535 beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
12536 drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
12537 nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
12538 and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
12539 Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
12540 no need to improve ...
12541 -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
12543 Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
12544 your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
12545 and they'll call you crazy.
12546 -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
12548 Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
12551 Talkers are no good doers.
12552 -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
12554 Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
12555 -- Friedrich Nietzsche
12557 TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
12558 You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
12559 determination and work like hell. Most people think you are
12560 stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.
12562 Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
12566 Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
12570 Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
12573 Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when they
12574 grow up, they will never be able to edge a car onto a freeway.
12576 Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
12578 Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
12579 for going backwards.
12583 An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
12584 advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
12587 Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
12588 Is those things arms, or is they legs?
12589 I marvel at thee, Octopus;
12590 If I were thou, I'd call me us.
12593 Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
12597 "Terence, this is stupid stuff:
12598 You eat your victuals fast enough;
12599 There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
12600 To see the rate you drink your beer.
12601 But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
12602 It gives a chap the belly-ache.
12603 The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
12604 It sleeps well the horned head:
12605 We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
12606 To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
12607 Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
12608 Your friends to death before their time.
12609 Moping, melancholy mad:
12610 Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
12613 "Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
12614 surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
12615 hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
12616 hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother."
12617 -- Len Cool, "American Pie"
12619 Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
12620 pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
12621 until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian ... To him is
12622 ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
12623 because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
12624 fact, for he merely said:
12626 "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
12627 it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
12628 because it is impossible."
12630 Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
12631 philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
12632 -- C. G. Jung, "Psychological Types"
12634 [Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church. Ed.]
12636 Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
12638 Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
12640 "Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
12641 one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
12642 -- J. Finnegan, USC.
12644 Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
12645 -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
12647 "That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver"
12650 "That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
12652 That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
12654 That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
12657 The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
12659 The Abrams' Principle:
12660 The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
12662 The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
12663 -- Thomas Jefferson
12665 The Advertising Agency Song:
12667 When your client's hopping mad,
12668 Put his picture in the ad.
12669 If he still should prove refractory,
12670 Add a picture of his factory.
12672 "The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
12674 -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340
12676 The answer is that libdialog, the library on which sysinstall depends
12677 for these menus, is genuinely evil. It is the unloved, satanic
12678 bastard child of multiple parents and torturing users like yourself
12679 constitutes the only joy in life it has left. Its source files are
12680 all chmod'd 0666 and dire README files warn against trespass by
12681 neophyte programmers. It is the 7th gate of Hell. It makes the baby
12682 Jesus cry. Were libdialog given anthropomorphic representation, it
12683 would be promptly burnt at the stake and its ashes scattered in the
12684 desert, to be then doused with holy water from altitude by
12685 fire-fighting aircraft.
12687 -- Jordan K. Hubbard on the evils of libdialog
12689 The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas
12690 River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little
12693 The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
12694 Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
12695 and color, but also on ability.
12698 The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
12701 The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
12702 in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
12703 Declaration not for that, but for future use.
12706 The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m.
12708 The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
12709 average man can see better than he can think.
12711 "The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
12712 people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried
12714 -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
12716 The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
12717 cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
12718 difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
12719 which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
12720 here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
12721 RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you
12722 want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking
12723 lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
12724 squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
12725 and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
12726 his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
12727 neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
12729 -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
12731 The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit
12732 called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in
12733 writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would
12734 be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices
12735 immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a
12736 bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special
12737 Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of
12738 paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty
12739 would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.
12740 The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to
12741 emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood
12742 Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
12743 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
12745 The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
12746 but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
12748 The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
12751 The best defense against logic is ignorance.
12753 The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
12755 "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
12756 blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
12757 You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
12758 night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
12759 love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
12760 know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only
12761 one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what
12762 wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
12763 never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
12764 dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a
12765 lot of things there are to learn."
12766 -- T. H. White, "The Once and Future King"
12768 The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
12772 The bigger the theory the better.
12774 The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
12778 The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss
12779 Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
12781 It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been
12782 known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and,
12783 in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two
12784 under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of
12785 people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a
12786 city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking
12787 umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of
12788 activity that frightens the horses on the street ...
12790 "The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch."
12792 The bogosity meter just pegged.
12794 The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
12795 in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
12797 The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
12798 To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
12799 program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and
12800 convert to the next higher units.
12802 The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be.
12803 Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in
12804 automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
12807 The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
12810 "The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
12811 flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language."
12813 The camel has a single hump;
12815 Or else the other way around.
12816 I'm never sure. Are you?
12819 The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
12820 greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
12821 inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
12822 party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
12825 The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.
12828 The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
12829 at the steam fitters' picnic.
12831 The chief cause of problems is solutions.
12834 The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
12837 The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will
12841 "The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
12844 "The Computer made me do it."
12846 The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
12849 The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his
12851 -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
12853 The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other
12854 subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up
12855 every bird watcher in the country.
12856 -- John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972
12858 The Consultant's Curse:
12859 When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him
12860 what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong
12861 medicine, and is normally only required once.
12863 The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
12864 none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
12865 Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
12866 Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
12868 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
12870 The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
12872 The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
12874 The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to
12878 The Crown is full of it!
12879 -- Nate Harris, 1775
12881 The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should
12882 therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could
12883 hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to
12884 declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war,
12885 then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press.
12886 Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
12887 -- William Ellery Channing
12889 The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
12891 The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
12892 us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
12893 Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
12895 The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
12897 The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
12899 "The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
12900 into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him
12901 out again, it would be a calamity."
12902 -- Benjamin Disraeli
12904 The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
12905 requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require
12907 -- Robert A. Heinlein
12909 The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
12910 following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
12912 "I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
12913 Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
12914 Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
12915 "Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
12916 Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
12917 Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
12918 Macaroons are ____
\b\b\b\bvery Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
12919 goyish. Lime soda is ____
\b\b\b\bvery goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
12920 Jews won't go near them ..."
12921 -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
12923 The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
12924 a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
12926 The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
12927 really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
12928 -- Gilbert K. Chesterson
12930 The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show
12931 off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
12932 next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
12933 duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
12934 duck and returned it to his master.
12935 "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
12936 "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't
12939 The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
12940 and owns the worm farm.
12943 The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
12945 The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
12948 The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
12949 weather forecasters.
12950 -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
12952 "The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
12953 Compute' -- I forget which."
12954 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
12956 The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
12958 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
12960 The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
12961 symposium to follow.
12963 The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
12964 their children to speak it.
12965 -- George Bernard Shaw
12967 The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a
12968 remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
12971 The fact that it works is immaterial.
12974 The faster we go, the rounder we get.
12975 -- The Grateful Dead
12978 You have taken yourself too seriously.
12980 The First Commandment for Technicians:
12981 Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
12982 capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
12983 untechnician-like manner.
12985 The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
12988 The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
12989 Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
12990 tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
12991 forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
12992 fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
12993 threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked
12994 suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
12995 foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
12996 one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with
12997 dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found
12998 drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
12999 and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have
13000 thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
13001 of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left
13002 in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
13003 crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave
13004 Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
13005 a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
13006 throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
13007 -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
13009 The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
13010 management is that success equals skill.
13013 The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
13014 child, was propounded to me by my father:
13015 "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
13017 I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
13019 "A herring," said my father.
13020 "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
13021 "So hang it there."
13022 "But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
13024 "But a herring isn't wet."
13025 "If it's just painted it's still wet."
13026 "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
13028 "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
13030 -- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
13032 "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
13033 hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."
13034 -- McCloctnik the Lucid
13036 The First Rule of Program Optimization:
13039 The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
13043 The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
13044 The second, a trick.
13045 Later, it's a well-established technique!
13046 -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics
13048 The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
13049 Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
13051 As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
13052 logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
13053 appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
13054 four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
13056 Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
13057 blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
13058 parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
13061 The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
13062 people who want some.
13063 -- Dwight MacDonald
13065 The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
13066 a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
13068 "The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and
13072 The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
13073 number of your kids by 32 teeth.
13075 The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
13078 The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
13080 The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
13081 center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
13082 Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
13083 End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
13085 The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled
13088 The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
13089 least until we've finished building it.
13091 The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature
13092 is to build better mice.
13094 The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him
13095 love and he invented marriage.
13097 THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
13098 The one who has the gold makes the rules.
13100 "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
13101 make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
13102 have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
13103 man in the bonds of Hell."
13106 The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
13110 The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
13111 statistics. These are raised to the _
\bnth degree, the cube roots are
13112 extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
13113 displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
13114 case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
13115 down anything he damn well pleases.
13116 -- Sir Josiah Stamp
13118 The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
13119 who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
13120 -- Benjamin Franklin
13122 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
13123 The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
13124 courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk
13125 clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods
13126 of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
13128 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13130 The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
13131 of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
13132 -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
13134 The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
13137 The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom
13138 whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary, nohow.
13140 The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
13141 You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
13143 The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
13146 The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
13147 which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
13148 least 5000 years old."
13150 The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
13151 lists of "Ten Best".
13154 "The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
13155 has gills through which it can see."
13158 The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
13159 capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
13161 The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
13162 protein -- it rejects it.
13165 The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can
13166 remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider
13167 struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in
13168 spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and
13169 wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head
13170 off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe.
13171 -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
13173 The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
13176 The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
13177 procession but carrying a banner.
13180 The idea is to die young as late as possible.
13183 The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
13184 devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
13185 where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with
13186 sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,
13187 consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than
13188 have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones
13189 repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist
13190 of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic
13191 devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
13192 -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
13194 "The identical is equal to itself, since it is different."
13197 "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit
13201 The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
13202 has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
13203 when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
13206 The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
13207 point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
13208 important thing to people.
13209 -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
13211 The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
13212 number of participants.
13215 The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
13216 by the number of people in the group.
13218 The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
13219 information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
13220 dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
13221 real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
13223 So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
13224 pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
13225 consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
13226 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
13228 The Kennedy Constant:
13229 Don't get mad -- get even.
13231 The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
13233 The ladies men admire, I've heard,
13234 Would shudder at a wicked word.
13235 Their candle gives a single light;
13236 They'd rather stay at home at night.
13237 They do not keep awake till three,
13238 Nor read erotic poetry.
13239 They never sanction the impure,
13240 Nor recognize an overture.
13241 They shrink from powders and from paints ...
13242 So far, I've had no complaints.
13245 The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a
13246 word processor," I replied, "They used to say the same thing about
13250 The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
13251 poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
13255 The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
13257 -- Henry David Thoreau
13259 "The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all
13260 men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the
13261 universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we
13262 presently imagine we own."
13265 The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
13268 The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
13270 The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
13274 The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
13277 "The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
13278 we could with both of them."
13279 -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
13281 The makers may make
13282 and the users may use,
13283 but the fixers must fix
13284 with but minimal clues
13286 The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
13287 crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
13289 -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
13291 The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
13292 will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
13295 The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
13296 soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
13297 when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
13299 The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
13301 The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
13302 devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
13305 The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might
13306 be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the
13307 law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was
13308 guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples
13309 Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking
13310 Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality
13311 of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive power.
13312 -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
13315 The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
13316 -- Laurence J. Peter
13318 The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
13319 -- Nicol Williamson
13321 The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
13323 The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
13325 "The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
13326 lower the mailing cost."
13327 -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
13329 The more laws and order are made prominent,
13330 the more thieves and robbers there will be.
13333 The more things change, the more they stay insane.
13335 The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
13338 The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
13341 "The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
13342 to watch someone else do it wrong without comment."
13343 -- Theodore H. White
13345 The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
13346 discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
13349 The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
13351 "The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
13352 1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert."
13355 The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
13356 Support your right to bare arms!
13358 The net of law is spread so wide,
13359 No sinner from its sweep may hide.
13360 Its meshes are so fine and strong,
13361 They take in every child of wrong.
13362 O wondrous web of mystery!
13363 Big fish alone escape from thee!
13364 -- James Jeffrey Roche
13366 The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
13367 hope I don't get run over again.
13369 The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
13370 in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
13372 But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
13373 whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
13376 "The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
13377 Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country.
13378 The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive
13379 and running the country ..."
13380 -- Robert J Woodhead
13382 The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
13384 -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
13386 The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
13388 -- Dennis M. Ritchie
13390 The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should
13391 serve the state is essentially a Communist notion ... In a free society
13392 these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their
13393 function is to serve as checks upon the state.
13396 The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are
13400 The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly
13401 analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their
13402 occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve
13403 these problems when called upon.
13405 However, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
13406 remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
13408 The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
13409 Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,
13410 Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate
13413 The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
13415 The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader
13416 catch his own breath.
13417 -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
13419 The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
13423 The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
13426 The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
13427 `social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
13428 -- Ernest Rutherford
13430 The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
13433 "The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon."
13434 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
13437 The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it.
13439 The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber
13440 has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,
13441 finished, and put inside boxes.
13442 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
13444 The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any
13448 The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from
13452 "I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
13454 -- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
13456 The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
13459 The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
13462 The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
13465 The optimum committee has no members.
13466 -- Norman Augustine
13468 "The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
13469 went back in time."
13472 The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
13474 -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
13476 The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
13477 were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
13480 The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
13481 Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
13482 Let others think his heart is big,
13483 I think it stupid of the Pig.
13486 The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
13487 swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
13488 batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
13489 center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
13490 his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
13493 The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
13496 The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish
13497 to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it
13498 is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of
13499 courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own
13500 preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper
13501 social function of expressing true distaste.
13502 -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to
13503 Excruciatingly Correct Behavior"
13505 The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often.
13507 The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
13508 Were each of them once a kiddie.
13509 A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
13510 Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
13513 The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his
13514 brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is
13515 Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
13516 -- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
13518 The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
13519 they might force their beliefs on us.
13522 The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
13523 warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by
13524 changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped
13526 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
13528 The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
13529 constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
13530 appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
13531 statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
13532 also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
13533 -- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
13535 The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
13536 voters to win the next election.
13538 The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO"
13539 represents the secondary theme:
13541 Law Enforcement Officials
13543 The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
13545 Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
13548 The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
13549 stupidity of your action.
13551 The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
13552 Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
13553 using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
13554 Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
13555 etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
13556 bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
13557 of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
13559 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
13561 The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
13565 The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get
13568 The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
13569 problems in order to get results.
13571 The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy
13572 problems in order to get results.
13574 The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
13575 pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
13576 -- Elizabeth Taylor
13578 The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
13580 The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
13581 outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
13582 mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once
13583 tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
13584 the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
13585 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13587 "The pyramid is opening!"
13589 "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
13590 -- The Firesign Theatre, "How Can You Be In Two Places
13591 At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
13593 The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
13594 "My brain is paged out to my liver"
13596 The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is
13597 it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
13598 that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of
13600 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
13602 The rain it raineth on the just
13603 And also on the unjust fella,
13604 But chiefly on the just, because
13605 The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
13608 The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
13611 The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
13613 The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",
13614 which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape
13615 Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil
13616 Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like.
13617 -- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
13619 The reason we come up with new versions is not to fix bugs. It's
13623 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
13624 persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
13625 progress depends on the unreasonable man.
13626 -- George Bernard Shaw
13628 The revolution will not be televised.
13630 The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
13633 The rhino is a homely beast,
13634 For human eyes he's not a feast.
13635 Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
13636 I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
13639 The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This
13640 means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
13642 "The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
13643 and to his imagination for his facts."
13646 The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
13647 -- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
13649 "The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
13650 House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
13651 you have and what rights you have not got."
13652 -- J. Parnell Thomas
13654 The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
13658 The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
13659 one who is doing it.
13661 The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
13662 his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
13663 one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
13664 take it too seriously.
13665 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
13667 The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
13668 give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
13669 -- Jane Bryant Quinn
13671 "The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
13673 The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
13674 showed that all had these things in common:
13676 (1) They all had moderate appetites.
13677 (2) They all came from middle class homes.
13678 (3) All but two of them were dead.
13680 The scum also rises.
13681 -- Hunter S. Thompson
13683 The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
13684 respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones
13685 from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
13686 millstones are lifted.
13687 -- George Bernard Shaw
13689 The Seventh Commandments for Technicians
13690 Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
13691 fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in
13694 The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land.
13696 The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
13699 The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:
13700 The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going
13701 in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long
13705 "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
13706 and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
13707 activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
13708 neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."
13710 "The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
13712 -- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon"
13714 "The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!"
13716 The sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you will be
13717 able to correct them.
13720 The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
13722 The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
13723 readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
13724 some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
13725 reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
13726 the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
13727 known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
13728 Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
13729 of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
13730 psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
13731 Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
13732 these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
13733 further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
13734 something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
13736 -- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
13738 The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
13740 The steady state of disks is full.
13743 The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make
13745 -- Mayor Frank Rizzo
13747 "The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
13748 is an emerging underachiever."
13750 The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant
13753 "The subspace _
\bW inherits the other 8 properties of _
\bV. And there aren't
13754 even any property taxes."
13755 -- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
13757 The sum of the Universe is zero.
13759 The sun was shining on the sea,
13760 Shining with all his might:
13761 He did his very best to make
13762 The billows smooth and bright --
13763 And this was very odd, because it was
13764 The middle of the night.
13765 -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
13767 The superfluous is very necessary.
13770 The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
13773 The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
13774 authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
13775 the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
13776 the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
13777 radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
13778 as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
13779 receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
13780 Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
13781 heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
13782 the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
13783 heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
13784 radiation, (_
\bH/_
\bE)^4 = 50, where _
\bE is the absolute temperature of the
13785 earth (~300K), gives _
\bH as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
13786 cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
13787 fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
13788 burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
13789 that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
13790 have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
13791 -- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
13793 The Third Law of Photography:
13794 If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
13795 when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark
13798 The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
13800 The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
13801 The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break
13803 The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
13805 The trouble with a kitten is that
13806 When it grows up, it's always a cat
13809 The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
13811 The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
13813 -- Franklin P. Jones
13815 The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
13816 more important to do.
13818 The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
13819 appreciates how difficult it was.
13821 The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths.
13824 The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
13827 The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility. And
13830 The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
13831 Which practically conceal its sex.
13832 I think it clever of the turtle
13833 In such a fix to be so fertile.
13836 "The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and
13840 The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
13841 annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
13844 The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
13845 "100 percent American"...
13846 -- U. S. Army (1945)
13848 The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
13849 everybody and still nobody likes him.
13852 The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be
13855 The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
13856 combination is locked up in the safe.
13859 The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
13860 Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
13861 to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his
13862 decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
13864 The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
13865 religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
13866 from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
13867 yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
13868 world put together.
13869 -- Sir Peter Medawar
13871 The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
13875 The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
13879 The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
13880 Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
13881 to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
13882 be one of the facts that needs altering.
13883 -- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
13885 "The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."
13887 "The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
13888 it's just a tired feeling:"
13890 The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
13892 "The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
13893 that would be clearly understood."
13896 "The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
13897 with a large fortune."
13899 The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
13900 Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
13901 It must have blown through someone's feet,
13902 Like those of Caspar Weinberger.
13905 The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
13907 The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
13909 The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
13911 The world's as ugly as sin,
13912 And almost as delightful.
13913 -- Frederick Locker-Lampson
13915 The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
13916 four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
13919 Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
13921 He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
13922 then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
13925 If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
13926 not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
13928 Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
13929 Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
13930 Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
13931 -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
13933 Then here's to the City of Boston,
13934 The town of the cries and the groans.
13935 Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
13936 And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
13937 -- Franklin Pierce Adams
13939 There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
13940 and praiseworthy ...
13941 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
13943 There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own
13946 There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axes
13947 are chosen correctly.
13949 There are no games on this system.
13951 There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
13952 existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
13953 marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
13954 engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
13955 obviously impossible.
13956 -- Richard Davisson
13958 There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the
13959 truth without lying.
13962 There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
13963 vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
13966 "There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
13967 plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
13968 and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
13971 "There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
13972 and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated
13973 pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving
13974 them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you
13975 stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your
13977 -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
13979 There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.
13980 -- Benjamin Disraeli
13982 "There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away
13983 from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone
13984 loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor."
13986 There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
13987 offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
13988 a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
13989 of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
13990 affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
13991 When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
13992 Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
13993 -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
13995 "There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
13996 engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far
13998 -- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
14000 There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
14001 the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many
14002 facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next
14003 fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent
14004 Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
14005 Factor; that's engineering.
14007 There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I
14011 There are three ways to get something done:
14012 (1) Do it yourself.
14013 (2) Hire someone to do it for you.
14014 (3) Forbid your kids to do it.
14016 There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is
14019 There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
14020 the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
14021 sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
14022 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
14024 There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
14025 sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
14028 "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
14029 make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
14030 other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
14034 "There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
14035 other is to read Pope."
14038 There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
14041 There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
14042 suitable application of high explosives.
14044 There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
14047 There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
14050 There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
14054 There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
14057 There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an
14061 There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
14062 paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
14064 There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
14066 There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
14067 tied during the month of April.
14069 There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
14072 There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
14073 what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
14074 disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
14077 There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
14078 -- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
14080 "There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a
14082 -- Arthur C. Clarke
14084 There *__
\b\bis* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
14086 There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
14089 There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
14090 tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
14091 abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
14092 war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
14094 -- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
14096 There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
14097 -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, World Future Society
14100 There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
14101 -- George Bernard Shaw
14103 There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
14105 There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
14107 There is no time like the pleasant.
14109 There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
14112 There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY.
14113 There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS. I'm very probably wrong.
14115 "There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
14116 said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat. "And yet just
14117 a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable
14118 question," said Nasrudin. "I could have answered it if I had been
14119 there." "Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
14120 the middle of the night?'"
14122 There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the
14123 ocean level wouldn't cure.
14126 There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
14127 that is not being talked about.
14130 There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
14131 returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
14134 There once was a girl named Irene
14135 Who lived on distilled kerosene
14136 But she started absorbin'
14138 And since then has never benzene.
14140 There once was a member of Mensa
14141 Who was a most excellent fencer.
14142 The sword that he used
14143 Was his -- (line is refused,
14144 And has now been removed by the censor).
14146 There once was an old man from Esser,
14147 Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
14148 It at last grew so small,
14149 He knew nothing at all,
14150 And now he's a College Professor.
14152 "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved
14154 -- C. S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia"
14156 There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
14157 left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
14158 Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
14159 started debating who should be allowed to stay.
14161 The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
14162 over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
14163 would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley
14164 said, "Look! We're not solving anything like this! The only fair
14165 thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
14168 There was a young lady from Hyde
14169 Who ate a green apple and died.
14170 While her lover lamented
14171 The apple fermented
14172 And made cider inside her inside.
14174 There was a young man who said "God,
14175 I find it exceedingly odd,
14176 That the willow oak tree
14178 When there's no one about in the Quad."
14180 "Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd,
14181 For I'm always about in the Quad;
14182 And that's why the tree,
14184 Signed "Yours faithfully, God."
14186 There was a young poet named Dan,
14187 Whose poetry never would scan.
14188 When told this was so,
14189 He said, "Yes, I know.
14190 It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can."
14192 "There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
14193 both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
14194 talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
14198 There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
14199 the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
14200 digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
14201 8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the
14202 transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
14203 stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
14204 feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
14205 systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
14206 first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
14207 satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
14208 telephone business?
14210 There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not
14213 There's a long-standing bug relating to the x86 architecture that
14214 allows you to install Windows.
14215 -- Matthew D. Fuller
14217 There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
14219 There's little in taking or giving,
14220 There's little in water or wine:
14221 This living, this living, this living,
14222 Was never a project of mine.
14223 Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
14224 The gain of the one at the top,
14225 For art is a form of catharsis,
14226 And love is a permanent flop,
14227 And work is the province of cattle,
14228 And rest's for a clam in a shell,
14229 So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
14230 Would you kindly direct me to hell?
14233 There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our
14234 whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
14237 There's no future in time travel.
14239 There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
14242 There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
14245 There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
14247 There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
14251 "There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead
14253 -- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
14255 There's nothing so precious as a cafe full of Gap kiddies trying to
14256 work out whether you're really wearing rubber pants.
14259 "There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't
14262 There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
14263 what it is I'll get married again.
14266 There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
14267 becoming an endangered synthetic.
14270 "These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
14271 "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
14272 "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
14273 out of MEGATON MAN!"
14275 These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
14276 used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
14278 They also surf who only stand on waves.
14280 They make a desert and call it peace.
14281 -- Tacitus (55?-120?)
14283 They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
14284 always spell better than they pronounce.
14287 "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
14288 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
14289 -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
14291 "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"
14293 They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results
14294 About a month before. Their hair began to curl
14295 The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it
14296 But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL.
14298 He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this
14299 To pass where they had failed For it must ever be
14300 And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest
14301 The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me.
14303 My notion was to start again
14304 Ignoring all they'd done
14305 We quickly turned it into code
14306 To see if it would run.
14308 They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
14310 "They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult
14314 Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
14316 Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
14318 Think big. Pollute the Mississippi.
14320 Think honk if you're a telepath.
14322 Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
14324 Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer
14327 Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
14329 "Thirty days hath Septober,
14330 April, June, and no wonder.
14331 all the rest have peanut butter
14332 except my father who wears red suspenders."
14334 This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need,
14335 please use the program "________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\brandchar". This program generates random
14336 characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
14337 something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be
14338 more profound than THIS program has ever been.
14340 This Fortune Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
14342 This fortune intentionally not included.
14344 This fortune is false.
14346 This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
14348 "This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
14349 regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling
14352 "This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT
14356 "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
14357 actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?"
14359 This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
14360 because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
14361 which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has
14362 "deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the
14363 consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any
14364 rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for
14365 oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill
14366 Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers
14367 over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These
14368 innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been
14369 passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
14370 amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do
14371 apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,
14372 and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
14373 -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
14375 This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
14377 This is for all ill-treated fellows
14378 Unborn and unbegot,
14379 For them to read when they're in trouble
14383 "This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
14385 -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
14387 This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
14389 THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
14391 If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
14392 contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
14393 without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
14394 contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
14395 can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
14396 for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
14397 difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
14398 and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
14399 "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before
14400 you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
14401 Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
14402 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
14403 Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
14404 more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ...
14406 This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
14407 power of computers:
14409 Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
14410 the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
14411 minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
14412 results are that one should eat each day:
14416 1 glass of skim milk
14417 27 heads of lettuce.
14418 -- Rev. Adrian Melott
14420 This is the ____
\b\b\b\bLAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
14422 This is the story of the bee
14423 Whose sex is very hard to see
14425 You cannot tell the he from the she
14426 But she can tell, and so can he
14428 The little bee is never still
14429 She has no time to take the pill
14431 And that is why, in times like these
14432 There are so many sons of bees.
14434 This is your fortune.
14436 This land is full of trousers!
14437 this land is full of mausers!
14438 And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
14439 -- The Firesign Theatre
14441 This land is made of mountains,
14442 This land is made of mud,
14443 This land has lots of everything,
14444 For me and Elmer Fudd.
14446 This land has lots of trousers,
14447 This land has lots of mousers,
14448 And pussycats to eat them
14449 When the sun goes down.
14451 This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life,
14452 you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
14455 This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
14457 This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
14461 This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
14462 the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
14463 solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
14464 largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
14465 which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
14466 paper that were unhappy.
14469 "This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
14470 something child-like."
14471 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
14473 This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
14474 student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
14476 One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
14477 Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
14478 computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
14479 which identifies errors in the original program.
14481 This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
14482 -- Douglas Hofstadter
14484 This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget
14487 Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those
14490 Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
14492 Those who can't write, write manuals.
14494 Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics.
14497 Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
14500 Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
14501 for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
14504 Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often
14505 surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
14508 Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
14510 Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
14511 will make violent revolution inevitable.
14514 Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
14515 men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
14516 without the roar of its many waters.
14517 -- Frederick Douglass
14519 Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
14520 the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
14521 Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
14522 whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
14523 fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
14524 more about the matter than the others.
14525 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14527 Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
14529 Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so.
14532 Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
14535 'Tis the dream of each programmer,
14536 Before his life is done,
14537 To write three lines of APL,
14538 And make the damn things run.
14540 To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
14549 "To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
14550 this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
14551 offer in response is based on information available to make no such
14554 To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
14555 call it the target.
14557 To envision how a 4-processor system running [SunOS] 4.1.x works, think
14558 of four kids and one bathroom.
14561 To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System.
14563 To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
14565 To err is human, to moo bovine.
14567 To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
14570 To generalize is to be an idiot.
14573 To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
14574 men, two of them absent.
14576 To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
14579 To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
14582 To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
14584 To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide
14587 To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
14588 system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
14589 inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
14590 precision and flexibility may be just as dysfunctional in novel,
14591 uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
14592 well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
14593 of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
14594 secure ecological niche.
14595 -- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
14597 To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
14598 telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
14599 computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
14600 in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
14601 lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
14603 Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
14604 suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
14605 computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
14606 one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
14607 break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
14608 incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
14609 an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
14610 pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
14611 loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
14612 and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
14613 -- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
14616 "To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?"
14618 "To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."
14621 Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
14623 Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
14625 Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
14627 Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
14629 Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
14631 "Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
14632 except in major motion pictures."
14633 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
14635 Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
14637 And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
14638 -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
14640 "Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
14641 cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
14642 spectacular adventure starring ... Tippy, the Wonder Dog."
14645 Toilet Toup'
\bee, n.:
14646 Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
14647 creating endless annoyance to male users.
14648 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
14650 Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
14652 Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
14654 Too clever is dumb.
14657 Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
14660 Too much of everything is just enough.
14663 Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
14665 -- Governor Jerry Brown
14667 Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
14669 10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
14670 9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
14671 8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
14672 7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
14673 Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
14674 assurance people in its wake.
14675 6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
14676 - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
14677 5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
14678 4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
14679 3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
14680 are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
14681 2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
14683 1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it!
14684 Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
14686 Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the
14687 earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century.
14688 As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help.
14693 Follow these simple suggestions:
14695 (1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
14696 (2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
14697 (3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like
14699 (4) Avoid showers ... take baths instead.
14700 (5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big
14702 (6) Stop flipping pancakes
14704 Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
14706 Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful, wealthy, and live
14707 in eucalyptus trees.
14709 Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant
14713 Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
14716 Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
14719 Dumb and illiterate.
14720 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
14722 Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
14725 Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.
14727 Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
14728 is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written
14729 in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and
14730 pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer),
14731 defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the
14732 absolutely perfect future.
14735 Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
14737 Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
14738 specification is that it should run noiselessly.
14740 Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
14743 Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____
\b\b\b\byell into keyboard.
14746 The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
14750 Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
14752 TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
14753 -- Frank Lloyd Wright
14755 'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
14756 Did gyre and gimble in their cave
14757 All mimsy was the CS-VAX
14758 And Cory raths outgrave.
14760 "Beware the software rot, my son!
14761 The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
14762 Beware the broken pipe, and shun
14763 The frumious system crash!"
14765 'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
14766 preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
14767 throughout our place of residence,
14768 Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
14769 possessors of this potential, including that
14770 species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
14771 Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
14772 edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
14773 Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
14774 imminent visitation from an eccentric
14775 philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
14776 is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
14778 Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
14781 Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
14784 Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man
14785 said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The
14786 second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his
14787 chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded
14788 only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the
14789 courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.
14790 If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is
14791 dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and
14792 must pay three silver pieces."
14794 Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
14796 "Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
14797 I forget the second."
14799 Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
14801 U: There's a U -- a Unicorn!
14802 Run right up and rub its horn.
14803 Look at all those points you're losing!
14804 UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
14805 -- The Roguelet's ABC
14807 "Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."
14809 (Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
14810 -- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
14812 UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
14814 "Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
14816 "It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
14818 -- MacNelley, "Shoe"
14820 Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
14821 Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
14822 hammer or get a splinter in it.
14824 Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
14825 just man is also in prison.
14826 -- Henry David Thoreau
14828 Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
14829 can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
14831 Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
14832 Superiority is recessive.
14834 Unfair animal names:
14836 -- tsetse fly -- bullhead
14837 -- booby -- duck-billed platypus
14838 -- sapsucker -- Clarence
14841 United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
14842 Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
14843 all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
14844 all the patriots of every persuasion.
14846 Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
14854 Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
14855 usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
14858 unix soit qui mal y pense
14860 UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
14861 Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
14862 -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
14865 If it happens, it must be possible.
14867 Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
14868 twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
14871 Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
14874 A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
14877 The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
14878 -- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
14880 Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
14883 Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
14884 opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
14887 Vail's Second Axiom:
14888 The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
14889 amount of work already completed.
14891 Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ...
14892 Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ...
14896 An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
14899 Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food,
14900 very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
14901 extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply
14902 "vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot
14903 and sour won ton soup.
14905 Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
14906 (1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
14908 (2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
14913 Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
14915 Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
14916 Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
14917 waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
14919 Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
14922 Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the
14925 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14926 Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
14927 ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
14928 morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
14929 wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
14930 that old underwear you own.
14932 VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
14933 You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
14934 sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and
14935 sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus
14938 "Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
14940 Virtue is its own punishment.
14943 Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
14944 from where you left them to where you can't find them.
14946 Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.
14948 VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.
14952 Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
14955 VYARZERZOMANIMORORSEZASSEZANSERAREORSES?
14957 Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
14960 Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
14961 1st customer: "I'll have tea."
14962 2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
14963 (Waiter exits, returns)
14964 Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
14966 Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
14968 War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
14969 -- Charles Edward Montague
14971 War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
14974 Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
14975 mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on
14976 your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war.
14978 Warning: Do not look directly into laser with remaining eye.
14980 Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
14981 those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking
14983 -- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
14985 Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.
14987 Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
14990 Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
14992 Wasting time is an important part of living.
14995 The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
14996 number and significance of any persons watching it.
14998 We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
14999 divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being
15000 correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
15003 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
15006 We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
15007 -- Winston Churchill
15009 We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
15010 -- Whole Earth Catalog
15012 We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
15013 -- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
15015 We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
15016 socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The
15017 bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say
15021 "We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last
15023 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
15025 "We are upping our standards ... so up yours."
15026 -- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988
15028 We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
15030 We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
15031 deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
15032 -- James E. Day, Postmaster General
15034 "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
15037 "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
15039 We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a
15042 We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
15043 hardware, but we can *___
\b\b\bsee* the blinking lights!
15045 We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
15046 -- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
15048 "We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
15049 hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
15050 mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
15051 our grave singing Hallelujah ...
15054 We have met the enemy, and he is us.
15057 We have only two things to worry about: That things will never get
15058 back to normal, and that they already have.
15060 "We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
15061 hands for masturbation."
15064 We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
15065 official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death
15066 Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish
15067 you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that
15068 said "ELECTROCUTION".
15070 Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your
15071 teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
15072 process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a
15073 couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways
15074 out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste
15075 stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom
15076 floor, which is how the police would find you.
15078 You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
15079 -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
15081 We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all
15082 purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start
15083 with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the
15084 playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is
15085 best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can
15086 buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.
15089 We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
15090 respect their good judgement.
15092 We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
15093 no matter how self-seeking.
15094 -- F. G. Withington
15096 We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago
15097 people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.
15098 For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had
15099 to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare
15100 fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with
15101 primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how
15102 ugly paneling is to begin with.
15103 -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
15105 We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
15106 friends are trying to kill us.
15108 We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
15109 technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
15111 We will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
15112 we will cry over things we used to laugh &
15113 our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentle
15114 creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
15115 in the end a summer with wild winds &
15116 new friends will be.
15118 We wish you a Hare Krishna
15119 We wish you a Hare Krishna
15120 We wish you a Hare Krishna
15121 And a Sun Myung Moon!
15125 Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
15128 Weinberg's First Law:
15129 Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
15131 Weinberg's Principle:
15132 An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
15133 sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
15135 Weinberg's Second Law:
15136 If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
15137 then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
15139 Weiner's Law of Libraries:
15140 There are no answers, only cross references.
15142 Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if
15143 you run out of food.
15146 "Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is
15147 no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five
15151 "We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later."
15153 Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
15154 lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
15155 governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the
15156 reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top
15157 contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men
15158 will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the
15159 most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and
15160 appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday
15161 morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit
15162 interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a
15163 guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through
15164 the entire show without answering a single question ...
15165 -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
15167 Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
15168 back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
15169 or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
15170 they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
15171 -- Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
15173 "Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___
\b\b\bcan*
15175 -- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
15177 Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
15178 And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
15179 I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
15180 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
15182 If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
15183 Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
15184 'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
15185 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
15187 On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
15188 But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
15189 Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
15190 I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
15191 -- Core Dumped Blues
15193 "Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
15195 "Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
15196 coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
15199 We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
15200 the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
15201 you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
15202 in his bowl full of jelly.
15203 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15205 We're only in it for the volume.
15208 Westheimer's Discovery:
15209 A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
15210 couple of hours in the library.
15213 Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
15215 We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
15216 of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
15217 but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
15220 "What are we going to do?"
15222 "Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking for
15223 something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
15224 short initiation period."
15226 "What are you doing?"
15228 "Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something
15229 that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short
15230 initiation period."
15232 What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
15234 What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
15236 What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
15238 What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
15240 What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
15242 "What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
15243 that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our
15244 country. Nice try anyway, George."
15245 -- D. J. on KSFO/KYA
15247 What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
15250 What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
15253 What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower
15254 stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed
15255 barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character
15256 from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of
15257 while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our
15258 dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up
15259 powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the
15260 bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any
15261 one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact
15262 lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where
15263 you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",
15264 if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with
15265 that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;
15266 they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to
15267 flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
15268 -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
15270 What I tell you three times is true.
15273 "What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
15274 sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
15275 with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
15276 came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
15278 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
15280 What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
15282 What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
15283 definitely overpaid for my carpet.
15284 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15286 What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's
15287 worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
15288 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15290 What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
15293 What is mind? No matter.
15294 What is matter? Never mind.
15295 -- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
15297 What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
15298 computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
15299 and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
15301 "What is the Nature of God?"
15303 CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
15307 STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.
15309 "I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
15312 "What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?"
15315 "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
15316 which is the exact opposite."
15317 -- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
15319 What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
15321 "What I've done, of course, is total garbage."
15322 -- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
15324 What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
15325 to compare it with.
15327 What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
15328 It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
15329 and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
15330 and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes,
15331 women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
15332 mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
15333 and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
15336 What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
15337 -- Ursula K. LeGuin
15339 What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
15341 What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
15343 What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
15345 What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
15347 What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
15349 What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
15351 What this country needs is a good five cent nickel.
15353 What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
15355 What this world needs is a good five-dollar plasma weapon.
15357 What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
15358 -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
15360 What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which
15361 nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday
15362 Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-
15363 launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just
15364 remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual
15365 process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still
15366 be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed.
15367 -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
15369 What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
15371 Whatever became of eternal truth?
15373 Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
15374 cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils
15375 as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding
15376 hundred dollar bills."
15379 Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
15381 -- Collis P. Huntingdon
15383 "Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not
15387 "What's another word for Thesaurus?"
15390 "What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
15393 When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
15397 When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
15398 thing," it's the money.
15401 When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
15404 When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
15405 not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
15406 travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
15407 -- Robert A. Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
15409 When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
15410 sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
15411 relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
15412 -- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
15415 When all other means of communication fail, try words.
15417 "When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
15418 tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?"
15421 When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
15422 the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
15423 -- Vine Deloria, Jr.
15425 When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I
15426 think it was a Tuesday.
15428 When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
15431 "When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
15432 parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if
15436 When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
15437 year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire
15438 winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.
15439 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15441 When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
15442 ladies, and, of course, the goat.
15444 When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
15445 I'm beginning to believe it.
15448 When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you
15449 take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come
15453 "When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
15454 firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'"
15457 When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
15458 the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
15461 When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an
15462 act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A
15463 group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a
15464 six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things
15465 together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ...
15466 Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective
15467 responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military
15468 establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have
15469 been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
15470 together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
15471 -- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
15473 When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
15474 or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
15475 cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
15476 go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
15479 When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
15481 When in doubt, tell the truth.
15484 When in doubt, use brute force.
15487 When in panic, fear and doubt,
15488 Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
15490 When love is gone, there's always justice.
15491 And when justice is gone, there's always force.
15492 And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
15496 When Marriage is Outlawed,
15497 Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
15499 When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
15503 When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony
15504 concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years --
15505 and I find I mind it less and less."
15506 -- Louise Andrews Kent
15508 When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
15509 for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
15510 your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
15513 When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
15514 say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
15516 When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
15519 When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
15520 modify the problem, not the remedy.
15522 When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
15523 the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
15524 nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____
\b\b\b\bthat.
15525 -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
15527 When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is
15531 When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
15532 stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
15533 from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
15534 were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
15535 corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
15536 -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
15538 When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
15542 When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
15543 insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
15544 required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
15545 exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
15546 -- George Bernard Shaw
15548 When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
15552 When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
15553 except our fingertips will have been singed.
15554 -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
15556 When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
15557 investigation of a topic, it is well to have the answer firmly in hand,
15558 so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
15559 swayed, directly to the goal.
15562 "When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
15564 When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
15566 When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
15569 "When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
15570 -- Winston Churchill, on formal declarations of war
15572 When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
15573 asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
15574 know the answer either.
15575 -- Edgar R. Fiedler
15577 When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
15578 -- The Wall Street Journal
15580 When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the
15581 impression you will make.
15583 When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
15584 Wretched, bored, dejected; only
15585 Here's the rub, my darling dear
15586 I feel the same when you are near.
15587 -- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"
15589 When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
15591 Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
15594 Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
15595 see it tried on him personally.
15598 Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
15601 Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
15602 you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
15603 Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
15605 "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
15607 Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
15611 WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
15613 Oh, dear, where can the matter be
15614 When it's converted to energy?
15615 There is a slight loss of parity.
15616 Johnny's so long at the fair.
15618 Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
15619 is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
15620 -- John Kenneth Galbraith
15622 Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
15624 Whether you can hear it or not
15625 The Universe is laughing behind your back
15626 -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
15628 Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
15630 While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
15631 admission to someone else.
15633 While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
15634 The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
15635 While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
15636 And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
15637 Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
15638 The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
15639 -- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
15642 While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
15644 While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
15645 keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
15646 -- Edward Stevenson
15648 While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
15651 While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining
15654 While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
15655 correctness never does.
15657 While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very
15658 reassuring to know that it's still there.
15660 While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
15661 safe, for you can watch both of his.
15662 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15665 You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
15668 "Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
15669 Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ..."
15671 Who made the world I cannot tell;
15672 'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
15673 My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
15674 I never soiled with such a deed.
15677 Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?
15679 Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
15681 "Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
15684 Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
15686 Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
15690 "Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
15691 have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."
15694 "Why be a man when you can be a success?"
15697 Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we
15700 Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
15702 Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
15703 avoid responsibility with?
15705 Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
15708 Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
15710 Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
15711 there must be a beverage.
15712 -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
15714 Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps and California have
15717 New Jersey had first choice.
15719 Why don't elephants eat penguins ?
15721 Because they can't get the wrappers off ...
15723 Why I Can't Go Out With You:
15725 I'd LOVE to, but ...
15726 -- I have to floss my cat.
15727 -- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
15728 -- I need to spend more time with my blender.
15729 -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
15730 -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
15731 -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
15732 -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
15733 -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
15734 -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
15735 -- I have some really hard words to look up.
15736 -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
15737 -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
15739 "Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
15740 because we are not the person involved"
15743 Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
15746 "Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
15749 "Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
15750 you knowing nothing?"
15751 -- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
15753 Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
15754 Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
15755 children open their old-fashioned presents.
15757 Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
15759 You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
15760 falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
15762 Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
15763 with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
15764 and I get this cretin TOP?"
15766 Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
15768 You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
15770 Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
15771 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
15773 "Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
15776 Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
15777 No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
15778 when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
15779 direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
15783 Government expands to absorb all available revenue and then some.
15785 Williams and Holland's Law:
15786 If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
15787 statistical methods.
15789 Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
15790 it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
15793 The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
15794 ... by leaving it out.
15795 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15797 With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
15798 try to be a fraud and a half.
15799 -- Otto von Bismarck
15801 With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
15802 -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
15804 With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
15805 build a nuclear balm?
15807 With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
15808 miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
15809 still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
15810 such thing as progress.
15813 Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
15815 Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
15816 (1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
15817 (2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
15818 (3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
15819 (4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
15820 VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
15821 (5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
15824 Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
15825 you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
15826 down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
15827 tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
15828 long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
15829 there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
15832 Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
15833 when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
15834 Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
15835 cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
15836 heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
15837 beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
15838 and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
15839 although their insurance rates went way up.
15840 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
15842 Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
15843 We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage
15844 any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you
15845 should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are,
15846 and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
15849 Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs.
15851 World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
15854 Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
15855 August. The lift lines are the shortest, though.
15856 -- Steve Rubenstein
15858 Worst Month of the Year:
15859 February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
15860 you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't
15861 get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
15862 -- Steve Rubenstein
15864 Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
15865 From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
15866 in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs
15867 damage my videotapes?"
15869 Worst Vegetable of the Year:
15870 The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next
15872 -- Steve Rubenstein
15874 "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
15876 "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
15879 Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
15880 and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer
15881 if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
15882 and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
15883 and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
15885 Write-Protect Tab, n.:
15886 A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
15887 left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error
15888 message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the
15889 momentary inconvenience.
15892 Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
15895 "Wrong," said Renner.
15897 "The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
15898 the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
15900 Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
15902 Xerox never comes up with anything original.
15905 The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made
15906 by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.
15907 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15909 X-rated movies are all alike ... the only thing they leave to the
15910 imagination is the plot.
15912 "Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
15913 goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
15914 their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating
15915 unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
15916 doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
15917 -- Stephen C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
15919 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
15920 fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic
15921 operators together.
15924 Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
15927 A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
15928 -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
15930 Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
15932 Yes, but which self do you want to be?
15934 Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still
15935 be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
15938 Yesterday upon the stair
15939 I met a man who wasn't there.
15940 He wasn't there again today --
15941 I think he's from the CIA.
15943 Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
15944 -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
15947 A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
15949 -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
15951 You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
15962 But you're not all there.
15964 "You are old, Father William," the young man said,
15965 "All your papers these days look the same;
15966 Those William's would be better unread --
15967 Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
15969 "In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
15970 "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
15971 But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
15972 Made it pointless to think any more."
15974 "You are old, father William," the young man said,
15975 "And your hair has become very white;
15976 And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
15977 Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
15979 "In my youth," father William replied to his son,
15980 "I feared it might injure the brain;
15981 But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
15982 Why, I do it again and again."
15985 "You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
15986 That your lectures bore people to death.
15987 Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
15988 Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
15990 "I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
15991 Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
15992 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
15993 Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
15995 "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
15996 For anything tougher than suet;
15997 Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
15998 Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
16000 "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
16001 And argued each case with my wife;
16002 And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
16003 Has lasted the rest of my life."
16006 "You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
16007 And there isn't one language you like;
16008 Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
16009 Have you thought about taking a hike?"
16011 "Since I never write programs," his father replied,
16012 "Every language looks equally bad;
16013 Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
16014 And don't realize that they've been had."
16016 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
16017 And have grown most uncommonly fat;
16018 Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
16019 Pray what is the reason of that?"
16021 "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
16022 "I kept all my limbs very supple
16023 By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
16024 Allow me to sell you a couple?"
16027 "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
16028 And make errors few people could bear;
16029 You complain about everyone's English but yours --
16030 Do you really think this is quite fair?"
16032 "I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
16033 "But my stature these days is so great
16034 That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
16035 And to stop me it's now far too late."
16037 "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
16038 That your eye was as steady as ever;
16039 Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
16040 What made you so awfully clever?"
16042 "I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
16043 Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
16044 Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
16045 Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
16048 You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
16050 You are the only person to ever get this message.
16052 You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
16053 this sort of trash.
16055 You buttered your bread, now lie in it!
16057 You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
16058 incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
16059 Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
16060 to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because
16061 nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
16062 they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
16063 some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
16065 The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
16066 pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear
16068 -- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
16070 "You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
16071 doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on."
16072 -- Hepler, Systems Design 182
16074 You can create your own opportunities this week.
16075 Blackmail a senior executive.
16077 "You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
16078 Why do you find that funny?"
16079 -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350
16081 You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
16082 can with just a kind word.
16085 You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have,
16087 -- Franklin P. Jones
16089 You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
16091 You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
16092 the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
16095 You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
16097 You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
16098 decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
16099 over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
16102 You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
16106 You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
16108 "You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename."
16109 -- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
16111 You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
16113 You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
16115 You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
16117 You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
16119 "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"
16122 You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
16123 -- Booker T. Washington
16125 You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
16127 "You can't make a program without broken egos."
16129 You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
16130 enough worrying about what's happening now.
16133 "You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten."
16134 -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
16137 "You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't."
16138 -- Dagwood Bumstead
16140 You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
16141 and last month in advance.
16143 You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
16145 -- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
16147 You do not have mail.
16149 You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
16152 You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting
16154 -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
16156 You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
16157 The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
16158 which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
16159 tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
16160 names. Here's the complete text:
16162 "(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
16163 "(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
16164 "(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
16165 send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
16166 THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
16167 household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
16168 you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
16169 NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
16171 The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
16172 money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
16174 -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
16176 You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
16178 You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
16180 This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
16182 You are permanently confused.
16185 You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
16186 metal objects which are not fastened down.
16188 You have junk mail.
16190 You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
16193 You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot
16196 You know if they ever find a way to harness sarcasm as an energy source,
16197 you people are all going to owe me big.
16200 You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
16201 you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
16203 You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
16204 anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
16205 you can always change the channel.
16208 You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
16209 -- S. Rickly Christian
16211 You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
16212 -- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
16214 You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
16215 friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
16217 You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
16219 You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
16221 You may be recognized soon. Hide.
16223 You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
16224 is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
16227 You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with
16231 You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
16234 You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
16235 success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
16236 or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
16237 party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
16238 -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
16240 You might have mail.
16242 You might like to know that I looked at a detailed map of NT, and I'm
16243 now able to confirm that in all probability Microsoft NT does not
16244 exist. If it does, it's so small as to be completely insignificant.
16247 "You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
16248 proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do."
16250 You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll
16253 You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
16254 reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
16255 the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
16257 -- Charles A. Beard
16259 You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
16262 You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were
16263 you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
16264 yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
16266 -- J. Wellington Wells
16268 You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
16270 You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
16271 know how seldom they do.
16274 You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
16277 You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
16279 -- Ernest Rutherford
16281 You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
16282 freedom and liberty.
16285 You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
16286 contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
16287 houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
16288 scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
16289 summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
16290 you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
16291 sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
16292 -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
16294 You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name,
16295 another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and
16296 another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
16297 such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
16298 many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
16299 If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
16300 should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
16301 for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
16302 because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
16303 chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
16305 In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his
16307 -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
16309 "You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
16310 plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture."
16311 -- Business Professor, University of Georgia
16313 You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
16315 You too can wear a nose mitten.
16317 You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
16319 You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
16320 a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
16322 You will be surprised by a loud noise.
16324 You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
16326 You will feel hungry again in another hour.
16328 You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door
16329 mayonnaise salesman.
16331 You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
16333 You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to
16336 You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
16337 taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
16341 "You'll never be the man your mother was!"
16343 Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
16344 thing he tells you.
16346 Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
16349 Your fault: core dumped
16351 Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
16353 Your lucky color has faded.
16355 Your lucky number has been disconnected.
16357 Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
16359 Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
16361 You're at the end of the road again.
16363 You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
16365 You're never too old to become younger.
16368 You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
16371 You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
16373 You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
16375 "You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."
16378 "You've got to think about tomorrow!"
16380 "TOMORROW! I haven't even prepared for *_________
\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\byesterday* yet!"
16382 "Yow! Am I having fun yet?"
16383 -- Zippy the Pinhead
16385 YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!
16388 The result of shutting down a production line.
16390 Zounds! I was never so bethump'd with words
16391 since I first call'd my brother's father dad.
16392 -- William Shakespeare, "King John"
16394 Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
16395 People are always available for work in the past tense.