!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
%
(1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
(2) Great generals are forewarned.
(3) Forewarned is forearmed.
(4) Four is an even number.
(5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
(6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms.
%
(1) Everything depends.
(2) Nothing is always.
(3) Everything is sometimes.
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1.80 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
the law!
%
10.0 times 0.1 is hardly ever 1.0.
%
100 buckets of bits on the bus
100 buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits on the bus
FF buckets of bits
Take one down, short it to ground
FE buckets of bits on the bus
ad infinitum...
%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at
which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR
(1) Scarecrow for centipedes
(2) Dead cat brush
(3) Hair barrettes
(4) Cleats
(5) Self-piercing earrings
(6) Fungus trellis
(7) False eyelashes
(8) Prosthetic dog claws
.
.
.
(99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors)
(100) Killer velcro
(101) Currency
%
186,282 miles per second:
It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
%
2180, U.S. History question:
What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what
office did he later hold?
%
$3,000,000
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355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
simulation!
%
3 syncs represent the trinity -- init, the child and the eternal zombie
process. In doing 3, you're paying homage to each and I think such
traditions are important in this shallow, mercurial business we find
ourselves in.
-- Jordan K. Hubbard
%
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%
77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working
---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop the
---X--- (9) GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates to
--- --- (8) nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex.
Nine in the second place means:
The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
Six in the third place means:
In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue
Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
%
7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National
Redwood Forest.
%
7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure)
The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the
Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus.
%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!
100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk! ...
%
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a
"Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-- Mahatma Gandhi
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A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific
game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have
traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there,
preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
-- Donald A. Metz
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A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and
placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or
rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results
from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball
and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the
ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical phenomena.
-- Donald A. Metz
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A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no
responsibility at the other.
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A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg
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A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out
of a divorce.
-- Don Quinn
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A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
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A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it
adds up to be real money.
-- Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen
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A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him.
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A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
%
A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
%
... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you
have turned into a pile of dust.
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A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have
enlightened him with ours.
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A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well
as afterward.
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A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the
poor to protect them from each other.
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A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
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A child can go only so far in life without potty training. It is not
mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty
trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
-- Dave Barry
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A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
Avoid him. He's a Commie.
%
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but
won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
-- Bill Vaughan
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A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
-- Herbert Prochnow
%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
-- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
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A closed mouth gathers no foot.
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A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
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A CONS is an object which cares.
-- Bernie Greenberg
%
A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it
is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it.
%
A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
-- Dyer
%
A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the
damned things is ample.
-- Rebecca West
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A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
-- Ben Franklin
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A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen
lantern.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
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A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
%
A day without sunshine is like night.
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A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur
coat.
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A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that
you will look forward to the trip.
%
A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was
eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality
test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy."
Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into
the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too".
%
A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano ...
%
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing
about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their
arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon
the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because
Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply
incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the
Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of
that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an
architect."
The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said,
"Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
-- Ogden Nash
%
A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a
Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser.
Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network
with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the
Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly
pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while
simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick
Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened.
%
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the
subject.
-- Winston Churchill
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A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- G. B. Shaw
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A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block
of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an
elephant.
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A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used.
-- D. Gries
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A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension.
-- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature"
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A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson
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A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than
he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men
favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter
facts of life in bandages of self-illusion.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
ducks.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
A girl and a boy bump into each other -- surely an accident.
A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops -- surely another accident.
But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid -- *____that ___had __to ____mean _________something*.
-- S. Morgenstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
of).
%
A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened
into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the
hope of greening the landscape of idea.
-- John Ciardi
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
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A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest
man a century.
%
A hypothetical paradox:
What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security
team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of
Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet?
-- Tom Galloway
%
A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears.
C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh.
E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech.
G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug.
I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of ennui.
O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
W is for Winnie, embedded in ice, X is for Xerxes, devoured by mice.
Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
-- Edward Gorey "The Gashlycrumb Tinies"
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A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
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A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost
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A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
%
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
-- Gopete Sherany
%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
-- Alan Perlis
%
A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program
in than some that do.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
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A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work
by being declared to work.
-- Anatol Holt
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A Law of Computer Programming:
Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
will find the programmers cannot write in English.
%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
-- Alan Perlis
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A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
-- H. H. Munroe, "Saki"
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A long memory is the most subversive idea in America.
%
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any
price.
%
A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in
his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and
exceptional ability in that particular field."
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A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
-- Steve Wright
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A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I
believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%
A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The
first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
"No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
"But the collar is up around my ears!"
"It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a
little more ... that's it."
"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation.
"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you
go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly."
So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a
sense of obligation."
-- Stephen Crane
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A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.
%
A master was explaining the nature of Tao to one of his
novices. "The Tao is embodied in all software -- regardless of how
insignificant," said the master.
"Is Tao in a hand-held calculator?" asked the novice.
"It is," came the reply.
"Is the Tao in a video game?" continued the novice.
"It is even in a video game," said the master.
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
The master coughed and shifted his position slightly. "The
lesson is over for today," he said.
-- "The Tao of Programming"
%
A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems.
%
A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed
on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new
game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the
pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly
along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their
heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn
around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite
direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the
paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin
colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins
fall over gently onto their backs.
-- Audubon Society Magazine
[From the BBC, 2001-02-02:
For five weeks, a team from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS)
monitored 1,000 king penguins on the island of South Georgia as Lynx
helicopters passed overhead.
"Not one king penguin fell over when the helicopters came over,"
said team leader Dr. Richard Stone.
"As the aircraft approached, the birds went quiet and stopped
calling to each other, and adolescent birds that were not associated
with nests began walking away from the noise. Pure animal instinct,
really."
The conclusion, said Dr. Stone, is that flights over 305 metres
(1,000 feet) caused "only minor and transitory ecological effects" on
king penguins.]
%
A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the
pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite
nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..."
"If what?" asked the composer.
"If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?"
%
A neighbor came to Nasrudin, asking to borrow his donkey. "It is out
on loan," the teacher replied. At that moment, the donkey brayed
loudly inside the stable. "But I can hear it bray, over there." "Whom
do you believe," asked Nasrudin, "me or a donkey?"
%
A new koan:
If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you.
If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you.
It is an ice cream koan.
%
A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary.
Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a round tuit now
has no excuse for further procrastination.
%
A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies
insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the
right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
%
A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the
rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
%
A novel approach is to remove all power from the system, which
removes most system overhead so that resources can be fully devoted to
doing nothing. Benchmarks on this technique are promising; tremendous
amounts of nothing can be produced in this manner. Certain hardware
limitations can limit the speed of this method, especially in the
larger systems which require a more involved & less efficient
power-down sequence.
An alternate approach is to pull the main breaker for the
building, which seems to provide even more nothing, but in truth has
bugs in it, since it usually inhibits the systems which keep the beer
cool.
%
A novice was trying to fix a broken Lisp machine by turning the power
off and on. Knight, seeing what the student was doing spoke sternly:
"You can not fix a machine by just power-cycling it with no
understanding of what is going wrong." Knight turned the machine off
and on. The machine worked.
%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%
A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry.
%
A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
-- George Wald
%
A pig is a jolly companion,
Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt --
A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale,
Though mountains may topple and tilt.
When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,
When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig,
Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover,
You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
You'll never go wrong with a pig!
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
by Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
%
A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!
-- The Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Sumatra"
%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And the Master answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
too.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came
upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope.
"That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow
man".
As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well,
he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing."
%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%
A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis
of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite
series of incomprehensible answers calculated with micrometric
precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from
inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical
accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality
for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly
defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the
information in the first place.
-- IEEE Grid news magazine
%
A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that
your wife will give you for free.
%
A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be
too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which
was intended for her preservation.
-- Colton
%
A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as
"you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if
the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants
to make a travesty of the game.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked
out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon.
-- Steel City News
%
A radioactive cat has eighteen half-lives.
%
A reading from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:
Then did he raise on high the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying,
"Bless this, O Lord, that with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny
bits, in thy mercy." And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the
lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and
breakfast cereals ... Now did the Lord say, "First thou pullest the
Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall be the number of
the counting and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt
thou not count, neither shalt thou count two, excepting that thou then
proceedeth to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being
the number of the counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand
Grenade in the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight,
shall snuff it."
-- Monty Python, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"
%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices
that the system works.
%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and
the real reason.
%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen
objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer
scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added
concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three
dimensional objects ...
%
A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may
not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized
rosewater.
%
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man
contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%
A sense of humor keen enough to show a man his own absurdities will
keep him from the commission of all sins, or nearly all, save those
that are worth committing.
-- Samuel Butler
%
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one
considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really
starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the
knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard.
-- Prof. Steiner
%
... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
-- Mark Twain
%
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
-- O'Henry
%
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures.
-- Daniel Webster
%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an
exam.
%
A student, in hopes of understanding the Lambda-nature, came to
Greenblatt. As they spoke a Multics system hacker walked by. "Is it
true," asked the student, "that PL-1 has many of the same data types as
Lisp?" Almost before the student had finished his question, Greenblatt
shouted, "FOO!", and hit the student with a stick.
%
A successful [software] tool is one that was used to do something
undreamed of by its author.
-- S. C. Johnson
%
A system admin's life is a sorry one. The only advantage he has over
Emergency Room doctors is that malpractice suits are rare. On the
other hand, ER doctors never have to deal with patients installing
new versions of their own innards!
-- Michael O'Brien
%
A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention,
and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by
blowing first.
%
A triangle which has an angle of 135 degrees is called an obscene
triangle.
%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest
in students.
-- John Ciardi
%
A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
-- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams
%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without
getting nervous.
%
A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets
people's attention.
%
A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire
%
A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to
admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact
remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one
reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It
is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of
using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these
matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times.
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
%
A.A.A.A.A.:
An organization for drunks who drive
%
AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%
Absence makes the heart go wander.
%
Absent, adj.:
Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed;
slandered.
%
Absentee, n.:
A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove
himself from the sphere of exaction.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Abstainer, n.:
A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a
pleasure.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Absurdity, n.:
A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own
opinion.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
because the stakes are so low.
-- Wallace Sayre
%
Accident, n.:
A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of
body is better.
-- Foolish Dictionary
%
Accidents cause History.
If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the
Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not
have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil
could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and
the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person
shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than
fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening
of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of
the returns."
%
According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least
once a year.
%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
-- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
totally worthless.
%
According to the obituary notices, a mean and unimportant person never
dies.
%
According to the Rand McNally Places-Rated Almanac, the best place to
live in America is the city of Pittsburgh. The city of New York came
in twenty-fifth. Here in New York we really don't care too much.
Because we know that we could beat up their city anytime.
-- David Letterman
%
Accordion, n.:
A bagpipe with pleats.
%
Accuracy, n.:
The vice of being right.
%
ACHTUNG!!!
Das machine is nicht fur gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist easy
schnappen der springenwerk, blowenfusen und corkenpoppen mit
spitzensparken. Ist nicht fur gewerken by das dummkopfen. Das
rubbernecken sightseeren keepen hands in das pockets. Relaxen und
vatch das blinkenlights!!!
%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%
Acid absorbs 47 times its weight in excess Reality.
%
Acquaintance, n.:
A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well
enough to lend to.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing.
%
Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had
everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of
it!"
%
Actor: So what do you do for a living?
Doris: I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
dishes for Chinese restaurants.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Actors will happen even in the best-regulated families.
%
ADA, n.:
Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in
Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA
awareness."
-- "Datamation", January 15, 1984
%
Admiration, n.:
Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adolescence, n.:
The stage between puberty and adultery.
%
Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look
like you ...
-- Gilda Radner
%
Adore, v.:
To venerate expectantly.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Adult, n.:
One old enough to know better.
%
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest
way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
-- Sinclair Lewis
%
Advice to young men: Be ascetic, and if you can't be ascetic,
then at least be aseptic.
%
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose
names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary
Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted
many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi
Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two
different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current
developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer
attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led
to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today,
skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously
injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it
hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact
that it sinks like a stone.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out.
It was replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life
more advanced than the lichen family.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
%
... After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known
quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
%
After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not
for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have
simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found
on the bench.
%
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
It was so granted.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
After I asked him what he meant, he replied that freedom consisted of
the unimpeded right to get rich, to use his ability, no matter what the
cost to others, to win advancement.
-- Norman Thomas
%
After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK?
%
After living in New York, you trust nobody, but you believe
everything. Just in case.
%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access
cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been
removed.
%
Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a
change.
%
Afternoon, n.:
That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the
morning.
%
Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Age, n.:
That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise
to commit.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Ah say, son, you're about as sharp as a bowlin' ball.
%
Ah, but the choice of dreams to live,
there's the rub.
For all dreams are not equal,
some exit to nightmare
most end with the dreamer
But at least one must be lived ... and died.
%
Ah, you know the type. They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact
that life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately
unfathomable crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep
up is they're a bunch of misfits and losers.
-- A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic
%
Air is water with holes in it.
%
Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
-- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed
%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire
telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New
York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this?
And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they
receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
%
Alden's Laws:
(1) Giving away baby clothes and furniture is the major cause
of pregnancy.
(2) Always be backlit.
(3) Sit down whenever possible.
%
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall,
Aleph-null bottles of beer,
You take one down, and pass it around,
Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall.
%
Alex Haley was adopted!
%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting
for a dial tone.
%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of
them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce
%
All [zoos] actually offer to the public in return for the taxes spent
upon them is a form of idle and witless amusement, compared to which a
visit to a penitentiary, or even to a State legislature in session, is
informing, stimulating and ennobling.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
than others.
-- Alan Truscott
%
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
%
All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
without thinking.
%
"All flesh is grass"
-- Isaiah
Smoke a friend today.
%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%
All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
%
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are
Socrates.
-- Woody Allen
%
All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane.
%
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more
specific.
-- Jane Wagner
%
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
-- The Book of Bokonon / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
%
All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
the United States.
-- Vic Gold
%
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
%
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
%
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of
every organism to live beyond its income.
-- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right
hands.
-- Saint Patrick
%
All syllogisms have three parts; therefore this is not a syllogism.
%
All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can,
too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you
subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you
can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax
decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What
if it rains?"
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
... all the modern inconveniences ...
-- Mark Twain
%
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
ridiculous ones.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
the government in less than a second.
-- Jim Fiebig
%
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
-- Sean O'Casey
%
All the world's a VAX,
And all the coders merely butchers;
They have their exits and their entrails;
And one int in his time plays many widths,
His sizeof being _N bytes. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms.
And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun,
And shining morning face, creeping like slug
Unwillingly to school.
-- A Very Annoyed PDP-11
%
All theoretical chemistry is really physics;
and all theoretical chemists know it.
-- Richard P. Feynman
%
All things are possible, except skiing thru a revolving door.
%
All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for
fun. Money's just the way we keep score.
-- Henry Tyroon
%
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
%
All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers ... Each one owes
infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in
which he was born.
-- Francois Fenelon
%
Alliance, n.:
In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Alone, adj.:
In bad company.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight
Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-- Dave Barry
%
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
%
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios,
mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have
any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place
to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer,
Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a
serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the
same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely
that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A
penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job
running the post office.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the
day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable
interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on
pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin,
and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous
material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the
management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion
the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical
Gamekeeping."
-- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid
back.
%
Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else.
%
Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing
that way.
%
Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end
across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%
Ambidextrous, adj.:
Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy
%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism
to decadence without touching civilization.
-- John O'Hara
%
America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him,
until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and
changed its name to "America".
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
American business long ago gave up on demanding that prospective
employees be honest and hardworking. It has even stopped hoping for
employees who are educated enough that they can tell the difference
between the men's room and the women's room without having little
pictures on the doors.
-- Dave Barry, "Urine Trouble, Mister"
%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because
people refuse to see it.
-- James Michener, "Space"
%
An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but
is always polite to traffic cops.
%
An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to
New Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but
not new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
-- David Letterman
%
An apple every eight hours will keep three doctors away.
%
An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean. He
knows he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with
great restraint.
As he designs the first work, frill after frill and
embellishment after embellishment occur to him. These get stored away
to be used "next time". Sooner or later the first system is finished,
and the architect, with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of
that class of systems, is ready to build a second system.
This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
are particular and not generalizable.
The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
one. The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile".
-- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
%
An artist should be fit for the best society and keep out of it.
%
An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree
murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's
mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border.
Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the
suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a
murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
%
An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you
really care to know.
%
An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible.
%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%
An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded
summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your
arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey
responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert
%
An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch. He
wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is
advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and
Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in
incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote
excellence:
The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and
discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able
to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting
things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch
parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a
timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who
doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful.
Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high
school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as
successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and
they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
%
... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
picturesque liar.
-- Mark Twain
%
An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these
eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as
possible.
-- Russell Hoban, "Pilgermann"
%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%
An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity
in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him.
"Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if
you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like
an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an
hour seems like a minute."
The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of purge.
%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
%
And as we stand on the edge of darkness
Let our chant fill the void
That others may know
In the land of the night
The ship of the sun
Is drawn by
The grateful dead.
-- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
%
... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
%
And I heard Jeff exclaim,
As they strolled out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all --
You take credit cards, right?"
-- "Outsiders" comic
%
... And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man
-- A. E. Housman
%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%
... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of
your own.
-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter
Preposterous Words
%
And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own. One
approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode. So this
procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
Orson Welles.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%
...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
courtesy detail.
%
And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a
horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory,
ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
world.
-- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
"Diet."
%
And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
a sense of humor, as does history. Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
tragedy, and this too is historic. And yet, still, when corn meets
tragedy face to face, we have politics.
-- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and
Ground Cover"
%
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _____needs heroes.
-- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%
Anoint, v.:
To grease a king or other great functionary already
sufficiently slippery.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Another Glitch in the Call
------- ------ -- --- ----
(Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)
We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?
Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
Chorus:
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
offers whiter teeth *___and* fresher breath.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
(1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
(2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
(3) I don't know.
(4) Who cares?
(5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
(6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
Papyrus Books).
%
Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
corner of the workshop.
Corollary:
On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
your toes.
%
Antonym, n.:
The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
-- Charles McCabe
%
Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
-- Richard Schickel
%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
-- Aesop
%
Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that
this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a
whole week.
%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
sell it.
%
Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche
-- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea. For instance,
my grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off
the fence." I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was
undoubtedly true.
-- Solomon Short
%
Any philosophy that can be put "in a nutshell" belongs there.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger
object.
%
Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
exactly the point of most pressure.
-- Milt Barber
%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
-- Rich Kulawiec
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
-- Andy Finkel, Commodore-Amiga Inc.
%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked.
%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
supposed to be doing at the moment.
-- Robert Benchley
%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
-- Publius Syrus
%
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs. The trick is to make one with
none.
%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
-- W. C. Fields
%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
tried taking candy from a baby.
-- Robin Hood
%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the
price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
%
Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution.
%
Aphorism, n.:
A concise, clever statement.
Afterism, n.:
A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
-- James Alexander Thom
%
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of
the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of
coding bums.
%
APL is a write-only language. I can write programs in APL, but I
can't read any of them.
-- Roy Keir
%
Aquadextrous, adj.:
Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off
with your toes.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to
be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same
mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid.
%
Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
general can be said."
%
ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
%
Are you a turtle?
%
Arguments with furniture are rarely productive.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You
are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are
not very nice.
%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
%
Armadillo:
To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
(1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
(2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
(3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
%
Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
measure progress. Some cathedrals took a century to complete. Can you
imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Art is anything you can get away with.
-- Marshall McLuhan
%
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
-- Paul Gauguin
%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
(1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
remind them of someone else.
(2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
yourself in person.
%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%
As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
interested in the basic nature of humor. "What kind of a sick
perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
"that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?"
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual
certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I
became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can
meet girls.
-- Matt Cartmill
%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
-- Albert Einstein
%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
-- Weisert
%
As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
Feeling worse and worser,
There I met a C.R.T.
And it drop't me a cursor.
C.R.T., C.R.T.,
Phosphors light on you!
If I had fifty hours a day
I'd spend them all at you.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%
As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
industries are secure. We hear about constitutional rights, free
speech and the free press. Every time I hear these words I say to
myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist". You never hear a
real American talk like that.
-- Frank Hague (1896-1956)
%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
popular.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%
As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500
programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging.
-- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
computer system.
%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had
to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
-- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
-- Woody Allen
%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such thing as a free
variable."
%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
-- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%
As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
interfere with flight. [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
Wright Brothers. They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
Wilbur. "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
organs!" You should have seen their original design.] As a result,
birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually. You almost never
see an aroused bird. So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
with their feet. When they find a conversation in which people are
talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull
your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you.
The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along
with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall
from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all
over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of
a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the
spider is suing you for damages.
%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%
ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
%
Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.
%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the
bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%
Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
for an answer.
%
Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it,
she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'
-- David Letterman
%
Ass, n.:
The masculine of "lass".
%
Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve.
Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be
strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum.
Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check
and dying broke.
-- Stanley Walker
%
At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
%
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where
it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
-- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
-- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
%
... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
-- J. B. White
%
At least they're ___________EXPERIENCED incompetents
%
At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
thumb with a hammer.
-- Marshall Lumsden
%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
%
Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
or street lamp.
%
Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
depths they were once able to plumb.
-- Stanley Kaufman
%
Automobile, n.:
A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians.
%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%
Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but
we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you.
-- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a student entering
school in the fall after the Kent State shootings
%
Bacchus, n.:
A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
getting drunk.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bagbiter:
1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually
intermittently. 2. adj.: Failing hardware or software. "This
bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar." Usage: verges on
obscenity. Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the
bag". Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS,
CHOMPER, CHOMPING.
%
Bagdikian's Observation:
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a
ukulele.
%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
by governors.
%
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
%
Banectomy, n.:
The removal of bruises on a banana.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
%
Barach's Rule:
An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician.
%
Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
floor -- especially in the dark.
%
Barometer, n.:
An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
are having.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Barth's Distinction:
There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
types, and those who don't.
%
Baruch's Observation:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%
Baseball is a skilled game. It's America's game -- it, and high
taxes.
-- Will Rogers
%
Basic is a high level languish.
APL is a high level anguish.
%
BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'.
%
BASIC, n.:
A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in
that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
%
Bathquake, n.:
The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water
faucet is turned on to a certain point.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your
door.
%
BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...)
%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
%
Be careful of reading health books. You might die of a misprint.
-- Mark Twain
%
Be different: conform.
%
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
%
Be security conscious -- National Defense is at stake.
%
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Bees are very busy souls
They have no time for birth controls
And that is why in times like these
There are so many Sons of Bees.
%
Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
followers.
One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
"Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile? What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU". (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
-- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%
Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's ego.
%
Begathon, n.:
A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
you won't have to watch commercials.
%
Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
away.
%
Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is
already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better
looking and richer male friend.
%
"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
%
Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
%
Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
(1) Houses are for people to live in.
(2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
(3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
%
Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence.
-- Time Bandits
%
Besides the device, the box should contain:
* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"
* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.
YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
cable.
IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's
why."
WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%
Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.
%
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole >town
cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus <north pole > town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
%
Better dead than mellow.
%
Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
great effort pushing boulders into a single word.
It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
both Parliament and Party.
It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other
planets, this may be the first message received from us.
-- The Realist, November, 1964
%
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it.
-- Donald Knuth
%
Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
-- Leonard Brandwein
%
Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
drip under pressure.
%
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%
Binary, adj.:
Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
%
Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
thing as division.
%
Bipolar, adj.:
Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
New York
%
Birth, n.:
The first and direst of all disasters.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
%
Bizoos, n.:
The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
basketball.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...
%
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
-- Herbert Hoover
%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles,
for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
%
BLISS is ignorance.
%
Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
%
Blore's Razor:
Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
funnier.
%
Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has
it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was
arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept
throwing up on them.
%
Boling's postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%
BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
%
Boob's Law:
You always find something in the last place you look.
%
Bore, n.:
A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
-- Walter Winchell
%
Bore, n.:
A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Boren's Laws:
(1) When in charge, ponder.
(2) When in trouble, delegate.
(3) When in doubt, mumble.
%
Boss, n.:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss,
in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an
ornamental stud."
%
Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System. You couldn't pry
that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crowbar.
-- O. W. Holmes
%
Boston, n.:
Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
%
Boy, life takes a long time to live.
-- Steven Wright
%
Boy, n.:
A noise with dirt on it.
%
Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
-- James Thurber
%
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
Brace yourselves. We're about to try something that borders on the
unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
(gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides. I tend
to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
-- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking Style"
%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
committee -- that will do them in.
%
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have
handled this?"
%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%
Brain, n.:
The apparatus with which we think that we think.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
error in an opponent.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Bride, n.:
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%
British Israelites:
The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of
Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by
Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further
believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the
Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in
the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your
head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Broad-mindedness, n.:
The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%
Brontosaurus Principle:
Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
in relation to their environment and to their own physiology: when
this occurs, they are an endangered species.
-- Thomas K. Connellan
%
Brook's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%
Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it
beyond recognition.
%
Bubble Memory, n.:
A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
intelligence. See also "vacuum tube".
%
Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%
Bug, n.:
An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he
wrote the program.
Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
-- Ray Simard
%
Bugs, pl. n.:
Small living things that small living boys throw on small
living girls.
%
BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the
outfit."
GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?"
BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive."
-- Jay Ward
%
Bumper sticker:
All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
manufacture.
%
Bureaucrat, n.:
A person who cuts red tape sideways.
-- J. McCabe
%
Bureaucrat, n.:
A politician who has tenure.
%
Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise.
%
Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
(1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
sawhorse.
(2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
(3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
perfectly balanced.
(4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
-- Robert Burns
%
But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death. If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations paws.
%
But I don't like Spam!!!!
%
But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand. Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell. If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions. Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
-- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
-- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
Compilers"
%
But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
to the nearest gas station.
%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
-- Hilaire Belloc
%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
-- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in
1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
increases.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a
kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I
explained yet about the bytes?
%
... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
-- Virginia Masters
%
But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
computers?
%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%
By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
completely overwhelm you.
%
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact,
it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
invent.
-- R. Emerson
-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
(whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
[to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
%
By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began
to suspect 'Hungry' ...
-- Gary Larson, "The Far Side"
%
By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I
mean.
-- Mark Twain
%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
C, n.:
A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more
like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or
anything else. It is either the best language available to the art
today, or it isn't.
-- Ray Simard
%
Cabbage, n.:
A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
a man's head.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cable is not a luxury, since many areas have poor TV reception.
-- The mayor of Tucson, Arizona, 1989
%
Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%
California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
-- Fred Allen
%
California, n.:
From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or
Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or
"fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex."
-- Ed Moran
%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb
%
Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missile sighted, target
Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept.
%
Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%
Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
points.
-- M. M. Johnston
%
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Supplement:
A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%
Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents
for postage and 30 cents for storage.
-- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post
%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things
off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare
recipients are Cancer people.
%
Canonical, adj.:
The usual or standard state or manner of something. A true
story: One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some
annoyance at the use of jargon. Over his loud objections, we made a
point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and
eventually it began to sink in. Finally, in one conversation, he used
the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking.
Steele: "Aha! We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
Stallman: "What did he say?"
Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
%
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any
importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as
they take root and become trees.
%
Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
planning to reduce the time it takes.
%
Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
trousers that don't match.
%
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then
putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Cat, n.:
Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson"
%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
%
Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously alive and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will *___and* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
-- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
%
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation
works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
-- Kelvin Throop III
%
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
how many?
%
Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
out of it?
Jaka: Ugh!
Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy?
-- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
But it's very funny--
Did you ever try buying them without money?
-- Ogden Nash
%
Chapter 1
The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
%
Character Density, n.:
The number of very weird people in the office.
%
Checkuary, n.:
The thirteenth month of the year. Begins New Year's Day and
ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on his
checks.
%
Chef, n.:
Any cook who swears in French.
%
Chemicals, n.:
Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
%
Chemistry is applied theology.
-- Augustus Stanley Owsley III
%
Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
-- Chicago Reader 3/27/81
%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
for overheated passengers. When your timer pops up, the driver will
cheerfully baste you.
-- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
%
Chicago, n.:
Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
%
Chicken Little only has to be right once.
%
Chicken Little was right.
%
Chicken Soup, n.:
An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure
is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
%
Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're
going to catch you in next.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for
word what you shouldn't have said.
%
Chism's Law of Completion:
The amount of time required to complete a government project is
precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it.
%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%
Chivalry, Schmivalry!
Roger the thief has a
method he uses for
sneaky attacks:
Folks who are reading are
Characteristically
Always Forgetting to
Guard their own bac ...
%
Christ:
A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time.
%
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the
time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%
Cigarette, n.:
A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in
between.
%
Cinemuck, n.:
The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which
covers the floors of movie theaters.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Clairvoyant, n.:
A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that
which is invisible to her patron -- namely, that he is a blockhead.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like
shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
-- Phyllis Diller
%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%
Cleveland still lives. God ____must be dead.
%
Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day.
%
Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery.
%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on
society.
-- Mark Twain
%
COBOL programs are an exercise in Artificial Inelegance.
%
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong.
-- Blair Houghton
%
Coincidence, n.:
You weren't paying attention to the other half of what was
going on.
%
Coincidences are spiritual puns.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
Cold, adj.:
When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions.
%
Cold, adj.:
When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own
pockets.
%
Collaboration, n.:
A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
other fellow can spell.
%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the
faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if
the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms,
legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the
loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it
won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary
Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to _n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Command, n.:
Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in
such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control.
%
COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Commitment, n.:
Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.
The chicken was involved, the pig was committed.
%
Committee Rules:
(1) Never arrive on time, or you will be stamped a beginner.
(2) Don't say anything until the meeting is half over; this
stamps you as being wise.
(3) Be as vague as possible; this prevents irritating the
others.
(4) When in doubt, suggest that a subcommittee be appointed.
(5) Be the first to move for adjournment; this will make you
popular -- it's what everyone is waiting for.
%
Committee, n.:
A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group
decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen
%
Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to
be appointed to do the work.
%
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at
different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
-- Clive James
%
Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
-- Josh Billings
%
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness
of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
-- David Guaspari
%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
%
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems
theory.
%
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
%
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
%
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
the world that just don't add up.
%
Computers will not be perfected until they can compute how much more
than the estimate the job will cost.
%
Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Concept, n.:
Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than
$25,000.
%
... [concerning quotation marks] even if we *___did* quote anybody in this
business, it probably would be gibberish.
-- Thom McLeod
%
Condense soup, not books!
%
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is
good for dandruff.
-- Peter de Vries
%
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
%
Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that
would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that
you undoubtedly will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND
SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,
RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%
Connector Conspiracy, n:
[probably came into prominence with the appearance of the
KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of
manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything)
to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old
stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive
interface devices.
%
Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
-- H. L. Mencken, "A Mencken Chrestomathy"
%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%
Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you
wish you weren't.
%
Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich.
-- Daffy Duck, "Ali Baba Bunny", [1957, Chuck Jones]
%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then
give it back to them.
%
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern
technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat.
%
Conversation, n.:
A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath
is called the listener.
%
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who knows
what is going on.
This person must be fired.
%
Coronation, n.:
The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and
visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite
bomb.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Corrupt, adj.:
In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%
Corrupt, stupid grasping functionaries will make at least as big a
muddle of socialism as stupid, selfish and acquisitive employers can
make of capitalism.
-- Walter Lippmann
%
Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job
is to enforce the law and fight crime.
-- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan
%
Court, n.:
A place where they dispense with justice.
-- Arthur Train
%
Coward, n.:
One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
[Crash programs] fail because they are based on the theory that, with
nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Crime does not pay ... as well as politics.
-- A. E. Neuman
%
Critic, n.:
A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries
to please him.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Croll's Query:
If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of?
%
cursor address, n:
"Hello, cursor!"
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It
eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the
business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation.
-- Johnny Hart
%
Cynic, n.:
A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not
as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking
out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cynic, n.:
One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye.
%
Dare to be naive.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie.
%
Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par."
Allen Gwinn: "Yours is."
%
Dawn, n.:
The time when men of reason go to bed.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
%
%DCL-E-MEM-BAD, bad memory
-VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
%
Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to
improve.
%
Dear Lord:
I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
the other hand", again.
%
Dear Miss Manners:
My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's
elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between
courses, is all right. Which is correct?
Gentle Reader:
For the purpose of answering examinations in your home
economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this
principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now
than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners
believes that is.
%
Dear Miss Manners:
Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from
your face.
Gentle Reader:
Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on
your face ...
%
Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part
of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old
will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a
commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as
"Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a
table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always
says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean,
"Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this
complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim
if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a
dead bat?
Answer: Yes.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe?
Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business
signs to alert the reader that an "S" is coming up at the end of a
word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when
creating hand-lettered small-business signs is that you should put
quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT
DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
-- R. Geis
%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%
Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.
%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
%
Death is only a state of mind.
Only it doesn't leave you much time to think about anything else.
%
Death to all fanatics!
%
Decision maker, n.:
The person in your office who was unable to form a task force
before the music stopped.
%
Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really
overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene
language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the
judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when
addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
-- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
%
Deck Us All With Boston Charlie
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo!
Don't we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
-- Walt Kelly
%
"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of
marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a
theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah,
those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly
blessed.
-- Randy Davis
%
default, n.:
[Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity. "Nothing will
come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
#define BITCOUNT(x) (((BX_(x)+(BX_(x)>>4)) & 0x0F0F0F0F) % 255)
#define BX_(x) ((x) - (((x)>>1)&0x77777777) \
- (((x)>>2)&0x33333333) \
- (((x)>>3)&0x11111111))
-- really weird C code to count the number of bits in a word
%
Definitions of hardware and software for dummies:
Hardware is what you kick;
Software is what you curse.
%
DELETE A FORTUNE!
Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?! Wouldn't you like
to see some of them deleted from the system? You can! Just mail to
"fortune" with the fortune you hate most, and we MIGHT make sure it
gets expunged.
%
Deliberation, n.:
The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is
buttered on.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow.
%
Demand the establishment of the government
in its rightful home at Disneyland.
%
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than
we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-- Senator Soaper
%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
don't think.
%
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
%
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
-- E. B. White
%
Democracy, n.:
A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass
meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate,
whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion,
prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
-- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932),
since withdrawn.
%
Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
%
Dentist, n.:
A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will
be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over
the table.
-- The Anarchist Cookbook
%
DETERIORATA
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.
You are a fluke of the universe ...
You have no right to be here.
Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
Is laughing behind your back.
-- National Lampoon
%
DeVries's Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
hits the paper.
%
Did I say 2? I lied.
%
Did you know ...
That no-one ever reads these things?
%
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined
them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction?
%
Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot
that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states:
"Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and
squirrel."
-- ihuxw!tommyo
%
Die, v.:
To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore's dying words
%
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
%
Disc space -- the final frontier!
%
Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be
yours too."
-- Dave Haynie
%
Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my
employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely
coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is
non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the
absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader.
The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for
the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal,
non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.)
%
Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
%
Distinctive, adj.:
A different color or shape than our competitors.
%
Distress, n.:
A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape
injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any
damage inflicted on the vehicle.
%
Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
%
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%
Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon.
%
Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
anger.
%
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
with ketchup.
%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes.
-- Donald Kaul
%
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
%
Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%
Do you have lysdexia?
%
Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
the time to take the dirt out of them?
%
"Do you think what we're doing is wrong?"
"Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!"
"I've never done anything illegal before."
"I thought you said you were an accountant!"
%
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-- Dick Brandon
%
Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
be good because the programmers hate it so much.
%
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
%
Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
%
Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
-- Golda Meir
%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%
Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
-- Joe Cointment
%
"Don't come back until you have him", the Tick-Tock Man said quietly,
sincerely, extremely dangerously.
They used dogs. They used probes. They used cardio plate crossoffs.
They used teepers. They used bribery. They used stick tites. They
used intimidation. They used torment. They used torture. They used
finks. They used cops. They used search and seizure. They used
fallaron. They used betterment incentives. They used finger prints.
They used the bertillion system. They used cunning. They used guile.
They used treachery. They used Raoul-Mitgong but he wasn't much help.
They used applied physics. They used techniques of criminology. And
what the hell, they caught him.
-- Harlan Ellison, "Repent, Harlequin, said the Tick-Tock Man"
%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%
Don't get even -- get odd!
%
Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly
misleading. Debug only code.
-- Dave Storer
%
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes
you nothing. It was here first.
-- Mark Twain
%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%
Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.
%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%
Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
%
Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance.
%
Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
%
Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy
it today you can do it again tomorrow.
%
Don't say yes until I finish talking.
-- Darryl F. Zanuck
%
Don't steal; thou'lt never thus compete successfully in business.
Cheat.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Don't suspect your friends -- turn them in!
-- "Brazil"
%
Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out of it alive.
%
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
%
Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to
get more wax!!
%
Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts
avoiding you.
-- The Old Farmer's Almanac
%
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any
good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken
%
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already
tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schultz
%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too
busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%
Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
%
Don Ameche: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she
pretty?
W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of
bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to
sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia.
Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative.
W. C.: It's almost impossible.
-- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson
E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles"
%
Double Bucky
(Sung to the tune of "Rubber Duckie")
Double bucky, you're the one!
You make my keyboard lots of fun
Double bucky, an additional bit or two:
(Vo-vo-de-o!)
Control and Meta side by side,
Augmented ASCII, nine bits wide!
Double bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few!
Oh, I sure wish that I,
Had a couple of bits more!
Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four.
Double bucky, left and right
OR'd together, outta sight!
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of
Double bucky, I'm happy I heard of
Double bucky, I'd like a whole word of you!
-- (C) 1978 by Guy L. Steele, Jr.
(to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit
be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use
by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"])
%
Double-Blind Experiment, n.:
An experiment in which the chief researcher believes he is
fooling both the subject and the lab assistant. Often accompanied by a
strong belief in the tooth fairy.
%
Down with categorical imperative!
%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%
Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front
of your eyes.
%
Drink Canada Dry! You might not succeed, but it *__is* fun trying.
%
Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
%
Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!
%
Ducharme's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
%
Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it holds the universe together.
-- Carl Zwanzig
%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders
has been discontinued.
%
Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate
and captain of your soul.
%
Due to lack of disk space, this fortune database has been
discontinued.
%
During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen
were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a
red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted,
"Hey, you almost hit my wife."
"Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a
shot at mine, over there."
%
During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several
times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o
%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have
nothing whatever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maugham (last words)
%
E Pluribus Unix
%
Eagleson's Law:
Any code of your own that you haven't looked at for six or more
months, might as well have been written by someone else. (Eagleson is
an optimist, the real number is more like three weeks.)
%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
%
/earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can.
%
Earth is a beta site.
%
Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun.
-- Jeff Berner
%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:
Black. Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the
cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of
the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this
means the puzzle is solved.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
%
Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work.
%
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Economics, n.:
Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K.
Galbraith ...
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy
would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it
hasn't.
-- Robert Orben
%
Economists state their GNP growth projections to the nearest tenth of a
percentage point to prove they have a sense of humor.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
Ed Sullivan will be around as long as someone else has talent.
-- Fred Allen
%
Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
-- Irsin Edman
%
Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
-- Bullwinkle Moose
%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many
people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable
comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where
the "nog" comes from.
To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine, gin and, if they are in
season, eggs...
%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain
of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks
%
Egotist, n.:
A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Ehrman's Commentary:
(1) Things will get worse before they get better.
(2) Who said things would get better?
%
Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees.
-- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star
%
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard
And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
Finding some code
That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Hacker MacKensie
Writing the code for a program that no one will run
It's nearly done
Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's nobody there.
What does he care?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles,
called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you
have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in
most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the
time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could
have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey,
although God alone knows why it would want to.
The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current,
direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes
have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one
direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents
harmful electron buildup in the wires.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Electrocution, n.:
Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
%
Elevators smell different to midgets.
%
Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%
Encyclopedia Salesmen:
Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police
and tell them your house is being burgled.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
-- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
%
Entropy isn't what it used to be.
%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which
otherwise require harder thinking.
-- Jerome Lettvin
%
Epperson's law:
When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably
something his wife can beat him at.
%
Equal bytes for women.
%
Error in operator: add beer
%
Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven
Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
-- Woody Allen
%
Etymology, n.:
Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that
were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed
from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy"
("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow."
-- Mike Kellen
%
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to
speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow
%
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
%
Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United
States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only two cents a
day.
%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you
just how busy they are?
%
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what,
exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men."
All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with
spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about:
Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please
take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something?
My wife is available. No. How about ..."
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%
Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
%
Every four seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this
woman and stop her.
%
Every group has a couple of experts. And every group has at least one
idiot. Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained. It's
sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two
highly-motivated, caustic twits.
-- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
%
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not
fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way
of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 16, 1953
%
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):
Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse
of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same
color"], that does not exist.
%
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
-- Frank Moore Colby
%
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
%
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
-- Don Vonada
%
Every man has his price. Mine is $3.95.
%
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
-- Miguel de Cervantes
%
Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the
richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
-- Robert Orben
%
Every nonzero finite dimensional inner product space has an orthonormal basis.
It makes sense, when you don't think about it.
%
Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one
instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every
program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work.
%
Every program has two purposes -- one for which it was written and
another for which it wasn't.
%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no
guarantee of eventual success.
%
Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett
%
Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.
-- Dykstra
%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how ___not to. So it is with the great programmers.
%
Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to
realize it.
%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the
scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact
wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of
existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to
discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the
problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all,
one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely
different way ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____does anything about it.
%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately,
no one we know belongs.
%
Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being
that a belch is more satisfying.
-- Ingmar Bergman
%
Everything journalists write is true, except when they write about
something you know.
-- Dag-Erling Smorgrav,
June 1999, FreeBSD-Stable Mailing List
%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%
Everything you know is wrong!
%
Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less
obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no
solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid.
There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no
straight lines.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
%
Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping
mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
"Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
"Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike the office water cooler.
%
Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from
acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
%
Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility.
%
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting somebody else to do
the work.
-- John G. Pollard
%
Expect the worst. It's the least you can do.
%
Expense Accounts, n.:
Corporate food stamps.
%
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
-- Olivier
%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake
when you make it again.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and
the instruction afterward.
%
Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old
ones.
%
Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.
%
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
%
Expert, n.:
Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides.
%
Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules:
NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE
To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully
cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand
corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and
address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) --
to a 3x5 inch index card. (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower
left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card
below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.) (e) Finally place 3x5 card
(without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the
Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595. Print
this address correctly. Comply with above instructions carefully and
completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
%
F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm!
%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%
f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
%
F: When into a room I plunge, I
Sometimes find some VIOLET FUNGI.
Then I linger, darkly brooding
On the poison they're exuding.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.
%
Fairy Tale, n.:
A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers.
%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic
without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%
Faith, n:
That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be
untrue.
%
Fakir, n:
A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost
religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to
have shinnied up a rope and vanished.
%
Familiarity breeds attempt.
%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
-- Su Tung-p'o
%
Famous last words:
%
Famous last words:
(1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
(2) "You and what army?"
(3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be
a cop."
%
Famous last words:
(1) Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix.
(2) Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there.
(3) What happens if you touch these two wires tog--
(4) We won't need reservations.
(5) It's always sunny there this time of the year.
(6) Don't worry, it's not loaded.
(7) They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager.
(8) Don't worry! Women love it!
%
Famous, adj.:
Conspicuously miserable.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Fats Loves Madelyn.
%
Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ...
%
Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children,
neither will you.
%
Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors
d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.
Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
the little hammers strike.
Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree. The piano is missing.
You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
%
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book.
Corollary:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live.
%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that
there is nothing important to do.
%
Fifty flippant frogs
Walked by on flippered feet
And with their slime they made the time
Unnaturally fleet.
%
FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North
Carolina.
%
Finagle's Creed:
Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%
Finagle's First Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%
Finagle's Fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes
it worse.
%
Finagle's Second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it
happened according to his own pet theory.
%
Finagle's Third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct,
beyond all need of checking, is the mistake.
Corollaries:
(1) Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
(2) The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%
Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture
on a rock.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%
Fine's Corollary:
Functionality breeds Contempt.
%
Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less:
"Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..."
Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to:
P.O. Box 35
Baffled Greek, Michigan
%
First Corollary of Taber's Second Law:
Machines that piss people off get murdered.
-- Pat Taber
%
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
wind.
%
First Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility
for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed
the deadline).
%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.
%
First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each
other.
%
First things first -- but not necessarily in that order
-- The Doctor, "Doctor Who"
%
First, a few words about tools.
Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of
the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously
injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If
you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look
particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for
granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Five is a sufficiently close approximation to infinity.
-- Robert Firth
%
FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when
the little hand is on the ....
%
Flon's Law:
There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is
the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%
Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my
joules!"
"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
a moment. Perhaps they're mislead."
"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence. "I remember putting them
in my burette ... We must call a copper."
Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
of Lawrence Ium.
"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can
catch him there." With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
-- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
%
flowchart, n. & v.:
[From flow "to ripple down in rich profusion, as hair" + chart
"a cryptic hidden-treasure map designed to mislead the uninitiated."]
1. n. The solution, if any, to a class of Mascheroni construction
problems in which given algorithms require geometrical representation
using only the 35 basic ideograms of the ANSI template. 2. n. Neronic
doodling while the system burns. 3. n. A low-cost substitute for
wallpaper. 4. n. The innumerate misleading the illiterate. "A
thousand pictures is worth ten lines of code." -- The Programmer's
Little Red Vade Mecum, Mao Tse T'umps. 5. v.intrans. To produce
flowcharts with no particular object in mind. 6. v.trans. To obfuscate
(a problem) with esoteric cartoons.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
Flugg's Law:
When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the
world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum.
%
Flying saucers on occasion
Show themselves to human eyes.
Aliens fume, put off invasion
While they brand these tales as lies.
%
Fog Lamps, n.:
Excessively (often obnoxiously) bright lamps mounted on the
fronts of automobiles; used on dry, clear nights to indicate that the
driver's brain is in a fog.
See also "Idiot Lights".
%
Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
-- Walt Kelly, "Putluck Pogo"
%
For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
%
For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a
cat.
%
For an adequate time call 555-3321.
%
For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be
always old-fashioned.
%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat,
and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.
-- R. Clopton
%
"For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence
of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind."
"Whose?"
"MINE! HA-HA!"
%
For large values of one, one equals two, for small values of two.
%
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire
life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days
now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets
when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch
in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have
the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which
means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are
advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are
the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their
names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot
("part of this complete breakfast").
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
%
For perfect happiness, remember two things:
(1) Be content with what you've got.
(2) Be sure you've got plenty.
%
For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
"Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
-- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to
the U.S.
%
For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%
For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of
a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with
computers altogether?
-- Jehan Shuman
%
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but
phone calls taper off.
-- Johnny Carson
%
For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
-- Justin Richardson
%
For your penance, say five Hail Marys and one loud BLAH!
%
Forgetfulness, n.:
A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their
destitution of conscience.
%
Forms follow function, and often obliterate it.
%
FORTUNE DISCUSSES THE OBSCURE FILMS! #6
RAZORBACK: Paul Harbride, 1984, 2 hours 25 min.
One of the great Australian films of the early 1980's, and
arguably the best movie ever made about a large, man-eating
hog. Some violence. With Gregory Harrison.
%
fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
"Hey you, get off my plate"
-- Roger Midnight
%
Fortune's Fictitious Country Song Title of the Week:
"How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?"
%
Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month):
Don't Write On Walls!
(and underneath)
You want I should type?
%
Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this
State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed
with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females
weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it
apply to female horses.
%
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an
impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter
is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
amounts of fertilization ...
HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many
teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
%
Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week:
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.
%
FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS #14
Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good
liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert and
light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything
drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18:
Q: Are you married?
A: No, I'm divorced.
Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
A: A lot of things I didn't know about.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19:
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29:
THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present
information and prejudice from your minds, if you have
any ...
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32:
Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
A: I will be three months November 8th.
Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time?
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:
Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
A: No.
Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears?
A: Picking them up in the air.
Q: Where was the dog at this time?
A: Attached to the ears.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3:
Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were
able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to
go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with
him to the station?
MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:
Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:
Q: What is your name?
A: Ernestine McDowell.
Q: And what is your marital status?
A: Fair.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
Q: What happened then?
A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify
me."
Q: Did he kill you?
A: No.
%
fortune: CPU time/usefulness ratio too high -- core dumped.
%
Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Oh, and have a nice day!
-- Bryce Nesbitt '84
%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
Corollary:
Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
except study for that instructor's course.
%
Fourth Law of Revision:
It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you.
%
Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: If the probability of success is not
almost one, it is damn near zero.
-- David Ellis
%
Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a
policeman's tie.
%
Fresco's Discovery:
If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored.
%
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar. The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
%
Frisbeetarianism, n.:
The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and
gets stuck.
%
Frobnicate, v.:
To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ.
Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a
frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK
sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless
manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse
search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is
turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it
he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the
screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
%
Frobnitz, pl. Frobnitzem (frob'nitsm) n.:
An unspecified physical object, a widget. Also refers to
electronic black boxes. This rare form is usually abbreviated to
FROTZ, or more commonly to FROB. Also used are FROBNULE, FROBULE, and
FROBNODULE. Starting perhaps in 1979, FROBBOZ (fruh-bahz'), pl.
FROBBOTZIM, has also become very popular, largely due to its exposure
via the Adventure spin-off called Zork (Dungeon). These can also be
applied to non-physical objects, such as data structures.
%
[From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology
Association, in Rome]:
The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria
and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not
spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods,
or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in
millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have
reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology
engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general,
president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social
schizophrenia in mass genocide.
%
From the "Guiness Book of World Records", 1973:
Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and
the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the
Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his
candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground
nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts,
other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not
qualify as nuts (unground)(other than ground nuts) by reason of their
being nuts (unground)."
%
From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was
convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
%
[From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
in Japan]:
The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
"flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
%
From the Pro 350 Pocket Service Guide, p. 49, Step 5 of the
instructions on removing an I/O board from the card cage, comes a new
experience in sound:
5. Turn the handle to the right 90 degrees. The pin-spreading
sound is normal for this type of connector.
%
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
-- Swinburne
%
Fuch's Warning:
If you actually look like your passport photo, you aren't well
enough to travel.
%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%
Furbling, v.:
Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank
even when you are the only person in line.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-- H. H. Williams
%
Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
%
G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One
of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his
secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says
`No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And
that's your chance, my boy."
%
Garbage In -- Gospel Out.
%
Garter, n.:
An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her
stockings and desolating the country.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall
on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
-- Adventures of Asterix
%
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference:
"Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow ...
Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I
think not, my friend, I think not.
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
"Gee, Mudhead, everyone at More Science High has an
extracurricular activity except you."
"Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?"
"Only to ten, Mudhead."
-- The Firesign Theatre
%
Gee, Toto, I don't think we are in Kansas anymore.
%
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much
for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for
committing incest.
%
GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20)
Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while
you can; the bad news will make you forget it. You will enjoy praise
and respect from those around you; everybody loves a sucker. A short
trip is in the stars, possibly to the men's room.
%
Genderplex, n.:
The predicament of a person in a restaurant who is unable to
determine his or her designated restroom (e.g., turtles and
tortoises).
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why
you should.
%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%
Genius, n.:
A chemist who discovers a laundry additive that rhymes with
"bright".
%
George Orwell 1984. Northwestern 0.
-- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%
George Washington was first in war, first in peace -- and the first to
have his birthday juggled to make a long weekend.
-- Ashley Cooper
%
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
(1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong
direction.
(2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
(3) The energy required to change either one of these states
will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
much as to make the task totally impossible.
%
Get forgiveness now -- tomorrow you may no longer feel guilty.
%
Get GUMMed
--- ------
The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
"cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
could tell them.
-- Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
%
Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
%
-- Gifts for Children --
This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children,
because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months
and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday-
morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children
exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If
your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You
Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it
might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe
me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child
who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
-- Gifts for Men --
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional
ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you
should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the
clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For
example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only
three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error,
that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh
at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?").
So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several
years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will
pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More
than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set
of tires.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Gimmie That Old Time Religion
We will follow Zarathustra, We will worship like the Druids,
Zarathustra like we use to, Dancing naked in the woods,
I'm a Zarathustra booster, Drinking strange fermented fluids,
And he's good enough for me! And it's good enough for me!
(chorus) (chorus)
In the church of Aphrodite,
The priestess wears a see-through nightie,
She's a mighty righteous sightie,
And she's good enough for me!
(chorus)
CHORUS: Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
Give me that old time religion,
'Cause it's good enough for me!
%
Ginsberg's Theorem:
(1) You can't win.
(2) You can't break even.
(3) You can't even quit the game.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
Theorem. To wit:
(1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
(2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
(3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
%
Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place
to stand, and I will drain the world.
%
Give me enough medals, and I'll win any war.
-- Napoleon
%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%
Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
a new town.
%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%
Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying
around, I'd rather lie around. No contest.
-- Eric Clapton
%
Giving up on assembly language was the apple in our Garden of Eden:
Languages whose use squanders machine cycles are sinful. The LISP
machine now permits LISP programmers to abandon bra and fig-leaf.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some
useful work done.
%
Gnagloot, n.:
A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
impress people.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Go 'way! You're bothering me!
%
Go climb a gravity well!
%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may
be in owning a piece thereof.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
//GO.SYSIN DD *, DOODAH, DOODAH
%
God did not create the world in seven days; he screwed around for six
days and then pulled an all-nighter.
%
God doesn't play dice.
-- Albert Einstein
%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders"
Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the
end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I
can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why
would he lie about a thing like that?
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little ...
The trade unions, under the European system, destroy liberty ... I do
not mean to say that a dollar a day is enough to support a workingman
... not enough to support a man and five children if he insists on
smoking and drinking beer. But the man who cannot live on bread and
water is not fit to live! A family may live on good bread and water in
the morning, water and bread at midday, and good bread and water at
night!
-- Rev. Henry Ward Beecher
%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
%
God is a polytheist.
%
God is Dead
-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
-- God
Nietzsche is God
-- The Dead
%
God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's
%
God is real, unless declared integer.
%
God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the
elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying
other things.
-- Pablo Picasso
%
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
-- Alfred Jarry
%
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
%
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.
-- Mark Twain
%
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
-- Kronecker
%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%
God may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean.
-- Albert Einstein
%
God must love the Common Man; He made so many of them.
%
God rest ye CS students now,
Let nothing you dismay.
The VAX is down and won't be up,
Until the first of May.
The program that was due this morn,
Won't be postponed, they say.
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy,
Oh, tidings of comfort and joy.
The bearings on the drum are gone,
The disk is wobbling, too.
We've found a bug in Lisp, and Algol
Can't tell false from true.
And now we find that we can't get
At Berkeley's 4.2.
(chorus)
%
Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to
school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a
person a car.
%
Gold, n.:
A soft malleable metal relatively scarce in distribution. It
is mined deep in the earth by poor men who then give it to rich men who
immediately bury it back in the earth in great prisons, although gold
hasn't done anything to them.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Goldenstern's Rules:
(1) Always hire a rich attorney.
(2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad
example.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
%
Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
%
Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%
Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.
%
Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
%
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%
Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.
%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words
%
Gordon's first law:
If a research project is not worth doing, it is not worth doing
well.
%
Gosh that takes me back... or is it forward? That's the trouble with
time travel, you never can tell.
-- Doctor Who, "Androids of Tara"
%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogadro 6.02 x 10^23
%
Goto, n.:
A programming tool that exists to allow structured programmers
to complain about unstructured programmers.
-- Ray Simard
%
Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage.
-- John Updike, "Couples"
%
Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are
different lies.
%
Government spending? I don't know what it's all about. I don't know
any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
doesn't know much.
-- Will Rogers
%
Grabel's Law:
2 is not equal to 3 -- not even for large values of 2.
%
Graduate life -- it's not just a job, it's an indenture.
%
Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%
Gravity is a myth: the Earth sucks.
%
Gray's Law of Programming:
`_n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the same
time as `_n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
`_n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as `_n' trivial tasks.
%
Great minds run in great circles.
%
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then-
Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them
off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I
wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his
mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a
tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men
stood lookout.
%
Green light in A.M. for new projects.
Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
%
Greener's Law:
Never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel.
%
Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
%
Grub first, then ethics.
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
Gurmlish, n.:
The red warning flag at the top of a club sandwich which
prevents the person from biting into it and puncturing the roof of his
mouth.
-- Rich Hall & Friends, "Sniglets"
%
Gyroscope, n.:
A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpendicular to each
other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the two
mutually perpendicular axes results from application of torque to the
other when the wheel is spinning and so that the entire apparatus
offers considerable opposition depending on the angular momentum to any
torque that would change the direction of the axis of spin.
-- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
%
H. L. Mencken suffers from the hallucination that he is H. L.
Mencken -- there is no cure for a disease of that magnitude.
-- Maxwell Bodenheim
%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%
H: If a 'GOBLIN (HOB) waylays you,
Slice him up before he slays you.
Nothing makes you look a slob
Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB).
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
Hacker's Law:
The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a
nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%
Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge.
%
Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror,
and you would not have been informed.
%
Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra! Ra! Ra!
%
Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big
enough majority in any town?
-- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
%
Half Moon tonight. (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
%
Half-done:
This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still
crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference
between this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like
the difference between life and death.
You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the
airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough
Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the
man, "Let me have a nice half-done."
Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
Hall's Laws of Politics:
(1) The voters want fewer taxes and more spending.
(2) Citizens want honest politicians until they want something
fixed.
(3) Constituency drives out consistency (i.e., liberals defend
military spending, and conservatives social spending in
their own districts).
%
Hand, n.:
A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by
stupidity.
%
Hanson's Treatment of Time:
There are never enough hours in a day, but always too many days
before Saturday.
%
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.
-- Oscar Levant
%
Happiness, n.:
An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of
another.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Hard work may not kill you, but why take chances?
%
Hardware, n.:
The parts of a computer system that can be kicked.
%
Hark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender. You stand
convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
-- Tobias Smollet
%
Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
From "The Thirteen Clocks"
%
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
-- Tom Lehrer
%
Harris's Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of equipment
ruined.
%
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he
makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean
famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses
probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you
have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like
enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their
attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock
down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law,
just like Richard Nixon."
-- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
%
Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float
on his back, you've got something.
%
Hartley's Second Law:
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%
Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the organism will
do as it damn well pleases.
%
"Has anyone had problems with the computer accounts?"
"Yes, I don't have one."
"Okay, you can send mail to one of the tutors ..."
-- E. D'Azevedo, Computer Science 372
%
Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
typed with the left hand? Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
of both hands. It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
%
Has your family tried 'em?
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons the
strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of the
biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark stains
that indicate freshness.
%
Hatred, n.:
A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Have an adequate day.
%
Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is
to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a
non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This
still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or
only serves to blunt the warning signs.
Long live the revolution!
Have a nice day.
%
Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell
you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time
for play?
%
Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs,
I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container
filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite
sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in
their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or
mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything, which is why
they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
"Have you lived here all your life?"
"Oh, twice that long."
%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a
crack in your sidewalk?
%
Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline
sharply the minute they start waving guns around?
-- Dr. Who
%
Have you reconsidered a computer career?
%
He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental
effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable
perversion.
-- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
%
He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
-- Stephen Leacock
%
He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation
perfectly delightful.
-- Sydney Smith
%
He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and
heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope
of ever behaving "normally."
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
%
He hadn't a single redeeming vice.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
-- Mark Twain
%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.
-- John Mason Brown, drama critic
%
He thought he saw an albatross
That fluttered 'round the lamp.
He looked again and saw it was
A penny postage stamp.
"You'd best be getting home," he said,
"The nights are rather damp."
%
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
-- Jonathan Swift
%
He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable.
%
He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry
attacks democracy itself.
-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%
He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ...
%
He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be
there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
%
He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ...
%
HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their ___OWN brains.
-- Walt Kelley
%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying
of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx
%
Heaven, n.:
A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of
their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you
expound your own.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Heavy, adj.:
Seduced by the chocolate side of the force.
%
Heisenberg may have slept here.
%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
%
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
organization.
%
"Hello," he lied.
-- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent
%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%
Help fight continental drift.
%
Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file!
%
Help stamp out and abolish redundancy.
%
Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
%
HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!
-- E. E. CUMMINGS
%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.
But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%
Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ...
%
Here I sit, broken-hearted,
All logged in, but work unstarted.
First net.this and net.that,
And a hot buttered bun for net.fat.
The boss comes by, and I play the game,
Then I turn back to net.flame.
Is there a cure (I need your views),
For someone trapped in net.news?
I need your help, I say 'tween sobs,
'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs.
%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach
your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.
Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in
pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force,
but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an
important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small
objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will
attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and
collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your
friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the
carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your
finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you
have carpeting.
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the
month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people
are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China.
The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either
(depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax
tadpole".
Bite the wax tadpole.
There is a sort of rough justice, is there not?
The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's
hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to
bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad,
but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
-- John Carroll, San Francisco Chronicle
%
Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like
`Psychic Wins Lottery'?
-- Jay Leno
%
Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs,
then they'd be algorithms.
%
Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!
-- W. C. Fields
%
Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%
"Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet.
As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of
equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney.
Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you
probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of
course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my
experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out
of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser.
"Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our
motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'"
-- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering"
%
Hier liegt ein Mann ganz ohnegleich;
Im Leibe dick, an Suenden reich.
Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws
Weil es uns duenkt, er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head;
We buried him today because
As far as we can tell, he's dead.
-- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty-Sue
Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher;
"The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele
%
Higgledy Piggledy,
Hamlet of Elsinore
Ruffled the critics by
Dropping this bomb:
"Phooey on Freud and his
Psychoanalysis --
Oedipus, Shmoedipus,
I just loved Mom."
%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%
Hippogriff, n.:
An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin.
The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle.
The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which
is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full
of surprises.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%
His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had
money, he went to Southern California.
%
His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier.
%
History is curious stuff
You'd think by now we had enough
Yet the fact remains I fear
They make more of it every year.
%
History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
%
History, n.:
Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we
learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from
what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long
view.
-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
%
Hlade's Law:
If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they
will find an easier way to do it.
%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
%
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%
Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it.
-- Rex Reed
%
Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's
willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop
for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say
"shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home
centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas
trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise
because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every
object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ...
Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has
a replacement. The employee, who has never in his life even seen the
inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the
same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at
an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of
these sometime around the middle of next week".
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories:
The ultimate in watchdog weaponry.
-- Chris Shaw
%
Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
%
Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
-- F. M. Hubbard
%
Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
%
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
%
Honorable, adj.:
Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative
bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the
honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people.
-- W. C. Fields
%
Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
%
Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.
-- Neil Armstrong
%
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
%
How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%
How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows.
%
How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
-- Elliot, "E.T."
%
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
How doth the VAX's C compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.
How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear their clothes to rags.
%
How I love to watch the morn,
With golden sun that shines,
Up above to nicely warm
These frosty toes of mine.
The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
It must have blown through someone's feet,
Like those of ... Caspar Weinberger.
-- P. Opus (Bloom County)
%
How doth the VAX's C-compiler
Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
Increase the system load.
How patiently it seems to run
And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
Tear all their clothes to rags.
%
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're
on.
%
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
%
How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being
carried by a waiter at a nice party?
Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors
d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell
what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then
say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it
back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another
cheese!" and so on.
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are
3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand,
who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a
nanocentury.
-- Tom Duff, Bell Labs
%
How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton?
-- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey
%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#15 Your pet rock snaps at you.
%
HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY:
#32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of you.
%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%
However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional
manner ... sulking and nausea.
-- Tom K. Ryan
%
HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill.,
motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate
amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits.
The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the
Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the
bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on
the bill. Agreed to.
-- Albuquerque Journal
%
Hug O' War
I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.
-- Shel Silverstein
%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in
1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an
operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a urethral
catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of
his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took
the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the
Nobel Prize.
%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%
Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse.
-- William Gilbert
%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
to ..... to ........ uh ..............
%
I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a
professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any
other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority.
-- Richard M. Nixon
What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder
have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.
This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's
reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go
buy some more.
-- timw@zeb.USWest.COM
%
I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work.
%
I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!
-- Paul McCracken
%
I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it.
-- English Professor
%
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the
great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
-- Winston Churchill
%
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone
has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- English Professor, Ohio University
%
I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
with an option to buy.
%
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
%
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person,
of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell
you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial
atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.
-- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan
%
I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of
the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for
you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
-- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
University of Tennessee at Knoxville
%
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an
argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and
steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect,
they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
%
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
-- G. K. Chesterton
%
I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.
-- Will Rogers
%
I bet the human brain is a kludge.
-- Marvin Minsky
%
I brake for chezlogs!
%
I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up.
-- Biff Barf
%
I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan
prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very
bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after
relentless day.
-- Betty MacDonald
%
I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
%
I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and
25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be
true.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh
%
I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
-- Florence Henderson
%
I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can
understand it.
-- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.
%
I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a
novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.
-- Fred Allen
%
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.
-- Lillian Hellman
%
I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate
of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ...
-- F. H. Wales (1936)
%
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good
grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause
of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the
United States would have lost World War II."
-- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
%
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frito Bugger in a
quavering voice.
"No," said GoodGulf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which
I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in
Elven-lore:
"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights
instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is
standing still ...
-- Steven Wright
%
I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather
dance with the cows till you come home.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps
the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ...
-- Peter Oakley
%
I didn't know it was impossible when I did it.
%
I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The
curtain was up.
%
I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because
we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently
leads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say,
in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had
time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the
library, we could call each other up:
You: Hello? Bob?
Bob: Yes?
You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you
took last Thursday? Outside of Sears?
Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed?
You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is:
"Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait.
I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill
and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto
the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to
have to get back to you.
Bob: Fine.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%
I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an
exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to
minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary
accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a
mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the
bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always
different.
-- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.)
%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us
with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
%
I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians
don't believe in astrology.
-- James R. F. Quirk
%
I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just
a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more
numbers!!
%
I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of
a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
-- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the
nominating.
-- Boss Tweed
%
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of
people waiting to abuse me.
-- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters"
%
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
-- Elvis Presley
%
"I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for
you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master--
that's all."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd
eat it, and I just hate it.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path.
-- Ronald Mabbitt
%
I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the
streets and frighten the horses.
-- Victor Hugo
%
I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?
%
"I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes. Just then, he vanished.
%
I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other
hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out.
%
I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that
the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is
thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists
broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake.
Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off
their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ...
-- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE
COMING!"
%
I doubt, therefore I might be.
%
I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business
on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment
he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual
becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
I drink to make other people interesting.
-- George Jean Nathan
%
I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
so I woke up from sheer boredom.
%
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the
accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For
the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that
can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have
that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by
subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should
someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly
understand his long delay.
%
I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words.
%
I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment.
-- Gautama Buddha
%
I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most *__________horrifying* 20
minutes of my life!
%
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-- Mae West
%
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
%
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
-- Pete Seeger
%
I had this sudden vision of a klein pizza containing all the mozarella
in the world.
-- Peter da Silva
%
I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler
Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!
-- Mary Lou Bax
%
I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense.
%
I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means
it's going to be up all night.
-- Steven Wright
%
I hate quotations.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
I have a simple philosophy:
Fill what's empty.
Empty what's full.
Scratch where it itches.
-- A. R. Longworth
%
I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it
any time!
%
I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show,
which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth
and they never believe me.
-- Camillo Di Cavour
%
I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it.
-- Edgar Allan Poe
%
I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You
sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an
eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I
have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of
beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a
guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more
of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry.
-- President Harry S. Truman
%
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on
Some people's n'oeuvres.
-- Warren Knox
%
I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming
that I have never made one.
-- James Gordon Bennett
%
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to
make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole
____BODY!
-- from "Cerebus" #82
%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it
scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have to convince you, or at least snow you ...
-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%
I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking
his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell
beating up a child.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked
at in the right way, did not become still more complicated.
-- Poul Anderson
%
I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere.
%
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
%
I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
%
I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
-- Bill Hoest
%
I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
%
I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World
War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
-- Albert Einstein
%
I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind!
The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.
-- Charles Schulz
%
I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
-- Art Leo
%
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to
promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want
peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
the way and let them have it.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
%
I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours.
%
I like your game but we have to change the rules.
%
I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what
entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils.
-- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
%
"I love to eat them Smurfies
Smurfies what I love to eat
Bite they ugly heads off,
Nibble on they bluish feet."
%
I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but
don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the
speed of light.
-- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk
%
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
week sometimes to make it up.
-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
%
I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do
was to go away.
%
I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
%
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!
-- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
%
I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the
kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled
substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no
restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we
made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given
powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative
nerve disease.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
%
I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
-- William F. Buckley
%
"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of
that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put
more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it
might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not
otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be
otherwise.'"
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that
the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile
so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the
plumber.
But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such
as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of
the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never
win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually
write about, such as nose-picking.
-- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
Political Fallout"
%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
%
I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope
they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
-- Will Rogers
%
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)!
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because ..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if ..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But ...
"Is that all?" asked Alice.
"That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
-- Graffito in Los Angeles
%
"... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was
supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which
actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..."
-- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning
Points in l'Amour"
%
I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full
house and four people died.
-- Steven Wright
%
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to
see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
-- Shirley Temple
%
I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do
too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which
direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After
much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot
tub to face is up.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
I think it is true for all _n. I was just playing it safe with _n >= 3
because I couldn't remember the proof.
-- Baker, Pure Math 351a
%
I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it.
%
I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick
and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this
country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people
in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly
not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am.
-- Monty Python
%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Ogden Nash
%
I think that I shall never see
A thing as lovely as a tree.
But as you see the trees have gone
They went this morning with the dawn.
A logging firm from out of town
Came and chopped the trees all down.
But I will trick those dirty skunks
And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'.
%
I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple
to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the
farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light
into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from
the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing
off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the
color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on
out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars
singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors.
-- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club
%
I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown
... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think
we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today.
When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we
are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was
driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa
Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin,
were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous
conversation ...
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
"I thought you were trying to get into shape."
"I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
%
... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a
pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!
-- Winston Churchill
%
I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in
twenty minutes. It's about Russia.
-- Woody Allen
%
I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
%
I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my
body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
-- Emo Phillips
%
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere
near the place.
-- Steven Wright
%
I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to
animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for
anything connected with society except that which makes the roads
safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women
warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
-- Brendan Behan
%
I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St.
Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE
HAW"!!'
-- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County"
%
I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know
anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is
a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows
up.
-- Will Rogers
%
I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I
put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured
what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I
should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
get off my driveway.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn't know.
-- Mark Twain
%
I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending
their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to
buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
-- Emile Henry Gauvreay
%
I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full
house and four people died.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained
it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass
stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold.
I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be
absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had
developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case.
Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's
temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I
chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to
the point where it would not run at all.
-- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black
Holes and the Fate of Stars"
%
I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any
questions, I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the
speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen?
He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work
for him then.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in
the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't
included.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the
statues that are in all the other museums.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
it took seven others to beat him!
%
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence.
There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work.
-- Gallagher
%
I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've
always worked for me.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got
to undo it.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I snore.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in `Y.'
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my blender.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my garage door.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from
Julian to Gregorian.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for
static cling.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my
cottage cheese sculpture.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma transplant.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never came back.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to stay tuned.
%
I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that
need worrying about.
%
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%
I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over,
carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia,
I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun.
-- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
%
I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd
listen to it!
-- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire
%
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob.
That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood.
-- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones]
%
I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man.
%
I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me!
%
I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister.
%
I'm changing my name to Chrysler
I'm going down to Washington, D.C.
I'll tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me!
I'm changing my name to Chrysler,
I'm heading for that great receiving line.
When they hand a million grand out,
I'll be standing with my hand out,
Yessir, I'll get mine!
-- Tom Paxton
%
I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did.
%
I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to
die in.
-- George McGovern
%
I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
-- Fred Allen
%
I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
-- Spider Robinson
%
... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a
KOSHER DELI!!
%
I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?
-- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate
%
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
living apart.
-- e. e. cummings
%
I'm N-ary the tree, I am,
N-ary the tree, I am, I am.
I'm getting traversed by the parser next door,
She's traversed me seven times before.
And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!)
Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!)
I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary.
N-ary the tree I am, I am,
N-ary the tree I am.
%
I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am.
It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
%
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is
-- I could be just as proud for half the money.
-- Arthur Godfrey
%
I'm rated PG-34!!
%
I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL
soon ...
%
I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it
(your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage.
-- English Professor, Providence College
%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
-- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance"
%
I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives
%
I've built a better model than the one at Data General
For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral
My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality;
My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality.
My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity,
You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity;
There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting;
My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting.
I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point:
There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point,
Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral
I've built a better model than the one at Data General.
-- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of
"Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance",
by Gilbert & Sullivan)
%
I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
%
I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was
this little hole in the bottom ...
-- John Croll
%
I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
%
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes
on the same day.
%
I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer.
%
I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer.
-- Senator Claghorn
%
I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab.
I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate.
All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week.
Time to die...
-- Peter Gutmann
%
I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
And from that full meridian of my glory
I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
Like a bright exhalation in the evening
And no man see me more.
-- William Shakespeare
%
IBM had a PL/I,
Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
It was a total loss.
%
Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box
of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
%
Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
solitary confinement.
%
Idiot Box, n.:
The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the
stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Idiot, n.:
A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human
affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape
at about 30 miles/second.
-- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming
%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law.
-- Roy Santoro
%
If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far.
-- Paul White
%
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus
forecast is a camel's behind.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
If A equals success, then the formula is _A = _X + _Y + _Z. _X is work. _Y
is play. _Z is keep your mouth shut.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If a group of _N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be _N-1
passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager.
-- T. Cheatham
%
If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four
hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where
it votes guilty.
-- Joseph C. Goulden
%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake
him up.
%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country.
%
If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have
dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to
maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it
must drop. The law of gravity supersedes the law of golf.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good
attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to
playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win --
unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager
can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?
-- Sparky Anderson
%
If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot
platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave
that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska.
%
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
-- Paul Beatty
%
If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
conclusion.
-- William Baumol
%
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
-- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%
If at first you don't succeed, give up. No use being a damn fool.
%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four
tellers?
%
If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
%
If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from?
%
If everybody minded their own business, the world would go
around a deal faster.
-- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%
... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with
the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls
asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ...
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three
to a can.
%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears.
%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads.
%
If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with
green, baggy skin.
%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.
%
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to
invent it.
%
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger
hands.
%
If God is dead, who will save the Queen?
%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%
If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows.
-- Yiddish saying
%
If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs?
-- Marvin Kitman
%
If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be
replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!
%
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
%
If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the
plantation and go home.
-- Eugene P. Gallagher
%
If I had any humility I would be perfect.
-- Ted Turner
%
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing
on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
In computer science, we stand on each other's feet.
-- Brian K. Reid
%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction.
On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
also a psychological interaction.
The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so
friendly.
The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
-- Bert Whitney
%
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
%
If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
%
If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him.
They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun
of it.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%
If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they
forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll
just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail.
And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty*
pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken!
And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and
think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to
receive Net Mail ...
-- Leith (Casey) Leedom
%
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
%
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
-- Tom Robbins
%
If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women
you've got in the house.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by
the page number.
%
If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it.
%
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think
little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and
Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
-- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
%
If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
-- Albert Einstein
%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss bank.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without
having to accomplish anything.
%
If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad,
he should see how bad it is with representation.
%
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the
physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker
entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability.
-- Vannevar Bush
%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied
harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
%
If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem.
-- C. Durance, Computer Science 234
%
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
-- Stanley Garn
%
If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong.
-- Norm Schryer
%
If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to
get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude.
See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving
the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting
that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The
college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious
and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to
rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective.
Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure
interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by
opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for
himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for
boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!
-- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920)
%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.
If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down.
If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance
will exceed all expectations.
-- Reverend Chichester
%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that
will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
-- Art Hoppe
%
If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make
something out of you.
-- Muhammad Ali
%
If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
%
If this is timesharing, give me my share right now.
%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%
If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was
yesterday?
%
If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is
doing the thinking.
-- Lyndon Baines Johnson
%
If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely
%
If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage.
%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel
in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary
qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
-- Marguerite Emmons
%
If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?
-- Ann Edwards-Duff
%
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
-- J. Paul Getty
%
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
%
If you can read this, you're too close.
%
If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.
%
If you can't be good, be careful.
If you can't be careful, give me a call.
%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
If you didn't get caught, did you really do it?
%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%
If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
-- Clarence Day
%
If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter.
-- Freeman Dyson
%
If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little
Lavoris in the toilet.
-- Jay Leno
%
If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to
either of you for the rest of the day.
%
If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to
have to get a toehold in the public eye.
%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody
will.
%
If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it
will always do it.
-- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin
%
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce.
-- Winston Churchill
%
If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous.
%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
%
If you have to hate, hate gently.
%
If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to
boot yourself in the posterior.
-- A. J. Liebling, "The Press"
%
If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away.
%
If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.
-- Graham Summer
%
If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few
people die past the age of a hundred.
-- George Burns
%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
but if you really make them think they'll hate you.
%
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Maslow
%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure
can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly
develop.
%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-- Mark Twain
%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine,
you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get
ice, but no cup.
%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But
this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is
somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
%
If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're
the sucker.
%
If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
%
If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens
tomorrow!
%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car
payments.
-- Earl Wilson
%
If you think technology can solve your security problems, then you
don't understand the problems and you don't understand the technology.
-- Bruce Schneier
%
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.
-- Arthur Kasspe
%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest
shopping center in the world?
-- Richard M. Nixon
%
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would
be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call
you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw
another party next year.
What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up
several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've
been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to
avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning
parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from
having another one ...
If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless
your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure
that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting
someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
-- Dave Barry
%
If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them
end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
-- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
%
If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything.
-- A. L.
%
If you want divine justice, die.
-- Nick Seldon
%
If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people
he gave it to.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the
Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's
statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington
telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with
titles beginning with the word "National".
-- George Will
%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every
word you say, talk in your sleep.
%
If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it,
even if they don't know what it means.
-- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
%
If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
%
If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for
tomorrow morning, sleep late.
-- Henny Youngman
%
If you're happy, you're successful.
%
If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and
deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the
better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random
with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives
you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a
successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself.
You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How
difficult can it be?"
Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible,
which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying
other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up
yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
%
If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
%
If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it
off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?
%
If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all.
-- Ronald Reagan
%
Ignisecond, n.:
The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car
door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!"
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux
Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex,
Et le m^omerade horgrave.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
Iles's Law:
There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly
at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it.
Neither will Iles.
%
Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the
land He's trying to ignore.
%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the
usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody
thinks of complaining.
-- Jef Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal
%
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
What's the first question that the computer community asks?
"Is it PC compatible?"
%
Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery.
-- Jack Paar
%
Immortality -- a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%
Impartial, adj.:
Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from
espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two
conflicting opinions.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the
mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the
Boss is reading it.
%
Impossible, adj.:
(1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve;
(2) I can't be bothered;
(3) God can't be bothered.
Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.
-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
%
In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of
stairs.
%
In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles.
%
In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't
get parts.
%
In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The
creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across.
%
In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred
syrup.
%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only
we can't control when the five year period will begin.
%
In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi,
junior, what are you up to?"
"I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the
rabbit.
"Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!"
"Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the
rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied
expression on his face.
Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?"
"I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits
devour wolves."
"Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?"
"Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes
out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw.
Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody
should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting
next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox.
The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important --
it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
%
In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth"
Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
-- Frank Mankiewicz
%
In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
-- Mark Twain
%
In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground
with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call
this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
%
In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All
those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the
devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up
as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one
of the risks he takes.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
-- The Peter Principle
%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks)
are to be treated as variables.
%
In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of
nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir.
-- Stuart Keate
%
In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own
at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
%
In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools
will be temporarily canceled.
%
In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and
make it better.
%
In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle
a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order
to get her attention.
%
In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride
in any motor vehicle.
%
In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
-- Winston Churchill, of Montgomery
%
In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door
neighbor.
%
In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
%
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last
resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but
inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
%
In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on
the sidewalks when a concert is on.
%
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come
into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish
between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which
will only make it mushy.
-- Mark Twain
%
In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your
pocket.
%
In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any
pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while
either flying or waiting to board a plane.
%
In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless
there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red
flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
%
In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as
to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the
speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
%
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the
universe.
-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government,
intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from
the cares of office.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds
and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
%
In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying
of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public
view."
%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that
is over six feet in length.
%
In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
In short, _N is Richardian if, and only if, _N is not Richardian.
%
In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's.
%
In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a
moving automobile.
%
[In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You
could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense
that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ...
And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we
didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no
point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum;
we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ....
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in
Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost
___see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and
rolled back.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
In the beginning was the word.
But by the time the second word was added to it,
there was trouble.
For with it came syntax ...
-- John Simon
%
In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat
hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am
training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the
net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any
preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you
close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be
empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
%
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
%
In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful
Dead.
-- Egyptian Book of the Dead
%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
-- Alan Perlis
%
In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or
a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it
to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by
forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you
stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit
punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong
enough to punch you.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the
Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million
three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years
from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.
... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of
fact.
-- Mark Twain
%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to
drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at
discotheques.
-- Art Linkletter
%
In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take
my advice.
-- Winston Churchill
%
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
%
In West Union, Ohio, no married man can go flying without his spouse
along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
%
Incumbent, n.:
Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves
smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is
not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery.
-- Stephen Crane
%
Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
%
Individualists unite!
%
Infancy, n.:
The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven
lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon
afterward.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Information Center, n.:
A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is
to tell you why you cannot have the information you require.
%
Ingrate, n.:
A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of
indigestion.
%
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%
Ink, n.:
A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and
water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote
intellectual crime.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Innovation is hard to schedule.
-- Dan Fylstra
%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%
Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the
salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon.
%
Interpreter, n.:
One who enables two persons of different languages to
understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to
the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure.
%
I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
A bit or byte to read or write,
I/O, I/O, I/O
%
INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
%
Irrationality is the square root of all evil
-- Douglas Hofstadter
%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is
meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a
soap bubble?
%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get
out, and such as are out wish to get in?
-- Ralph Emerson
%
Is your job running? You'd better go catch it!
%
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
listen to weather forecasts and economists?
-- Kelvin Throop III
%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune
tellers take economists seriously?
%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
The Course of Progress:
Most things get steadily worse.
The Path of Progress:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%
It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working
as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he
had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked,
"What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed
Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival
came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer
this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the
Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so.
To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's
your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked,
"Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
%
It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown
came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and
applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I
think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the
wits, who believe that it is a joke.
-- S. A. Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
%
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself
that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that
one can learn."
-- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
%
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have
been searching for evidence which could support this.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in
organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be
self-critical?
-- Alan Perlis
%
It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of
Urbana, Illinois.
%
It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will
not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves
and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like
mature human beings ...
-- Playboy, January 1983
%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a
pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the
sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color.
-- Voltaire
%
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always
assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had
achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst
all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having
a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that
they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same
reasons.
Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert
mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
misinterpreted ...
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be
coming up it.
-- Henry Allen
%
It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
One in a million, perhaps.
%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark
%
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three
benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never
to use either.
-- Mark Twain
%
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by
twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
-- Rod Serling
%
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is
lightly greased.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community
a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to
treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the
focus of attention, the harder the task.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.
%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
people.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood
Boulevard at one time.
%
It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
%
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry
a tune.
-- Woody Allen
%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
%
It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not
desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
-- Woody Allen
%
It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our
offense consists in doubting it.
-- Justice Robert H. Jackson
%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the
problem.
%
It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be
privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to
corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
%
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one
damn thing over and over.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
%
It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is?
-- Elizabeth Carpenter
%
It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit.
%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that
virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire
%
It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their
dignity.
%
It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared
to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.
-- Havelock Ellis
%
It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to
students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential
programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of
regeneration.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the
lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as
high as the eagle?
%
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more
glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through
which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the
day, that is the highest of arts.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
%
It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad
crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed
until the other has gone.
%
It is the business of little minds to shrink.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind
%
It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for
five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But
it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you.
%
It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the
future.
%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%
It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
good either if you speak when your head is empty.
%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
%
It runs like _x, where _x is something unsavory
-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the
flag.
%
It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the
municipality.
-- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
%
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing,
but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous.
-- Robert Benchly
%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%
It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot.
%
It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a
breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was
broken ...
-- James Dent
%
It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps
I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I
don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and
the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual
charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its
novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but
yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable
man a lifetime.
-- Thomas Aldrich
%
It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east
laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The
thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle,
nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying
for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's.
Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating
under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting
icepacks.
-- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like
the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on
the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work.
%
It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human
nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant
examples.
-- Charles Dickens
%
It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing
warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or
two things still safe to eat.
-- Robert Fuoss
%
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word.
-- Andrew Jackson
%
It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.
-- Cheers
%
It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
%
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
-- Steven Wright
%
"It's a summons."
"What's a summons?"
"It means summon's in trouble."
-- Rocky and Bullwinkle
%
It's a very *__UN*lucky week in which to be took dead.
-- Churchy La Femme
%
It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black.
%
It's bad luck to be superstitious.
-- Andrew W. Mathis
%
It's better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all.
-- Marty Winch
%
"It's easier said than done."
... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than
said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than
said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than
done".
%
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
%
It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for
being right.
%
It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!
-- Macy's
%
It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
%
It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it
is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It
isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
-- Oxford University Press, "Edpress News"
%
It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right.
Put your hands on your hips
And pull your knees in tight.
But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insa-a-a-a-a-ane!
LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN!
-- Rocky Horror Picture Show
%
It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
-- Walt Disney
%
"It's Like This"
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk.
%
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong
direction.
%
It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name.
%
It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre.
-- Sam Goldwyn
%
It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
-- George Burns
%
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
-- Phil White
%
It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either.
-- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%
It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too.
-- Alexander Korda
%
It's not just a computer -- it's your ass.
-- Cal Keegan
%
It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's
what you're taking for it...
%
It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off
the ground.
-- Daniel B. Luten
%
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it
happens.
-- Woody Allen
%
It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
-- Garfield
%
It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that
English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many
other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.
-- Sydney J. Harris
%
It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%
It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the
Devil when he is the only explanation of it.
%
It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which
raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody
not to.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
It's the thought, if any, that counts!
%
JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
by Mark Isaak
Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their
hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices
are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some
BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it
to him.
So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path,
he met the traveling salesman.
"Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman
in high-level language.
"I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
"I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when
he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she
started thrashing.
"Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the
window ...
%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%
James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total
indifference to public notice to be universally recognized.
-- Tom Stoppard
%
Jenkinson's Law:
It won't work.
%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%
Job Placement, n.:
Telling your boss what he can do with your job.
%
Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
%
Johnson's First Law:
When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
most inconvenient possible time.
%
Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called
"Bureaucracy". Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do
anything loses.
%
Join the march to save individuality!
%
Jone's Law:
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone
to blame it on.
%
Jone's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%
Jones's First Law:
Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction
to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their
original contribution.
%
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
(and nobody cares about it).
-- Bill Joy 6/21/85
%
Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good
solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires
one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the
winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is
because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise
mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political
motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the
whole truth.
-- Stephen R. Schwambach
%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has
changed.
-- Irene Peter
%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he
knows what it is.
%
Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you
get a prompt, type like hell.
%
Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't
immune to bullets.
-- The Brigadier, "Dr. Who"
%
Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some
of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?
-- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
%
Just remember, it all started with a mouse.
-- Walt Disney
%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to
twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%
`Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.
'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true.'
%
Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a
faster rat!!!
%
Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven!
-- Michael J. Wagner
%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%
Justice, n.:
A decision in your favor.
%
K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining;
Cobol's wordy and confining;
KOBOLDS topple when you strike them;
Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to
wear tail lights.
%
Katz' Law:
Man and nations will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.
%
Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
%
Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze
- Hellman's Mayonnaise
%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
(1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
force is technically termed "car suck").
(2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
than "Watch this!"
%
Keep your Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now ... try to get something DONE!
%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most
automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the
numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the
driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the
dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know
what's wrong."
%
Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College:
Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students,
and parking for the faculty.
%
Kids have *_____never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could
travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the
original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate
teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for
grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate
teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Kin, n.:
An affliction of the blood.
%
Kinkler's First Law:
Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law:
All the easy problems have been solved.
%
Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack.
%
Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through
any of its streets.
%
Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
%
Kiss your keyboard goodbye!
%
Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within.
%
Kleptomaniac, n.:
A rich thief.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%
Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
-- Henry N. Camp
%
Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr):
The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Labor, n.:
One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Lackland's Laws:
(1) Never be first.
(2) Never be last.
(3) Never volunteer for anything
%
Lactomangulation, n.:
Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Ladybug, ladybug,
Look to your stern!
Your house is on fire,
Your children will burn!
So jump ye and sing, for
The very first time
The four lines above
Have been put into rhyme.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Laetrile is the pits
%
Langsam's Laws:
(1) Everything depends.
(2) Nothing is always.
(3) Everything is sometimes.
%
Larkinson's Law:
All laws are basically false.
%
Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with
was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting
pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the
farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their
sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do
you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her?
What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead
of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under
the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops
whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which
Lassie filed the applications for.
-- Dave Barry
%
Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment
had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to
my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'
-- Steven Wright
%
Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police
record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense
of humor.
%
Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won.
%
Laugh at your problems; everybody else does.
%
Laughter is the closest distance between two people."
-- Victor Borge
%
Law of Communications:
The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications
between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of
misunderstanding.
%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
distributed.
%
Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary:
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is
directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the
bread to butter.
%
Laws of Serendipity:
(1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for
something.
(2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already
be engaged in making an inferior one.
%
Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom:
No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats --
approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
%
Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
%
Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and
everything else follows in the same way.
-- Alan J. Perlis
%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%
Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the
fun?
%
Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
"Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour
unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a
drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he
can."
%
Leibowitz's Rule:
When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
hold the hammer with both hands.
%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are
pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike
honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people
are thieves.
%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore.
Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because
you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of
fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got
a sick sense of humor.
%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%
Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a
number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash
and another number.
-- James Estes
%
Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
You first.
%
Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every
relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you
really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the
end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the
qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and
bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind
his back.
-- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn
%
Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
Mental Anguish. You would sue:
* The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
in there".
* The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
cretin like yourself.
* Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
a large cash settlement anyway.
-- Dave Barry
%
Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often
overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of
dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your
tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to
spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe
money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will
probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care?
It's not his money.
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or
to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in
public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result
in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn
will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed
agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P.
Sevenoaks
%
Lewis's Law of Travel:
The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to
anyone, ever.
%
Liar, n.:
A lawyer with a roving commission.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
%
LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22)
Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your
desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and
polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that.
%
LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay.
Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most
Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal
disease.
%
Lie, n.:
A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.
%
Lieberman's Law:
Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%
Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to
eat it nevertheless.
-- Flaubert
%
Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it.
%
Life is like a simile.
%
Life is like an analogy.
%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find
there is nothing in it.
%
Life is too important to take seriously.
-- Corky Siegel
%
Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove.
%
Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility.
-- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
%
Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
weren't for other people.
-- Blore
%
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
%
Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
-- Marvin, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking
for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
-- Alan McKay
%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%
Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe
we should think only about today.
Charlie Brown:
No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get
better.
%
Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night.
-- Candice Bergen
%
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip
around the Sun.
%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted
before.
%
Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And plunged it deep into the VAX;
Don't you envy people who
Do all the things ___YOU want to do?
%
Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these
interest rates, we don't need it."
%
Lobster:
Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are
squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the
only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to
eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial
before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most
ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime
in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its
unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of
the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout,
"Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a
memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe
at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot.
Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be,
too.
-- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and
Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
%
Lockwood's Long Shot:
The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't
one in a million, but once would be enough.
%
Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *_____awful*.
%
... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
legally ... impeccable!
%
Logicians have but ill defined
As rational the human kind.
Logic, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
-- Oliver Goldsmith
%
Look out! Behind you!
%
Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us
to pay income taxes, too?
-- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
%
Loose bits sink chips.
%
Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying
"BOOGA, BOOGA!"
%
Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
%
Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in
Halstead, Kansas.
%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the
world has ever seen.
%
Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
-- Sigmund Freud
%
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it
flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
-- Matt Groening
%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with
the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
Love is sentimental measles.
%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
%
Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood.
-- Louise Beal
%
Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
%
Love's Drug
My love is like an iron wand
That conks me on the head,
My love is like the valium
That I take before my bed,
My love is like the pint of scotch
That I drink when I be dry;
And I shall love thee still, my dear,
Until my wife is wise.
%
Lowery's Law:
If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
anyway.
%
LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand.
%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.
%
Lunatic Asylum, n.:
The place where optimism most flourishes.
%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%
MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into
the smallest amount of thoughts.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Machine-Independent, adj.:
Does not run on any existing machine.
%
Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate,
and play games -- but not with pleasure.
-- Leo Rosten
%
Mad, adj.:
Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them
first for seven hours, they always come out tender.
-- W. C. Fields
%
MAFIA, n:
[Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is
rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an
imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
entire nodal aggravations.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism.
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
The two definition immediately preceding are condensed from the works
of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject
with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human
knowledge.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Magnocartic, adj.:
Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%
Magpie, n.:
A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it
might be taught to talk.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Maier's Law:
If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of.
Corollaries:
(1) The bigger the theory, the better.
(2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than
50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to
obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.
%
Maintainer's Motto:
If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
%
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly
as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Majority, n.:
That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%
Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist!
%
Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users
tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It
has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is
the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files.
-- System V.2 administrator's guide
%
Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%
Man 1: Ask me what the most important thing about telling a good
joke is.
Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
Man 1: ______TIMING!
%
Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called
upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the
only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
%
Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it
is an enemy.
-- Albert Einstein
%
Man, n.:
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks
he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief
occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which,
however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole
habitable earth and Canada.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Mandrell: "You know what I think?"
Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you
don't think, right?"
-- Dr. Who
%
Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history,
dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive
man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the
air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first
primitive umpire.
What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as
mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
%
Manual, n.:
A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a
given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The
information you need is in the others.
-- Ray Simard
%
Many years ago in a period commonly known as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ...
-- Walt Kelly
%
Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery:
Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a
simple yes or no answer.
%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%
Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on
the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam
dancing.
-- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83
%
Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.
-- Malcolm Smith
%
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated.
-- R. Drabek
%
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they
translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something
entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
%
Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is
described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can
play.
-- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by
James Blish
%
Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence.
%
Matter cannot be created or destroyed,
nor can it be returned without a receipt.
%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer
%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts.
%
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones.
%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a
Thousand Caramels.
%
Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology.
-- R. S. Barton
%
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge
it.
%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not
$19.95.
%
Meader's Law:
Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
everyone you know, only more so.
%
Meeting, n.:
An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or
department not represented in the room must solve a problem.
%
Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha
Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man
had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and
it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...
[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important
world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the
next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.]
... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even
more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a
fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the
older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and
obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the
window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger
hotshot cells moving up from below.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the
cork makes when it is popped.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that
is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can
ever hope to acquire it.
%
Menu, n.:
A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of.
%
Meskimen's Law:
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to
do it over.
%
MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched.
%
Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it.
%
methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin-
ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl-
phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu-
taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl-
glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala-
nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta-
minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly-
cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl-
leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu-
cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva-
lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro-
sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu-
cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe-
nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala-
nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas-
partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl-
glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl-
valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu-
cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi-
nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse-
rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl-
glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly-
sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro-
lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl-
glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.:
The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a
1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids.
-- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and
Preposterous Words
%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%
Micro Credo:
Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%
Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been
watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks.
%
Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you
out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles.
-- Casablanca
%
Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO
inconsiderate."
-- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
%
Miksch's Law:
If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Millihelen, adj:
The amount of beauty required to launch one ship.
%
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with
themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
%
Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that
politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum
and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they
are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to
rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all
the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert
Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert
Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when
Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the
black.
-- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery"
%
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.
%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%
Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap
pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
-- Russell Baker
%
Misfortune, n.:
The kind of fortune that never misses.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Miss, n.:
A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that
they are in the market.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are
held to discuss it.
%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water 2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
Cinnamon
Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break
RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar
and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon
juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously
with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top
crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let
steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust
is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
-- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked
him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just
last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew
better.
%
Molecule, n.:
The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished
from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a
closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of
matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the
atom in that it is an ion ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented
it wasn't worth doing.
%
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
%
Monday, n.:
In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
%
Money is the root of all wealth.
%
Moon, n.:
1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to
hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC).
%
Mophobia, n.:
Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian.
%
MORE SPORTS RESULTS:
The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last
Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while
the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the
Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could
paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player
took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting
their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player
said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a
fight and the match was called by officials.
%
More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One
path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total
extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
-- Woody Allen, "Side Effects"
%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd
be out of a job.
%
Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex
because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs
and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little
eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around
and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the
female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just
dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven
by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the
truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of
them that it doesn't make any difference.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
than they do.
-- Turgenev
%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
-- Frank Zappa
%
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
-- Arnold Bennett
%
Mother is the invention of necessity.
%
Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before.
%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
%
"Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams)
"365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old
Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his
pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes
in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be
in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he,
133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!" An electronic
computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much
fun to watch.
-- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics)
%
Murphy's Discovery:
Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to
women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything
will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in
trouble!
%
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't
work.
%
Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%
Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Goedel's Theorem ...
-- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow"
%
Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret
military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and
Esther and hustle them off to prison.
They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day
and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation
movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court,
charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them
if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call
her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not
possible, and turns to Murray.
"This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
spits in the sergeants face.
"Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
Mustgo, n.:
Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
long it has become a science project.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%
My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it.
-- "Grendel", by John Gardner
%
My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I
threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste.
First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the
frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up
the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed
forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier
perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through
the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative
crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a
symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state
in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I
really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded
OK.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless
there are three other people.
-- Orson Welles
%
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand
times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and
sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right
through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever
listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just
log out again.
%
My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?
-- MadameX
%
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
And I wish he were in Asia.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
-- Groucho Marx
%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
And I wish I'd never met him.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!!
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%
My pen is at the bottom of a page,
Which, being finished, here the story ends;
'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done,
But stories somehow lengthen when begun.
-- Byron
%
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
-- Christopher Morley
%
My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies
%
Mythology, n.:
The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its
origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished
from the true accounts which it invents later.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa);
n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc);
n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0);
n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00);
n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000);
-- C code which reverses the bits in a word.
%
Naeser's Law:
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.
%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he
says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says
will be right.
-- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny"
%
Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant
said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next
time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone
might steal it."
%
Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the
villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time,"
said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the
villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The
remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he
said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of
my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually
spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to.
%
Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to
serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk
into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?"
"Never." "Then how do you know it was me?"
%
Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful
than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the
light more."
%
Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver
pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of
meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it,
"Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without
the recipe?"
%
Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of
conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the
fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he
is most likely to be creamed?
-- Solomon Short
%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%
Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it
cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs.
-- Fran Leibowitz
%
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
Necessity is a mother.
%
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
-- Lin Yutang
%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
%
Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off.
%
Never drink Coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled
with the chemicals in Coke produce hallucinations. People tend to
change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually
fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators
have windows.
%
Never eat more than you can lift.
-- Miss Piggy
%
Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
%
Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
%
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
-- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation"
%
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to
make it complex and wonderful.
%
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a
law against it by that time.
%
Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower.
%
Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient.
%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
-- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS
%
Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon.
%
Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's
supposed to do.
-- R. A. Heinlein
%
New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt.
%
New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in
any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
%
New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of
Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
%
New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area.
-- Monty Python's Big Red Book
%
New systems generate new problems.
%
New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and
his wife most often reminds him to act it.
-- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary
%
New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors.
%
New York's got the ways and means;
Just won't let you be.
-- The Grateful Dead
%
Newlan's Truism:
An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government
economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job.
%
NEWS FLASH!!
Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West
German pole-vault champion.
%
*** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!
%
Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.
%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day.
As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.
%
Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying
as an income tax refund.
-- F. J. Raymond
%
Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name
correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into
(Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but
Americans call him by value.
%
Nine megs for the secretaries fair,
Seven megs for the hackers scarce,
Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs,
Three megs for system source;
One disk to rule them all,
One disk to bind them,
One disk to hold the files
And in the darkness grind 'em.
%
Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes
And tapes without any tracks;
Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes
And tapes mixed up on the racks --
Take hold of the tape
And pull off the strip,
And then you'll be sure
Your tape drive will skip.
-- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%
Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they
would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect
that much.
-- Augustine
%
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
%
Nirvana? That's the place where the powers that be and their friends
hang out.
-- Zonker Harris
%
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless
absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
-- Fran Leibowitz
%
No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a
camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform
effectively under such difficult conditions.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
No good deed goes unpunished.
-- Clare Boothe Luce
%
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after
eating one peanut.
-- Channing Pollock
%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will
seriously cramp his style.
%
No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.
%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%
No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid.
%
No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval
system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of
the author.
-- Chris Shaw
%
No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
CHORUS:
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
(chorus)
Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
(chorus)
%
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
-- C. Schulz
%
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
%
No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied
occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an
indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining
occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as
an indication-applied occurrence.
-- ALGOL 68 Report
%
No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper.
-- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
taken over by Rupert Murdoch
%
No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'
-- Dr. Who
%
Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION.
%
Nobody said computers were going to be polite.
%
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in
order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the
substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young
and rob the old.
-- Lewis Lapham
%
Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%
Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
%
Noncombatant, n.:
A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong.
%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the
Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats
in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the
moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a
dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every
respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside
it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms,
then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they
chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none.
-- William Shakespeare
%
Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper
is from the wrong kind of tree.
-- Professor W., EECS, George Washington University
%
Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter
of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund
is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is
careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
-- Woody Allen
%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light ...
To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the
light comes on.
%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young
%
Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires
tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.
-- Nero Wolfe
%
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Conscience makes egotists of us all.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell
%
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charlie Brown
%
November, n.:
The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
%
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
the following questions:
(1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
food?
(2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
(3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living
right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
longer.)
That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
%
Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called
Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that
were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ...
-- "The Begatting of a President"
%
Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette.
-- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354
%
... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to
get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in
the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs
on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage
children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a
snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn
to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about
a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an
outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does
he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect
Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks
Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some
kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your
children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop
quickly.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home
tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where
they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of
Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon
administration. In either the hardware or housewares department,
you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and
described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with
interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools
that Americans might use around the home. Buy it.
This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it
inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off
if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to
direct sunlight.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
%
Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of
normal routines, for children and adults alike.
-- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack"
%
Nuclear war would really set back cable.
-- Ted Turner
%
[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable.
-- Edwin Meese III
%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%
(null cookie; hope that's ok)
%
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
%
O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say?
%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
Murphy was an optimist.
%
Of ______course it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a
fake?
%
Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the
reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest
amount of hot air.
-- Thomas L. Martin
%
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.
-- Plato
%
Of all the words of witch's doom
There's none so bad as which and whom.
The man who kills both which and whom
Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
-- Fletcher Knebel
%
Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power
tools aren't soluble in alcohol ...
-- Crazy Nigel
%
Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.
%
Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%.
And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a
blazer.
%
Office Automation, n.:
The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone
you would want to talk with over coffee.
%
Ogden's Law:
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch
up.
%
Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo!
%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
I muck with indices and structs all day
And when it works, I shout hoo-ray
Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay
%
Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd
be irresponsible, too.
-- Lichty & Wagner
%
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --
Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence.
Hovering there
I've chased the shouting wind along and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up along delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never lark, or even eagle flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
-- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight"
%
Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes.
%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-- A. E. Housman
%
Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
%
OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard.
-- Dr. Joy
%
OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
%
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
%
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
%
Oliver's Law:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
it.
%
Omnibiblious, adj.:
Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything.
I'm omnibiblious."
%
OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need four GALLONS of
JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O
as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ...
WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES?
%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
-- Wolfgang Pauli
%
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only
nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter
what it does.
-- Will Rogers
%
On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's
income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than
$283 on the desk before the cashier.
"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That
route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and
worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!"
%
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created jerks.
-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
%
On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a
POINT ...
%
On the subject of C program indentation:
"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
-- Blair P. Houghton
%
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-- Charles Babbage
%
On-line, adj.:
The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a
computer.
%
Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were
forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.
-- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee"
%
Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that
each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his
choice.
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians
called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukkah"
and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People
passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy
Hanukkah!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!"
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict,
Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease".
Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your
principals or your mistress".
%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon your knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."
Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human
beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by
side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them
which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the
sky.
-- Rainer Rilke
%
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a
great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to
the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of
life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But
one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is
going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I
shall die of boredom."
The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that
current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the
rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!"
But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go,
and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.
Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current
lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.
And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried,
"See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the
Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current
said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us
free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this
adventure.
But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to
the rocks, making legends of a Saviour.
%
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of
the smaller prime numbers.
2: The Odd Prime --
It's the only even prime, therefore it's odd. QED.
3: The True Prime --
Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime
in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91
received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the
next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none
at all.
Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are
derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but
true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
%
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you
with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday
shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday
advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a
shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take
them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Once, adv.:
Enough.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least
somebody's listening.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
"One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative."
Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this.
The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame.
-- Chuq Von Rospach
%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means.
%
One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing
how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
-- Professor Charles P. Issawi
%
One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell
the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald
announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to
a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The
captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth
-- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin,
"to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if
I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!"
"Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth."
%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled.
%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they
never have to stop and answer the phone.
%
One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious.
-- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)
%
One learns to itch where one can scratch.
-- Ernest Bramah
%
One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as
one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will
produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to
represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as
many ...
-- Anthony Chevins
%
One man's theology is another man's belly laugh.
%
One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How
will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net,
I'll tell you."
%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people.
%
One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible
from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at
least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts
are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but
when He's good, nobody can touch Him.
-- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983
%
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to
do and always a clever thing to say.
-- Will Durant
%
One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that,
lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of
their C programs.
-- Robert Firth
%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God
create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "________somebody has to buy
retail."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984
%
One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your
seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best
way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who
fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become
disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas.
%
The Seventh Commandments for Technicians
Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy
fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in
other ways.
%
The First Commandment for Technicians:
Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged
capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
untechnician-like manner.
%
One Page Principle:
A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch
paper cannot be understood.
-- Mark Ardis
%
One planet is all you get.
%
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that
they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's
say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding
study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by
sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag,
strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus
rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also
be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr.
Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle
Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save
millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently
support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that
your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members
of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are
already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
One reason why George Washington
Is held in such veneration:
He never blamed his problems
On the former Administration.
-- George O. Ludcke
%
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
%
One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of
sheer terror.
-- W. K. Hartmann
%
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a
new model.
%
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
%
One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned
at the stake while the votes were being counted.
-- Thomas B. Reed
%
One-Shot Case Study, n.:
The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which
it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes
green.
%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%
Only God can make random selections.
%
Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to
use the editorial "we."
%
Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer.
%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%
Oregano, n.:
The ancient Italian art of pizza folding.
%
Oregon, n.:
Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday
night.
%
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds.
Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams
%
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
%
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.
%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is
they charge fifteen cents for them.
%
Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the
office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we
were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of
juice. But only *__he* had a lollipop.
He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?"
Her reply:
"He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it
means to be a programmer."
%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
In kernel as it is in user!
%
Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.
-- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries
%
... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce
Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One
thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If
somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it
on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what
a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
-- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
%
Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it.
-- Alex Schure
%
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
-- General Omar N. Bradley
%
OUTCONERR
Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes
Did logzerneg the ifthen block
All kludgy were the function flows
And subroutines adhoc.
Beware the runtime-bug my friend
squrooneg, the false goto
Beware the infiniteloop
And shun the inprectoo.
%
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog,
it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
%
Overdrawn? But I still have checks left!
%
Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket.
%
Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated.
%
Ozman's Laws:
(1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he
won't.
(2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they
make.
(3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't.
(4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth.
%
Painting, n.:
The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and
exposing them to the critic.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
panic: can't find /
%
panic: kernel trap (ignored)
%
Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much
better.
-- Laurie Anderson
%
Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them.
%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%
Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one.
%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to
criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too.
-- D. J. Hicks
%
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Everything else causes cancer in rats.
%
Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
%
Parker's Law:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%
Parsley
is gharsley.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.
%
Pascal is not a high-level language.
-- Steven Feiner
%
Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat.
-- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340
%
Pascal Users:
To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the
death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed.
%
Pascal, n.:
A programming language named after a man who would turn over in
his grave if he knew about it.
%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
%
Patageometry, n.:
The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant
under brain transplants.
%
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale.
%
Paul's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you
save.
%
Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.
%
Peace, n.:
In international affairs, a period of cheating between two
periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Peanut Blossoms
4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
8 eggs 4 tsp. soda
4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie
sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a
Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a
hell of a lot.
%
Pecor's Health-Food Principle:
Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in
it.
%
Pedaeration, n.:
The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the
sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Penguin Trivia #46:
Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were.
-- Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.
-- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%
People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of
the future.
%
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
-- Ken Kesey
%
People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed.
%
People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better
press than people who are just funny and smart.
-- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
%
People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never
slept in a room with a single mosquito.
%
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who
haven't what they want that they don't want it.
-- Ogden Nash
%
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that
Benjamin Franklin said it first.
%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%
People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they
did yesterday.
%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt.
"Confound those who have said our remarks before us."
-- Aelius Donatus
%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%
Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
when there is no longer anything to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%
Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity!
%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
themselves.
%
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersey.
%
Philogeny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogeny.
%
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.
-- John Keats
%
Pick another fortune cookie.
%
Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional
hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational
sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ...
%
Pig, n.:
An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race
by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is
inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your
associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack
confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible
things to small animals.
%
PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20)
Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the
American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as
nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will
probably get run over by a bus.
%
Pittsburgh Driver's Test
(7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light
but a steady left tail light. This means
(a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
to call the problem to the driver's attention.
(b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
(c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
(d) the driver is from out of town.
The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign
countries to signal turns.
%
Pittsburgh Driver's Test
(8) Pedestrians are
(a) irrelevant.
(b) communists.
(c) a nuisance.
(d) difficult to clean off the front grille.
The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
%
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
-- Don Marquis
%
PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the
solution set.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
Plaese porrf raed.
-- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
%
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia
because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers
couldn't compete successfully with poets.
-- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half
Shell"
%
Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them.
%
Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table.
-- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%
Please take note:
%
Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas"
until you are told that those rooms are "punched out". Once punched
out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas,
and such.
-- N. Meyrowitz
%
Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means?
%
Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm
into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing
problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the
radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how
plumbing works.
A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system,
except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires,
it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets
and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at
all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can
kill you.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
%
Pohl's law:
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
%
Police: Good evening, are you the host?
Host: No.
Police: We've been getting complaints about this party.
Host: About the drugs?
Police: No.
Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns?
Police: No, the noise.
Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns
or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the
background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise?
The neighbors?
Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent
complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could
ask the host to quiet things down?
Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagen bug with primitive
religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living
room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the
lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out
onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind
down.
%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
%
Politician, n.:
An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of
organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the
agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared
with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Politician, n.:
From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or
"face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence
"polytetien", a person of two or more faces.
-- Martin Pitt
%
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even
where there is no river.
-- Nikita Khrushchev
%
Politics is like coaching a football team. You have to be smart enough
to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest.
%
Polymer physicists are into chains.
%
Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the
Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The
white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before
it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his
name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with
laughter, singing
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the chimney smokes
Pope Goestheveezl
The square was finally cleared by armed carabinieri with tears of
laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for
hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron
Hans Neizant B"ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K"oln in 1653.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Portable, adj.:
Survives system reboot.
%
Positive, adj.:
Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth.
%
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987
%
Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
%
Power, n:
The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.
%
Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little
more time for dreaming.
-- J. P. McEvoy
%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and
forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax.
%
President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the
vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting.
-- The Washington Post
%
Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist!
%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
It's on the other side.
%
[Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves
to see him work.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
-- Frederick Winsor
%
Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have
orgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, which
is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
encryption standard and they came up with ...
Student: EBCDIC!
%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem.
Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on
his exam. Newell has now tossed five shutouts this quarter. Newell's
earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%
%
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to
build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying
to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-- Rich Cook
%
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.
This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them. Induction
techniques are very popular; even the military used them.
SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.
We know it's true for _n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than _n. _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
as large as we want. If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n. We
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
about _n.
QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
%
Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of
legs for a horse.
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.
Topics to be covered in future issues include proof by:
Intimidation
Gesticulation (handwaving)
"Try it; it works"
Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
Blatant assertion
Changing all the 2's to _n's
Mutual consent
Lack of a counterexample, and
"It stands to reason"
%
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
BBW Branch Both Ways
BEW Branch Either Way
BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full
BH Branch and Hang
BMR Branch Multiple Registers
BOB Branch On Bug
BPO Branch on Power Off
BST Backspace and Stretch Tape
CDS Condense and Destroy System
CLBR Clobber Register
CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately
CM Circulate Memory
CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming
CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip
CRN Convert to Roman Numerals
%
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
DC Divide and Conquer
DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key
DO Divide and Overflow
EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator
EPI Execute Programmer Immediately
EROS Erase Read Only Storage
EXCE Execute Customer Engineer
HCF Halt and Catch Fire
IBP Insert Bug and Proceed
INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out])
PBC Print and Break Chain
PDSK Punch Disk
%
Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set:
PI Punch Invalid
POPI Punch Operator Immediately
PVLC Punch Variable Length Card
RASC Read And Shred Card
RPM Read Programmers Mind
RSSC Reduce Speed, Step Carefully (for improved accuracy)
RTAB Rewind Tape and Break
RWDSK Rewind Disk
RWOC Read Writing On Card
SCRBL Scribble to disk - faster than a write
SLC Search for Lost Chord
SPSW Scramble Program Status Word
SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk
STROM Store in Read Only Memory
TDB Transfer and Drop Bit
WBT Water Binary Tree
%
Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller
than the both put together.
%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check
three friends. If they're OK, you're it.
%
Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well
anyhow and is certainly a damn fool.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves
to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way
to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the
cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in
fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a
lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of
the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.
%
Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
%
Put no trust in cryptic comments.
%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%
Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A: One per person.
%
Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
%
Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
%
Q: How many DEC repairmen does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've
brought with them.
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb
itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
%
Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb
in San Francisco?
A: Both of them.
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%
Q: How many IBM CPUs does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%
Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001,
Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of
the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20%
of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences
of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
%
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government
plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer
prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb
assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
%
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
%
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
to the earlier joke.
%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those
Californians trying to share the experience.
%
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub
with brightly colored machine tools.
%
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
of the way.
%
Q: What's a light-year?
A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
%
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
%
Q: Why do ducks have flat feet?
A: To stamp out forest fires.
Q: Why do elephants have flat feet?
A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
%
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
%
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What
should I do?
A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on
believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be
the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No
time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if
somebody else has made the correction.
And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're
the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have
to inform the whole net right away!
-- Brad Templeton, "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions
on Netiquette"
%
Quality Control, n.:
The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
%
Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?
%
Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
%
Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!!
%
Quidquid latine dictum est, altum videtur.
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
%
Quigley's Law:
Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will
attempt to use it.
%
QUOTE OF THE DAY:
`
%
Qvid me anxivs svm?
%
QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]:
1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69
kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [colloq.] one
thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [anat.] a
painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [slang]
person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert.
-- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed.
%
Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives.
%
Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something
I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of
computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport
store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told
all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all
the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are
they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current
rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on
Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be
impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying
goes, giving away the store?
-- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President
%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-- Dorothy Parker, "Resume", 1926
%
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe
the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described
with pictures.
%
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
Congress. But I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain
%
Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic
value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is
much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice
this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA.
%
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware
has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing
machines are so poor at I/O.
%
Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are
so long they can't afford the disk space.
%
Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write
in anything less portable than a number two pencil.
%
Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker
with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they
hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for
applications.)
%
Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run
on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo
sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet.
%
Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured
programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-
trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
clear desks.
%
Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine
doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell
quiche.
%
Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it
should be hard to understand.
%
Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the
illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how
much good it did them.
%
Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires
you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers
wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly
spring up in the middle of the machine room.
%
Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write
in BASIC after reaching puberty.
%
Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress
freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who
wear white socks.
%
Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who
can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN.
%
Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue.
%
Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use
functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them?
%
Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness.
This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a
computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package.
%
Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and
greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any
moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that
systems could be virtual at *___all* levels. They would like personal
computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your
DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their
Correctness Verification Aid packages.
%
Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the
job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like
using an undocumented external procedure.
%
Real Time, adj.:
Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there
and then.
%
Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never
afraid to break your face.
%
Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts
down the system for days.
%
Real Users hate Real Programmers.
%
Real Users know your home telephone number.
%
Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your
program doesn't deliver it.
%
Real Users never use the Help key.
%
Real World, The n.:
1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may
be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To
programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related
to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and
tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5.
4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university.
"Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used
pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking
of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a
deceased person.
%
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
%
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
%
Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth?
-- Patrick Sky
%
Reality is for people who lack imagination.
%
Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction.
%
Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.
-- Alvy Ray Smith
%
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away"
-- Philip K. Dick
%
Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!
%
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than
being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
-- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot"
%
Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you
lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict,
but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and
Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3
recessions.
%
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
%
"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
-- Ogden Nash
%
"Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe
again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know
which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A
spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the
starfield surrounding the ship.
"Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC
announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they
are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been
intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and
transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown.
Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious."
-- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star"
%
Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia:
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
%
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
-- Anatole France
%
Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it.
-- Dave Barry
%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be
worse in Cleveland.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good
offense!
%
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
%
Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
-- Dave Butler
%
Renning's Maxim:
Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.
%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%
Reporter, n.:
A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a
tempest of words.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system?
SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that
the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can
carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away."
I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind
of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to
do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of
ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we
need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political
career by being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but
that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I
can't help it.
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun
%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get
another chance later on.
%
Review Questions
(1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH,
and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before
he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the
Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship?
(2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks
twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks
every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off
his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week?
(3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers
the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a
pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King
Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice?
%
Rhode's Law:
When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening,
circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly,
empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred,
induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always
for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage,
material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or
none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed,
proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably,
universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it
becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe.
%
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
-- Steven Wright
%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will
reject the proposal.
%
Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
-- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo"
%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-
door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
%
Rudin's Law:
If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it
every time.
%
Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London:
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall
be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person
shall be deemed to be a cat.
%
Rule of Creative Research:
(1) Never draw what you can copy.
(2) Never copy what you can trace.
(3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%
Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly
content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom.
%
Rule of the Great:
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%
Rules for Academic Deans:
(1) HIDE!!!!
(2) If they find you, LIE!!!!
-- Father Damian C. Fandal
%
Rules for driving in New York:
(1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal.
(2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers
on.
(3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the
intersection.
%
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
(1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
(2) Never leave the table hungry.
(3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
(4) Enjoy your food.
(5) Enjoy your companion's food.
(6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to
accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
(7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare,
for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a
brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
(8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
(9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You
can always eat it later.
(10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
(11) Avoid blue food.
-- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
%
Rules:
(1) The boss is always right.
(2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1.
%
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead.
(1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs,
ants.
(2) Something is missing in your personal relationships.
(3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate.
(4) You have a hard time getting a waiter.
(5) Exotic birds flock around you.
(6) People ignore you at parties.
(7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning.
(8) You no longer get off on cocaine.
%
Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence
(1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear
bomb; use the stairs.
(2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit
the ground.
(3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials.
(4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to
psychological problems.
(5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to
recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed
potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc.
(6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs
will be scarce in the post-nuclear age.
(7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles.
(8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be
staggering illegally.
(9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more
sanitary due to limited circulation.
(10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on
D-Day.
%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority
of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People
laugh at you a great deal.
%
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
-- Herb Caen
%
San Francisco, n.:
Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse.
%
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind.
-- Mark Harrold
%
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
Must be a pacifist.
What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
-- Arlo Guthrie
%
Satellite Safety Tip #14:
If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck.
%
Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.
%
Saturday night in Toledo Ohio,
Is like being nowhere at all,
All through the day how the hours rush by,
You sit in the park and you watch the grass die.
-- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio"
%
Sauron is alive in Argentina!
%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%
Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
%
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
%
Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I
ordered French Toast in the Renaissance.
-- Steven Wright
%
SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out!
-- Ken Thompson
%
Schapiro's Explanation:
The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's
because they use more manure.
%
Schizophrenia beats being alone.
%
Schlattwhapper, n.:
The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down,
hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Schnuffel, n.:
A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in
mixed company.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Schwiggle, n.:
The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a
pencil.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made
of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts
is not necessarily science.
-- Henri Poincar'e
%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%
Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
-- William Buckley
%
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.
%
Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%
Scott's second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found
to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation.
%
Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it!
Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock?
Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table.
Kirk: Then it's of external origin?
Spock: Affirmative.
Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two.
Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two.
%
Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
%
Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the
Presidency.
-- Richard Nixon
%
Second Law of Business Meetings:
If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
will pick the wrong one.
Corollary:
If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
wrong, anyway.
%
Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State).
In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a
multiline message byte.
In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message
must be sent passive true.
The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter:
(1) The ANRS if DAV is false
(2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither:
(a) The LADS is active
(b) Nor LACS is active
-- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for
Programmable Instrumentation
%
Security check: INTRUDER ALERT!
%
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ...
%
Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
Ice Cream cures all ills.
%
Self Test for Paranoia:
You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's
your own fault.
%
Seminars, n.:
From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion.
%
Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would
notify you if the record has pornographic material or
material glorifying violence?"
Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me."
Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's
legs on the album cover is good indication that it's
not for little Johnny."
-- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock
lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985
%
Senate, n.:
A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and
misdemeanors.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Serenity through viciousness.
%
Serocki's Stricture:
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
%
"Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated
thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY
advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now."
"I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly.
"Too proud?" the other enquired.
Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean,"
she said, "that one can't help growing older."
"ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With
proper assistance, you might have left off at seven."
-- Lewis Carroll
%
Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a
big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at
reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's
build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up
like crabgrass all over the United States.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke.
%
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
-- Swami X
%
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
-- M. C. Reed
%
Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go,
it's one of the best.
-- Woody Allen
%
Shamus, n. [Yiddish]:
A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the
temple, and makes sure everything is in working order.
A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagogue
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be
bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I
am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks
he's nobody!"
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
-- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
Teen Should Know"
%
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
want to use it.
%
She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to.
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%
She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
-- Mark Twain
%
She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them
were bad.
%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could
have poured on a waffle ...
%
She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing,
you should hear me play piano.'
-- Morrisey
%
She's genuinely bogus.
%
Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have
taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an
excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature.
-- Samuel Johnson
%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%
Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%
Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
-- from the Brown University Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%
Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%
Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%
Since I hurt my pendulum
My life is all erratic.
My parrot, who was cordial,
Is now transmitting static.
The carpet died, a palm collapsed,
The cat keeps doing poo.
The only thing that keeps me sane
Is talking to my shoe.
-- My Shoe
%
Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
alive.
-- John Sloan
%
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
-- Bob "Mountain" Beck
%
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally
examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published
Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry
comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should
have gotten.
%
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
to work.
%
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I
neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they
were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a
testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
chains.
-- Frederick Douglass
%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
(1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
check.
(2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
(3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.
%
Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ...
%
Slurm, n.:
The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
it sits in the dish too long.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
-- Fletcher Knebel
%
Snacktrek, n.:
The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have
materialized.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
-- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
Revolution"
%
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
-- Voltarine de Cleyre
%
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.
-- Samuel Foote
%
... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all
along.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway?
And why can't he ever remember his Bible?
%
Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
bound to occur.
%
Software, n.:
Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
%
Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
%
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
-- Ed Howe
%
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
"The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
and go to a mall.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only
one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
%
Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic.
%
Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
worse.
-- Avery
%
Some points to remember [about animals]:
(1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
hippopotamuses;
(2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
front of your clothes;
(3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
you have just kicked.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Some primal termite knocked on wood.
And tasted it, and found it good.
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand
progress.
%
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
progress.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%
Someone will try to honk your nose today.
%
Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
the only ashtray.
%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
-- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
%
Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
%
Song Title of the Week:
"They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
in me."
%
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins.
(Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune).
%
Sorry, no fortune this time.
%
Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Spare no expense to save money on this one.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question
back at him.
%
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.
Wow! wow! wow!
I speak severely to my boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! wow! wow!
-- Lewis Carroll, "Alice in Wonderland"
%
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
Because the paging thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
I speak severely to my VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
My jobs it always thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
%
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
%
Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
-- Dave Millman
%
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free
the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a
bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same
memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well,
no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously
designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
%
Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
Helpless users with projects due
Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
* VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
* DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
-- Curtis Jackson
%
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very _____least
he can do is to Shut Up!
-- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
%
Speed is subsittute fo accurancy.
%
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
number of times you have looked at it.
%
Spelling is a lossed art.
%
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
%
Spirtle, n.:
The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
your eye.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
%
Spouse, n.:
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
%
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur'ee of bat guano; and the
greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!
-- Harlan Ellison
%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
another drink.
%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming:
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.
%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
Now, if they'd only take a bath ...
%
Stult's Report:
Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
fight the solutions.
%
Stupid, adj.:
Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
%
Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
%
Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.
%
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain
%
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood.
%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%
Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
without his duck ...
%
(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
To code the impossible code,
To bring up a virgin machine,
To pop out of endless recursion,
To grok what appears on the screen,
To right the unrightable bug,
To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
To mount the unmountable magtape,
To stop the unstoppable crash!
%
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
%
Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
%
Support your local police force -- steal!!
%
Support your local Search and Rescue unit -- get lost.
%
Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
%
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
%
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
%
Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type
in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:
Name #
%
Swahili, n.:
The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions.
-- Johnny Hart
%
Sweater, n.:
A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
_
_ / \ o
/ \ | | o o o
| | | | _ o o o o
| \_| | / \ o o o
\__ | | | o o
| | | | ______ ~~~~ _____
| |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__
| ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __\
| | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " )
| | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
| | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \\
| | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \\
// | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \\
// ( ) / / \` \__ \\
//-------------------------------------------------------------\\
Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels
start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and
then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the
music at top volume and at least a pint of ether.
-- H. S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
%
T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
He don't rock, and he don't roll;
Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
%
Tact, n.:
The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
%
Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese.
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
%
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
-- Kipling
%
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit
back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
no need to improve ...
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
-- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
%
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
-- Euripides
%
Talkers are no good doers.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
%
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
%
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
determination and work like hell. Most people think you are
stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.
%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
-- Russell Long
%
Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
out of the market.
%
Taxes, n.:
Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
an extension.
%
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when they
grows up, they will never be able to edge their car onto a freeway.
%
Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
%
Technological progress has merely provided us
with more efficient means for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Telephone, n.:
An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I'd call me us.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
writing.
-- R. Geis
%
Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.
-- A. E. Housman
%
Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother.
-- Len Cool, "American Pie"
%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:
"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
because it is impossible."
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
(Tertullian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
%
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
%
Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
%
Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds.
-- J. Finnegan, USC.
%
Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
-- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
%
That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver.
-- Foghorn Leghorn
%
That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
-- Moliere
%
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
%
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
%
The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
people who want some.
-- Dwight MacDonald
%
The Abrams' Principle:
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
The Advertising Agency Song:
When your client's hopping mad,
Put his picture in the ad.
If he still should prove refractory,
Add a picture of his factory.
%
The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug
someone with it.
-- M. Devine, Computer Science 340
%
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas
River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little
Rock.
%
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
-- T. Lehrer
%
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
-- Bill Murray
%
The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
Declaration not for that, but for future use.
-- Abraham Lincoln
%
The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m.
%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the
average man can see better than he can think.
%
The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by
people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried
anything.
-- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore
%
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than
cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and
difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots,
which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but --
here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO
RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you
want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking
lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a
squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out
and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault,
his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was
neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking
lots.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit
called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in
writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would
be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices
immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a
bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special
Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of
paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty
would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning.
The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to
emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood
Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland";
but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.
%
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
-- W. C. Fields
%
The best defense against logic is ignorance.
%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time.
%
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and
blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails.
You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only
love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or
know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only
one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what
wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust,
never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never
dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a
lot of things there are to learn."
-- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
%
The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them
is a match.
-- Will Rogers
%
The bigger the theory the better.
%
The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse
time.
-- Merrick Furst
%
The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss
Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been
known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and,
in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two
under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of
people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a
city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking
umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of
activity that frightens the horses on the street ...
%
The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch.
%
The bogosity meter just pegged.
%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up
in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
%
The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development:
To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and
convert to the next higher units.
%
The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be.
Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in
automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
-- Art Buchwald
%
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding
bureaucracy.
%
The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the
flexibility and power of assembly language with the readability
of assembly language.
%
The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary two;
Or else the other way around.
I'm never sure. Are you?
-- Ogden Nash
%
The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly
greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed
inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner
party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain.
-- G. Fitch
%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up
at the steam fitters' picnic.
%
The chief cause of problems is solutions.
-- Eric Sevareid
%
The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions.
-- Alfred Adler
%
The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will
walk carefully.
-- Russian Proverb
%
The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
%
The Computer made me do it.
%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis
%
The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his
memos.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other
subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up
every bird watcher in the country.
-- John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972
%
The Consultant's Curse:
When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him
what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong
medicine, and is normally only required once.
%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is
none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but."
Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period.
Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you
talked about.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down.
%
The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to
eat.
-- John McNulty
%
The Crown is full of it!
-- Nate Harris, 1775
%
The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should
therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could
hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to
declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war,
then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press.
Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges.
-- William Ellery Channing
%
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
%
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
%
The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary?
%
The devil finds work for idle circuits to do.
%
The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell
into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him
out again, it would be a calamity.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science
requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
"I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is
Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.
"Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are ____very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is
goyish. Lime soda is ____very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them ..."
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
%
The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man
really clever who has not found that he is stupid.
-- Gilbert K. Chesterson
%
The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show
off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his
next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the
duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the
duck and returned it to his master.
"Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
"Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."
%
The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late
and owns the worm farm.
-- Travis McGee
%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%
The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and
add ten percent.
%
The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on
weather forecasters.
-- Jean-Paul Kauffmann
%
The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not
Compute' -- I forget which.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of
civilization.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with
symposium to follow.
%
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
their children to speak it.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a
remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
-- L. Ogborn
%
The faster we go, the rounder we get.
-- The Grateful Dead
%
The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%
The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it.
-- Abbie Hoffman
%
The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King
Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a
tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad
forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously
fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of
threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked
suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of
foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead
one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with
dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found
drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown
and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have
thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture
of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left
in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed
crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave
Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when
a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful
throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system.
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of
management is that success equals skill.
-- Robert Heller
%
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
"What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and
whistles?"
I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity
gave up.
"A herring," said my father.
"A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!"
"So hang it there."
"But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
"Paint it."
"But a herring isn't wet."
"If it's just painted it's still wet."
"But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring
doesn't whistle!!"
"Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
hard."
-- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish"
%
The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your
hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do.
-- McCloctnik the Lucid
%
The First Rule of Program Optimization:
Don't do it.
The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!):
Don't do it yet.
-- Michael Jackson
%
The first time, it's a KLUDGE!
The second, a trick.
Later, it's a well-established technique!
-- Mike Broido, Intermetrics
%
The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions
Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals:
As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of
logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more
appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the
four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector.
. . .
Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible
blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves
parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge
of the hyper-cube.
%
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%
The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl.
-- Dave Barry
%
The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the
number of your kids by 32 teeth.
%
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to
chance.
%
The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness.
%
The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the
center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South
Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South
End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End.
%
The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled
today.
%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at
least until we've finished building it.
%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps.
The goal of nature is to build better mice.
%
The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him
love and he invented marriage.
%
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who
make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians
have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine
man in the bonds of Hell.
-- St. Augustine
%
The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got
to be good.
%
"The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop")
On the good ship Enterprise
Every week there's a new surprise
Where the Romulans lurk
And the Klingons often go berserk.
Yes, the good ship Enterprise
There's excitement anywhere it flies
Where Tribbles play
And Nurse Chapel never gets her way.
See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge,
Mr. Spock is at his side.
The weekly menace, ooh-ooh
It gets fried, scattered far and wide.
It's the good ship Enterprise
Heading out where danger lies
And you live in dread
If you're wearing a shirt that's red.
-- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics
%
The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of
statistics. These are raised to the _nth degree, the cube roots are
extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive
displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every
case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts
down anything he damn well pleases.
-- Sir Josiah Stamp
%
The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all
who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%
The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog:
The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in
courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk
clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods
of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp
Hedgehog Eater.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men
of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.
-- Justice Louis D. Brandeis
%
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein
%
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a
custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the
contrary, nohow.
%
The Heineken Uncertainty Principle:
You can never be sure how many beers you had last night.
%
The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent
thinkers.
%
The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back,
which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at
least 5000 years old."
%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smith
%
The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and
has gills through which it can see.
-- Monty Python
%
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.
%
The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
protein -- it rejects it.
-- P. Medawar
%
The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can
remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider
struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in
spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and
wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head
off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
%
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain
%
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
procession but carrying a banner.
-- Mark Twain
%
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
-- Ashley Montague
%
The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with
sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed,
consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than
have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones
repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist
of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic
devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
The identical is equal to itself, since it is different.
-- Franco Spisani
%
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf
has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know
when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
-- Will Rogers
%
The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important
point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly
important thing to people.
-- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King
%
The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the
number of participants.
-- Adam Walinsky
%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided
by the number of people in the group.
%
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a
dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a
real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless.
So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never
pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big
consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
The Kennedy Constant:
Don't get mad -- get even.
%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints ...
So far, I've had no complaints.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
The last time somebody said, "I find I can write much better with a
word processor," I replied, "They used to say the same thing about
drugs."
-- Roy Blount, Jr.
%
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
law free.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the
poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread.
-- Anatole France
%
The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all
men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the
universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we
presently imagine we own.
-- H. G. Wells
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE
SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language
Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for
Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code
with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN,
END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make
a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus
they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without
the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP
This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of
an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said
to be useful in protheththing lithtth.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL
SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler.
Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they
compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the
coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom
sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to
compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but
infinitely faster) language, COCAINE.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE
Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely
unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just
are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions.
SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at
parties.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C-
This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he
submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is
best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the
language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code
statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very
similar to COBOL.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18a: FIFTH
FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types
refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and
JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and
BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY,
CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND.
The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and
financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include
VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH
and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers
who end up using this language.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE
Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene
Descartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The
language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics
and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A
spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of
ours."
The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have
almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the
organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to
exist.
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL
From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley,
VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry.
Here is a sample program:
LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND
VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN
FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
DO*WAH - (DITTY**2)
BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
SURE
LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM
REALLY
LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW)
IM*SURE
GOTO THE MALL
When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message:
GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!
%
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs
while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there
because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and
Perrier.
Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle
and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower
case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the
message:
"i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can
you find the time to try it again?"
%
The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching
train.
%
The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon.
%
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get
much sleep.
-- Woody Allen
%
The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
%
The makers may make
And the users may use,
But the fixers must fix
With but minimal clues
%
The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the
crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no
one has ever been.
-- Alan Ashley-Pitt
%
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
-- Mark Twain
%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development of a
soda can, when discarded will last forever ... and a $7,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.
%
... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ...
-- Dave Barry
%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
%
The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.
%
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might
be general systems laws. For example, Frank Harary once suggested the
law that any field that had the word "science" in its name was
guaranteed thereby not to be a science. He would cite as examples
Military Science, Library Science, Political Science, Homemaking
Science, Social Science, and Computer Science. Discuss the generality
of this law, and possible reasons for its predictive
power.
-- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
Thinking."
%
The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
-- Nicol Williamson
%
The moon is a planet just like the Earth, only it is even deader.
%
The moon may be smaller than Earth, but it's further away.
%
The more data I punch in this card, the lighter it becomes, and the
lower the mailing cost.
-- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
%
The more laws and order are made prominent,
the more thieves and robbers there will be.
-- Lao Tsu
%
The more things change, the more they stay insane.
%
The more we disagree, the more chance there is that at least one of us
is right.
%
The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.
-- Andy Warhol
%
The most difficult thing in the world is to know how to do a thing and
to watch someone else do it wrong without comment.
-- Theodore H. White
%
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I found it!) but "That's funny ..."
-- Isaac Asimov
%
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
%
... the MYSTERIANS are in here with my CORDUROY SOAP DISH!!
%
"... The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this time
completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert.
-- D. Letterman
%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
Support your right to bare arms!
%
The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong,
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery!
Big fish alone escape from thee!
-- James Jeffrey Roche
%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government around. I
hope I don't get run over again.
%
The New Testament offers the basis for modern computer coding theory,
in the form of an affirmation of the binary number system.
But let your communication be Yea, yea; nay, nay: for
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil.
-- Matthew 5:37
%
The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The
Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country.
The National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive
and running the country ...
-- Robert J. Woodhead
%
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to
choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%
The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the
80-column card.
-- Dennis M. Ritchie
%
The notion that the church, the press, and the universities should
serve the state is essentially a Communist notion ... In a free society
these institutions must be wholly free -- which is to say that their
function is to serve as checks upon the state.
-- Alan Barth
%
The number of arguments is unimportant unless some of them are
correct.
-- Ralph Hartley
%
The objective of all dedicated employees should be to thoroughly
analyze all situations, anticipate all problems prior to their
occurrence, have answers for these problems, and move swiftly to solve
these problems when called upon.
However, when you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to
remind yourself your initial objective was to drain the swamp.
%
The Official MBA Handbook on business cards:
Avoid overly pretentious job titles such as "Lord of the Realm,
Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India" or "Director of Corporate
Planning."
%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy.
%
The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age
brings wisdom.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader
catch his own breath.
-- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
%
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when
to cringe.
%
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the
`social sciences' is: some do, some don't.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
The only problem with being a man of leisure is that you can never stop
and take a rest.
%
The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon.
-- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
Over and Over"
%
The only really decent thing to do behind a person's back is pat it.
%
The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber
has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture,
finished, and put inside boxes.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on.
It is never any use to oneself.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
-- Hegel
I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the
long view.
-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The opossum is a very sophisticated animal. It doesn't even get up
until 5 or 6 p.m.
%
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr
%
The optimum committee has no members.
-- Norman Augustine
%
The other day I put instant coffee in my microwave oven ... I almost
went back in time.
-- Steven Wright
%
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because
it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The people of Halifax invented the trampoline. During the
Victorian period the tripe-dressers of Halifax stretched tripe across a
large wooden frame and jumped up and down on it to `tender and dress'
it. The tripoline, as they called it, degenerated into becoming the
apparatus for a spectator sport.
The people of Halifax also invented the harmonium, a device for
castrating pigs during Sunday service.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
Let others think his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
-- Ogden Nash
%
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter
swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute
his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
-- Dizzy Dean
%
The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.
-- David Lardner
%
The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish
to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it
is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of
courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own
preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper
social function of expressing true distaste.
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to
Excruciatingly Correct Behavior"
%
The porcupine with the sharpest quills gets stuck on a tree more often.
%
The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
-- Ogden Nash
%
The President publicly apologized today to all those offended by his
brother's remark, "There's more Arabs in this country than there is
Jews!". Those offended include Arabs, Jews, and English teachers.
-- Baltimore, Channel 11 News, on Jimmy Carter
%
The price of seeking to force our beliefs on others is that someday
they might force their beliefs on us.
-- Mario Cuomo
%
The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired
warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by
changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped
marker.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to
constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every
appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA
statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This
also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers
%
The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough
voters to win the next election.
%
The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO"
represents the secondary theme:
Law Enforcement Officials
The overall theme of SoupCon shall be:
Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials
-- M. Gallaher
%
... the privileged being which we call human is distinguished from
other animals only by certain double-edged manifestations which in
charity we can only call "inhuman."
-- R. A. Lafferty
%
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil
using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle
Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats,
etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous
bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None
of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats
developed cancer.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go
to erase it.
-- Glaser and Way
%
The problem with engineers is that they tend to cheat in order to get
results.
The problem with mathematicians is that they tend to work on toy
problems in order to get results.
The problem with program verifiers is that they tend to cheat at toy
problems in order to get results.
%
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be
pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
-- Elizabeth Taylor
%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
%
The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's
outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by
mistake since its colors are those of the London Reform Club. Once
tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims
the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
"The pyramid is opening!"
"Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
-- The Firesign Theatre, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
%
The qotc (quote of the con) was Liz's:
"My brain is paged out to my liver"
%
The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is
it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television,
that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of
industrial waste?
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
%
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
--Lord Bowen
%
The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is
cursed.
%
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
%
The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose",
which is also sometimes called "grape sugar", and also because "Grape
Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil
Food and Gravel", which is what it tastes like.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The revolution will not be televised.
%
The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.
-- Emerson
%
The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros.
-- Ogden Nash
%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This
means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%
The Right Honorable Gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests
and to his imagination for his facts.
-- Sheridan
%
The right to revolt has sources deep in our history.
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
%
The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee [the
House Un-American Activities Committee]. We will determine what rights
you have and what rights you have not got.
-- J. Parnell Thomas
%
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. And littered with
sloppy analysis!
%
The Roman Rule
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the
one who is doing it.
%
The Ruffed Pandanga of Borneo and Rotherham spreads out his feathers in
his courtship dance and imitates Winston Churchill and Tommy Cooper on
one leg. The padanga is dying out because the female padanga doesn't
take it too seriously.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
The rule on staying alive as a forecaster is to give 'em a number or
give 'em a date, but never give 'em both at once.
-- Jane Bryant Quinn
%
"The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography"
%
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100
showed that all had these things in common:
(1) They all had moderate appetites.
(2) They all came from middle class homes
(3) All but two of them were dead.
%
The scum also rises.
-- Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
%
The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes,
respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones
from Man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the
millstones are lifted.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood
as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all.
The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in
the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in
twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a
fierce host which out-numbers Lankhmar's inhabitants by fifty to one --
and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd.
Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
-- Fritz Leiber, from "The Swords of Lankhmar"
%
The sheep that fly over your head are soon to land.
%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-- Noelie Alito
%
The Sixth Commandment of Frisbee:
The greatest single aid to distance is for the disc to be going
in a direction you did not want. (Goes the wrong way = Goes a long
way.)
-- Dan Roddick
%
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity
and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted
activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ...
neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
%
The sooner all the animals are dead, the sooner we'll find their
money.
-- Ed Bluestone, "The National Lampoon"
%
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up!
%
The sooner you make your first 5000 mistakes, the sooner you will be
able to correct them.
-- Nicolaides
%
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
%
The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's
readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of
some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet
reflection followed by sudden preventive action explains why they led
the field for many years in both chess and ax murders. It is well
known that as early as 1970, the U.S.S.R., aware of what a defeat at
Reykjavik would do to national prestige, implemented a vigorous program
of preparation and incentive. Every day for an entire year, a team of
psychologists, chess analysts and coaches met with the top three
Russian grand masters and threatened them with a pointy stick. That
these tactics proved fruitless is now a part of chess history and a
further testament to the American way, which provides that if you want
something badly enough, you can always go to Iceland and get it from
the Russians.
-- Marshall Brickman, Playboy, April, 1973
%
"Yoda", by "Weird Al" Yankovic;
Sung to the tune of "Lola", by the Kinks:
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda
S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
%
The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
%
The steady state of disks is full.
-- Ken Thompson
%
THE STORY OF CREATION
or
THE MYTH OF URK
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Spirit of IBM
was moving over the face of the market. And DEC said, "Let there be
registers"; and there were registers. And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions. DEC called the data
Stack, and the instructions they called Code. And there was evening
and there was morning, one interrupt.
-- Rico Tudor
%
The streets are safe in Philadelphia, it's only the people who make
them unsafe.
-- Mayor Frank Rizzo
%
The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and
is an emerging underachiever.
%
The study of non-linear physics is like the study of non-elephant
biology.
%
The subspace _W inherits the other 8 properties of _V. And there aren't
even any property taxes.
-- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
%
The sum of the Universe is zero.
%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
%
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire
%
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
-- Mark Twain
%
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as
the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as
the light of seven days." Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much
as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all. The light we
receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that ... The radiation falling on Heaven will
heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to
the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much
heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for
radiation, (_H/_E)^4 = 50, where _E is the absolute temperature of the
earth (-300K), gives _H as 798K (525C). The exact temperature of Hell
cannot be computed ... [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the
fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their part in the lake which
burneth with fire and brimstone." A lake of molten brimstone means
that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C. We
have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
-- From "Applied Optics" vol. 11, A14, 1972
%
The Third Law of Photography:
If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark
leaks out.
%
The Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break
even.
The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
%
The Three Major Kind of Tools
* Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or
jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a
manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces,
bludgeons, and truncheons.)
* Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
* Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far
greater than the value of any project that could possibly result.
(Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses
any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
The trouble with a kitten is that
When it grows up, it's always a cat
-- Ogden Nash
%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%
The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate
it.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing
more important to do.
%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that nobody
appreciates how difficult it was.
%
The trouble with superheros is what to do between phone booths.
-- Ken Kesey
%
The truth is what is; what should be is a dirty lie.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with its credibility.
And vice versa.
%
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
-- Ogden Nash
%
The two most common things in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
The United States also has its native Fascists who say that they are
"100 percent American"...
-- U. S. Army (1945)
%
The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to
everybody and still nobody likes him.
-- Jim Samuels
%
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be
broken.
%
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination -- but the
combination is locked up in the safe.
-- Peter DeVries
%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie
Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said
to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his
decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
%
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and
religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging
from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its
yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the
world put together.
-- Sir Peter Medawar
%
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offense.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
%
The verdict of a jury is the a priori opinion of that juror who smokes
the worst cigars.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
prejudice.
-- Mark Twain
%
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.
Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts
to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to
be one of the facts that needs altering.
-- Doctor Who, "Face of Evil"
%
The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes,
it's just a tired feeling:
%
The wages of sin are high but you get your money's worth.
%
The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity
that would be clearly understood.
-- Alexander Haig
%
The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start
with a large fortune.
%
THE WOMBAT
The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods.
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.
%
The world is coming to an end ... SAVE YOUR BUFFERS!!!
%
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
%
The world is coming to an end. Please log off.
%
The world's as ugly as sin,
And almost as delightful.
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of
four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all
the answers.
%
Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the Jordan,
then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an open
market.
If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he should
not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of himself.
Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
Then here's to the City of Boston,
The town of the cries and the groans.
Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
-- Franklin Pierce Adams
%
THEORY
Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
-- Dorothy Parker
%
There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable,
and praiseworthy ...
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
There are many intelligent species in the universe. They all own
cats.
%
There are no data that cannot be plotted on a straight line if the axes
are chosen correctly.
%
There are no games on this system.
%
There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the
existence of a "hottest part" implies a temperature difference, and any
marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat
engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is
obviously impossible.
-- Richard Davisson
%
There are people so addicted to exaggeration
that they can't tell the truth without lying.
-- Josh Billings
%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or a
vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
-- Gloria Steinem
%
There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named
Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or
Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that
every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is
this?
Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think ___you
can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's
forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster
-- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't
even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover
why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
-- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both
plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis;
and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again,
don't we all?
%
There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells
and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated
pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving
them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you
stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your
intelligence.
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
-- Disraeli
%
There are three possibilities:
Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from the sun;
there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or
someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor.
%
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin
a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount
of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of
affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately.
When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating.
Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
-- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior
%
There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and
engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far
the more certain.
-- Baron Rothschild, ca. 1800
%
There are three schools of magic. One: State a tautology, then ring
the changes on its corollaries; that's philosophy. Two: Record many
facts. Try to find a pattern. Then make a wrong guess at the next
fact; that's science. Three: Be aware that you live in a malevolent
Universe controlled by Murphy's Law, sometimes offset by Brewster's
Factor; that's engineering.
%
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I
can't remember.
-- Italo Svevo
%
There are three ways to get something done:
(1) Do it yourself.
(2) Hire someone to do it for you.
(3) Forbid your kids to do it.
%
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
%
There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is
one of them.
%
There are two kinds of solar-heat systems: "passive" systems collect
the sunlight that hits your home, and "active" systems collect the
sunlight that hits your neighbors' homes, too.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good
sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
-- Woody Allen
%
There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to
make is so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the
other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious
deficiencies.
-- C. A. R. Hoare
%
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third one
works.
%
There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a
suitable application of high explosives.
%
There can be no twisted thought without a twisted molecule.
-- R. W. Gerard
%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
There exist tasks which cannot be done by more than 10 men or fewer
than 100.
-- Steele's Law
%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know
nothing about.
%
There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an
opinion.
-- Anatole France
%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%
There is a green, multi-legged creature crawling on your shoulder.
%
There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
tied during the month of April.
%
There is a natural hootchy-kootchy to a goldfish.
-- Walt Disney
%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
There is hopeful symbolism in the fact that flags do not wave in a vacuum.
-- Arthur C. Clarke
%
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
-- Mark Twain
%
There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the
tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not
abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards -- only physics and
war hold him in check. And also the wife who wants him home by five,
of course.
-- Encyclopedia Apocryphia, 1990 ed.
%
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.
-- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, World Future Society
Convention, 1977
%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
%
There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
%
There is no time like the pleasant.
%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be
doing.
%
There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY.
There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS I'm very probably wrong.
%
"There is nothing which cannot be answered by means of my doctrine,"
said a monk, coming into a teahouse where Nasrudin sat. "And yet just
a short time ago, I was challenged by a scholar with an unanswerable
question," said Nasrudin. "I could have answered it if I had been
there." "Very well. He asked, 'Why are you breaking into my house in
the middle of the night?'"
%
There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the
ocean level wouldn't cure.
-- Ross MacDonald
%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and
that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale
returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
%
There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.
-- C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia
%
There was a plane crash over mid-ocean, and only three survivors were
left in the life-raft: the Pope, the President, and Mayor Daley.
Unfortunately, it was a one-man life-raft, and quickly sinking, so they
started debating who should be allowed to stay.
The Pope pointed out that he was the spiritual leader of millions all
over the world, the President explained that if he died then America
would be stuck with the Vice-President, and so forth. Then Mayor Daley
said, "Look! We're not solving anything like this! The only fair
thing to do is to vote on it." So they did, and Mayor Daley won by 97
votes.
%
There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
during the trial.
-- David Letterman
%
There were in this country two very large monopolies. The larger of
the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, Watergate, double-
digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, bankrupt airlines, and the
8-cent postcard. The second was responsible for such things as the
transistor, the solar cell, lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity
stereo recording, sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative
feedback, magnetic tape, magnetic "bubbles", electronic switching
systems, microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications
satellite. Guess which one got to tell the other how to run the
telephone business?
%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad it's not
a fence.
%
There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.
%
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle --
Would you kindly direct me to hell?
-- Dorothy Parker
%
There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our
whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
-- Walt Kelly
%
There's no future in time travel.
%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
%
There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get
any worse.
%
There's no room in the drug world for amateurs.
%
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government
working for you.
-- Will Rodgers
%
There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and
dead armadillos.
-- Jim Hightower, Texas Agricultural Commissioner
%
There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them
won't aggravate.
%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn
what it is I'll get married again.
-- Clint Eastwood
%
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
"These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
"These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
"These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
out of MEGATON MAN!"
%
These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%
They make a desert and call it peace.
-- Tacitus (55?-120?)
%
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.
-- Mark Twain
%
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759
%
They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!
%
They told me you had proven it When they discovered our results
About a month before. Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less Instead of understanding it
But rather less than more. We'd run the thing through PRL.
He sent them word that we would try Don't tell a soul about all this
To pass where they had failed For it must ever be
And after we were done, to them A secret, kept from all the rest
The new proof would be mailed. Between yourself and me.
My notion was to start again
Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
To see if it would run.
%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%
They're unfriendly, which is fortunate, really. They'd be difficult to like.
-- Avon
%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%
Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
%
Think big. Pollute the Mississippi.
%
Think honk if you're a telepath.
%
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%
Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer
crashes.
%
Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
%
"Thirty days hath Septober,
April, June, and no wonder.
all the rest have peanut butter
except my father who wears red suspenders."
%
This Fortue Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
%
This fortune cookie program is out of order. For those in desperate need,
please use the program "________randchar". This program generates random
characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with
something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be
more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%
This fortune is false.
%
This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
%
This is a country where people are free to practice their religion,
regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number of dangling keys...
%
This is a job for BOB VIOLENCE and SCUM, the INCREDIBLY STUPID MUTANT DOG.
-- Bob Violence
%
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an
actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
%
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly,
because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under
which it recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has
"deregulated" the airline industry. What this means for you, the
consumer, is that the airlines are no longer required to follow any
rules whatsoever. They can show snuff movies. They can charge for
oxygen. They can hire pilots right out of Vending Machine Refill
Person School. They can conserve fuel by ejecting husky passengers
over water. They can ram competing planes in mid-air. These
innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which have been
passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
amazingly low fares, such as $29. Of course, certain restrictions do
apply, the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark,
and you must pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
-- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
%
This is an unauthorized cybernetic announcement.
%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.
-- A. E. Housman
%
This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back
to one.
-- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortune, clean or obscene? We cannot continue
without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are
contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We
can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money
for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the
difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight
and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to
"fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before
you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week.
Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute
30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or
more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
%
This is the ____LAST time I take travel suggestions from Ray Bradbury!
%
This is the first numerical problem I ever did. It demonstrates the
power of computers:
Enter lots of data on calorie & nutritive content of foods. Instruct
the thing to maximize a function describing nutritive content, with a
minimum level of each component, for fixed caloric content. The
results are that one should eat each day:
1/2 chicken
1 egg
1 glass of skim milk
27 heads of lettuce.
-- Rev. Adrian Melott
%
This is the story of the bee
Whose sex is very hard to see
You cannot tell the he from the she
But she can tell, and so can he
The little bee is never still
She has no time to take the pill
And that is why, in times like these
There are so many sons of bees.
%
This is your fortune.
%
This land is full of trousers!
this land is full of mausers!
And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
-- The Firesign Theatre
%
This land is made of mountains,
This land is made of mud,
This land has lots of everything,
For me and Elmer Fudd.
This land has lots of trousers,
This land has lots of mousers,
And pussycats to eat them
When the sun goes down.
%
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life,
you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where
to go.
%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
%
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but to be hurled with
great force.
-- Dorothy Parker
%
This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of
the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many
solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
paper that were unhappy.
-- Douglas Adams
%
This process can check if this value is zero, and if it is, it does
something child-like.
-- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
%
This quote is taken from the Diamondback, the University of Maryland
student newspaper, of Tuesday, 3/10/87.
One disadvantage of the Univac system is that it does not use
Unix, a recently developed program which translates from one
computer language to another and has a built-in editing system
which identifies errors in the original program.
%
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
-- Douglas Hofstadter
%
... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives
as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as
determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people
buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s
couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three
weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available,
they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent
restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of
excellence-oriented people like themselves waiting, their beepers going
off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have
a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
%
Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire
rainbow of legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better
than he does.
As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about
it. I am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily
sane. But we will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we
consider his exterior a sort of Dorian Gray facade. Inwardly, he is
being eaten alive by tinhorn politicians.
The disease is fatal. There is no known cure. The most we can
do for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his
honor. From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can
be as easily led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public
relations, to joy as to bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter
Thompson's disease. I don't have it this morning. It comes and goes.
This morning I don't have Hunter Thompson's disease.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr. on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear
and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
%
Those of you who think you know everything are very annoying to those
of us who do.
%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
%
Those who do not do politics will be done in by politics.
-- French Proverb
%
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
-- Henry Spencer
%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents,
for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
-- Aristotle
%
Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often
surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
-- Mark B. Cohen
%
Those who in quarrels interpose, must often wipe a bloody nose.
%
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible
will make violent revolution inevitable.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are
men who want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean
without the roar of its many waters.
-- Frederick Douglass
%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are
the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with
Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether --
whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation ... A
fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any
more about the matter than the others.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
%
Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
%
Time is an illusion; lunchtime, doubly so.
-- Ford Prefect
%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at
once.
%
'Tis the dream of each programmer,
Before his life is done,
To write three lines of APL,
And make the damn things run.
%
(to "The Caissons Go Rolling Along")
Scratch the disks, dump the core, Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor, Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits. Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash. And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down, And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash. And the tape drives will crumble
in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun, When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash. The system is going to crash.
%
To A Quick Young Fox:
Why jog exquisite bulk, fond crazy vamp,
Daft buxom jonquil, zephyr's gawky vice?
Guy fed by work, quiz Jove's xanthic lamp --
Zow! Qualms by deja vu gyp fox-kin thrice.
-- Lazy Dog
%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.
%
To be is to do.
-- I. Kant
To do is to be.
-- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
-- F. Flintstone
%
To be responsive at this time, though I will simply say, and therefore
this is a repeat of what I said previously, that which I am unable to
offer in response is based on information available to make no such
statement.
%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit,
call it the target.
%
To err is human, to forgive is Not Company Policy.
%
To err is human, to forgive, beyond the scope of the Operating System
%
To err is human, to moo bovine.
%
To every Ph.D. there is an equal and opposite Ph.D.
-- B. Duggan
%
To generalize is to be an idiot.
-- William Blake
%
To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
men, two of them absent.
%
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
-- Thomas Edison
%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
-- Robert Heller
%
To the best of my recollection, Senator, I can't recall.
%
To the systems programmer, users and applications serve only to provide
a test load.
%
To those accustomed to the precise, structured methods of conventional
system development, exploratory development techniques may seem messy,
inelegant, and unsatisfying. But it's a question of congruence:
precision and flexibility may be just as dysfunctional in novel,
uncertain situations as sloppiness and vacillation are in familiar,
well-defined ones. Those who admire the massive, rigid bone structures
of dinosaurs should remember that jellyfish still enjoy their very
secure ecological niche.
-- Beau Sheil, "Power Tools for Programmers"
%
To understand this important story, you have to understand how the
telephone company works. Your telephone is connected to a local
computer, which is in turn connected to a regional computer, which is
in turn connected to a loudspeaker the size of a garbage truck on the
lawn of Edna A. Bargewater of Lawrence, Kan.
Whenever you talk on the phone, your local computer listens in. If it
suspects you're going to discuss an intimate topic, it notifies the
computer above it, which listens in and decides whether to alert the
one above it, until finally, if you really humiliate yourself, maybe
break down in tears and tell your closest friend about a sordid
incident from your past involving a seedy motel, a neighbor's spouse,
an entire religious order, a garden hose and six quarts of tapioca
pudding, the top computer feeds your conversation into Edna's
loudspeaker, and she and her friends come out on the porch to listen
and drink gin and laugh themselves silly.
-- Dave Barry, "Won't It Be Just Great Owning Our Own
Phones?"
%
To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?
%
To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
-- Woody Allen
%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of your lossage.
%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
%
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity?
And where does it go after it leaves the toaster?
-- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%
Today's thrilling story has been brought to you by Mushies, the great new
cereal that gets soggy even without milk or cream. Join us soon for more
spectacular adventure starring ... Tippy, the Wonder Dog.
-- Bob & Ray
%
Today, of course, it is considered very poor taste to use the F-word
except in major motion pictures.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%
Toilet Toup'ee, n.:
Any shag carpet that causes the lid to become top-heavy, thus
creating endless annoyance to male users.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Too clever is dumb.
-- Ogden Nash
%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
-- Mae West
%
Too much of everything is just enough.
-- Bob Wier
%
Too often I find that the volume of paper expands to fill the available
briefcases.
-- Governor Jerry Brown
%
Top 10 things likely to be overheard if you had a Klingon Programmer:
10) Specifications are for the weak and timid!
9) You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
8) Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
7) What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'.
Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality
assurance people in its wake.
6) Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments'
- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
5) Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
4) A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
3) Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features
are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
2) You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the
original Klingon.
1) Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it!
Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
%
Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the
earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century.
As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help.
Please...
CONSERVE GRAVITY
Follow these simple suggestions:
(1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like
curling.
(4) Avoid showers ... take baths instead.
(5) Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big
pile.
(6) Stop flipping pancakes
%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful, wealthy, and live
in eucalyptus trees.
%
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
-- Henrik Tikkanen
%
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
-- Mark Twain
%
Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
%
Truthful, adj.:
Dumb and illiterate.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
-- Charles Schulz
%
Try to be the best of whatever you are, even if what you are is no good.
%
Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done,
is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written
in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and
pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer),
defined by the imperfect past, the insufficient present, and the
absolutely perfect future.
-- Amrom Katz
%
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
%
Trying to be happy is like trying to build a machine for which the only
specification is that it should run noiselessly.
%
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
-- Alan Watts
%
Trying to establish voice contact ... please ____yell into keyboard.
%
Turnaucka's Law:
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.
%
Tussman's Law:
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrabe.
"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
%
'Twas the Night before Crisis
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update! On Add! On Inquiry! On Delete!
On Batch Jobs! On Closing! On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
%
'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period
preceding the annual Yuletide celebration, And
throughout our place of residence,
Kinetic activity was not in evidence among the
possessors of this potential, including that
species of domestic rodent known as Mus musculus.
Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward
edge of the woodburning caloric apparatus,
Pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an
imminent visitation from an eccentric
philanthropist among whose folkloric appelations
is the honorific title of St. Nicklaus ...
%
Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
-- Howard Kandel
%
Two men came before Nasrudin when he was magistrate. The first man
said, "This man has bitten my ear -- I demand compensation." The
second man said, "He bit it himself." Nasrudin withdrew to his
chambers, and spent an hour trying to bite his own ear. He succeeded
only in falling over and bruising his forehead. Returning to the
courtroom, Nasrudin pronounced, "Examine the man whose ear was bitten.
If his forehead is bruised, he did it himself and the case is
dismissed. If his forehead is not bruised, the other man did it and
must pay three silver pieces."
%
Two percent of zero is almost nothing.
%
Two sure ways to tell a sexy male; the first is, he has a bad memory.
I forget the second.
%
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
%
U: There's a U -- a Unicorn!
Run right up and rub its horn.
Look at all those points you're losing!
UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
%
"Ubi non accusator, ibi non judex."
(Where there is no police, there is no speed limit.)
-- Roman Law, trans. Petr Beckmann (1971)
%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%
"Uncle Cosmo ... why do they call this a word processor?"
"It's simple, Skyler ... you've seen what food processors do to food,
right?"
-- MacNelley, "Shoe"
%
Uncle Ed's Rule of Thumb:
Never use your thumb for a rule. You'll either hit it with a
hammer or get a splinter in it.
%
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a
just man is also a prison.
%
Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it
can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic ...
%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
Superiority is recessive.
%
Unfair animal names:
-- tsetse fly -- bullhead
-- booby -- duck-billed platypus
-- sapsucker -- Clarence
-- Gary Larson
%
United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the
Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general strike of
all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of
all the patriots of every persuasion.
Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the
world.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
Universe, n.:
The problem.
%
University, n.:
Like a software house, except the software's free, and it's
usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly tell you how to
fix it, and ...
%
unix soit qui mal y pense
%
UNIX was half a billion (500000000) seconds old on
Tue Nov 5 00:53:20 1985 GMT (measuring since the time(2) epoch).
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
%
Unnamed Law:
If it happens, it must be possible.
%
Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out
twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Usage: fortune -P [] -a [xsz] [Q: [file]] [rKe9] -v6[+] dataspec ... inputdir
%
User n.:
A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%
USER, n.:
The word computer professionals use when they mean "idiot."
-- Dave Barry, "Claw Your Way to the Top"
%
Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale down the beach.
-- S. C. Johnson
%
Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two,
opulence is when you have three -- and paradise is when you have none.
-- Doug Larson
%
Vail's Second Axiom:
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
amount of work already completed.
%
Valerie: Aww, Tom, you're going maudlin on me ...
Tom: I reserve the right to wax maudlin as I wane eloquent ...
-- Tom Chapin
%
Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%
Vanilla, adj.:
Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of food,
very often does not mean that the food is flavored with vanilla
extract! For example, "vanilla-flavored won ton soup" (or simply
"vanilla won ton soup") means ordinary won ton soup, as opposed to hot
and sour won ton soup.
%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
(1) If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only
once.
(2) If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
points.
%
Veni, Vidi, Visa.
%
"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past
year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley
reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their
artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue
moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon
Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the
entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the
sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made
good copy."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%
Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."
Orac: "It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvor Hardin
%
Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the
yard.
%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
Learn something new today, like how to spell or how to count to
ten without using your fingers. Be careful dressing this
morning. You may be hit by a car later in the day and you
wouldn't want to be taken to the doctor's office in some of
that old underwear you own.
%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and
sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus
drivers.
%
"Virtual" means never knowing where your next byte is coming from.
%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving
from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling.
%
VMS is like a nightmare about RSX-11M.
%
Vote anarchist.
%
Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and
TAX-DEFERRED!
%
VYARZERZOMANIMORORSEZASSEZANSERAREORSES?
%
*** System shutdown message from root ***
System going down in 60 seconds
%
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-- Mark Twain
%
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
(Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
%
Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
%
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
-- Charles Edward Montague
%
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ketchup is a vegetable.
%
WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:
Firings will continue until morale improves.
%
WARNING:
Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your
mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on
your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war.
%
Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for
those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking
up.
-- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
%
Warp 7 -- It's a law we can live with.
%
Washington [D.C.] is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
-- John F. Kennedy
%
Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%
Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to the
number and significance of any persons watching it.
%
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy. The question which
divides us is whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being
correct. My own feeling is that it is not crazy enough.
-- Niels Bohr
%
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
-- Winston Churchill
%
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.
-- Whole Earth Catalog
%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%
We are going to give a little something, a few little years more, to
socialism, because socialism is defunct. It dies all by itself. The
bad thing is that socialism, being a victim of its ... Did I say
socialism?
-- Fidel Castro
%
We are on the verge: Today our program proved Fermat's next-to-last theorem.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
We are upping our standards ... so up yours.
-- Pat Paulsen for President, 1988
%
We can defeat gravity. The problem is the paperwork involved.
%
We can predict everything, except the future.
%
We cannot put the face of a person on a stamp unless said person is
deceased. My suggestion, therefore, is that you drop dead.
-- James E. Day, Postmaster General
%
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
-- Vroomfondel
%
We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company.
%
We don't know who discovered water, but we're certain it wasn't a
fish.
%
We don't understand the software, and sometimes we don't understand the
hardware, but we can *___see* the blinking lights!
%
We gave you an atomic bomb, what do you want, mermaids?
-- I. I. Rabi to the Atomic Energy Commission
%
We had it tough ... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an
hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down
mill, and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on
our grave singing Haleleuia ...
-- Monty Python
%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly
%
We have only two things to worry about: That things will never get
back to normal, and that they already have.
%
We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his
hands for masturbation.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an
official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death
Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish
you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that
said "ELECTROCUTION".
Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your
teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing
process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a
couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways
out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste
stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom
floor, which is how the police would find you.
You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
%
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all
purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start
with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the
playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is
best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can
buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English.
-- Alan M. Turing
%
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always
respect their good judgement.
%
We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass
no matter how self-seeking.
-- F. G. Withington
%
We ought to be very grateful that we have tools. Millions of years ago
people did not have them, and home projects were extremely difficult.
For example, when a primitive person wanted to put up paneling, he had
to drive the little paneling nails into the cave wall with his bare
fist, so generally the paneling wound up getting spattered with
primitive blood, which isn't really all that bad when you consider how
ugly paneling is to begin with.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best
friends are trying to kill us.
%
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.
But there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle
Haggard song at a French restaurant. ...
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of
her milk white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I
had punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone
told him, "You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was
lean and tough like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he
fought me. And when we finished there were no winners, just men doing
what men must do. ...
"Stop the car," the girl said. There was a look of terrible
sadness in her eyes. She knew about the woman of the tollway. I knew
not how. I started to speak, but she raised an arm and spoke with a
quiet and peace I will never forget.
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the
tollway belle's for thee."
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was
a lie. Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I
poured whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
Competition
%
We will have solar energy as soon as the utility companies solve one
technical problem -- how to run a sunbeam through a meter.
%
We will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
%
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
-- Maxwell Smart
%
We'll cross out that bridge when we come back to it later.
%
We're deep into the holiday gift-giving season, as you can tell from
the fact that everywhere you look, you see jolly old St. Nick urging
you to purchase things, to the point where you want to slug him right
in his bowl full of jelly.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
We're only in it for the volume.
-- Black Sabbath
%
We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center
of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week,
but for some reason nobody's ever done it.
-- Andy Rooney
%
Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%
Weinberg's Principle:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
%
Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross references.
%
Welcome thy neighbor into thy fallout shelter. He'll come in handy if
you run out of food.
-- Dean McLaughlin
%
Well, here it is, 1983, so it won't be long before you start reading a
lot of boring stories about people like Vance Hartke. Hartke is a
governor or mayor or something from one of the flatter states, and the
reason you'll be reading about him is that he's one of the 50 top
contenders for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination. These men
will spend the next 18 months going around the country engaging in the
most degrading activities imaginable, such as wearing idiot hats and
appearing on "Meet the Press". "Meet the Press" is one of those Sunday
morning public interest shows that the public is not the least bit
interested in. It features a panel of reporters who ask questions of a
guest politician, who wins an Amana home freezer if he can get through
the entire show without answering a single question ...
-- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
%
Well, I would -- if they realized that we -- again if -- if we led them
back to that stalemate only because our retaliatory power, our seconds,
or strike at them after our first strike, would be so destructive they
they couldn't afford it, that would hold them off.
-- President Ronald Reagan, on the MX missile
%
Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can*
you believe?!
-- Bullwinkle J. Moose [Jay Ward]
%
Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
-- Core Dumped Blues
%
"Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9?"
"Piece of cake, Master? Radial slice of baked confection ...
coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
-- Dr. Who
%
"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is
no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five
hundred."
-- The Mahabharata
%
Westheimer's Discovery:
A couple of months in the laboratory can frequently save a
couple of hours in the library.
%
Wethern's Law:
Assumption is the mother of all screw-ups.
%
"What are we going to do?"
"Me, I'm examining the major Western religions. I'm looking for
something that's soft on morality, generous with holidays, and has a
short initiation period."
%
"What are you doing?"
"Examining the world's major religions. I'm looking for something
that's light on morals, has lots of holidays, and with a short
initiation period."
%
What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
%
"What do you give a man who has everything?" the pretty
teenager asked her mother.
"Encouragement, dear," she replied.
%
What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
%
What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
%
What garlic is to food, insanity is to art.
%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%
What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so
that we wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our
country. Nice try anyway, George.
-- D. J. on KSFO/KYA
%
What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the
entrance?
%
What good is having someone who can walk on water if you don't follow
in his footsteps?
%
What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I hop into the shower
stall. Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped in I landed
barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot character
from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off of
while he showers. Then I hop right back into the stall because our
dog, Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up
powerful dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the
bathroom and wants to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any
one of which -- bear in mind that I am naked and, without my contact
lenses, essentially blind -- could result in the kind of injury where
you have to learn a whole new part if you want to sing the "Messiah",
if you get my drift. Then I hop right back out, because Robert, with
that uncanny sixth sense some children have -- you cannot teach it;
they either have it or they don't -- has chosen exactly that moment to
flush one of the toilets. Perhaps several of them.
-- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%
What I tell you three times is true.
%
What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-
sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up
with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always
came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at
parties.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
%
What I've done, of course, is total garbage.
-- R. Willard, Pure Math 430a
%
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I
definitely overpaid for my carpet.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's
worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
What is a magician but a practicing theorist?
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
%
What is mind? No matter.
What is matter? Never mind.
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
%
What is the difference between a Turing machine and the modern
computer? It's the same as that between Hillary's ascent of Everest
and the establishment of a Hilton on its peak.
%
"What is the Nature of God?"
CLICK...CLICK...WHIRRR...CLICK...=BEEP!=
1 QT. SOUR CREAM
1 TSP. SAUERKRAUT
1/2 CUT CHIVES.
STIR AND SPRINKLE WITH BACON BITS.
"I've just GOT to start labeling my software..."
-- Bloom County
%
What is the robbing of a bank compared to the FOUNDING of a bank?
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out,
which is the exact opposite.
-- Bertrand Russell, "Skeptical_Essays", 1928
%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do.
%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
%
What publishers are looking for these days isn't radical feminism.
It's corporate feminism -- a brand of feminism designed to sell books
and magazines, three-piece suits, airline tickets, Scotch, cigarettes
and, most important, corporate America's message, which runs: "Yes,
women were discriminated against in the past, but that unfortunate
mistake has been remedied; now every woman can attain wealth, prestige
and power by dint of individual rather than collective effort."
-- Susan Gordon
%
What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?
-- Ursula K. LeGuin
%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%
What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.
%
What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.
%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent bagel.
%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%
What this country needs is a good five cent microcomputer.
%
What this country needs is a good five cent nickel.
%
What this country needs is a good five dollar plasma weapon.
%
What this world needs is a good five-dollar plasma weapon.
%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which
nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday
Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-
launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just
remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual
process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still
be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed.
-- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
%
What you don't know can hurt you, only you won't know it.
%
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-- Steven Wright
%
"What's that thing?"
"Well, it's a highly technical, sensitive instrument we use in
computer repair. Being a layman, you probably can't grasp exactly what
it does. We call it a two-by-four."
-- Jeff MacNelley, "Shoe"
%
What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?
-- Dr. Who
%
Whatever became of eternal truth?
%
Whatever became of Strange de Jim? Well, he found a substitute for
cocaine: "You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils
as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding
hundred dollar bills."
-- Herb Caen
%
Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not
nailed down.
-- Collis P. Huntingdon
%
Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches!
-- Mom
%
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him -- that's where the
money is.
-- Robespierre
%
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
thing," it's the money.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half
loop?
%
When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is
not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space
travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.
-- Robert Heinlein, "Time Enough For Love"
%
When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog along to see the
sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain
relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.
-- Robert Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
%
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
%
When are you BUTTHEADS gonna learn that you can't oppose Gestapo
tactics *with* Gestapo tactics?
-- Reuben Flagg
%
When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before
the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."
-- Vine Deloria, Jr.
%
When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask? Well, last year, I
think it was a Tuesday.
%
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
guarantee them.
%
When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great
parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if
I'm leaving.
-- Steven Wright
%
When I heated my home with oil, I used an average of 800 gallons a
year. I have found that I can keep comfortably warm for an entire
winter with slightly over half that quantity of beer.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
When I said "we", officer, I was referring to myself, the four young
ladies, and, of course, the goat.
%
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now
I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
When I was a kid I said to my father one afternoon, "Daddy, will you
take me to the zoo?" He answered, "If the zoo wants you let them come
and get you."
-- Jerry Lewis
%
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any
firearms with me. I said, `Well, what do you need?'
-- Steven Wright
%
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into
the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
-- Woody Allen
%
When I was seven years old, I was once reprimanded by my mother for an
act of collective brutality in which I had been involved at school. A
group of seven-year-olds had been teasing and tormenting a
six-year-old. "It is always so," my mother said. "You do things
together which not one of you would think of doing alone." ...
Wherever one looks in the world of human organization, collective
responsibility brings a lowering of moral standards. The military
establishment is an extreme case, an organization which seems to have
been expressly designed to make it possible for people to do things
together which nobody in his right mind would do alone.
-- Freeman Dyson, "Weapons and Hope"
%
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
-- Mark Twain
%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%
When in doubt, tell the truth.
-- Mark Twain
%
When in doubt, use brute force.
-- Ken Thompson
%
When in panic, fear and doubt,
Drink in barrels, eat, and shout.
%
When love is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always Mom.
Hi, Mom!
-- Laurie Anderson
%
When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%
When more and more people are thrown out of work, unemployment
results.
-- Calvin Coolidge
%
When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony
concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years --
and I find I mind it less and less."
-- Louise Andrews Kent
%
When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity:
for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when
your boss is away and you get twice as much done.
-- Daniel B. Luten
%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only
say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%
When the going gets tough, the tough get empirical.
-- Jon Carroll
%
When the government bureau's remedies don't match your problem, you
modify the problem, not the remedy.
%
When the Ngdanga tribe of West Africa hold their moon love ceremonies,
the men of the tribe bang their heads on sacred trees until they get a
nose bleed, which usually cures them of ____that.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
When the speaker and he to whom he is speaks do not understand, that is
metaphysics.
-- Voltaire
%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones
were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the
corners as bodies of a lower grade ...
-- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%
When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the plane, the
plane will fly.
-- Donald Douglas
%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most
insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are
required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and
exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is
not hereditary.
-- Thomas Paine
%
When we understand knowledge-based systems, it will be as before --
except our fingertips will have been singed.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
investigation of a topic, it is well to have the answer firmly in hand,
so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
swayed, directly to the goal.
-- Amrom Katz
%
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
%
When you don't know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%
When you have an efficient government, you have a dictatorship.
-- Harry S. Truman
%
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer
to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.
-- R. A. Lafferty
%
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.
-- Winston Churchill, on formal declarations of war
%
When you know absolutely nothing about the topic, make your forecast by
asking a carefully selected probability sample of 300 others who don't
know the answer either.
-- Edgar R. Fiedler
%
When you make your mark in the world, watch out for guys with erasers.
-- The Wall Street Journal
%
When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the
impression you will make.
%
When you're away, I'm restless, lonely,
Wretched, bored, dejected; only
Here's the rub, my darling dear
I feel the same when you are near.
-- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away"
%
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
%
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically", they really mean, "not really".
-- Dave Parnas
%
Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
see it tried on him personally.
-- A. Lincoln
%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-- Mark Twain
"Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
-- Mark Twain
%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
Oh, dear, where can the matter be
When it's converted to energy?
There is a slight loss of parity.
Johnny's so long at the fair.
%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what
is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
%
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is
admission to someone else.
%
While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
-- Robert Burns, Address on "The Rights of Woman",
November 26, 1792
%
While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
%
While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't
keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
-- Edward Stevenson
%
While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own
form of misery.
%
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
%
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their
correctness never does.
%
While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very
reassuring to know that it's still there.
%
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are
safe, for you can watch both of his.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Whistler's Law:
You never know who is right, but you always know who is in
charge.
%
Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process ...
%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
-- A. E. Housman
%
Who messed with my anti-paranoia shot?
%
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%
Who's on first?
%
"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
-- George Ade
%
Whom computers would destroy, they must first drive mad.
%
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.
%
Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'? I could
have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing.
-- Ian Shoales
%
Why be a man when you can be a success?
-- Bertolt Brecht
%
Why bother building any more nuclear warheads until we use the ones we
have?
%
Why can't you be a non-conformist like everyone else?
%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse?
What is the Latin for office automation?
%
Why do we have two eyes? To watch 3-D movies with.
%
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
there must be a beverage.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps and California have
more lawyers?
New Jersey had first choice.
%
Why don't elephants eat penguins ?
Because they can't get the wrappers off ...
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but ...
-- I have to floss my cat.
-- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
-- I need to spend more time with my blender.
-- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
-- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
-- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
-- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
-- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
-- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
-- I have some really hard words to look up.
-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
%
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved
-- Mark Twain
%
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
%
Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
you knowing nothing?
-- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
%
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year?
Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your
children open their old-fashioned presents.
Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it
falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer
with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory,
and I get this cretin TOP?"
Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
Why was I born with such contemporaries?
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Why You Can't Run When There's Trouble in the Office:
No matter where you stand, no matter how far or fast you flee,
when it hits the fan, as much as possible will be propelled in your
direction, and almost none will be returned to the source.
-- John L. Shelton
%
Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%
William Safire's Rules for Writers:
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never
be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Verbs have to
agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to see if you words
out. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal
of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. A writer must
not shift your point of view. And don't start a sentence with a
conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a
sentence with.) Don't overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as
close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more
words, to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a
linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing
metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky. Everyone should
be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their
writing. Always pick on the correct idiom. The adverb always follows
the verb. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek
viable alternatives.
%
Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
statistical methods.
%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as
it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
%
Wit, n.:
The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery
... by leaving it out.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I
try to be a fraud and a half.
-- Otto von Bismarck
%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?
%
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
%
With trembling hands he unfurled the ancient cracked parchment,
this was the place, it had to be. Uncertainly he began to mumble the
chant "rdbms, sql, third normal formal form, java, table, scalable".
Something moved... From outside they heard a scream and a thud.
The sales department had awoken.
%
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
%
Wombat's Laws of Computer Selection:
(1) If it doesn't run Unix, forget it.
(2) Any computer design over 10 years old is obsolete.
(3) Anything made by IBM is junk. (See number 2)
(4) The minimum acceptable CPU power for a single user is a
VAX/780 with a floating point accelerator.
(5) Any computer with a mouse is worthless.
-- Rich Kulawiec
%
Wood is highly ecological, since trees are a renewable resource. If
you cut down a tree, another will grow in its place. And if you cut
down the new tree, still another will grow. And if you cut down that
tree, yet another will grow, only this one will be a mutation with
long, poisonous tentacles and revenge in its heart, and it will sit
there in the forest, cackling and making elaborate plans for when you
come back.
Wood heat is not new. It dates back to a day millions of years ago,
when a group of cavemen were sitting around, watching dinosaurs rot.
Suddenly, lightning struck a nearby log and set it on fire. One of the
cavemen stared at the fire for a few minutes, then said: "Hey! Wood
heat!" The other cavemen, who did not understand English, immediately
beat him to death with stones. But the key discovery had been made,
and from that day forward, the cavemen had all the heat they needed,
although their insurance rates went way up.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
We are no longer allowing this practice. We wish to discourage
any thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you
should not consider having anything removed. We hired you as you are,
and to have anything removed would certainly make you less than we
bargained for.
%
Workers of the world, arise! You have nothing to lose but your chairs.
%
World War Three can be averted by adherence to a strictly enforced
dress code!
%
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing:
August. The lines are the shortest, though.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Worst Month of the Year:
February. February has only 28 days in it, which means that if
you rent an apartment, you are paying for three full days you don't
get. Try to avoid Februarys whenever possible.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Worst Response To A Crisis, 1985:
From a readers' Q and A column in TV GUIDE: "If we get involved
in a nuclear war, would the electromagnetic pulses from exploding bombs
damage my videotapes?"
%
Worst Vegetable of the Year:
The brussels sprout. This is also the worst vegetable of next
year.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
-- Lewis Carroll
%
Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish
and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer
if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and
and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and
and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
%
Write-Protect Tab, n.:
A small sticker created to cover the unsightly notch carelessly
left by disk manufacturers. The use of the tab creates an error
message once in a while, but its aesthetic value far outweighs the
momentary inconvenience.
-- Robb Russon
%
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
-- Frank Zappa
%
"Wrong," said Renner.
"The tactful way," Rod said quietly, "the polite way to disagree with
the Senator would be to say, `That turns out not to be the case.'"
%
X-rated movies are all alike -- the only thing they leave to the
imagination is the plot.
%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%
XIIdigitation, n.:
The practice of trying to determine the year a movie was made
by deciphering the Roman numerals at the end of the credits.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
"Yacc" owes much to a most stimulating collection of users, who have
goaded me beyond my inclination, and frequently beyond my ability in
their endless search for "one more feature". Their irritating
unwillingness to learn how to do things my way has usually led to my
doing things their way; most of the time, they have been right.
-- Stephen C. Johnson, "Yacc guide acknowledgements"
%
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of APL, I shall
fear no evil, for I can string six primitive monadic and dyadic
operators together.
-- Steve Higgins
%
Yeah, but you're taking the universe out of context.
%
Year, n.:
A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
%
Yes, but which self do you want to be?
%
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog.
Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog.
Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy
%
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today --
I think he's from the CIA.
%
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
Yinkel, n.:
A person who combs his hair over his bald spot, hoping no one
will notice.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%
You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
%
You are here:
***
***
*********
*******
*****
***
*
But you're not all there.
%
You are not illiterate.
-- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie
%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
Made it pointless to think any more."
%
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
-- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."
-- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
Have you thought about taking a hike?"
"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
"Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
And don't realize that they've been had."
%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"
-- Lewis Carroll
%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
Do you really think this is quite fair?"
"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
"But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
And to stop me it's now far too late."
%
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
-- Lewis Carroll
%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%
You are the only person to ever get this message.
%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
%
You buttered your bread, now lie in it!
%
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting
incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail.
Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable
to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because
nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes
they receive and send them back to the original givers the next year;
some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then
pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear
safety glasses.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
You can bring any calculator you like to the midterm, as long as it
doesn't dim the lights when you turn it on.
-- Hepler, Systems Design 182
%
You can create your own opportunities this week.
Blackmail a senior executive.
%
You can do this in a number of ways. IBM chose to do all of them.
Why do you find that funny?
-- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350, University of Washington
%
You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you
can with just a kind word.
-- Bumper Sticker
%
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have,
for instance.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
-- Alan Perlis
%
You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
%
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
-- F. Allen
%
You can tell how far we have to go, when FORTRAN is the language of
supercomputers.
-- Steven Feiner
%
You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.
%
You can write a small letter to Grandma in the filename.
-- Forbes Burkowski, Computer Science 454
%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.
-- Booker T. Washington
%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%
You can't make a program without broken egos.
%
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic
enough worrying about what's happening now.
-- Lauren Bacall
%
You can't survive by sucking the juice from a wet mitten.
-- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
Over and Over"
%
You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't.
-- Dagwood Bumstead
%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a reasonable
doubt.
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%
You do not have mail.
%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger
%
You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting
needles.
-- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
%
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form.
The short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified",
which means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears
tax-preparation expert to distinguish between their first and last
names. Here's the complete text:
"(1) How much did you make? (AMOUNT)
"(2) How much did we here at the government take out? (AMOUNT)
"(3) Hey! Sounds like we took too much! So we're going to
send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"
The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money. So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long
form.
-- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
%
You have a tendency to feel you are superior to most computers.
%
You have acquired a scroll entitled 'irk gleknow mizk'(n).--More--
This is an IBM Manual scroll.--More--
You are permanently confused.
-- Dave Decot
%
You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
metal objects which are not fastened down.
%
You have junk mail.
%
You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets
wrinkled.
%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
%
You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes
you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
%
You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens
anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
you can always change the channel.
-- Jim Ignatowski
%
You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
-- S. Rickly Christian
%
You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
-- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
%
You know you've been spending too much time on the computer when your
friend misdates a check, and you suggest adding a "++" to fix it.
%
You know you've landed gear-up when it takes full power to taxi.
%
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon
airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in
deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me
when I was young!"
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen!"
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
%
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
%
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he
is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.
-- Sydney Harris
%
You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with
him.
-- Ed Howe
%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
-- Alfred Kahn
%
You men out there probably think you already know how to dress for
success. You know, for example, that you should not wear leisure suits
or white plastic belts and shoes, unless you are going to a costume
party disguised as a pig farmer vacationing at Disney World.
-- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success"
%
You might have mail.
%
You might have had mail.
%
You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable
proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do.
%
You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll
be dead.
%
You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a
reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating
the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for
independence.
-- Charles A. Beard
%
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the
beach.
%
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were
you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare
yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the
company.
-- J. Wellington Wells
%
You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
%
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could
know how seldom they do.
-- Olin Miller
%
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.
%
You should never bet against anything in science at odds of more than
about 10^12 to 1.
-- Ernest Rutherford
%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for
freedom and liberty.
-- Henrik Ibsen
%
You should not use your fireplace, because scientists now believe that,
contrary to popular opinion, fireplaces actually remove heat from
houses. Really, that's what scientists believe. In fact many
scientists actually use their fireplaces to cool their houses in the
summer. If you visit a scientist's house on a sultry August day,
you'll find a cheerful fire roaring on the hearth and the scientist
sitting nearby, remarking on how cool he is and drinking heavily.
-- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
%
You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name,
another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and
another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms
such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In
many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money.
If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you
should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate
for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it
because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially
chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his
hemorrhoids.
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a
plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture.
-- Business Professor, University of Georgia
%
You think Oedipus had a problem -- Adam was Eve's mother.
%
YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF
PAPER SHUFFLING!
Mr. TAA of Muddle, Mass. says: "Before I took this course I used to be
a lowly bit twiddler. Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel
really important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."
Mr. MARC had this to say: "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
to was a dead-end job as a engineer. Now I have a promising future and
make really big Zorkmids."
MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.
SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
%
You too can wear a nose mitten.
%
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%
You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
%
You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door
mayonnaise salesman.
%
You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the
Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
-- Sherlock Holmes
%
You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
%
You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You're not paid enough to
worry.
%
You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a
taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a
minute and a huff.
-- Groucho Marx
%
You'll never be the man your mother was!
%
You're at the end of the road again.
%
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%
You're never too old to become younger.
-- Mae West
%
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on.
-- Dean Martin
%
You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%
You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks.
-- Gary Giddens
%
"You've got to think about tomorrow!"
"TOMORROW! I haven't even prepared for *_________yesterday* yet!"
%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
thing he tells you.
%
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything. It just stops you
from enjoying it.
%
Your fault: core dumped
%
Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that
bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a
chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home
electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit
breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires
until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can
damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change
your fuses regularly.
Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This
sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more
often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case
you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not
sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a
fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed
electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession,
such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette
table, etc.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
%
Your lucky color has faded.
%
Your lucky number has been disconnected.
%
Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%
Yow! Am I having fun yet?
-- Zippy the Pinhead
%
YOW!! Everybody out of the GENETIC POOL!
%
Zero Defects, n.:
The result of shutting down a production line.
%
Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
since I first called my brother's father dad.
-- William Shakespeare, "King John"
%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%
THE LAST BUG
"But you're out of your mind," It still wasn't perfect,
They said with a shrug. As year followed year,
"The customer's happy; And strangers would comment,
What's one little bug?" "Is that guy still here?"
But he was determined. He died at the console,
The others went home. Of hunger and thirst.
He spread out the program, Next day he was buried,
Deserted, alone. Face down, nine-edge first.
The cleaning men came, And the last bug in sight,
The whole room was cluttered An ant passing by,
With memory-dumps, punch cards. Saluted his tombstone,
"I'm close," he muttered. And whispered, "Nice try."
The mumbling got louder,
Simple deduction,
"I've got it, it's right,
Just change one instruction."
%
Speaking of the philosophy involved in moving humanity into space:
Furniture will be a largely obsolete concept. Take for example the dresser my
mom bought for me when I was a kid. I still have it, and by the standards of
its era, it's an admirable household fixture. It is a massive construction of
maple wood, expertly joined with cunningly fit pieces, fitted and glued with
the strength of iron. It is set with massive brass fixtures, and looks today
-- discounting the dust -- as new as the day it was purchased, a quarter
century ago. So far, so good; a fine piece of furniture, you might say. But
let's look at it objectively, as a machine, as an object with a purpose. Here
sit a hundred pounds of hardwood with a compressive strength of 1500 psi,
jointed by an expert craftsman into a rigid box that would easily support a
bull elephant. And what is the sole purpose of this massive crate, this
monument to a dead tree? -- it holds my socks.
Not only is it blind engineering overkill of epic proportions, it is also an
environmental disaster. The home to generations of squirrels, a sentinel post
for falcons, an autumnal banner of golden glory, a living creature, was chopped
down to enshrine some underwear. This, my friends, is no way to run a planet.
-- Marshall T. Savage, from The Millennial Project:
Colonizing the Galaxy -- In Eight Easy Steps
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Nearly every software professional has heard the term spaghetti code as a
pejorative description for complicated, difficult to understand, and impossible
to maintain, software. However, many people may not know the other two
elements of the complete Pasta Theory of Software.
Lasagna code is used to describe software that has a simple, understandable,
and layered structure. Lasagna code, although structured, is unfortunately
monolithic and not easy to modify. An attempt to change one layer conceptually
simple, is often very difficult in actual practice.
The ideal software structure is one having components that are small and
loosely coupled; this ideal structure is called ravioli code. In ravioli
code, each of the components, or objects, is a package containing some meat
or other nourishment for the system; any component can be modified or replaced
without significantly affecting other components.
We need to go beyond the condemnation of spaghetti code to the active
encouragement of ravioli code.
-- Raymond J. Rubey, in a letter to the editor of Crosstalk
magazine
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63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
now there's 63,005 bugs in the code!!
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"It's not very common in Crowthorne"
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1) Don't expect fairings.
2) If confused read #1.
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Cheer up. You could have all the problems you have now, and then also
be named Eustace Clarence Scrubb.
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Never leave a macassar and an antimacassar in the same room together.
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Why did the furry install Unix? Because it supports catman(8).
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Many people don't realize that trailhead doggerel is illegal -- but
surely you've heard of "hike rhymes and misdemeanors"...
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We all know political bumper stickers and some of us even put them on
our cars. However, if you show up at headquarters on Friday afternoon
after a long campaign week, you're more likely to see a stumper
bicker.
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When you're under siege by a winter storm, that's a "frontal assault".
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Somebody has mail.
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'Agnosis' is when you don't know. 'Diagnosis' is when you don't know
twice.
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An assortment of ways to be assimilated is a "smorgasborg".
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The Navy's forever doomed to be inefficient because it's always trying
to do things in a sub-optimal manner.
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Q. What do you do if you find an abomination rooted in and need a
druid in a hurry?
A. Call the copse.
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A truly great library contains something in it to offend everyone.
-- Jo Godwin
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Give a man a 0day and he'll have access for a day, teach a man to phish
and he'll have access for life.
-- the grugq
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Information wants to be free and also extremely difficult to use.
-- An ancient open source proverb
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I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.
-- Mitch Hedberg
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You, the Poles, have a funny nature. When the people going along the
road are attacked by a dog with its insistent and noisy barking, you
immediately feel like jumping off the vehicle, standing on all fours
and starting to bark back at it. We, in the Vilnius region, let the
dog bark because that is what its canine nature is like but we do not
stop our journey because of its barking, and without any war
against dogs we calmly continue our journey until we reach our
destination. It seems that you care more about barking than the dog
does, and more about winning the war with any lousy puppy than about
reaching the destination quickly.
-- Jozef Pilsudski
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[NeXT] attracted the strangest kind of hybrid, which was sort of like...
Unix weenies by Armani.
-- John Perry Barlow
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Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you
and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember, my friend, future
events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the
unknown, the mysterious, the unexplainable. That is why you are here.
-- Criswell Predicts, "Plan 9 From Outer Space"
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Rule 1 of cryptanalysis: check for plaintext.
-- Bob Morris, Crypto '95
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Remember kids, the only difference between Science and screwing around is
writing it down.
-- Adam Savage
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THE PURPLE COW Confession: and a Portrait, Too,
Reflections on a Mythic Beast, Upon a Background that I Rue!
Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least.
Ah, yes! I wrote the "Purple Cow"--
I never saw a Purple Cow; I'm sorry, now, I wrote it!
I never hope to see one; But I can tell you, anyhow,
But I can tell you, anyhow, I'll kill you if you quote it!
I'd rather see than be one. -- Gelett Burgess
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Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we
can perform without thinking about them.
-- Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics (1911)
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I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter
than a season.
-- Josh Rosen
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Computers for the brasses -- art for the masses.
-- J.C.R. Licklider
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If, in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a
computer display backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day, and
that was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could
you derive from that?
-- Douglas Engelbart, Fall Joint Computer Conference,
December 9th, 1968
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They made me do it
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It was the first thing that I formed a really powerful bond with.
It was some sort of mental love missile and I just lit the touch paper and
fired myself into it, at oblivious speed, and it exploded, and sparkled and it
was totally beautiful.
-- Chris Packham and the kestrel
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Austerity is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by
there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton.
-- Alexei Sayle
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I wonder why. I wonder why.
I wonder why I wonder.
I wonder why I wonder why
I wonder why I wonder!
-- Richard P. Feynman, "Always Trying to Escape"
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Fanfare, n.:
The food available for consumption at a con.
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Fail we may, sail we must
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Don't shout at your JBODs, they don't like it!
-- Brendan Gregg, "Shouting in the Datacenter"
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Bell has two patents on UNIX
a) set-user-id bit
b) on "typo" !
-- John Lions, Australian UNIX Users Group Newsletter, Oct 1978
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The purpose of computing numbers is not yet in sight