$ cat /usr/share/games/fortune/fortunes
This fortune brought to you by:
$FreeBSD: src/games/fortune/datfiles/fortunes,v 1.12.2.3 1999/11/27 07:34:25 wes
Exp $
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!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
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(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.
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(1) Everything depends.
(2) Nothing is always.
(3) Everything is sometimes.
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1.79 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.
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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"
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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
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186,282 miles per second:
It isn't just a good idea, it's the law!
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2180, U.S. History question:
What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what
office did he later hold?
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$3,000,000
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"355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
simulation!"
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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!
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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.
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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 Ghandi
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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.
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A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
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... 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.
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A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon.
Avoid him. He's a Commie.
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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
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A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody
wants to read.
-- Mark Twain
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A closed mouth gathers no foot.
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A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
-- Gigo
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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.
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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.
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A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper.
-- Dyer
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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 crusader's wife slipped from the garrison
And had an affair with a Saracen.
She was not oversexed,
Or jealous or vexed,
She just wanted to make a comparison.
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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?
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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 risque 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 as 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
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A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five times eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
%
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.
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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
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A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
ducks.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
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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. Morganstern, "The Silent Gondoliers"
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A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort
of).
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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
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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 enui.
O is for Olive, run through with an awl, P is for Prue, trampled flat in a brawl
Q is for Quinton who sank in a mire, R is for Rhoda, consumed by a fire.
S is for Susan who parished of fits, T is for Titas who flew into bits.
U is for Una who slipped down a drain, V is for Victor, squashed under a train.
W is for Winie, embedded in ice, X is for Xercies, devoured by mice.
Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin.
-- Edward Gorey "The Gastly Crumb Tines"
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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.
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A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
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A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction.
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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
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A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing.
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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 limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
%
A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.
-- H. H. Munroe
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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.
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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
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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
%
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.
-- Audobon Society Magazine
%
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 dramatist of the absurd
Has a voice that will shortly be heard.
I learn from my spies
He's about to devise
An unprintable three-letter word.
%
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!"
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"
%
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City
upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come
to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was
too.
-- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%
A 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 incomprehensive 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 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 UNIX saleslady, Lenore,
Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more.
She found a good way
To combine work and play:
She sells C shells by the seashore.
%
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature
replaces it with.
-- Tennessee Williams
%
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
The system, you see,
Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
%
A 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.
%
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 it's 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."
%
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 asceptic.
%
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"
-- Isiah
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
%
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
-- E. 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.
%
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 an opinion is an art.
-- Charles McCabe
%
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.
%
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 and useful if it's made of chocolate.
%
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?
%
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 things as a free
variable."
%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple
memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
-- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%
As you 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 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, 9 June, 1985
%
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 Kent State student
%
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
ukelele.
%
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!"
%
"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!"
%
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
%
Berkeley had what we called "copycenter," which is "take it down
to the copy center and make as many copies as you want."
-- Kirk McKusick
%
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 town
cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus 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.
%
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.
-- Kin 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
%
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 mimic 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.
-- LaRouchefoucauld
%
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 undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer
maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS
OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY
UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED
IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD
WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND
SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS,
RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS,
RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE
FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%
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
%
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."
-- "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
%
"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-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 than an "S" is coming up at the end of a
word, as in: WE DO NOT EXCEPT PERSONAL CHECK'S, or: NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR
ANY ITEM'S. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when
creating hand- lettered small-business signs is that you should put
quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "TRY" OUR HOT
DOG'S, or even TRY "OUR" HOT DOG'S.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
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
%
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 insures we shall be governed no better than
we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
-- Senator Soaper
%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the
incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G. B. Shaw
%
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you
don't think.
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Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
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Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
-- E. B. White
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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.
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Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the
board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls.
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Dentist, n.:
A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls
coins out of one's pockets.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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Despising machines to a man,
The Luddites joined up with the Klan,
And ride out by night
In a sheeting of white
To lynch all the robots they can.
-- C. M. and G. A. Maxson
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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
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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
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DeVries's Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want
hits the paper.
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Did I say 2? I lied.
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Did you know ...
That no-one ever reads these things?
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Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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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?
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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
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Die, v.:
To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard
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"Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a
conventional thing to happen to him."
-- John Barrymore's dying words
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Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
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Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight.
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Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
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Disc space -- the final frontier!
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Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be
yours too."
-- Dave Haynie
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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.)
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Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art.
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Distinctive, adj.:
A different color or shape than our competitors.
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Distress, n.:
A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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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.
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Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?
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Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
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Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
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Do not drink coffee in early a.m. It will keep you awake until noon.
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Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to
anger.
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"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good
with ketchup."
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Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
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Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
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Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes.
-- Donald Kaul
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Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
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Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
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Do you have lysdexia?
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Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take
the time to take the dirt out of them?
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"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!"
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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
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Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must
be good because the programmers hate it so much.
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Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
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Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow.
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Don't be humble ... you're not that great.
-- Golda Meir
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Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
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Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!
-- Joe Cointment
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"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"
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Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
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Don't feed the bats tonight.
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Don't get even -- get odd!
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Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly
misleading. Debug only code.
-- Dave Storer
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"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes
you nothing. It was here first."
-- Mark Twain
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Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
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Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
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Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier.
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Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
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Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
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Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking
distance