Holy Grail Of Signature Quotes

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-194317452011-04-21T13:45:14.313-07:00Holy Grail Of Signature QuotesDukehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09842709002418443780noreply@blogger.comBlogger11100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19431745.post-1133302829421596172005-11-29T14:06:00.000-08:002005-11-29T14:20:30.076-08:00The Holy Grail Of Signature QuotesThis is a document of great quotes that I found on a website. I subsequently forgot the website, so I will post it here. It is about 800 pages long. % (1) Everything depends. (2) Nothing is always. (3) Everything is sometimes. % 1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's the law! % $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" % 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR (1) Scarecrow for centipedes (2) Dead cat brush (3) Hair barrettes (4) Cleats (5) Self-piercing earrings (6) Fungus trellis (7) False eyelashes (8) Prosthetic dog claws . . . (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors) (100) Killer velcro (101) Currency % 186,282 miles per second: It isn't just a good idea, it's the law! % 2180, U.S. History question: What 20th Century U.S. President was almost impeached and what office did he later hold? % $3,000,000 (now that's a fortune!) % "355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!" % 43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped % 77. HO HUM -- The Redundant ------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme --- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife ------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working ---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop the ---X--- (9) GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates to --- --- (8) nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex. Nine in the second place means: The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune. Six in the third place means: In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble! % 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure) The Bionic Dog drinks too much and kicks over the National Redwood Forest. % 7:30, Channel 5: The Bionic Dog (Action/Adventure) The Bionic Dog gets a hormonal short-circuit and violates the Mann Act with an interstate Greyhound bus. % 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 % 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 % A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other. % A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on. -- Carl Sandburg % A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce. -- Don Quinn % 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 % A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it adds up to be real money. -- Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen % A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him. % A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring. % A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose. % ... A booming voice says, "Wrong, cretin!", and you notice that you have turned into a pile of dust. % A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours. % A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward. % A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other. % A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness. % 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 % A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five. % A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie. % A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. -- Bill Vaughan % A city is a large community where people are lonesome together -- Herbert Prochnow % A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain % A closed mouth gathers no foot. % 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 % A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking. % A CONS is an object which cares. -- Bernie Greenberg. % A consultant is a person who borrows your watch, tells you what time it is, pockets the watch, and sends you a bill for it. % A continuing flow of paper is sufficient to continue the flow of paper. -- Dyer % A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample. -- Rebecca West % A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats. -- Ben Franklin % 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. % A cynic is a person searching for an honest man, with a stolen lantern. -- Edgar A. Shoaff % A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it? % A day without sunshine is like night. % A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat. % 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 was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect." The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?" % A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. -- Ogden Nash % A dozen, a gross, and a score, Plus three times the square root of four, Divided by seven, Plus five time 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 % A fool must now and then be right by chance. % A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw % 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. % A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used. -- D. Gries % "A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension." -- Mandelbrot, "The Fractal Geometry of Nature" % A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. -- Adlai Stevenson % A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion. -- H. L. Mencken % A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding ducks. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 % A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of). % A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea. -- John Ciardi % A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James % A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century. % A hypothetical paradox: What would happen in a battle between an Enterprise security team, who always get killed soon after appearing, and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of a planet? -- Tom Galloway % A is for Amy who fell down the stairs, B is for Basil assaulted by bears. C is for Clair who wasted away, D is for Desmond thrown out of the sleigh. E is for Ernest who choked on a peach, F is for Fanny, sucked dry by a leech. G is for George, smothered under a rug, H is for Hector, done in by a thug. I is for Ida who drowned in the lake, J is for James who took lye, by mistake. K is for Kate who was struck with an axe, L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks. M is for Maud who was swept out to sea, N is for Nevil who died of 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 Xerxes, devoured by mice. Y is for Yoric whose head was bashed in, Z is for Zilla who drank too much gin. -- Edward Gorey "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" % A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance. % A jury consists of 12 persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. -- Robert Frost % A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction. % A lady with one of her ears applied To an open keyhole heard, inside, Two female gossips in converse free -- The subject engaging them was she. "I think", said one, "and my husband thinks That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!" As soon as no more of it she could hear The lady, indignant, removed her ear. "I will not stay," she said with a pout, "To hear my character lied about!" -- Gopete Sherany % A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do. -- Dennis M. Ritchie % A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work. -- Anatol Holt % 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 % A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. % A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any price. % A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and exceptional ability in that particular field." % A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths. -- Steven Wright % A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks. -- Lew Col % A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The first thing he notices is that the arms are too long. "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine." "But the collar is up around my ears!" "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a little more ... that's it." "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation. "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly." So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the street. Reba and Florence see him go by. "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!" "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" % A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." -- Stephen Crane % 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 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 % 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 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," circa. 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 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 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. -- Publilius 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? % "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 <CONTROL-G> tolls. % Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the Station-to-Station rate. % Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee. % Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell" for an answer. % "Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it, she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'" -- David Letterman % Ass, n.: The masculine of "lass". % Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve. Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be strengthened. Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum. Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check and dying broke. -- Stanley Walker % "At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head under the exhaust of a bus until he revived." % At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is not. But obviously it cannot be where it is not. And if it is where it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest. -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow % At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats. -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985 % ... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand. -- J. B. White % "At least they're EXPERIENCED incompetents!" % At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his thumb with a hammer. -- Marshall Lumsden % At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer. % Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp. % Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason. -- Winston Churchill % Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever depths they were once able to plumb. -- Stanley Kaufman % Automobile, n.: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians. % Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" % Avoid reality at all costs. % "Avoid revolution or expect to get shot. Mother and I will grieve, but we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you." -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a 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!" <huff, huff> % Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone. % Bennett's Laws of Horticulture: (1) Houses are for people to live in. (2) Gardens are for plants to live in. (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant. % "Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence" -- Time Bandits % Besides the device, the box should contain: * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING" * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns. YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram cable. IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's why." WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret. -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!" % Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon. % better !pout !cry better watchout lpr why santa claus <north pole >town cat /etc/passwd >list ncheck list ncheck list cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist cat list | grep nice >giftlist santa claus <north pole > town who | grep sleeping who | grep awake who | egrep 'bad|good' for (goodness sake) { be good } % Better dead than mellow. % Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate. Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and great effort pushing boulders into a single word. It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow. Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass both Parliament and Party. It stands today, a monument to human spirit. If life exists on other planets, this may be the first message received from us. -- The Realist, November, 1964. % "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth % Beware of computerized fortune-tellers! % Beware of low-flying butterflies. % Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein % Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a drip under pressure. % "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle" % Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy. % Binary, adj.: Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes. % "Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division." % Bipolar, adj.: Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo, New York % Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic % Bizoos, n.: The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a basketball. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % ... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ... % Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt. % Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels. % 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 among the children of the Great Society there were those whose skins were black. And lo! Their portion was niggardly, and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat ... Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and they called him King. And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let my people go to the front of the bus." But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass. When ye shall prove yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea, verily, like unto a snowball in Hell." -- "The Begatting of a President" % ... 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 % 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. % 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. Newman % Critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Croll's Query: If tin whistles are made of tin, what are foghorns made of? % cursor address, n: "Hello, cursor!" -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" % "Cutting the space budget really restores my faith in humanity. It eliminates dreams, goals, and ideals and lets us get straight to the business of hate, debauchery, and self-annihilation." -- Johnny Hart % Cynic, n.: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Cynic, n.: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye. % Dare to be naive. -- R. Buckminster Fuller % Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie. % Dave Mack: "Your stupidity, Allen, is simply not up to par." Allen Gwinn: "Yours is." % Dawn, n.: The time when men of reason go to bed. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed. % %DCL-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" % 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. % Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. -- H. L. Mencken % Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse. -- Jawaharlal Nehru % Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. -- E. B. White % Democracy, n.: A government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic... negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demagogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy. -- U. S. Army Training Manual No. 2000-25 (1928-1932), since withdrawn. % Demographic polls show that you have lost credibility across the board. Especially with those 14 year-old Valley girls. % Dentist, n.: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls coins out of one's pockets. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % 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 % Dessert is probably the most important stage of the meal, since it will be the last thing your guests remember before they pass out all over the table. -- The Anarchist Cookbook % DETERIORATA Go placidly amid the noise and waste, And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself, And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss -- and when. Remember that two wrongs never make a right, But that three do. Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD". Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment, And despite the changing fortunes of time, There is always a big future in computer maintenance. You are a fluke of the universe ... You have no right to be here. Whether you can hear it or not, the universe Is laughing behind your back. -- National Lampoon % DeVries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper. % Did I say 2? I lied. % Did you know ... That no-one ever reads these things? % Did you know that clones never use mirrors? -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Did you know that if you took all the economists in the world and lined them up end to end, they'd still point in the wrong direction? % Did you know that the voice tapes easily identify the Russian pilot that shot down the Korean jet? At one point he definitely states: "Natasha! First we shoot jet, then we go after moose and squirrel." -- ihuxw!tommyo % Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly. -- Elbert Hubbard % "Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him." -- John Barrymore's dying words % Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little. % Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight. % Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock. % Disc space -- the final frontier! % Disclaimer: "These opinions are my own, though for a small fee they be yours too." -- Dave Haynie % Disclaimer: Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.) % Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art. % Distinctive, adj.: A different color or shape than our competitors. % Distress, n.: Don't get even -- get odd! % Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code. -- Dave Storer % "Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." Don't hit a man when he's down -- kick him; it's easier. % Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today. % Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam. % Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance. %Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. Don: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she pretty? W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia. Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative. W. C.: It's almost impossible. -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles" "Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing." " % During the next two hours, the system will be going up and down several times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_ ~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_ ~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o % "Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it." -- W. Somerset Maugham % E Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees. -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star % Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although God alone knows why it would want to. The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires. Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How about ..." -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -- R. Buckminster Fuller % Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence", "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" % % Famous last words: (1) Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix. (2) Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there. (3) What happens if you touch these two wires tog-- (4) We won't need reservations. (5) It's always sunny there this time of the year. (6) Don't worry, it's not loaded. (7) They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager. % % Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea ... -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast"). -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide" % For perfect happiness, remember two things: (1) Be content with what you've got. (2) Be sure you've got plenty. % For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something. -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18: Q: Are you married? A: No, I'm divorced. Q: And what did your husband do before you divorced him? A: A lot of things I didn't know about. % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19: Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people? A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people. % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29: THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present information and prejudice from your minds, if you have any ... % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #32: Q: Do you know how far pregnant you are right now? A: I will be three months November 8th. Q: Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th? A: Yes. Q: What were you and your husband doing at that time? % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37: Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears? A: No. Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears? A: Picking them up in the air. Q: Where was the dog at this time? A: Attached to the ears. % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3: Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station? MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot. % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41: Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated? A: By death. Q: And by whose death was it terminated? % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52: Q: What is your name? A: Ernestine McDowell. Q: And what is your marital status? A: Fair. % Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7: Q: What happened then? A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify me." Q: Did he kill you? -- Gifts for Children -- This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children, because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday- morning cartoon-show advertisements. Make sure you get your children exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % -- Gifts for Men -- Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him ("You're not going to wear THAT tie with that suit, are you?"). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you. If you want to give a man something practical, consider tires. More than once, I would have gladly traded all the gifts I got for a new set of tires. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY #21 -- July 30, 1917 On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught then- Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl. He bought them off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked thankfully, "I thought I wouldn't get out of that under $1000!" Always one to learn from his mistakes, in later years President Harding carried on his affairs in a tiny closet in the White House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men stood lookout. % Slice him up before he slays you. Nothing makes you look a slob Like running from a HOB'LIN (GOB). -- The Roguelet's ABC Hatred, n.: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's superiority. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Have an adequate day. % Have an adequate day. % Have people realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a non-cynical, or even an informative cookie? Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or only serves to blunt the warning signs. Long live the revolution! Have a nice day. % Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying to tell you, "There's a time for work and a time for play," never find the time for play? % Have you ever wondered what makes Californians so calm? Besides drugs, I mean. The answer is hot tubs. A hot tub is a redwood container filled with water that you sit in naked with members of the opposite sex, none of whom is necessarily your spouse. After a few hours in their hot tubs, Californians don't give a damn about earthquakes or mass murderers. They don't give a damn about anything , which is why they are able to produce "Laverne and Shirley" week after week. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % "Have you lived here all your life?" "Oh, twice that long." % Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a crack in your sidewalk? % Have you noticed the way people's intelligence capabilities decline sharply the minute they start waving guns around? -- Dr. Who % Have you reconsidered a computer career? % "He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion." -- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails" % "He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions" % He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful. -- Sydney Smith % He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving "normally." -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72" % He hadn't a single redeeming vice. -- Oscar Wilde % "He is now rising from affluence to poverty." -- Mark Twain % He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered. % He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace. -- John Mason Brown, drama critic % He thought he saw an albatross That fluttered 'round the lamp. He looked again and saw it was A penny postage stamp. "You'd best be getting home," he said, "The nights are rather damp." % He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue. -- Jonathon Swift % "He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable." % "He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes ..." % He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting industry attacks democracy itself. -- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS % He who Laughs, Lasts. % "He's just a politician trying to save both his faces ..." % He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter. % "He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..." % HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science. SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains. -- Walt Kelley % Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. % Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. -- Redd Foxx % Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. -- Redd Foxx % Heaven, n.: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with attention while you expound your own. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Heavy, adj.: Seduced by the chocolate side of the force. % "Heisenberg may have slept here" % Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. -- Milton Friedman % Heller's Law: The first myth of management is that it exists. Johnson's Corollary: Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the organization. % "Hello," he lied. -- Don Carpenter quoting a Hollywood agent % Help a swallow land at Capistrano. % Help fight continental drift. % Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file! % Help stamp out and abolish redundancy. % Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70! % HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN! -- E. E. CUMMINGS % Her locks an ancient lady gave Her loving husband's life to save; And men -- they honored so the dame -- Upon some stars bestowed her name. But to our modern married fair, Who'd give their lords to save their hair, No stellar recognition's given. There are not stars enough in heaven. % "Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ..." % Here I sit, broken-hearted, All logged in, but work unstarted. First net.this and net.that, And a hot buttered bun for net.fat. The boss comes by, and I play the game, Then I turn back to net.flame. Is there a cure (I need your views), For someone trapped in net.news? I need your help, I say 'tween sobs, 'Cause I'll soon be listed in net.jobs. % Here in my heart, I am Helen; I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least. I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta" el; I'm Salome, moon of the East. Here in my soul I am Sappho; Lady Hamilton am I, as well. In me R' ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea, With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell. I'm all of the glamorous ladies At whose beckoning history shook. But you are a man, and see only my pan, So I stay at home with a book. -- Dorothy Parker % Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson. It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit. Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" % Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China. The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax tadpole". Bite the wax tadpole. There is a sort of rough justice, is there not? The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad, but broad satiric vistas do not open up. -- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle % "Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like `Psychic Wins Lottery'?" -- Jay Leno % Heuristics are bug ridden by definition. If they didn't have bugs, then they'd be algorithms. % "Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!" -- W. C. Fields % Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes, nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home. % "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser. "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'" -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering" % Hier liegt ein Mann ganz obnegleich; Im Leibe dick, an Suden reich. Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws Weil es uns dunkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head; We buried him today because As far as we can tell, he's dead. -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty Sue Bach and written by the local doggerel catcher; "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele % Higgeldy Piggeldy, Hamlet of Elsinore Ruffled the critics by Dropping this bomb: "Phooey on Freud and his Psychoanalysis -- Oedipus, Shmoedipus, I just love Mom." % Hindsight is an exact science. % Hippogriff, n.: An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore, only one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Hire the morally handicapped. % "His great aim was to escape from civilization, and, as soon as he had money, he went to Southern California." % "His mind is like a steel trap -- full of mice" -- Foghorn Leghorn % "His super power is to turn into a scotch terrier." % History is curious stuff You'd think by now we had enough Yet the fact remains I fear They make more of it every year. % History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history. % History, n.: Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view. -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab" % Hlade's Law: If you have a difficult task, give it to a lazy person -- they will find an easier way to do it. % Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. % Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. % Hollywood is where if you don't have happiness you send out for it. -- Rex Reed % Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say "shop for", as opposed to "obtain". This is the major drawback of home centers: they are always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every object -- every board, washer, nail and screw -- in the entire store ... Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has a replacement. The employee, who has never is his life even seen the inside of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of these sometime around the middle of next week". -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % Home of Doberman Propulsion Laboratories: The ultimate in watchdog weaponry. -- Chris Shaw % "Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense" % Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people. -- F. M. Hubbard % Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..." % Honk if you love peace and quiet. % Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur." -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case. % Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. -- W. C. Fields % Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa. % "Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed." -- Neil Armstrong % How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all? % How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers? % How come wrong numbers are never busy? % "How do I love thee? My accumulator overflows." % How do you explain school to a higher intelligence? -- Elliot, "E.T." % How doth the little crocodile Improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile On every golden scale! How cheerfully he seems to grin, How neatly spreads his claws, And welcomes little fishes in, With gently smiling jaws! -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" % How doth the VAX's C compiler Improve its object code. And even as we speak does it Increase the system load. How patiently it seems to run And spit out error flags, While users, with frustration, all Tear their clothes to rags. % How doth the VAX's C-compiler Improve its object code. And even as we speak does it Increase the system load. How patiently it seems to run And spit out error flags, While users, with frustration, all Tear all their clothes to rags. % How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on. % How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: "We'll fix it in software." How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: "We'll document it in the manual." How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb? None: "The user can work it out." % "How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by a waiter at a nice party?" Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another cheese!" and so on. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" % How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 x 10^7, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff, Bell Labs % How much does it cost to entice a dope-smoking UNIX system guru to Dayton? -- Brian Boyle, UNIX/WORLD's First Annual Salary Survey % How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. % How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. % HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY: #1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces. % HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY: #15 Your pet rock snaps at you. % HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY: #32: You call your answering service and they've never heard of you. % Howe's Law: Everyone has a scheme that will not work. % However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea. -- Tom K. Ryan % HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill., motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits. The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on the bill. Agreed to. -- Albuquerque Journal % Hug O' War I will not play at tug o' war. I'd rather play at hug o' war, Where everyone hugs Instead of tugs, Where everyone giggles And rolls on the rug, Where everyone kisses, And everyone grins, And everyone cuddles, And everyone wins. -- Shel Silverstein % Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill. % Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating table to prevent his interference, he placed a uretheral catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize. % Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs. % "Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse." -- William Gilbert % Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to ..... to ........ uh .............. % I also believe that academic freedom should protect the right of a professor or student to advocate Marxism, socialism, communism, or any other minority viewpoint -- no matter how distasteful to the majority. -- Richard M. Nixon What are our schools for if not indoctrination against Communism? -- Richard M. Nixon % "I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products. This technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. My carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat. Better go by some more." -- timw@zeb.USWest.COM % I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work. % "I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!" -- Paul McCracken % "I am not now, and never have been, a girlfriend of Henry Kissinger." -- Gloria Steinem % I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the demigodic party. -- Dennis Ritchie % "I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it." -- English Professor % "I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." -- Winston Churchill % "I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top." -- English Professor, Ohio University % I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast with an option to buy. % "I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater." % "I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering." -- Pooh-Bah, "The Mikado", Gilbert & Sullivan % "I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway." -- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee at Knoxville % "I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me." -- Dave Barry % 'I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean." -- G. K. Chesterton % "I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat." -- Will Rogers % "I bet the human brain is a kludge." -- Marvin Minsky % I brake for chezlogs! % I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up. -- Biff Barf % I can feel for her because, although I have never been an Alaskan prostitute dancing on the bar in a spangled dress, I still get very bored with washing and ironing and dishwashing and cooking day after relentless day. -- Betty MacDonald % I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself. % "I can remember when a good politician had to be 75 percent ability and 25 percent actor, but I can well see the day when the reverse could be true." -- Harry Truman % "I can resist anything but temptation." % "I can't complain, but sometimes I still do." -- Joe Walsh % "I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling." -- Florence Henderson % I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it. -- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. % I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. -- Fred Allen % "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." -- Lillian Hellman % I cannot conceive that anybody will require multiplications at the rate of 40,000 or even 4,000 per hour ... -- F. H. Wales (1936) % I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar. What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II." -- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar" % "I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering voice. "No," Said Gandalf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long known in Elven-lore: "This Ring, no other, is made by the elves, Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves. Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop, This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop. The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring. The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing. If broken or busted, it cannot be remade. If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)." % " I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still ..." -- Steven Wright % I could dance till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home. -- Groucho Marx % "I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that M&Ms really *do* melt in your hand ..." -- Peter Oakley % "I didn't know it was impossible when I did it." % I didn't like the play, but I saw it under adverse conditions. The curtain was up. % I disapprove of the F-word, not because it's dirty, but because we use it as a substitute for thoughtful insults, and it frequently leads to violence. What we ought to do, when we anger each other, say, in traffic, is exchange phone numbers, so that later on, when we've had time to think of witty and learned insults or look them up in the library, we could call each other up: You: Hello? Bob? Bob: Yes? You: This is Ed. Remember? The person whose parking space you took last Thursday? Outside of Sears? Bob: Oh yes! Sure! How are you, Ed? You: Fine, thanks. Listen, Bob, the reason I'm calling is: "Madam, you may be drunk, but I am ugly, and ..." No, wait. I mean: "you may be ugly, but I am Winston Churchill and ..." No, wait. (Sound of reference book thudding onto the floor.) S-word. Excuse me. Look, Bob, I'm going to have to get back to you. Bob: Fine. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!" % I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always different. -- Mrs. La Touche (19th cent.) % "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." -- Isaac Asimov % "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -- Galileo Galilei % "I do not know myself, and God forbid that I should." -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe % "I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians don't believe in astrology." -- James R. F. Quirk % I don't believe there really IS a GAS SHORTAGE.. I think it's all just a BIG HOAX on the part of the plastic sign salesmen -- to sell more numbers!! % I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of a frog jumping on my Breakfast. -- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82 % "I don't care who does the electing as long as I get to do the nominating" -- Boss Tweed % "I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem." -- Ashleigh Brilliant % "I don't have to take this abuse from you -- I've got hundreds of people waiting to abuse me." -- Bill Murray, "Ghostbusters" % I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. -- Elvis Presley % "I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to." -- Elvis Presley % "I don't know what you mean by `glory,'" Alice said Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant `there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But glory doesn't mean `a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-- that's all." -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" % "I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it." -- Clarence Darrow % "I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path." -- Ronald Mabbitt % I don't mind what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses. -- Victor Hugo % "I don't object to sex before marriage, but two minutes before?!?" % "I don't think so," said Ren' e Descartes. Just then, he vanished. % "I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out." % I don't want to alarm anybody, but there is an excellent chance that the Earth will be destroyed in the next several days. Congress is thinking about eliminating a federal program under which scientists broadcast signals to alien beings. This would be a large mistake. Alien beings have nuclear blaster death cannons. You cannot cut off their federal programs as if they were merely poor people ... -- Davy Barry, "THE ALIENS ARE COMING, THE ALIENS ARE COMING!" % I doubt, therefore I might be. % "I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind." -- George Bernard Shaw % b"I drink to make other people interesting." -- George Jean Nathan % I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on, so I woke up from sheer boredom. % I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that can't be measured in monetary terms. Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly understand his long delay. % "I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words." % "I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment." -- Gotama Buddha % I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex. It was the most horrifying 20 minutes of my life! % 'I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it." -- Mae West % I get up each morning, gather my wits. Pick up the paper, read the obits. If I'm not there I know I'm not dead. So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed. % I get up each morning, gather my wits. Pick up the paper, read the obits. If I'm not there I know I'm not dead. So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed. Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent? My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went. But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin, And think of the places my get-up has been. -- Pete Seeger % "I had to censor everything my sons watched ... even on the Mary Tyler Moore show I heard the word 'damn'!" -- Mary Lou Bax % "I had to hit him -- he was starting to make sense." % "I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means it's going to be up all night." -- Steven Wright % "I hate quotations." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson % I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches. -- A. R. Longworth % "I have a very firm grasp on reality! I can reach out and strangle it any time!" % "I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show, which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark'." -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" % I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me. -- Camillo Di Cavour % I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it. -- Edgar Allan Poe % "I have just read your lousy review buried in the back pages. You sound like a frustrated old man who never made a success, an eight-ulcer man on a four-ulcer job, and all four ulcers working. I have never met you, but if I do you'll need a new nose and plenty of beefsteak and perhaps a supporter below. Westbrook Pegler, a guttersnipe, is a gentleman compared to you. You can take that as more of an insult than as a reflection on your ancestry." -- President Harry S Truman % I have learned To spell hors d'oeuvres Which still grates on Some people's n'oeuvres. -- Warren Knox % "I have made mistakes but I have never made the mistake of claiming that I have never made one." -- James Gordon Bennett % "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." -- Blaise Pascal % I have more humility in my little finger than you have in your whole BODY! -- from "Cerebus" #82 % "I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" % "I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best." -- Oscar Wilde % "I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it scattered around the beaches of the world ... Perhaps you've seen it. -- Steven Wright % "I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..." -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435 % "I have two very rare photographs: one is a picture of Houdini locking his keys in his car; the other is a rare photograph of Norman Rockwell beating up a child." -- Steven Wright % I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way, did not become still more complicated. -- Poul Anderson % "I haven't lost my mind -- it's backed up on tape somewhere." % "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it." % I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!! % "I just need enough to tide me over until I need more." -- Bill Hoest % I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once. % "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein % "I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building." -- Charles Schulz % "I like being single. I'm always there when I need me." -- Art Leo % I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower % "I like work ... I can sit and watch it for hours." % "I like your game but we have to change the rules." % "I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils." -- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson % "I love to eat them Smurfies Smurfies what I love to eat Bite they ugly heads off, Nibble on they bluish feet." % "I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the speed of light." -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk % "I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent." -- Ashleigh Brilliant % "I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up." -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad" % I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts % "I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away." % "I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like." % I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation. -- G. B. Shaw % "I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!" -- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus) % "I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease." -- Dave Barry, "The Snake" % I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow! % "I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob." -- William F. Buckley % "I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is -- `Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- `Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'" -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" % I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern. I realize that the whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile so we can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the plumber. But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such as this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of the world hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never win large cash journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually write about, such as nose-picking. -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against Political Fallout" % I really hate this damned machine I wish that they would sell it. It never does quite what I want But only what I tell it. % "I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person." % I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes. I hope they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em. -- Will Rogers % I see the eigenvalue in thine eye, I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh. Bernoulli would have been content to die Had he but known such _a-squared cos 2(phi)! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" % I sent a letter to the fish, I told them, "This is what I wish." The little fishes of the sea, They sent an answer back to me. The little fishes' answer was "We cannot do it, sir, because ..." I sent a letter back to say It would be better to obey. But someone came to me and said "The little fishes are in bed." I said to him, and I said it plain "Then you must wake them up again." I said it very loud and clear, I went and shouted in his ear. But he was very stiff and proud, He said "You needn't shout so loud." And he was very proud and stiff, He said "I'll go and wake them if ..." I took a kettle from the shelf, I went to wake them up myself. But when I found the door was locked I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked, And when I found the door was shut, I tried to turn the handle, But ... "Is that all?" asked Alice. "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye." -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" % "I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck." -- Graffito in Los Angeles % "... I should explain that I was wearing a black velvet cape that was supposed to make me look like the dashing, romantic Zorro but which actually made me look like a gigantic bat wearing glasses ..." -- Dave Barry, "The Wet Zorro Suit and Other Turning Points in l'Amour" % "I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." -- Steven Wright % "I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph." -- Shirley Temple % I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do too much damage if it catches fire or explodes. First you decide which direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy. After much trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot tub to face is up. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % "I think it is true for all n. I was just playing it safe with n >= 3 because I couldn't remember the proof." -- Baker, Pure Math 351a % "I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it." % I think that all good, right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being told that all good, right thinking people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not, and I'm sick and tired of being told that I am. -- Monty Python % I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall I'll never see a tree at all. -- Ogden Nash % I think that I shall never see A thing as lovely as a tree. But as you see the trees have gone They went this morning with the dawn. A logging firm from out of town Came and chopped the trees all down. But I will trick those dirty skunks And write a brand new poem called 'Trunks'. % "I think the sky is blue because it's a shift from black through purple to blue, and it has to do with where the light is. You know, the farther we get into darkness, and there's a shifting of color of light into the blueness, and I think as you go farther and farther away from the reflected light we have from the sun or the light that's bouncing off this earth, uh, the darker it gets ... I think if you look at the color scale, you start at black, move it through purple, move it on out, it's the shifting of color. We mentioned before about the stars singing, and that's one of the effects of the shifting of colors." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club % I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown ... HEY! PAY ATTENTION WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU DAMMIT! I said I think we can all agree that there is not enough common courtesy shown today. When we take the time to be courteous to each other, we find that we are happier and less likely to engage in nuclear war. This point was driven home by the recent summit talks, where Nancy Reagan and Raisa Gorbachev, each of whose husband thinks the other's husband is vermin, were able to sit down at a high-level tea and engage in courteous conversation ... -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" % "I thought you were trying to get into shape." "I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle." % " ... I told my doctor I got all the exercise I needed being a pallbearer for all my friends who run and do exercises!" -- Winston Churchill % I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia. -- Woody Allen % I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure. % "I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance." % "I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure." % "I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this." -- Emo Phillips % I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place. -- Steven Wright % I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer. -- Brendan Behan % "I want to buy a husband who, every week when I sit down to watch `St. Elsewhere', won't scream, `FORGET IT, BLANCHE ... IT'S TIME FOR "HEE HAW"!!'" -- Berke Breathed, "Bloom County" % I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up. -- Will Rogers % "I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn. By accident I put the car key in the door lock. The house started up. So I figured what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times. I thought I should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to get off my driveway." -- Steven Wright % "I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain % I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike. -- Emile Henry Gauvreay % "I was playing poker the other night ... with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died." -- Steven Wright % "I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific". -- Steven Wright % I went on to test the program in every way I could devise. I strained it to expose its weaknesses. I ran it for high-mass stars and low-mass stars, for stars born exceedingly hot and those born relatively cold. I ran it assuming the superfluid currents beneath the crust to be absent -- not because I wanted to know the answer, but because I had developed an intuitive feel for the answer in this particular case. Finally I got a run in which the computer showed the pulsar's temperature to be less than absolute zero. I had found an error. I chased down the error and fixed it. Now I had improved the program to the point where it would not run at all. -- George Greenstein, "Frozen Star: Of Pulsars, Black Holes and the Fate of Stars" % "I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen? He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work for him then. -- Steven Wright % "I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren't included." -- Steven Wright % "I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums." -- Steven Wright % I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that it took seven others to beat him! % "I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called `brightness', but it doesn't work." -- Gallagher % "I wouldn't recommend sex, drugs or insanity for everyone, but they've always worked for me." -- Hunter S. Thompson % "I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got to undo it." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I snore." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in `Y.'" % "I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my blender." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my garage door." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving." % "I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma transplant." % "I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night." % "I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV." % "I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never came back." % "I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to say tuned." % "I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that need worrying about." % "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." % "I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia, I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun." -- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H % I'll defend to the death your right to say that, but I never said I'd listen to it! -- Tom Galloway with apologies to Voltaire % I'll grant thee random access to my heart, Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love; And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove And in our bound partition never part. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" % "I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob. That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood." -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones] % "I'm a creationist; I refuse to believe that I could have evolved from man." % I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me! % "I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister." % I'm changing my name to Chrysler I'm going down to Washington, D.C. I'll tell some power broker What they did for Iacocca Will be perfectly acceptable to me! I'm changing my name to Chrysler, I'm heading for that great receiving line. When they hand a million grand out, I'll be standing with my hand out, Yessir, I'll get mine! -- Tom Paxton % I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did. % "I'm defending her honor, which is more than she ever did." % "I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in." -- George McGovern % I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man. -- Fred Allen % I'm going to live forever, or die trying! -- Spider Robinson % ... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a KOSHER DELI!! % "I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?" -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate % i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart. -- e. e. cummings % I'm N-ary the tree, I am, N-ary the tree, I am, I am. I'm getting traversed by the parser next door, She's traversed me seven times before. And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!) Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!) I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary. N-ary the tree I am, I am, N-ary the tree I am. % "I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am. It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get." % "I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life." % I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is -- I could be just as proud for half the money. -- Arthur Godfrey % I'm rated PG-34!! % "I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again REAL soon ..." % "I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage." -- English Professor, Providence College % I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance" % "I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives" % I've built a better model than the one at Data General For data bases vegetable, animal, and mineral My OS handles CPUs with multiplexed duality; My PL/1 compiler shows impressive functionality. My storage system's better than magnetic core polarity, You never have to bother checking out a bit for parity; There isn't any reason to install non-static floor matting; My disk drive has capacity for variable formatting. I feel compelled to mention what I know to be a gloating point: There's lots of room in memory for variables floating-point, Which shows for input vegetable, animal, and mineral I've built a better model than the one at Data General. -- Steve Levine, "A Computer Song" (To the tune of "Modern Major General", from "Pirates of Penzance", by Gilbert & Sullivan) % I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand. % I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was this little hole in the bottom ... -- John Croll % I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself. % I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx % I've known him as a man, as an adolescent and as a child -- sometimes on the same day. % "I've seen better heads on half a pint of beer." % "I've seen, I SAY, I've seen better heads on a mug of beer" -- Senator Claghorn % I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness; And from that full meridian of my glory I haste now to my setting. I shall fall, Like a bright exhalation in the evening And no man see me more. -- Shakespeare % IBM had a PL/I, Its syntax worse than JOSS; And everywhere this language went, It was a total loss. % Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds. % Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like solitary confinement. % Idiot Box, n.: The part of the envelope that tells a person where to place the stamp when they can't quite figure it out for themselves. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Idiot, n.: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % If a 6600 used paper tape instead of core memory, it would use up tape at about 30 miles/second. -- Grishman, Assembly Language Programming % If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro % "If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far." -- Paul White % If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then a consensus forecast is a camel's behind. -- Edgar R. Fiedler % If A equals success, then the formula is A = X + Y + Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut. -- Albert Einstein % If a group of N persons implements a COBOL compiler, there will be N-1 passes. Someone in the group has to be the manager. -- T. Cheatham % If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty. -- Joseph C. Goulden % If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program, wake him up. % If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country. % If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop. The law of gravity supercedes the law of golf. -- Donald A. Metz % "If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude. If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the game right. If it plays the game right, it will win -- unless, of course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?" -- Sparky Anderson % If all be true that I do think, There be Five Reasons why one should Drink; Good friends, good wine, or being dry, Or lest we should be by-and-by, Or any other reason why. % If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. -- John Kenneth Galbraith % If all the Chinese simultaneously jumped into the Pacific off a 10 foot platform erected 10 feet off their coast, it would cause a tidal wave that would destroy everything in this country west of Nebraska. % If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door. -- Paul Beatty % If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a conclusion. -- William Baumol % If an S and an I and an O and a U With an X at the end spell Su; And an E and a Y and an E spell I, Pray what is a speller to do? Then, if also an S and an I and a G And an HED spell side, There's nothing much left for a speller to do But to go commit siouxeyesighed. -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament" % If anything can go wrong, it will. % If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool. % If at first you don't succeed, redefine success. % If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers? % "If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?" % If entropy is increasing, where is it coming from? % If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a deal faster. -- The Duchess, "Through the Looking Glass" % If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane. % ... If forced to travel on an airplane, try and get in the cabin with the Captain, so you can keep an eye on him and nudge him if he falls asleep or point out any mountains looming up ahead ... -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % If God didn't mean for us to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come three to a can. % If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire. % If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet. % If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears. % If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in their Heads. % If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with green, baggy skin. % If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way. % If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been necessary to invent it. % If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger hands. % If God is dead, who will save the Queen? % If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions? % "If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows." -- Yiddish saying % If God wanted us to be brave, why did he give us legs? -- Marvin Kitman % "If I am elected, the concrete barriers around the WHITE HOUSE will be replaced by tasteful foam replicas of ANN MARGARET!" % If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive! -- Samuel Goldwyn % If I don't drive around the park, I'm pretty sure to make my mark. If I'm in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again. If I abstain from fun and such, I'll probably amount to much; But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn. -- Dorothy Parker % If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture. % If I had a plantation in Georgia and a home in Hell, I'd sell the plantation and go home. -- Eugene P. Gallagher % If I had any humility I would be perfect. -- Ted Turner % "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith." -- Albert Einstein % If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants. -- Isaac Newton In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand. -- Gerald Holton If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders. -- Hal Abelson In computer science, we stand on each other's feet. -- Brian K. Reid % If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction. On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is also a psychological interaction. The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly. The crucial point is if you can tell which is which. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" % If I traveled to the end of the rainbow As Dame Fortune did intend, Murphy would be there to tell me The pot's at the other end. -- Bert Whitney % If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people? % If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune. % If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and make fun of it. -- Thomas Carlyle % "If just one piece of mail gets lost, well, they'll just think they forgot to send it. But if *two* pieces of mail get lost, hell, they'll just think the other guy hasn't gotten around to answering his mail. And if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, can you imagine it, if *fifty* pieces of mail get lost, why they'll think someone *else* is broken! And if 1Gb of mail gets lost, they'll just *know* that Arpa is down and think it's a conspiracy to keep them from their God given right to receive Net Mail ..." -- Leith (Casey) Leedom % If life is a stage, I want some better lighting. % If little else, the brain is an educational toy. -- Tom Robbins % If little green men land in your back yard, hide any little green women you've got in the house. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % If mathematically you end up with the wrong answer, try multiplying by the page number. % If money can't buy happiness, I guess you'll just have to rent it. % "If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination." -- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859) % If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants. -- A. Einstein. % If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers" % If only I could be respected without having to be respectable. % If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment without having to accomplish anything. % If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation. % If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. -- Vannevar Bush % If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder. -- Pope John Paul I % "If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem." -- C. Durance, Computer Science 234 % If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would presumably flunk it. -- Stanley Garn % If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong. -- Norm Schryer % If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson % "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me!" -- "Ma" Ferguson, Governor of Texas (circa 1920) % If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances are 50-50 it will. % If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down. If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be down. If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however, church attendance will exceed all expectations. -- Reverend Chichester % If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams. % If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. % If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex? -- Art Hoppe % If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can sure make something out of you. -- Muhammad Ali % If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it. % If this is timesharing, give me my share right now. % If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same? % If today is the first day of the rest of your life, what the hell was yesterday? % If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking. -- Lyndon Baines Johnson % If two wrongs don't make a right, try three. -- Laurence J. Peter % "If value corrupts then absolute value corrupts absolutely" % "If we were meant to fly, we wouldn't keep losing our luggage." % If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted. -- Marguerite Emmons % If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it? -- Ann Edwards-Duff % "If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars." -- J. Paul Getty % If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse. % If you can read this, you're too close. % If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything. % If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, give me a call. % If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. % If you cannot convince them, confuse them. -- Harry S Truman % If you didn't get caught, did you really do it? % If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost. % If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours. -- Clarence Day % If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter. -- Freeman Dyson % "If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet." -- Jay Leno % If you eat a live frog in the morning, nothing worse will happen to either of you for the rest of the day. % "If you ever want to get anywhere in politics, my boy, you're going to have to get a toehold in the public eye." % If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will. % If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it. -- Les Aspin, D., Wisconsin % "If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce" -- Winston Churchill % If you had any brains, you'd be dangerous. % If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some. % "If you have to hate, hate gently" % If you just try long enough and hard enough, you can always manage to boot yourself in the posterior. -- A. J. Liebling % If you keep anything long enough, you can throw it away. % If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee. -- Graham Summer % If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred. -- George Burns % If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you. % If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. -- Maslow % If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way will promptly develop. % If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -- Mark Twain % If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending machine, you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice" button, you'll get ice, but no cup. % If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and none dare criticize it. % If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're the sucker. % If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair. % If you stick a stock of liquor in your locker, It is slick to stick a lock upon your stock. Or some joker who is slicker, Will trick you of your liquor, If you fail to lock your liquor with a lock. % If you think education is expensive, try ignorance. -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard % If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow! % If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. -- Earl Wilson % If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it. -- Arthur Kasspe % If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? -- Richard M. Nixon % If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world? -- Richard Nixon % If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to say they had a nice time. Now you'll be be expected to throw another party next year. What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been indicted for anything. You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ... If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door, unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas through your living room window. As host, your job is to make sure that they don't arrest anybody. Or if they're dead set on arresting someone, your job is to make sure it isn't you ... % If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable. -- "Graffiti in the Big Ten" % "If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything." -- A. L. % If you want divine justice, die. -- Nick Seldon % If you want to know what god thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. -- Dorthy Parker % If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word "National". -- George Will % If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep. % "If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means." -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party" % If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one. % If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late. -- Henny Youngman % If you're happy, you're successful. % If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be?" Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This article can help you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. % If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory. -- Benjamin Disraeli % If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%? % "If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?" % If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all. -- Ronald Reagan % Ignisecond, n.: The overlapping moment of time when the hand is locking the car door even as the brain is saying, "my keys are in there!" -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Il brilgue: les t^ oves libricilleux Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave, Enm^ im' es sont les gougebosquex, Et le m^ omerade horgrave. -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" % Iles's Law: There is always an easier way to do it. When looking directly at the easy way, especially for long periods, you will not see it. Neither will Iles. % Illinois isn't exactly the land that God forgot -- it's more like the land He's trying to ignore. % Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -- Jules de Gaultier % "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." -- Jeff Raskin, interviewed in Doctor Dobb's Journal % Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300. What's the first question that the computer community asks? "Is it PC compatible?" % Immigration is the sincerest form of flattery. -- Jack Paar % Immortality -- a fate worse than death. -- Edgar A. Shoaff % Impartial, adj.: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either of two conflicting opinions. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate while the Boss is reading it. % Impossible, adj.: (1) I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve; (2) I can't be bothered; (3) God can't be bothered. Meaning (3) may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck. -- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab" % In 1750 Issac Newton became discouraged when he fell up a flight of stairs. % In 1869 the waffle iron was invented for people who had wrinkled waffles. % In 1880 the French captured Detroit but gave it back ... they couldn't get parts. % In 1914, the first crossword puzzle was printed in a newspaper. The creator received $4000 down ... and $3000 across. % In 1915 pancake make-up was invented but most people still preferred syrup. % In a five year period we can get one superb programming language. Only we can't control when the five year period will begin. % In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi, junior, what are you up to?" "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit. "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible!" "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days?" "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves." "Are you crazy? Where is your academic honesty?" "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox. The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts. % In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth" Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex. -- Frank Mankiewicz % In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus, "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man." -- Mark Twain % In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf. % In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow. All those who think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm, please raise your hands. Thank you. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" % In America, any boy may become president and I suppose that's just one of the risks he takes. -- Adlai Stevenson % In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own incompetency -- The Peter Principle % In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from handbooks) are to be treated as variables. % "In any world menu, Canada must be considered the vichyssoise of nations -- it's cold, half-French, and difficult to stir." -- Stuart Keate % In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public. % In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs. % In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools will be temporarily canceled. % In case of injury notify your superior immediately. He'll kiss it and make it better. % In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order to get her attention. % In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride in any motor vehicle. % "In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable." -- Winston Curchill, of Montgomery % In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbor. % In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset. % In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages. % In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalks when a concert is on. % In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. -- Mark Twain % In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket. % In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while either flying or waiting to board a plane. % In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians. % In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00. % "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos % In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane. % In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public view." % In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways. Our asymptotes no longer out of phase, We shall encounter, counting, face to face. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" % In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length. % In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % "In short, N is Richardian if, and only if, N is not Richardian." % In specifications, Murphy's Law supersedes Ohm's. % In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a moving automobile. % [In the 60's] there was madness in any direction, at any hour ... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was `right', that we were winning ... And that, I think, was the handle -- the sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply `prevail'. There was no point in fighting -- on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave .... So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark -- the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back. -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" % In the beginning was the word. But by the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax ... -- John Simon % In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe." "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play." Minsky shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?", Sussman asked his teacher. "So the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened. % In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in the proper order then why can't he? % In the land of the dark, the Ship of the Sun is driven by the Grateful Dead. -- Egyptian Book of the Dead % In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble. -- Alan Perlis % In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong enough to punch you. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. -- Mark Twain % In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques. -- Art Linkletter % In those days he was wiser than he is now -- he used to frequently take my advice. -- Winston Churchill % In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer. % In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months. % Incumbent, n.: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % ... indifference is a militant thing ... when it goes away it leaves smoking ruins, where lie citizens bayonetted through the throat. It is not a children's pastime like mere highway robbery. -- Stephen Crane % Indifference will be the downfall of mankind, but who cares? % Individualists unite! % Infancy, n.: The period of our lives when, according to Wordsworth, "Heaven lies about us." The world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward. -- Ambrose Bierce % Information Center, n.: A room staffed by professional computer people whose job it is to tell you why you cannot have the information you require. % Ingrate, n.: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion. % Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Martin Luther King, Jr. % Ink, n.: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Innovation is hard to schedule. -- Dan Fylstra % Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids. % Insanity is the final defense ... It's hard to get a refund when the salesman is sniffing your crotch and baying at the moon. % Interpreter, n.: One who enables two persons of different languages to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Intolerance is the last defense of the insecure. % INVENTORY Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. % Iron Law of Distribution: Them that has, gets. % "Irrationality is the square root of all evil" -- Douglas Hofstadter % Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble? % Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in? -- Ralph Emerson % Is your job running? You'd better go catch it! % Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? -- Kelvin Throop III % Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy fortune tellers take economists seriously? % Issawi's Laws of Progress: The Course of Progress: Most things get steadily worse. The Path of Progress: A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. % It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates. One slow day, he found that he had time to chat with the new entrants. To the first one he asked, "What's your IQ?" The new arrival replied, "190". They discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours. When the second new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's IQ. The answer this time came "120". To which Einstein replied, "Tell me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half an hour or so. To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the question, "What's your IQ?". Upon receiving the answer "70", Einstein smiled and asked, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?" % It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was just a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe that it is a joke. % It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *only* by amusing oneself that one can learn." -- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman % It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this. -- Bertrand Russell % It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats. % It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail, and learning to be self-critical? -- Alan Perlis % It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of Urbana, Illinois. % It is always preferable to visit home with a friend. Your parents will not be pleased with this plan, because they want you all to themselves and because in the presence of your friend, they will have to act like mature human beings ... -- Playboy, January 1983 % It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their color. -- Voltaire % It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted ... -- Douglas Admas "The Hitch-Hikers' Guide To The Galaxy" % It is better for civilization to be going down the drain than to be coming up it. -- Henry Allen % It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck? One in a million, perhaps. % It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark % It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either. -- Mark Twain % It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. -- Rod Serling % "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" % It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of attention, the harder the task. -- Sydney J. Harris % It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa. % It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. % It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one. % It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" % It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at one time. % It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia. % It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune. -- Woody Allen % It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. % It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off. -- Woody Allen % It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it. -- Justice Robert H. Jackson % It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem. % It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles. -- George Bernard Shaw % It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail. -- Gore Vidal % It is not true that life is one damn thing after another -- it's one damn thing over and over. -- Edna St. Vincent Millay % It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is? -- Elizabeth Carpenter % It is now pitch dark. If you proceed, you will likely fall into a pit. % It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue. -- Voltaire % It is only people of small moral stature who have to stand on their dignity. % It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great. -- Havelock Ellis % It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. -- Dijkstra % It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks while the lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of the ant soar as high as the eagle? % It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live" % It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone. % It is the business of little minds to shrink. -- Carl Sandburg % It is the business of the future to be dangerous. -- Hawkwind % It is true that if your paperboy throws your paper into the bushes for five straight days it can be explained by Newton's Law of Gravity. But it takes Murphy's law to explain why it is happening to you. % It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the future. % It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out. % It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too good either if you speak when your head is empty. % It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others. % "It runs like x, where x is something unsavory" -- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435 % It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. % It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the municipality. -- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio % "It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too famous." -- Robert Benchly % It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead. % "It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot." % It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was broken ... -- James Dent % "It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty .... Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime." -- Thomas Aldrich % It was the next morning that the armies of Twodor marched east laden with long lances, sharp swords, and death-dealing hangovers. The thousands were led by Arrowroot, who sat limply in his sidesaddle, nursing a whopper. Goodgulf, Gimlet, and the rest rode by him, praying for their fate to be quick, painless, and if possible, someone else's. Many an hour the armies forged ahead, the war-merinos bleating under their heavy burdens and the soldiers bleating under their melting icepacks. -- The Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" % It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like the rose and the teeth were in the same glass. % It will be advantageous to cross the great stream ... the Dragon is on the wing in the Sky ... the Great Man rouses himself to his Work. % It will be generally found that those who sneer habitually at human nature and affect to despise it, are among its worst and least pleasant examples. -- Charles Dickens % It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat. -- Robert Fuoss % It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. -- Andrew Jackson % "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear." % It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for. % "It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it." -- Steven Wright % "It's a summons." "What's a summons?" "It means summon's in trouble." -- Rocky and Bullwinkle % It's a very *UN*lucky week in which to be took dead. -- Churchy La Femme % It's always darkest just before it gets pitch black. % "It's bad luck to be superstitious." -- Andrew W. Mathis % It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all. -- Marty Winch % "It's easier said than done." ... and if you don't believe it, try proving that it's easier done than said, and you'll see that "it's easier said that `it's easier done than said' than it is done", which really proves that "it's easier said than done". % It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. % It's easier to get forgiveness for being wrong than forgiveness for being right. % "It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!" -- Macy's % It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse. % It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs. -- Oxford University Press, Edpress News % It's just a jump to the left And then a step to the right. Put your hands on your hips And pull your knees in tight. It's the pelvic thrust That really gets you insa-a-a-a-ane LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN! -- Rocky Horror Picture Show % "It's kind of fun to do the impossible." -- Walt Disney % "It's Like This" Even the samurai have teddy bears, and even the teddy bears get drunk. % It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong direction. % "It's men like him that give the Y chromosome a bad name." % It's more than magnificent -- it's mediocre. -- Sam Goldwyn % It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair. -- George Burns % It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one. -- Phil White % "It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either." -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston % It's not enough to be Hungarian; you must have talent too. -- Alexander Korda % "It's not just a computer -- it's your ass." -- Cal Keegan % It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's what you're taking for it... % It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off the ground. -- Daniel B. Luten % It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen % It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips. -- Garfield % It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case. -- Sydney J. Harris % It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ... % It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles. % It's so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the Devil when he is the only explanation of it. % It's the opinion of some that crops could be grown on the moon. Which raises the fear that it may not be long before we're paying somebody not to. -- Franklin P. Jones % It's the thought, if any, that counts! % JACK AND THE BEANSTACK by Mark Isaak Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it to him. So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path, he met the traveling salesman. "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman in high-level language. "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips and Apples," commented Jack. "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now." Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she started thrashing. "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the window ... % Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government: No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. % James Joyce -- an essentially private man who wished his total indifference to public notice to be universally recognized. -- Tom Stoppard % Jenkinson's Law: It won't work. % Jesus Saves, Moses Invests, But only Buddha pays Dividends. % Job Placement, n.: Telling your boss what he can do with your job. % Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes! % Johnson's First Law: When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the most inconvenient possible time. % Join in the new game that's sweeping the country. It's called "Bureaucracy". Everybody stands in a circle. The first person to do anything loses. % Join the march to save individuality! % Jone's Law: The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on. % Jone's Motto: Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. % Jones's First Law: Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the importance of their original contribution. % Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac (and nobody cares about it). -- Bill Joy 6/21/85 % Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions seldom black or white. Beware of the solution that requires one side to be totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner. The reason there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all the facts. Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is not acting from political motivation. Rather, he is acting from a deep sense of respect for the whole truth. -- Stephen R. Schwambach % Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed. -- Irene Peter % Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you. % Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is. % Just go with the flow control, roll with the crunches, and, when you get a prompt, type like hell. % "Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets" -- The Brigader, "Dr. Who" % "Just out of curiosity does this actually mean something or have some of the few remaining bits of your brain just evaporated?" -- Patricia O Tuama, rissa@killer.DALLAS.TX.US % Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty! % `Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried, As he landed his crew with care; Supporting each man on the top of the tide By a finger entwined in his hair. 'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.' % Just when you thought you were winning the rat race, along comes a faster rat!!! % Justice always prevails ... three times out of seven! -- Michael J. Wagner % Justice is incidental to law and order. -- J. Edgar Hoover % Justice, n.: A decision in your favor. % K: Cobalt's metal, hard and shining; Cobol's wordy and confining; KOBOLDS topple when you strike them; Don't feel bad, it's hard to like them. -- The Roguelet's ABC % Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to wear tail lights. % Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. % Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans. % Keep Cool, but Don't Freeze - Hellman's Mayonnaise % Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis. % Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo. % Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee: (1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck"). (2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!" % Keep you Eye on the Ball, Your Shoulder to the Wheel, Your Nose to the Grindstone, Your Feet on the Ground, Your Head on your Shoulders. Now ... try to get something DONE! % Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he says, "will usually know what's wrong." % Kerr's Three Rules for a Successful College: Have plenty of football for the alumni, sex for the students, and parking for the faculty. % Kids have *never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves. -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do" % Kin, n.: An affliction of the blood % Kinkler's First Law: Responsibility always exceeds authority. Kinkler's Second Law: All the easy problems have been solved. % "Kirk to Enterprise -- beam down yeoman Rand and a six-pack." % Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through any of its streets. % Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic. % Kiss your keyboard goodbye! % Klein bottle for rent -- inquire within. % Klein bottle for sale ... inquire within. % Kleptomaniac, n.: A rich thief. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A. % Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions. -- Henry N. Camp % Krogt, n. (chemical symbol: Kr): The metallic silver coating found on fast-food game cards. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Labor, n.: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Lackland's Laws: (1) Never be first. (2) Never be last. (3) Never volunteer for anything % Lactomangulation, n.: Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Ladybug, ladybug, Look to your stern! Your house is on fire, Your children will burn! So jump ye and sing, for The very first time The four lines above Have been put into rhyme. -- Walt Kelly % Laetrile is the pits % Langsam's Laws: (1) Everything depends. (2) Nothing is always. (3) Everything is sometimes. % Larkinson's Law: All laws are basically false. % Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them was always getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do you think something's wrong? Do you think she wants us to follow her? What is it, girl?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the applications for. -- Dave Barry % "Last night, I came home and realized that everything in my apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to my friend -- he said, `Do I know you?'" -- Steven Wright % "Last week a cop stopped me in my car. He asked me if I had a police record. I said, no, but I have the new DEVO album. Cops have no sense of humor." % Last yeer I kudn't spel Engineer. Now I are won. % Laugh at your problems; everybody else does. % "Laughter is the closest distance between two people." -- Victor Borge % Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. % Law of Probable Dispersal: Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly distributed. % Law of Selective Gravity: An object will fall so as to do the most damage. Jenning's Corollary: The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet. % Law of the Perversity of Nature: You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. % Laws of Serendipity: (1) In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something. (2) If you wish to make an improved product, you must already be engaged in making an inferior one. % Lazlo's Chinese Relativity Axiom: No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats -- approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less. % Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads. % Learning French is trivial: the word for horse is cheval, and everything else follows in the same way. -- Alan J. Perlis % Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. % Legalize free-enterprise murder: why should governments have all the fun? % Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907: "Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he can." % Leibowitz's Rule: When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you hold the hammer with both hands. % LEO (July 23 - Aug 22) You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieves. % LEO (July 23 - Aug 22) Your determination and sense of humor will come to the fore. Your ability to laugh at adversity will be a blessing because you've got a day coming you wouldn't believe. As a matter of fact, if you can laugh at what happens to you today, you've got a sick sense of humor. % Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday. % "Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a number. You're two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash and another number." -- James Estes % Let us live!!! Let us love!!! Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!! You first. % Let's just say that where a change was required, I adjusted. In every relationship that exists, people have to seek a way to survive. If you really care about the person, you do what's necessary, or that's the end. For the first time, I found that I really could change, and the qualities I most admired in myself I gave up. I stopped being loud and bossy ... Oh, all right. I was still loud and bossy, but only behind his back." -- Kate Hepburn, on Tracy and Hepburn % Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental Anguish. You would sue: * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls in there". * The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious cretin like yourself. * Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you a large cash settlement anyway. -- Dave Barry % Let's talk about how to fill out your 1984 tax return. Here's an often overlooked accounting technique that can save you thousands of dollars: For several days before you put it in the mail, carry your tax return around under your armpit. No IRS agent is going to want to spend hours poring over a sweat-stained document. So even if you owe money, you can put in for an enormous refund and the agent will probably give it to you, just to avoid an audit. What does he care? It's not his money. -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes" % LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London) Dear Sir, I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the home or to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted upon us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism, and can only result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller potatoes, which in turn will cause massive unemployment in the already severely depressed agricultural industry. Yours faithfully, Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J. P. Sevenoaks % Lewis's Law of Travel: The first piece of luggage out of the chute doesn't belong to anyone, ever. % Liar, n.: A lawyer with a roving commission. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. -- Harry Emerson Fosdick % LIBRA (Sep. 23 to Oct. 22) Your desire for justice and truth will be overshadowed by your desire for filthy lucre and a decent meal. Be gracious and polite. Someone is watching you, so stop staring like that. % LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22) You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay. Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of venereal disease. % Lie, n.: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date. % Lieberman's Law: Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens. % Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. % Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string. % "Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to eat it nevertheless." -- Flaubert % "Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it." % Life is like a simile. % Life is like an analogy % Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find there is nothing in it. % "Life is too important to take seriously." -- Corky Siegel % "Life may have no meaning -- or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove." % "Life to you is a bold and dashing responsibility" -- a Mary Chung's fortune cookie % "Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it weren't for other people" -- Blore % Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code. % "Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it." -- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" % Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. % Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem. -- Alan McKay % Limericks are art forms complex, Their topics run chiefly to sex. They usually have virgins, And masculine urgin's, And other erotic effects. % Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations. % Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think only about today. Charlie Brown: No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get better. % Living in LA is like not having a date on Saturday night. -- Candice Bergen % Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun. % Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before. % Lizzie Borden took an axe, And plunged it deep into the VAX; Don't you envy people who Do all the things YOU want to do? % Loan-department manager: "There isn't any fine print. At these interest rates, we don't need it." % Lobster: Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot. Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be, too. -- "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and Utensils into Excuses and Apologies" % Lockwood's Long Shot: The chances of getting eaten up by a lion on Main Street aren't one in a million, but once would be enough. % Logic is a little bird, sitting in a tree; that smells *awful*. % ... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and legally ... impeccable! % Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human kind. Logic, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can. -- Oliver Goldsmith % Look out! Behind you! % Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too? -- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox % Loose bits sink chips. % Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!" % Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy. % Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in Halstead, Kansas. % Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. % Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen. % Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder. -- Sigmund Freud % "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." -- Matt Groening % Love is a word that is constantly heard, Hate is a word that is not. Love, I am told, is more precious than gold. Love, I have read, is hot. But hate is the verb that to me is superb, And Love but a drug on the mart. Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art. -- Ogden Nash % "Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished." -- Goethe % Love is sentimental measles. % Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence. -- H. L. Mencken % Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes. % Love thy neighbor as thyself, but choose your neighborhood. -- Louise Beal % Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to. % Love's Drug My love is like an iron wand That conks me on the head, My love is like the valium That I take before my bed, My love is like the pint of scotch That I drink when I be dry; And I shall love thee still, my dear, Until my wife is wise. % Lowery's Law: If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway. % LSD melts in your mind, not in your hand. % Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug. % Lunatic Asylum, n.: The place where optimism most flourishes. % Lysistrata had a good idea. % "MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts." -- Winston Churchill % Machine-Independent, adj.: Does not run on any existing machine. % Machines certainly can solve problems, store information, correlate, and play games -- but not with pleasure. -- Leo Rosten % Mad, adj.: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence ... -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender. -- W. C. Fields % MAFIA, n: [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS. MAFIA documentation is rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP operations. From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex security functions. The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a more than usually autocratic operating system. Screen prompts carry an imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay. Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and entire nodal aggravations. -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary" % Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet. The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Magnocartic, adj.: Any automobile that, when left unattended, attracts shopping carts. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" % Magpie, n.: A bird whose theivish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Maier's Law: If the facts don't conform to the theory, they must be disposed of. Corollaries: (1) The bigger the theory, the better. (2) The experiment may be considered a success if no more than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded to obtain a correspondence with the theory. % Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. % Maintainer's Motto: If we can't fix it, it ain't broke. % Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man. Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds. Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Majority, n.: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law. % Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist! % Making files is easy under the UNIX operating system. Therefore, users tend to create numerous files using large amounts of file space. It has been said that the only standard thing about all UNIX systems is the message-of-the-day telling users to clean up their files. -- System V.2 administrator's guide % Malek's Law: Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way. % Man 1: Ask me the what the most important thing about telling a good joke is. Man 2: OK, what is the most impo -- Man 1: TIMING! % "Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain." -- Lily Tomlin % Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. -- Oscar Wilde % Man is the best computer we can put aboard a spacecraft ... and the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor. -- Wernher von Braun % Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain % Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. -- Samuel Butler % Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them. -- Samuel Butler (1835-1902) % Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else -- unless it is an enemy. -- Albert Einstein % Man, n.: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks e is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His hief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own pecies, which, however, multiplies with such insistent apidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Mandrell: "You know what I think?" Doctor: "Ah, ah that's a catch question. With a brain your size you don't think, right?" -- Dr. Who % Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history, dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first primitive umpire. What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers. -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag" % Manual, n.: A unit of documentation. There are always three or more on a given item. One is on the shelf; someone has the others. The information you need in in the others. -- Ray Simard % Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday ... -- Walt Kelly % Mark's Dental-Chair Discovery: Dentists are incapable of asking questions that require a simple yes or no answer. % Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly. -- Voltaire % Maryel brought her bat into Exit once and started whacking people on the dance floor. Now everyone's doing it. It's called grand slam dancing. -- Ransford, Chicago Reader 10/7/83 % Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant. -- Malcolm Smith % Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek % Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely different. -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe % Mathematicians often resort to something called Hilbert space, which is described as being n-dimensional. Like modern sex, any number can play. -- Dr. Thor Wald, in "Beep/The Quincunx of Time", by James Blish % "Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence." % Matter cannot be created or destroyed, nor can it be returned without a receipt. % Maturity is only a short break in adolescence. -- Jules Feiffer % May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts % May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual! % May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous Zones. % May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a Thousand Caramels. % Maybe Computer Science should be in the College of Theology. -- R. S. Barton % Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly charge it. % McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom: If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95. % Meader's Law: Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so. % Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe. % Meeting, n.: An assembly of people coming together to decide what person or department not represented in the room must solve a problem. % Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the Empire forged. -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Douglas Adams % Men's skin is different from women's skin. It is usually bigger, and it has more snakes tattooed on it. Also, if you examine a woman's skin very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ... [EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the woman's skin. Thank you.] ... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"! And what is even more interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying! This is a fact. Your skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first, without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from below. -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face" % Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American: The worst actress in the company is always the manager's wife. % Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American: The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise the cork makes when it is popped. % Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American: All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards. % Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American: Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent that is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a large city can never hope to acquire it. % Menu, n.: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of. % Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over. % MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED -- The Pershing II missiles have been launched. % Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it. % methionylglutaminylarginyltyrosylglutamylserylleucylphenylalanylalanylglutamin- ylleucyllysylglutamylarginyllysylglutamylglycylalanylphenylalanylvalylprolyl- phenylalanylvalylthreonylleucylglycylaspartylprolylglycylisoleucylglutamylglu- taminylserylleucyllysylisoleucylaspartylthreonylleucylisoleucylglutamylalanyl- glycylalanylaspartylalanylleucylglutamylleucylglycylisoleucylprolylphenylala- nylserylaspartylprolylleucylalanylaspartylglycylprolylthreonylisoleucylgluta- minylasparaginylalanylthreonylleucylarginylalanylphenylalanylalanylalanylgly- cylvalylthreonylprolylalanylglutaminylcysteinylphenylalanylglutamylmethionyl- leucylalanylleucylisoleucylarginylglutaminyllysylhistidylprolylthreonylisoleu- cylprolylisoleucylglycylleucylleucylmethionyltyrosylalanylasparaginylleucylva- lylphenylalanylasparaginyllysylglycylisoleucylaspartylglutamylphenylalanyltyro- sylalanylglutaminylcysteinylglutamyllysylvalylglycylvalylaspartylserylvalylleu- cylvalylalanylaspartylvalylprolylvalylglutaminylglutamylserylalanylprolylphe- nylalanylarginylglutaminylalanylalanylleucylarginylhistidylasparaginylvalylala- nylprolylisoleucylphenylalanylisoleucylcysteinylprolylprolylaspartylalanylas- partylaspartylaspartylleucylleucylarginylglutaminylisoleucylalanylseryltyrosyl- glycylarginylglycyltyrosylthreonyltyrosylleucylleucylserylarginylalanylglycyl- valylthreonylglycylalanylglutamylasparaginylarginylalanylalanylleucylprolylleu- cylasparaginylhistidylleucylvalylalanyllysylleucyllysylglutamyltyrosylasparagi- nylalanylalanylprolylprolylleucylglutaminylglycylphenylalanylglycylisoleucylse- rylalanylprolylaspartylglutaminylvalyllysylalanylalanylisoleucylaspartylalanyl- glycylalanylalanylglycylalanylisoleucylserylglycylserylalanylisoleucylvalylly- sylisoleucylisoleucylglutamylglutaminylhistidylasparaginylisoleucylglutamylpro- lylglutamyllysylmethionylleucylalanylalanylleucyllysylvalylphenylalanylvalyl- glutaminylprolylmethionyllysylalanylalanylthreonylarginylserine, n.: The chemical name for tryptophan synthetase A protein, a 1,913-letter enzyme with 267 amino acids. -- Mrs. Bryne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and % Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch. % Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift. % "Microwave oven? Whaddya mean, it's a microwave oven? I've been watching Channel 4 on the thing for two weeks." % "Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles." % Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?" Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO inconsiderate." -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury" % Miksch's Law: If a string has one end, then it has another end. % Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. -- Groucho Marx % Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. -- Groucho Marx % Millihelen, adj: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. % Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz % Millions of sensible people are too high-minded to concede that politics is almost always the choice of the lesser evil. "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," they say, "I will not vote." Having abstained, they are presented with a President who appoints the people who are going to rummage around in their lives for the next four years. Consider all the people who sat home in a stew in 1968 rather than vote for Hubert Humphrey. They showed Humphrey. Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black. -- Russel Baker, "Ford without Flummery" % Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. % Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner. % Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however. % Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate. % Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it. -- Russell Baker % Misfortune, n.: The kind of fortune that never misses. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Miss, n.: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure. % Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it. % MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed) Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers 2 cups water 2 cups sugar 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine Cinnamon Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices. -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box % Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings. % Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week. The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better. % Molecule, n.: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the ultimate, indivisible unit of matter ... The ion differs from the molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion ... -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing. % Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life. % Monday, n.: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. % Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots % Money is the root of all wealth. % Moon, n.: 1. A celestial object whose phase is very important to hackers. See PHASE OF THE MOON. 2. Dave Moon (MOON@MC). % Mophobia, n.: Fear of being verbally abused by a Mississippian. % MORE SPORTS RESULTS: The Beverly Hills Freudians tied the Chicago Rogerians 0-0 last Saturday night. The match started with a long period of silence while the Freudians waited for the Rogerians to free associate and the Rogerians waited for the Freudians to say something they could paraphrase. The stalemate was broken when the Freudians' best player took the offensive and interpreted the Rogerians' silence as reflecting their anal-retentive personalities. At this the Rogerians' star player said "I hear you saying you think we're full of ka-ka." This started a fight and the match was called by officials. % More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -- Woody Allen % Mosher's Law of Software Engineering: Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did, you'd be out of a job. % Most fish live underwater, which is a terrible place to have sex because virtually anywhere you lie down there will be stinging crabs and large quantities of little fish staring at you with buggy little eyes. So generally when two fish want to have sex, they swim around and around for hours, looking for someplace to go, until finally the female gets really tired and has a terrible headache, and she just dumps her eggs right on the sand and swims away. Then the male, driven by some timeless, noble instinct for survival, eats the eggs. So the truth is that fish don't reproduce at all, but there are so many of them that it doesn't make any difference. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know" % Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do. -- Turgenev % Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass. -- Frank Zappa % Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like. -- Arnold Bennett % Mother is the invention of necessity. % Mother told me to be good, but she's been wrong before. % Mr. Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing. % "Multiply in your head" (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) "365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365. He [ten-year-old Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,255!" An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn't be as much fun to watch. -- James R. Newman (The World of Mathematics) % Murphy's Discovery: Do you know Presidents talk to the country the way men talk to women? They say, "Trust me, go all the way with me, and everything will be all right." And what happens? Nine months later, you're in trouble! % Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain doesn't work. % Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory. % "Murphy's Law, that brash proletarian restatement of Godel's Theorem ..." -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow" % Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a top-secret military installation. In an instant, armed troops surround Murray and Esther and hustle them off to prison. They can't prove who they are because they've left their passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured day and night to get them to name their contacts in the liberation movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a military court, charged with espionage, and sentenced to death. The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad asks them if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know if she can call her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's sorry, that's not possible, and turns to Murray. "This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he spits in the sergeants face. "Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" % Mustgo, n.: Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so long it has become a science project. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" % "My advice to you, my violent friend, is to seek out gold and sit on it." -- "Grendel", by John Gardner % My band career ended late in my senior year when John Cooper and I threw my amplifier out the dormitory window. We did not act in haste. First we checked to make sure the amplifier would fit through the frame, using the belt from my bathrobe to measure, then we picked up the amplifier and backed up to my bedroom door. Then we rushed forward, shouting "The WHO! The WHO!" and we launched my amplifier perfectly, as though we had been doing it all our lives, clean through the window and down onto the sidewalk, where a small but appreciative crowd had gathered. I would like to be able to say that this was a symbolic act, an effort on my part to break cleanly away from one state in my life and move on to another, but the truth is, Cooper and I really just wanted to find out what it would sound like. It sounded OK. -- Dave Barry, "The Snake" % "My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people." -- Orson Welles % My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again. % "My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?" -- MadameX % My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway or the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart -- And I wish somebody'd shoot him. -- Dorothy Parker % My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet, And a wild young wood-thing bore him! The ways are fair to his roaming feet, And the skies are sunlit for him. As sharply sweet to my heart he seems As the fragrance of acacia. My own dear love, he is all my dreams -- And I wish he were in Asia. -- Dorothy Parker % My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one. -- Groucho Marx % My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right. % My own dear love, he is strong and bold And he cares not what comes after. His words ring sweet as a chime of gold, And his eyes are lit with laughter. He is jubilant as a flag unfurled -- Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him. My own dear love, he is all my world -- And I wish I'd never met him. -- Dorothy Parker % ... My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!! % "My pants just went on a wild rampage through a Long Island Bowling Alley!!" -- Zippy the Pinhead % My pen is at the bottom of a page, Which, being finished, here the story ends; 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done, But stories somehow lengthen when begun. -- Byron % My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed. -- Christopher Morley % "My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies" % Mythology, n.: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % n = ((n >> 1) & 0x55555555) | ((n << 1) & 0xaaaaaaaa); n = ((n >> 2) & 0x33333333) | ((n << 2) & 0xcccccccc); n = ((n >> 4) & 0x0f0f0f0f) | ((n << 4) & 0xf0f0f0f0); n = ((n >> 8) & 0x00ff00ff) | ((n << 8) & 0xff00ff00); n = ((n >> 16) & 0x0000ffff) | ((n << 16) & 0xffff0000); -- C code which reverses the bits in a word. % Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof. % NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe? Everything he says is wrong. GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right. -- G. B. Shaw, "The Man of Destiny" % Nasrudin called at a large house to collect for charity. The servant said "My master is out." Nasrudin replied, "Tell your master that next time he goes out, he should not leave his face at the window. Someone might steal it." % Nasrudin returned to his village from the imperial capital, and the villagers gathered around to hear what had passed. "At this time," said Nasrudin, "I only want to say that the King spoke to me." All the villagers but the stupidest ran off to spread the wonderful news. The remaining villager asked, "What did the King say to you?" "What he said -- and quite distinctly, for everyone to hear -- was 'Get out of my way!'" The simpleton was overjoyed; he had heard words actually spoken by the King, and seen the very man they were spoken to. % Nasrudin walked into a shop one day, and the owner came forward to serve him. Nasrudin said, "First things first. Did you see me walk into your shop?" "Of course." "Have you ever seen me before?" "Never." "Then how do you know it was me?" % Nasrudin walked into a teahouse and declaimed, "The moon is more useful than the sun." "Why?", he was asked. "Because at night we need the light more." % Nasrudin was carrying home a piece of liver and the recipe for liver pie. Suddenly a bird of prey swooped down and snatched the piece of meat from his hand. As the bird flew off, Nasrudin called after it, "Foolish bird! You have the liver, but what can you do with it without the recipe?" % Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed? -- Solomon Short % Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night, God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light. It did not last; the devil howling "Ho! Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo. % Nature is by and large to be found out of doors, a location where, it cannot be argued, there are never enough comfortable chairs. -- Fran Leibowitz % Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. -- Abraham Lincoln % Necessity is a mother. % Neckties strangle clear thinking. -- Lin Yutang % Never be led astray onto the path of virtue. % Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him. % Never call a man a fool; borrow from him. % Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you. % Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off % Never drink coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators have windows. % Never eat more than you can lift. -- Miss Piggy % Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat. % Never let your schooling interfere with your education. % Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right. -- Salvor Hardin, "Foundation" % Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found to make it complex and wonderful. % Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. -- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977 % Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together. % Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time. % Never settle with words what you can accomplish with a flame thrower. % Never tell a lie unless it is absolutely convenient. % Never try to outstubborn a cat. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" % Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes. -- Dr. Warren Jackson, Director, UTCS % "Never underestimate the power of a small tactical nuclear weapon." % Never worry about theory as long as the machinery does what it's supposed to do. -- R. A. Heinlein % New crypt. See /usr/news/crypt. % New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe. % New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within. % New members urgently required for SUICIDE CLUB, Watford area. -- Monty Python's Big Red Book % New systems generate new problems. % New Year's Eve is the time of year when a man most feels his age, and his wife most often reminds him to act it. -- Webster's Unafraid Dictionary % New York is real. The rest is done with mirrors. % New York's got the ways and means; Just won't let you be. -- The Grateful Dead % Newlan's Truism: An "acceptable" level of unemployment means that the government economist to whom it is acceptable still has a job. % NEWS FLASH!! Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West German pole-vault champion. % *** NEWSFLASH *** Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven! % Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction. % Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law: A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead. % Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year. % Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund. -- F. J. Raymond % "Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice." -- Foghorn Leghorn % Nihilism should commence with oneself. % Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him by name, but Americans call him by value. % Nine megs for the secretaries fair, Seven megs for the hackers scarce, Five megs for the grads in smoky lairs, Three megs for system source; One disk to rule them all, One disk to bind them, One disk to hold the files And in the darkness grind 'em. % Nine-track tapes and seven-track tapes And tapes without any tracks; Stretchy tapes and snarley tapes And tapes mixed up on the racks -- Take hold of the tape And pull off the strip, And then you'll be sure Your tape drive will skip. -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes % "Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much." -- Augustine % Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules: The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent. % "Nirvana? Thats the place where the powers that be and their friends hang out. -- Zonker Harris % No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation. -- Fran Lebowitz % No committee could ever come up with anything as revolutionary as a camel -- anything as practical and as perfectly designed to perform effectively under such difficult conditions. -- Laurence J. Peter % No good deed goes unpunished. -- Clare Boothe Luce % No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut. -- Channing Pollock % No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas. % No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style. % No matter what other nations may say about the United States, immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery. % No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -- Eleanor Roosevelt % "No one gets too old to learn a new way of being stupid." % No part of this message may reproduce, store itself in a retrieval system, or transmit disease, in any form, without the permissiveness of the author. -- Chris Shaw % No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff -- He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough. Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame. CHORUS: Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory. Puff the fractal dragon was written in C, And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory. Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail. All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!" (chorus) Puff used more resources than DCS could spare. The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care. A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end, But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again! (chorus) % No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it. % No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere. % "No proper program contains an indication which as an operator-applied occurrence identifies an operator-defining occurrence which as an indication-applied occurrence identifies an indication-defining occurrence different from the one identified by the given indication as an indication-applied occurrence." -- ALGOL 68 Report % "No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper." -- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch % No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture! -- Sherlock Holmes % "No, `Eureka' is Greek for `This bath is too hot.'" -- Dr. Who % Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. -- Tallulah Bankhead % NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION % Nobody said computers were going to be polite. % Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young and rob the old. -- Lewis Lapham % Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with constructive praise. % Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations: Negative expectations yield negative results. Positive expectations yield negative results. % Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades. % Noncombatant, n.: A dead Quaker. -- Ambrose Bierce % Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong. % "Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong." % Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. % Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter -- for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it, and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had -- first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit, and everything was just fine ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" % "Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none." -- Shakespeare % "Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree." -- Professor W. % Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman -- unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes ... -- Woody Allen % Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. % Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up. % Nothing is faster than the speed of light ... To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the light comes on. % Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it. -- Andrew Young % Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth. -- Nero Wolfe % Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. Conscience makes egotists of us all. -- Oscar Wilde % Nothing recedes like success. -- Walter Winchell % Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. -- Charlie Brown % November, n.: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature. % Now I lay me down to sleep I pray the double lock will keep; May no brick through the window break, And, no one rob me till I awake. % "Now is the time for all good men to come to." -- Walt Kelly % Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself the following questions: (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a food? (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me? (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like longer.) That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick. % "Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place called Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange trees that were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled SUNKIST ..." -- "The Begatting of a President" % "Now this is a totally brain damaged algorithm. Gag me with a smurfette." -- P. Buhr, Computer Science 354 % ... Now you're ready for the actual shopping. Your goal should be to get it over with as quickly as possible, because the longer you stay in the mall, the longer your children will have to listen to holiday songs on the mall public-address system, and many of these songs can damage children emotionally. For example: "Frosty the Snowman" is about a snowman who befriends some children, plays with them until they learn to love him, then melts. And "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" is about a young reindeer who, because of a physical deformity, is treated as an outcast by the other reindeer. Then along comes good, old Santa. Does he ignore the deformity? Does he look past Rudolph's nose and respect Rudolph for the sensitive reindeer he is underneath? No. Santa asks Rudolph to guide his sleigh, as if Rudolph were nothing more than some kind of headlight with legs and a tail. So unless you want your children exposed to this kind of insensitivity, you should shop quickly. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of Raisinets and malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon administration. In either the hardware or housewares department, you'll find an item imported from an obscure Oriental country and described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of a little handle with interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental notions of tools that Americans might use around the home. Buy it. This is the kind of tool set professionals use. Not only is it inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off if you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to direct sunlight. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % "Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile." -- Karl Lehenbauer % "Nuclear war would mean abolition of most comforts, and disruption of normal routines, for children and adults alike." -- Willard F. Libby, "You *Can* Survive Atomic Attack" % "Nuclear war would really set back cable." -- Ted Turner % [Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable. -- Edwin Meese III % Nudists are people who wear one-button suits. % (null cookie; hope that's ok) % Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing. % O give me a home, Where the buffalo roam, Where the deer and the antelope play, Where seldom is heard A discouraging word, 'Cause what can an antelope say? % O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law: Murphy was an optimist. % "Of course it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a fake?" % Of all possible committee reactions to any given agenda item, the reaction that will occur is the one which will liberate the greatest amount of hot air. -- Thomas L. Martin % Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable. -- Plato % Of all the words of witch's doom There's none so bad as which and whom. The man who kills both which and whom Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom. -- Fletcher Knebel % "Of course power tools and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows power tools aren't soluble in alcohol ..." -- Crazy Nigel % Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy. % Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%. And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a blazer. % Office Automation, n.: The use of computers to improve efficiency by removing anyone you would want to talk with over coffee. % Ogden's Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up. % Oh Dad! We're ALL Devo! % Oh don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and none goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at! % Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay I muck with indices and structs all day And when it works, I shout hoo-ray Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay % Oh, I don't blame Congress. If I had $600 billion at my disposal, I'd be irresponsible, too. -- Lichty & Wagner % Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -- Wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up along delirious, burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, Where never lark, or even eagle flew; And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. -- John Gillespie Magee Jr., "High Flight" % Oh, well, I guess this is just going to be one of those lifetimes. % Oh, when I was in love with you, Then I was clean and brave, And miles around the wonder grew How well did I behave. And now the fancy passes by, And nothing will remain, And miles around they'll say that I Am quite myself again. -- A. E. Housman % Oh, wow! Look at the moon! % "OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard." -- Dr. Joy % OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything. % Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man. -- Trotsky % Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address. % Old soldiers never die. Young ones do. % Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. % Omnibiblious, adj.: Indifferent to type of drink. "Oh, you can get me anything. I'm omnibiblious." % OMNIVERSAL AWARENESS?? Oh, YEH!! First you need four GALLONS of JELL-O and a BIG WRENCH!! ... I think you drop th' WRENCH in the JELL-O as if it was a FLAVOR, or an INGREDIENT ... or ... I ... um ... WHERE'S the WASHING MACHINES? % On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague: "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." -- Wolfgang Pauli % On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. -- Will Rogers % On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third day's income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied no less than $283 on the desk before the cashier. "Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic. That route never brought in money like this! What happened?" "Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth Street and worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold mine!" % On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks. -- Avery % On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are created jerks. -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow" % On the road, ZIPPY is a pinhead without a purpose, but never without a POINT ... % On the subject of C program indentation: "In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be indented six feet downward and covered with dirt." -- Blair P. Houghton % "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage % On-line, adj.: The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer. % Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days. -- W. C. Fields, "My Little Chickadee" % Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice. In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it "Christmas" and went to church; the Jews called it "Hanukka" and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say "Merry Christmas!" or "Happy Hanukka!" or (to the atheists) "Look out for the wall!" -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % Once at a social gathering, Gladstone said to Disraeli, "I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease". Disraeli replied, "That all depends upon whether I embrace your principals or your mistress". % Once Law was sitting on the bench And Mercy knelt a-weeping. "Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench! Nor come before me creeping. Upon you knees if you appear, 'Tis plain you have no standing here." Then Justice came. His Honor cried: "YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!" "Amica curiae," she replied -- "Friend of the court, so please you." "Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door -- I never saw your face before!" -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky. -- Rainer Rilke % Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom." The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure. But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the rocks, making legends of a Saviour. % Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of the smaller prime numbers. 2: The Odd Prime -- It's the only even prime, therefore is odd. QED. 3: The True Prime -- Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you three times, it's true." 31: The Arbitrary Prime -- Determined by unanimous unvote. We needed an arbitrary prime in case the prof asked for one, and so had an election. 91 received the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the next most. However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none at all. Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities are derived from those primes. So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd but true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers. % ... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % Once, adv.: Enough. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening. -- Franklin P. Jones % "One basic notion underlying Usenet is that it is a cooperative." Having been on USENET for going on ten years, I disagree with this. The basic notion underlying USENET is the flame. -- Chuq Von Rospach % One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal means. % One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette. -- Professor Charles P. Issawi % One day the King decided that he would force all his subjects to tell the truth. A gallows was erected in front of the city gates. A herald announced, "Whoever would enter the city must first answer the truth to a question which will be put to him." Nasrudin was first in line. The captain of the guard asked him, "Where are you going? Tell the truth -- the alternative is death by hanging." "I am going," said Nasrudin, "to be hanged on that gallows." "I don't believe you." "Very well, if I have told a lie, then hang me!" "But that would make it the truth!" "Exactly," said Nasrudin, "your truth." % One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet when well oiled. % One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone. % One is not superior merely because one sees the world as odious. -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848) % One learns to itch where one can scratch. -- Ernest Bramah % One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one man would have produced alone. These two plus two more will produce half again as many ideas. These four plus four more begin to represent a creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ... -- Anthony Chevins % One man's theology is another man's belly laugh. % One monk said to the other, "The fish has flopped out of the net! How will it live?" The other said, "When you have gotten out of the net, I'll tell you." % One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people. % One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him. -- John Gardner, NYT Book Review, Jan 1983 % One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. -- Will Durant % "... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." -- Robert Firth % One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why did God create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is "*somebody* has to buy retail." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" % One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic is our support for UNIX? Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago. Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use. UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand, easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines. And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it. We have good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s. It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming. With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there. With VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if you look long enough it's there. That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there. -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984 % One of the rules of Busmanship, New York style, is never surrender your seat to another passenger. This may seem callous, but it is the best way, really. If one passenger were to give a seat to someone who fainted in the aisle, say, the others on the bus would become disoriented and imagine they were in Topeka, Kansas. % The Seventh Commandments for Technicians Work thou not on energized equipment, for if thou dost, thy fellow workers will surely buy beers for thy widow and console her in other ways. % The First Commandment for Technicians: Beware the lightening that lurketh in the undischarged capacitor, lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most untechnician-like manner. % One Page Principle: A specification that will not fit on one page of 8.5x11 inch paper cannot be understood. -- Mark Ardis % "One planet is all you get." % One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips. Let's say your congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet. Just when he got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the plane door. It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman proposed a law. ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be designated as Cuticle Inspection Month? And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.") This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen. The problem is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500 members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil, are already too large to fit on normal aircraft. -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" % One reason why George Washington Is held in such veneration: He never blamed his problems On the former Administration. -- George O. Ludcke % One seldom sees a monument to a committee. % One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint. % "One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of sheer terror." -- W. K. Hartmann % One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model. % One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him. % One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted. -- Thomas B. Reed % One-Shot Case Study, n.: The scientific equivalent of the four-leaf clover, from which it is concluded all clovers possess four leaves and are sometimes green. % Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps. % Only God can make random selections. % Only presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we." % Only through hard work and perseverance can one truly suffer. % Optimization hinders evolution. % Optimization hinders evolution. % Oregano, n.: The ancient Italian art of pizza folding. % Oregon, n.: Eighty billion gallons of water with no place to go on Saturday night. % Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl. -- Mike Adams % Osborn's Law: Variables won't; constants aren't. % Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails. % Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is they charge fifteen cents for them. % Our documentation manager was showing her two year old son around the office. He was introduced to me, at which time he pointed out that we were both holding bags of popcorn. We were both holding bottles of juice. But only *he* had a lollipop. He asked his mother, "Why doesn't HE have a lollipop?" Her reply: "He can have a lollipop any time he wants to. That's what it means to be a programmer." % Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user! % Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing. -- Roy L. Ash, ex-president Litton Industries % ... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself. -- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!" % "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure % "Our vision is to speed up time, eventually eliminating it." -- Alex Schure % Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. -- General Omar N. Bradley % OUTCONERR Twas FORTRAN as the doloop goes Did logzerneg the ifthen block All kludgy were the function flows And subroutines adhoc. Beware the runtime-bug my friend squrooneg, the false goto Beware the infiniteloop And shun the inprectoo. % "Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog, it's too dark to read." -- Groucho Marx % Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now I can remember things that *have* happened before ... % Overdrawn? But I still have checks left! % Overflow on /dev/null, please empty the bit bucket. % Overload -- core meltdown sequence initiated. % Ozman's Laws: (1) If someone says he will do something "without fail," he won't. (2) The more people talk on the phone, the less money they make. (3) People who go to conferences are the ones who shouldn't. (4) Pizza always burns the roof of your mouth. % Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. -- Ambrose Bierce % panic: can't find / % panic: kernel trap (ignored) % Paradise is exactly like where you are right now ... only much, much better. -- Laurie Anderson % Parallel lines never meet, unless you bend one or both of them. % Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life. % Paranoid schizophrenics outnumber their enemies at least two to one. % Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid too. -- D. J. Hicks % Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Arnold's Addendum: Everything else causes cancer in rats. % Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction. % Parker's Law: Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. % Parkinson's Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good bureaucracy, public or private, will find it. % Parkinson's Fourth Law: The number of people in any working group tends to increase regardless of the amount of work to be done. % Parsley is gharsley. -- Ogden Nash % Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be. % "Pascal is not a high-level language." -- Steven Feiner % "Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat." -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340 % Pascal Users: To show respect for the 313th anniversary (tomorrow) of the death of Blaise Pascal, your programs will be run at half speed. % Pascal, n.: A programming language named after a man who would turn over in his grave if he knew about it. % Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life. -- Eric Hoffer % Patageometry, n.: The study of those mathematical properties that are invariant under brain transplants. % Paul Revere was a tattle-tale % Paul's Law: In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much you save. % Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor. % Peace, n.: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Peanut Blossoms 4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk 4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla 4 cups shortening 14 cups flour 8 eggs 4 tsp. soda 4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a hell of a lot. % Pecor's Health-Food Principle: Never eat rutabaga on any day of the week that has a "y" in it. % Pedaeration, n.: The perfect body heat achieved by having one leg under the sheet and one hanging off the edge of the bed. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Penguin Trivia #46: Animals who are not penguins can only wish they were. -- Chicago Reader 10/15/82 % People need good lies. There are too many bad ones. -- Bokonon, "Cat's Cradle" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. % People often find it easier to be a result of the past than a cause of the future. % "People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense." -- Ken Kesey % People usually get what's coming to them ... unless it's been mailed. % People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart. -- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post" % People who claim they don't let little things bother them have never slept in a room with a single mosquito. % People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they don't want it. -- Ogden Nash % People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first. % People will buy anything that's one to a customer. % People will do tomorrow what they did today because that is what they did yesterday. % Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. "Confound those who have said our remarks before us." -- Aelius Donatus % Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things. % Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery % Personifiers Unite! You have nothing to lose but Mr. Dignity! % Peter's Law of Substitution: Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after themselves. % Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to exciting Camden, New Jersey. % Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates philogyny. % Philosophy will clip an angel's wings. -- John Keats % Pick another fortune cookie. % "Picture the sun as the origin of two intersecting 6-dimensional hyperplanes from which we can deduce a certain transformational sequence which gives us the terminal velocity of a rubber duck ..." % Pig, n.: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which, however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20) You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You lack confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people do terrible things to small animals. % PISCES (Feb. 19 to Mar. 20) Take the high road, look for the good things, carry the American Express card and a weapon. The world is yours today, as nobody else wants it. Your mortgage will be foreclosed. You will probably get run over by a bus. % Pittsburgh Driver's Test (7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but a steady left tail light. This means (a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn to call the problem to the driver's attention. (b) the driver is signaling a right turn. (c) the driver is signaling a left turn. (d) the driver is from out of town. The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns. % Pittsburgh Driver's Test (8) Pedestrians are (a) irrelevant. (b) communists. (c) a nuisance. (d) difficult to clean off the front grille. The correct answer is (a). Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely. % Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. -- Don Marquis % PL/1, "the fatal disease", belongs more to the problem set than to the solution set. -- E. W. Dijkstra % "Plaese porrf raed." -- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase % Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets. -- Kilgore Trout (Philip J. Farmer) "Venus on the Half Shell" % Play Rogue, visit exotic locations, meet strange creatures and kill them. % Playing an unamplified electric guitar is like strumming on a picnic table. -- Dave Barry, "The Snake" % Please ignore previous fortune. % Please take note: % Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas" until you are told that those rooms are "punched out". Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such. -- N. Meyrowitz % Please, won't somebody tell me what diddie-wa-diddie means? % Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how plumbing works. A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % PLUNDERER'S THEME (to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius) Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation. Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations. Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation. % Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it. % Police: Good evening, are you the host? Host: No. Police: We've been getting complaints about this party. Host: About the drugs? Police: No. Host: About the guns, then? Is somebody complaining about the guns? Police: No, the noise. Host: Oh, the noise. Well that makes sense because there are no guns or drugs here. (An enormous explosion is heard in the background.) Or fireworks. Who's complaining about the noise? The neighbors? Police: No, the neighbors fled inland hours ago. Most of the recent complaints have come from Pittsburgh. Do you think you could ask the host to quiet things down? Host: No Problem. (At this point, a Volkswagon bug with primitive religious symbols drawn on the doors emerges from the living room and roars down the hall, past the police and onto the lawn, where it smashes into a tree. Eight guests tumble out onto the grass, moaning.) See? Things are starting to wind down. % Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds. % Politician, n.: An eel in the fundamental mud upon which the superstructure of organized society is reared. When he wriggles, he mistakes the agitation of his tail for the trembling of the edifice. As compared with the statesman, he suffers the disadvantage of being alive. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Politician, n.: From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence "polytetien", a person of two or more faces. -- Martin Pitt % Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev % Politics is like coaching a football team. you have to be smart enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose interest. % Polymer physicists are into chains. % Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with laughter, singing Half a pound of tuppenny rice Half a pound of treacle That's the way the chimney smokes Pope Goestheveezl The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant B" ompzidaize was elected Landburgher of K" oln in 1653. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % Portable, adj.: Survives system reboot. % Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % Pound for pound, the amoeba is the most vicious animal on earth. % "Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat" -- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy 1981-1987 % Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically. % Power, n: The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA. % Practical people would be more practical if they would take a little more time for dreaming. -- J. P. McEvoy % Predestination was doomed from the start. % President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic pundits and forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets tax. % President Thieu says he'll quit if he doesn't get more than 50% of the vote. In a democracy, that's not called quitting. -- The Washington Post % Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist! % Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. % [Prime Minister Joseph] Chamberlain loves the working man -- he loves to see him work. -- Winston Churchill % Pro is to con as progress is to Congress. % Probable-Possible, my black hen, She lays eggs in the Relative When. She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now Because she's unable to postulate how. -- Frederick Winsor % Probably the question asked most often is: Do one-celled animals have orgasms? The answer is yes, they have orgasms almost constantly, which is why they don't mind living in pools of warm slime. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know" % Prof: So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data encryption standard and they came up with ... Student: EBCDIC!" % Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem. Eng. 130 midterm. Once again no student received a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed five shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30% % Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction. This technique is used on equations with "n" in them. Induction techniques are very popular, even the military used them. SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction. We know it's true for n equal to 1. Now assume that it's true for every natural number less than n. N is arbitrary, so we can take n as large as we want. If n is sufficiently large, the case of n+1 is trivially equivalent, so the only important n are n less than n. We can take n = n (from above), so it's true for n+1 because it's just about n. QED. (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?") % Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity. SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs. (1) Horses have an even number of legs. (2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front. (3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number of legs for a horse. (4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity. (5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs. Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by: Intimidation Gesticulation (handwaving) "Try it; it works" Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...) Blatant assertion Changing all the 2's to n's Mutual consent Lack of a counterexample, and "It stands to reason" % Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: BBW Branch Both Ways BEW Branch Either Way BBBF Branch on Bit Bucket Full BH Branch and Hang BMR Branch Multiple Registers BOB Branch On Bug BPO Branch on Power Off BST Backspace and Stretch Tape CDS Condense and Destroy System CLBR Clobber Register CLBRI Clobber Register Immediately CM Circulate Memory CMFRM Come From -- essential for truly structured programming CPPR Crumple Printer Paper and Rip CRN Convert to Roman Numerals % Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: DC Divide and Conquer DMPK Destroy Memory Protect Key DO Divide and Overflow EMPC Emulate Pocket Calculator EPI Execute Programmer Immediately EROS Erase Read Only Storage EXCE Execute Customer Engineer HCF Halt and Catch Fire IBP Insert Bug and Proceed INSQSW Insert into queue somewhere (for FINO queues [First in never out]) PBC Print and Break Chain PDSK Punch Disk % Proposed Additions to the PDP-11 Instruction Set: PI Punch Invalid POPI Punch Operator Immediately PVLC Punch Variable Length Card RASC Read And Shred Card RPM Read Programmers Mind RSSC reduce speed, step carefully (for improved accuracy) RTAB Rewind tape and break RWDSK rewind disk RWOC Read Writing On Card SCRBL scribble to disk - faster than a write SLC Search for Lost Chord SPSW Scramble Program Status Word SRSD Seek Record and Scar Disk STROM Store in Read Only Memory TDB Transfer and Drop Bit WBT Water Binary Tree % "Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together." % Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill. Check three friends. If they're OK, you're it. % Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow and is certainly a damn fool. -- H. L. Mencken % Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water. -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny" % Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off of the TV screen. % Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen. % Pushing 40 is exercise enough. % Put no trust in cryptic comments. % Put your Nose to the Grindstone! -- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons and Toolmakers, Ltd. % Putt's Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand. % Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is? A: One per person. % Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence? A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence. % Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ? A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires. % Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat? A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires. Q: How long does it take? A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them. Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats? A: They replace your generator. % Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness. % Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb in San Francisco? A: Both of them. % Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift? A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register. % Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job? A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off. % Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb? A: 100. Ten to do it, and 90 to write document number GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A ...... consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks". % Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a pulitzer prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb assassin to break the bulb in the first place. % Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One and a half. % Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem to the earlier joke. % Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all those Californians trying to share the experience. % Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. % Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of the way. % Q: What's a light-year? A: One-third less calories than a regular year. % Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road? A: Because it was on the other side. % Q: Why do ducks have flat feet? A: To stamp out forest fires. Q: Why do elephants have flat feet? A: To stamp out flaming ducks. % Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together? A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home. % Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars. What should I do? A: Post the correct answer at once! We can't have people go on believing that! Very good of you to spot this. You'll probably be the only one to make the correction, so post as soon as you can. No time to lose, so certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the correction. And it's not good enough to send the message by mail. Since you're the only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform the whole net right away! -- Brad Templeton, "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette" % Quality Control, n.: The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works. % Question: Man Invented Alcohol, God Invented Grass. Who do you trust? % Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened! % Quick, sing me the BUDAPEST NATIONAL ANTHEM!! % Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur. (Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.) % Quigley's Law: Whoever has any authority over you, no matter how small, will atttempt to use it. % QUOTE OF THE DAY: ` % "Qvid me anxivs svm?" % QWERT (kwirt), n. [MW < OW qwertyuiop, a thirteenth]: 1. a unit of weight equal to 13 poiuyt avoirdupois (or 1.69 kiloliks), commonly used in structural engineering; 2. [colloq.] one thirteenth the load that a fully grown sligo can carry; 3. [anat.] a painful irritation of the dermis in the region of the anus; 4. [slang] person who excites in others the symptoms of a qwert. -- Webster's Middle World Dictionary, 4th ed. % Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives. % Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store? -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President % Ray's Rule of Precision: Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe. % Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. -- Dorothy Parker % Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures. % Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain % Real computer scientists admire ADA for its overwhelming aesthetic value but they find it difficult to actually program in it, as it is much too large to implement. Most computer scientists don't notice this because they are still arguing over what else to add to ADA. % Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware. Hardware has limitations, software doesn't. It's a real shame that Turing machines are so poor at I/O. % Real computer scientists don't comment their code. The identifiers are so long they can't afford the disk space. % Real computer scientists don't program in assembler. They don't write in anything less portable than a number two pencil. % Real computer scientists don't write code. They occasionally tinker with `programming systems', but those are so high level that they hardly count (and rarely count accurately; precision is for applications.) % Real computer scientists only write specs for languages that might run on future hardware. Nobody trusts them to write specs for anything homo sapiens will ever be able to fit on a single planet. % Real programmers disdain structured programming. Structured programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet- trained. They wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise clear desks. % Real programmers don't bring brown-bag lunches. If the vending machine doesn't sell it, they don't eat it. Vending machines don't sell quiche. % Real programmers don't comment their code. It was hard to write, it should be hard to understand. % Real programmers don't draw flowcharts. Flowcharts are, after all, the illiterate's form of documentation. Cavemen drew flowcharts; look how much good it did them. % Real Programmers don't play tennis, or any other sport that requires you to change clothes. Mountain climbing is OK, and real programmers wear their climbing boots to work in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the middle of the machine room. % Real programmers don't write in BASIC. Actually, no programmers write in BASIC after reaching puberty. % Real programmers don't write in FORTRAN. FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies. FORTRAN is for wimp engineers who wear white socks. % Real Programmers don't write in PL/I. PL/I is for programmers who can't decide whether to write in COBOL or FORTRAN. % Real Programmers think better when playing Adventure or Rogue. % Real Programs don't use shared text. Otherwise, how can they use functions for scratch space after they are finished calling them? % Real software engineers don't debug programs, they verify correctness. This process doesn't necessarily involve execution of anything on a computer, except perhaps a Correctness Verification Aid package. % Real software engineers don't like the idea of some inexplicable and greasy hardware several aisles away that may stop working at any moment. They have a great distrust of hardware people, and wish that systems could be virtual at *all* levels. They would like personal computers (you know no one's going to trip over something and kill your DFA in mid-transit), except that they need 8 megabytes to run their Correctness Verification Aid packages. % Real software engineers work from 9 to 5, because that is the way the job is described in the formal spec. Working late would feel like using an undocumented external procedure. % Real Time, adj.: Here and now, as opposed to fake time, which only occurs there and then. % Real Users are afraid they'll break the machine -- but they're never afraid to break your face. % Real Users find the one combination of bizarre input values that shuts down the system for days. % Real Users hate Real Programmers. % Real Users know your home telephone number. % Real Users never know what they want, but they always know when your program doesn't deliver it. % Real Users never use the Help key. % Real World, The n.: 1. In programming, those institutions at which programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL, RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4. The location of the status quo. 5. Anywhere outside a university. "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world." Used pejoratively by those not in residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has entered the real world is not unlike talking about a deceased person. % Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs. % Reality is an obstacle to hallucination. % Reality is bad enough, why should I tell the truth? -- Patrick Sky % Reality is for people who lack imagination. % Reality is for those who can't face Science Fiction. % Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity. -- Alvy Ray Smith % "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away". -- Philip K. Dick % "Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!" % Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" % Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose your job. These economic downturns are very difficult to predict, but sophisticated econometric modeling houses like Data Resources and Chase Econometrics have successfully predicted 14 of the last 3 recessions. % Reclaimer, spare that tree! Take not a single bit! It used to point to me, Now I'm protecting it. It was the reader's CONS That made it, paired by dot; Now, GC, for the nonce, Thou shalt reclaim it not. % "Reflections on Ice-Breaking" Candy Is dandy But liquor Is quicker. -- Ogden Nash % "Reintegration complete," ZORAC advised. "We're back in the universe again ..." An unusually long pause followed, "... but I don't know which part. We seem to have changed our position in space." A spherical display in the middle of the floor illuminated to show the starfield surrounding the ship. "Several large, artificial constructions are approaching us," ZORAC announced after a short pause. "The designs are not familiar, but they are obviously the products of intelligence. Implications: we have been intercepted deliberately by a means unknown, for a purpose unknown, and transferred to a place unknown by a form of intelligence unknown. Apart from the unknowns, everything is obvious." -- James P. Hogan, "Giants Star" % Reisner's Rule of Conceptual Inertia: If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it. % Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin. -- Anatole France % "Rembrandt's first name was Beauregard, which is why he never used it." -- Dave Barry % Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Cleveland. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" % Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good offense! % Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat. % Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. % Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life. -- Dave Butler % Renning's Maxim: Man is the highest animal. Man does the classifying. % Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea. % Reporter, n.: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" % REPORTER: Senator, are you for or against the MX missile system? SENATOR: Bob, the MX missile system reminds me of an old saying that the country folk in my state like to say. It goes like this: "You can carry a pig for six miles, but if you set it down it might run away." I have no idea why the country folk say this. Maybe there's some kind of chemical pollutant in their drinking water. That is why I pledge to do all that I can to protect the environment of this great nation of ours, and put prayer back in the schools, where it belongs. What we need is jobs, not empty promises. I realize I'm risking my political career be being so outspoken on a sensitive issue such as the MX, but that's just the kind of straight-talking honest person I am, and I can't help it. -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics" % Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun % Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get another chance later on. % Review Questions (1) If Nerd on the planet Nutley starts out in his spaceship at 20 KPH, and his speed doubles every 3.2 seconds, how long will it be before he exceeds the speed of light? How long will it be before the Galactic Patrol picks up the pieces of his spaceship? (2) If Roger Rowdy wrecks his car every week, and each week he breaks twice as many bones as before, how long will it be before he breaks every bone in his body? How long will it be before they cut off his insurance? Where does he get a new car every week? (3) If Johnson drinks one beer the first hour (slow start), four beers the next hour, nine beers the next, etc., and stacks the cans in a pyramid, how soon will Johnson's pyramid be larger than King Tut's? When will it fall on him? Will he notice? % Rhode's Law: When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance, or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted, estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably, and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to assume otherwise, maybe. % "Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time." -- Steven Wright % Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal. % Romeo wasn't bilked in a day. -- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo" % ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church- door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. % Rudin's Law: If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do it every time. % Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London: Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat. % Rule of Creative Research: (1) Never draw what you can copy. (2) Never copy what you can trace. (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down. % Rule of Defactualization: Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies. % Rule of Feline Frustration: When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go to the bathroom. % Rule of the Great: When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch. % Rules for Academic Deans: (1) HIDE!!!! (2) If they find you, LIE!!!! -- Father Damian C. Fandal % Rules for driving in New York: (1) Anything done while honking your horn is legal. (2) You may park anywhere if you turn your four-way flashers on. (3) A red light means the next six cars may go through the intersection. % RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED (1) Never eat on an empty stomach. (2) Never leave the table hungry. (3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry. (4) Enjoy your food. (5) Enjoy your companion's food. (6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned. (7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare, for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks? (8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal. (9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You can always eat it later. (10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap. (11) Avoid blue food. -- Richard Smit, "The Bronx Diet" % Rules: (1) The boss is always right. (2) When the boss is wrong, refer to rule 1. % Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence Tip #1: How to tell when you are dead. (1) Little things start bothering you: little things like worms, bugs, ants. (2) Something is missing in your personal relationships. (3) Your dog becomes overly affectionate. (4) You have a hard time getting a waiter. (5) Exotic birds flock around you. (6) People ignore you at parties. (7) You have a hard time getting up in the morning. (8) You no longer get off on cocaine. % Safety Tips for the Post-Nuclear Existence (1) Never use an elevator in a building that has been hit by a nuclear bomb; use the stairs. (2) When you're flying through the air, remember to roll when you hit the ground. (3) If you're on fire, avoid gasoline and other flammable materials. (4) Don't attempt communication with dead people; it will only lead to psychological problems. (5) Food will be scarce; you will have to scavenge. Learn to recognize foods that will be available after the bomb: mashed potatoes, shredded wheat, tossed salad, ground beef, etc. (6) Put your hand over your mouth when you sneeze; internal organs will be scarce in the post-nuclear age. (7) Try to be neat; fall only in designated piles. (8) Drive carefully in "Heavy Fallout" areas; people could be staggering illegally. (9) Nutritionally, hundred dollar bills are equal to ones, but more sanitary due to limited circulation. (10) Accumulate mannequins now; spare parts will be in short supply on D-Day. % SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21) You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority of Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at you a great deal. % San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was. -- Herb Caen % San Francisco, n.: Marcel Proust editing an issue of Penthouse. % Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold % Santa Claus wears a Red Suit, He must be a communist. And a beard and long hair, Must be a pacifist. What's in that pipe that he's smoking? -- Arlo Guthrie % Satellite Safety Tip #14: If you see a bright streak in the sky coming at you, duck. % Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in. % Saturday night in Toledo Ohio, Is like being nowhere at all, All through the day how the hours rush by, You sit in the park and you watch the grass die. -- John Denver, "Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio" % Sauron is alive in Argentina! % Save energy: be apathetic. % Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda. % Save the whales. Collect the whole set. % "Saw a sign on a restaurant that said Breakfast, any time -- so I ordered French Toast in the Renaissance. -- Steven Wright % SCCS, the source motel! Programs check in and never check out! -- Ken Thompson % Schapiro's Explanation: The grass is always greener on the other side -- but that's because they use more manure. % Schizophrenia beats being alone. % Schlattwhapper, n.: The window shade that allows itself to be pulled down, hesitates for a second, then snaps up in your face. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Schnuffel, n.: A dog's practice of continuously nuzzling in your crotch in mixed company. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Schwiggle, n.: The amusing rotation of one's bottom while sharpening a pencil. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. -- Henri Poincair' e % Science is what happens when preconception meets verification. % Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it. -- William Buckley % SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21) You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered. % Scott's first Law: No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right. % Scott's second Law: When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be found to have been wrong in the first place. Corollary: After the correction has been found in error, it will be impossible to fit the original quantity back into the equation. % Scotty: Captain, we din' can reference it! Kirk: Analysis, Mr. Spock? Spock: Captain, it doesn't appear in the symbol table. Kirk: Then it's of external origin? Spock: Affirmative. Kirk: Mr. Sulu, go to pass two. Sulu: Aye aye, sir, going to pass two. % Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else. % Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency. -- Richard Nixon % Second Law of Business Meetings: If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you will pick the wrong one. Corollary: If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it wrong, anyway. % "Section 2.4.3.5 AWNS (Acceptor Wait for New Cycle State). In AWNS the AH function indicates that it has received a multiline message byte. In AWNS the RFD message must be sent false and the DAC message must be sent passive true. The AH function must exit the AWNS and enter: (1) The ANRS if DAV is false (2) The AIDS if the ATN message is false and neither: (a) The LADS is active (b) Nor LACS is active" -- from the IEEE Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation % Security check: INTRUDER ALERT! % Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" % "See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ..." % Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine: Ice Cream cures all ills. % Self Test for Paranoia: You know you have it when you can't think of anything that's your own fault. % Seminars, n.: From "semi" and "arse", hence, any half-assed discussion. % Sen. Danforth: "There is nothing on the face of the album which would notify you if the record has pornographics material or material glorifying violence?" Tipper Gore: "No, there is nothing that would suggest that to me." Frank Zappa: "I would say that a buzz saw blade between the guy's legs on the album cover is good indication that it's not for little Johnny." -- The Senate Commerce Committee hearing on rock lyrics, from The Village Voice, 6 Oct 1985 % Senate, n.: A body of elderly gentlemen charged with high duties and misdemeanors. -- Ambrose Bierce % Serenity through viciousness. % Serocki's Stricture: Marriage is always a bachelor's last option. % Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence. % "Seven years and six months!" Humpty Dumpty repeated thoughtfully. "An uncomfortable sort of age. Now if you'd asked MY advice, I'd have said `Leave off at seven' -- but it's too late now." "I never ask advice about growing," Alice said indignantly. "Too proud?" the other enquired. Alice felt even more indignant at this suggestion. "I mean," she said, "that one can't help growing older." "ONE can't, perhaps," said Humpty Dumpty; "but TWO can. With proper assistance, you might have left off at seven." -- Lewis Carroll % Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with that, let's build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up like crabgrass all over the United States. -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw" % Sex is a natural bodily process, like a stroke. % Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer. -- Swami X % Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated. -- M. C. Reed. % Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best. -- Woody Allen % Shamus, n. [Yiddish]: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the temple, and makes sure everything is in working order. A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog functionaries, and there's a joke about that: A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks he's nobody!" -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" % Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every Teen Should Know" % Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. % "She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to." -- Gypsy Rose Lee % She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot. -- Mark Twain % She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them were bad. % She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you could have poured on a waffle ... % "She said, `I know you ... you cannot sing'. I said, `That's nothing, you should hear me play piano.'" -- Morrisey % She's genuinely bogus. % "Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature." -- Samuel Johnson % SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT! POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE! % Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss. % Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change. % Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help. -- from the Brown Security Crime Prevention Pamphlet % Silverman's Law: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will. % Simon's Law: Everything put together falls apart sooner or later. % Since I hurt my pendulum My life is all erratic. My parrot, who was cordial, Is now transmitting static. The carpet died, a palm collapsed, The cat keeps doing poo. The only thing that keeps me sane Is talking to my shoe. -- My Shoe % Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're alive. -- John Sloan % Since we're all here, we must not be all there. -- Bob "Mountain" Beck % [Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. -- Winston Churchill % Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text. This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy. % Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor): That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you should have gotten. % Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work. % Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. -- Frederick Douglass % Slick's Three Laws of the Universe: (1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check. (2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat. (3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is attracted to dark objects. % Slowly and surely the unix crept up on the Nintendo user ... % Slurm, n.: The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when it sits in the dish too long. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. -- Fletcher Knebel % Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. -- Fletcher Knebel % Snacktrek, n.: The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will have materialized. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" % So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of 8-millimeter video equipment. ... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*. -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution" % So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. -- Bertrand Russell % ... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. -- Voltarine de Cleyre % So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark]. With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and -- I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us. Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" % "So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots." -- Samuel Foote % ... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking, under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all along. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" % So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever remember his Bible? % Sodd's Second Law: Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is bound to occur. % Software, n.: Formal evening attire for female computer analysts. % Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit. % Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them. -- Ed Howe % Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on "The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money and go to a mall. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them. -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22" % Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only one life to live, let me live it as a jerk." % Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit them on the head. % Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic. % Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even worse. -- Avery % Some points to remember [about animals]: (1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotamuses; (2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the front of your clothes; (3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs you have just kicked. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % Some primal termite knocked on wood. And tasted it, and found it good. And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today. -- Ogden Nash % Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand progress. % Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand progress. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the pens will multiply instead of disappear. % Someone will try to honk your nose today. % "Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm the only ashtray." % Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world. -- Lily Tomlin % "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's Machineries of Joy?" "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin." -- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy" % Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering. % Song Title of the Week: "They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me." % Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already paid may disregard this fortune). % Sorry, no fortune this time. % Sorry. I forget what I was going to say. % Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space. -- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" % "Spare no expense to save money on this one." -- Samuel Goldwyn % Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers: If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him. % Speak roughly to your little boy, And beat him when he sneezes: He only does it to annoy Because he knows it teases. Wow! wow! wow! I speak severely to my boy, And beat him when he sneezes: For he can thoroughly enjoy The pepper when he pleases! Wow! wow! wow! -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland" % Speak roughly to your little VAX, And boot it when it crashes; It knows that one cannot relax Because the paging thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! I speak severely to my VAX, And boot it when it crashes; In spite of all my favorite hacks My jobs it always thrashes! Wow! Wow! Wow! % Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword. % Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman. -- Dave Millman % Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well, no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use? % Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror: With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair He throws the spinning disk drives in the air! And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds! Helpless users with projects due Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too! Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla! Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!" * VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation * DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc. -- Curtis Jackson % Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very *least* he can do is to Shut Up! -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was" % "Speed is subsittute fo accurancy." % Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading: The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the number of times you have looked at it. % Spelling is a lossed art. % Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers. % Spirtle, n.: The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in your eye. -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends" % Spouse, n.: Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single. % "Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to pur' ee of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!" -- Harlan Ellison % Stay away from flying saucers today. % Stay away from hurricanes for a while. % "Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly." % Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy: Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink. % Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming: Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. % Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. % Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only take a bath ... % Stult's Report: Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is fight the solutions. % Stupid, n.: Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay. % Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out? % Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crud. % Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. -- Mark Twain % Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way before it is understood. % Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring. % Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar without his duck ... % (Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA) To code the impossible code, To bring up a virgin machine, To pop out of endless recursion, To grok what appears on the screen, To right the unrightable bug, To endlessly twiddle and thrash, To mount the unmountable magtape, To stop the unstoppable crash! % Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have! % Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy. % Support your local police force -- steal!! % Support your local Search and Rescue unit -- get lost. % Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead! % Surprise due today. Also the rent. % Surprise your boss. Get to work on time. % Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving the room is punishable under law: Name # % Swahili, n.: The language used by the National Enquirer to print their retractions. -- Johnny Hart % Sweater, n.: A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly. % Swipple's Rule of Order: He who shouts the loudest has the floor. % Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % System/3! System/3! See how it runs! See how it runs! Its monitor loses so totally! It runs all its programs in RPG! It's made by our favorite monopoly! System/3! % Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over. -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % _ _ / \ o / \ | | o o o | | | | _ o o o o | \_| | / \ o o o \__ | | | o o | | | | ______ ~~~~ _____ | |__/ | / ___--\\ ~~~ __/_____\__ | ___/ / \--\\ \\ \ ___ <__ x x __ | | / /\\ \\ )) \ ( " ) | | -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >----------- | | // | | //__________ / \ ____) (___ \ | | // __|_| ( --------- ) //// ______ /////\ \ // | ( \ ______ / <<<< <>-----<<<<< / \ // ( ) / / \` \__ \ //-------------------------------------------------------------\ Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether. -- H.S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" % T: One big monster, he called TROLL. He don't rock, and he don't roll; Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies. He just Love To Eat Them Roguies. -- The Roguelet's ABC % Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head. % Tact, n.: The unsaid part of what you're thinking. % Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way. % Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata" % Take it easy, we're in a hurry. % Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool. -- Kipling % Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to improve ... -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" % Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms, and they'll call you crazy. -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul" % Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. -- Euripides % Talkers are no good doers. -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI" % Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself. -- Friedrich Nietzsche % TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20) You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged determination and work like hell. Most people think you are stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist. % Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree." -- Russell Long % Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself out of the market. % Taxes, n.: Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an extension. % Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway. % Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else. % Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards. -- Aldous Huxley % Telephone, n.: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. -- Ambrose Bierce % Tell me, O Octopus, I begs, Is those things arms, or is they legs? I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I'd call me us. -- Ogden Nash % Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing. -- R. Geis % "Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time. Moping, melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad." -- A. E. Housman % "Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother." -- Len Cool, "American Pie" % Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical fact, for he merely said: "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible." Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it. -- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types (Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church). % Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones. % Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession. % "Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds." -- J. Finnegan, USC. % Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future. -- Pogo, by Walt Kelly % "That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver" -- Foghorn Leghorn % "That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all." % That secret you've been guarding, isn't. % That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them. -- Dorothy Parker % The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy. % The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by people who want some. -- Dwight MacDonald % The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the wall. % The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper -- Thomas Jefferson % The Advertising Agency Song: When your client's hopping mad, Put his picture in the ad. If he still should prove refractory, Add a picture of his factory. % "The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug someone with it." -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340 % ... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock. % The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion. Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed and color, but also on ability. -- T. Lehrer % The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe. -- Bill Murray % The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use. -- Abraham Lincoln % The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m. % The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think. % "The bad reputation UNIX has gotten is totally undeserved, laid on by people who don't understand, who have not gotten in there and tried anything." -- Jim Joyce, owner of Jim Joyce's UNIX Bookstore % The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots, which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but -- here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault, his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking lots. -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide" % The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12". The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets." -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" % The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman. % The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. -- W. C. Fields % The best defense against logic is ignorance. % The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long time. % "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn." -- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King" % The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match. -- Will Rogers % The bigger the theory the better. % The biggest difference between time and space is that you can't reuse time. -- Merrick Furst % The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public. It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street ... % "The bland leadeth the bland and they both shall fall into the kitsch." % The bogosity meter just pegged. % The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school. % The Briggs/Chase Law of Program Development: To determine how long it will take to write and debug a program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add one, and convert to the next higher units. % The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo. -- Art Buchwald % The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy. % "The C Programming Language -- A language which combines the flexibility of assembly language with the power of assembly language." % The camel has a single hump; The dromedary two; Or else the other way around. I'm never sure. Are you? -- Ogden Nash % The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animals. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose, for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics. -- H. L. Mencken % "The chain which can be yanked is not the eternal chain." -- G. Fitch % The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up at the steam fitters' picnic. % The chief cause of problems is solutions. % The chief danger in life is that you may take too may precautions. -- Alfred Adler % The church is near but the road is icy; the bar is far away but I will walk carefully. -- Russian Proverb % "The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere." % "The Computer made me do it." % The computing field is always in need of new cliches. -- Alan Perlis % The confusion of a staff member is measured by the length of his memos. -- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981 % The conservation movement is a breeding ground of Communists and other subversives. We intend to clean them out, even if it means rounding up every bird watcher in the country. -- John Mitchell, Atty. General 1969-1972 % The Consultant's Curse: When the customer has beaten upon you long enough, give him what he asks for, instead of what he needs. This is very strong medicine, and is normally only required once. % The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" % The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity. % The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is going down. % The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to eat. -- John McNulty % The Crown is full of it! -- Nate Harris, 1775 % The cry has been that when war is declared, all opposition should therefore be hushed. A sentiment more unworthy of a free country could hardly be propagated. If the doctrine be admitted, rulers have only to declare war and they are screened at once from scrutiny ... In war, then, as in peace, assert the freedom of speech and of the press. Cling to this as the bulwark of all our rights and privileges. -- William Ellery Channing % The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life. % The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe. % The debate rages on: Is PL/I Bachtrian or Dromedary? % The devil finds work for idle circuits to do. % "The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity." -- Benjamin Disraeli % The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship. -- Robert Heinlein % The doctrine of human equality reposes on this: that there is no man really clever who has not found that he is stupid. -- Gilbert K. Chesterson % The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the duck and returned it to his master. "Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly. "Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim." % The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm. -- Travis McGee % The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier. % The easiest way to figure the cost of living is to take your income and add ten percent. % The economy depends about as much on economists as the weather does on weather forecasters. -- Jean-Paul Kauffmann % "The eleventh commandment was `Thou Shalt Compute' or `Thou Shalt Not Compute' -- I forget which." -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982 % The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson % The end of the world will occur at 3:00 p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow. % The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. -- G. B. Shaw % The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forbearance among men. -- Ambrose Bierce % The fact that it works is immaterial. -- L. Ogborn % The faster we go, the rounder we get. -- The Grateful Dead % The Fifth Rule: You have taken yourself too seriously. % The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. -- Abbie Hoffman % The first Great Steward, Parrafin the Climber, was employed in King Chloroplast's kitchen as second scullery boy when the old King met a tragic death. He apparently fell backward by accident on a dozen salad forks. Simultaneously the true heir, his son Carotene, mysteriously fled the city, complaining of some sort of plot and a lot of threatening notes left on his breakfast tray. At the time, this looked suspicious what with his father's death, and Carotene was suspected of foul play. Then the rest of the King's relatives began to drop dead one after the other in an odd fashion. Some were found strangled with dishrags and some succumbed to food poisoning. A few were found drowned in the soup vats, and one was attacked by assailants unknown and beaten to death with a pot roast. At least three appear to have thrown themselves backward on salad forks, perhaps in a noble gesture of grief over the King's untimely end. Finally there was no one left in Minas Troney who was either eligible or willing to wear the accursed crown, and the rule of Twodor was up for grabs. The scullery slave Parrafin bravely accepted the Stewardship of Twodor until that day when a lineal descendant of Carotene's returns to reclaim his rightful throne, conquer Twodor's enemies, and revamp the postal system. -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings" % The first myth of management is that it exists. The second myth of management is that success equals skill. -- Robert Heller % The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish child, was propounded to me by my father: "What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet -- and whistles?" I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final perplexity gave up. "A herring," said my father. "A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the wall!" "So hang it there." "But a herring isn't green!" I protested. "Paint it." "But a herring isn't wet." "If its just painted its still wet." "But -- " I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "-- a herring doesn't whistle!!" "Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it hard." -- Leo Rosten, "The Joys of Yiddish" % "The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do." -- McCloctnik the Lucid % The First Rule of Program Optimization: Don't do it. The Second Rule of Program Optimization (for experts only!): Don't do it yet. -- Michael Jackson % The first time, it's a KLUDGE! The second, a trick. Later, it's a well-established technique! -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics % The following quote is from page 4-27 of the MSCP Basic Disk Functions Manual which is part of the UDA50 Programmers Doc Kit manuals: As stated above, the host area of a disk is structured as a vector of logical blocks. From a performance viewpoint, however, it is more appropriate to view the host area as a four dimensional hyper-cube, the four dimensions being cylinder, group, track, and sector. . . . Referring to our hyper-cube analogy, the set of potentially accessible blocks form a line parallel to the track axis. This line moves parallel to the sector axis, wrapping around when it reaches the edge of the hyper-cube. % The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities. % "The four building blocks of the universe are fire, water, gravel and vinyl." -- Dave Barry % The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the number of your kids by 32 teeth. % The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance. % The gentlemen looked one another over with microscopic carelessness. % The geographical center of Boston is in Roxbury. Due north of the center we find the South End. This is not to be confused with South Boston which lies directly east from the South End. North of the South End is East Boston and southwest of East Boston is the North End. % The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled today. % The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it. % The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice. % The gods gave man fire and he invented fire engines. They gave him love and he invented marriage. % THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES The one who has the gold makes the rules. % "The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine % The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good. % "The Good Ship Enterprise" (to the tune of "The Good Ship Lollipop") On the good ship Enterprise Every week there's a new surprise Where the Romulans lurk And the Klingons often go berserk. Yes, the good ship Enterprise There's excitement anywhere it flies Where Tribbles play And Nurse Chapel never gets her way. See Captain Kirk standing on the bridge, Mr. Spock is at his side. The weekly menace, ooh-ooh It gets fried, scattered far and wide. It's the good ship Enterprise Heading out where danger lies And you live in dread If you're wearing a shirt that's red. -- Doris Robin and Karen Trimble of The L.A. Filkharmonics % The government [is] extremely fond of amassing great quantities of statistics. These are raised to the nth degree, the cube roots are extracted, and the results are arranged into elaborate and impressive displays. What must be kept ever in mind, however, is that in every case, the figures are first put down by a village watchman, and he puts down anything he damn well pleases. -- Sir Josiah Stamp % The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature. -- Benjamin Franklin. % The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog: The Gerat Bald Swamp Hedgehog of Billericay displays, in courtship, his single prickle and does impressions of Holiday Inn desk clerks. Since this means him standing motionless for enormous periods of time he is often eaten in full display by The Great Bald Swamp Hedgehog Eater. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" % The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis % The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax. -- Albert Einstein % The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the contrary, nohow. % The Heineken Uncertainty Principle: You can never be sure how many beers you had last night. % The herd instinct among economists makes sheep look like independent thinkers. % The hieroglyphics are all unreadable except for a notation on the back, which reads "Genuine authentic Egyptian papyrus. Guaranteed to be at least 5000 years old." % The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists of "Ten Best". -- H. Allen Smith % "The human brain is like an enormous fish -- it is flat and slimy and has gills through which it can see." -- Monty Python % The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. % The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein -- it rejects it. -- P. Medawar % The human race has been fascinated by sharks for as long as I can remember. Just like the bluebird feeding its young, or the spider struggling to weave its perfect web, or the buttercup blooming in spring, the shark reveals to us yet another of the infinite and wonderful facets of nature, namely the facet that it can bite your head off. This causes us humans to feel a certain degree of awe. -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV" % The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain % The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner. -- Mark Twain % The idea is to die young as late as possible. -- Ashley Montagu % The idea is to die young as late as possible. -- Ashley Montague % The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers, where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with sledgehammers. With their devices thus permanently destroyed, consumers would then be free to go out and buy new devices, rather than have to fritter away years of their lives trying to have the old ones repaired at so-called "factory service centers," which in fact consist of two men named Lester poking at the insides of broken electronic devices with cheap cigars and going, "Lookit all them WIRES in there!" -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants" % "The identical is equal to itself, since it is different." -- Franco Spisani % "The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer." -- Henry Kissinger % The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr. -- Will Rogers % The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people. -- Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King % The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants. -- Adam Walinsky % The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group. % The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes... -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes" % The Kennedy Constant: Don't get mad -- get even. % The Killer Ducks are coming!!! % The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light; They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints ... So far, I've had no complaints. -- Dorothy Parker % "The last time somebody said, `I find I can write much better with a word processor.', I replied, `They used to say the same thing about drugs.' -- Roy Blount, Jr. % The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free. -- Henry David Thoreau % The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France % "The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own." -- H.G. Wells % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #10: SIMPLE SIMPLE is an acronym for Sheer Idiot's Monopurpose Programming Language Environment. This language, developed at the Hanover College for Technological Misfits, was designed to make it impossible to write code with errors in it. The statements are, therefore, confined to BEGIN, END and STOP. No matter how you arrange the statements, you can't make a syntax error. Programs written in SIMPLE do nothing useful. Thus they achieve the results of programs written in other languages without the tedious, frustrating process of testing and debugging. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #12: LITHP This otherwise unremarkable language is distinguished by the absence of an "S" in its character set; users must substitute "TH". LITHP is said to be useful in protheththing lithtth. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #13: SLOBOL SLOBOL is best known for the speed, or lack of it, of its compiler. Although many compilers allow you to take a coffee break while they compile, SLOBOL compilers allow you to travel to Bolivia to pick the coffee. Forty-three programmers are known to have died of boredom sitting at their terminals while waiting for a SLOBOL program to compile. Weary SLOBOL programmers often turn to a related (but infinitely faster) language, COCAINE. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #17: SARTRE Named after the late existential philosopher, SARTRE is an extremely unstructured language. Statements in SARTRE have no purpose; they just are. Thus SARTRE programs are left to define their own functions. SARTRE programmers tend to be boring and depressed, and are no fun at parties. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18: C- This language was named for the grade received by its creator when he submitted it as a class project in a graduate programming class. C- is best described as a "low-level" programming language. In fact, the language generally requires more C- statements than machine-code statements to execute a given task. In this respect, it is very similar to COBOL. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #18a: FIFTH FIFTH is a precision mathematical language in which the data types refer to quantity. The data types range from CC, OUNCE, SHOT, and JIGGER to FIFTH (hence the name of the language), LITER, MAGNUM and BLOTTO. Commands refer to ingredients such as CHABLIS, CHARDONNAY, CABERNET, GIN, VERMOUTH, VODKA, SCOTCH, and WHATEVERSAROUND. The many versions of the FIFTH language reflect the sophistication and financial status of its users. Commands in the ELITE dialect include VSOP and LAFITE, while commands in the GUTTER dialect include HOOTCH and RIPPLE. The latter is a favorite of frustrated FORTH programmers who end up using this language. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #2: RENE Named after the famous French philosopher and mathematician Rene DesCartes, RENE is a language used for artificial intelligence. The language is being developed at the Chicago Center of Machine Politics and Programming under a grant from the Jane Byrne Victory Fund. A spokesman described the language as "Just as great as dis [sic] city of ours." The center is very pleased with progress to date. They say they have almost succeeded in getting a VAX to think. However, sources inside the organization say that each time the machine fails to think it ceases to exist. % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #5: VALGOL From its modest beginnings in Southern California's San Fernando Valley, VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the industry. Here is a sample program: LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START IF PIZZA = LIKE BITCHEN AND GUY = LIKE TUBULAR AND VALLEY GIRL = LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2 THEN FOR I = LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100 DO*WAH - (DITTY**2) BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT) SURE LIKE BAG THIS PROGRAM REALLY LIKE TOTALLY (Y*KNOW) IM*SURE GOTO THE MALL When the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the message: GAG ME WITH A SPOON!! % THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi, Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley. The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier. Many mourn the demise of LAIDBACK because of its reputation as a gentle and non-threatening language since all error messages are in lower case. For example, LAIDBACK responded to syntax errors with the message: "i hate to bother you, but i just can't relate to that. can you find the time to try it again?" % The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an approaching train. % The light at the end of the tunnel may be an oncoming dragon. % The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep. -- Woody Allen % The longer I am out of office, the more infallible I appear to myself. -- Henry Kissinger % "The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as we could with both of them." -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22" % The makers may make and the users may use, but the fixers must fix with but minimal clues % The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been. -- Alan Ashley-Pitt %<