Ink: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic, and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. %% *** Fortune datafile 4 *** Kleptomaniac: A rich thief. %% Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. %% 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!" %% Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission. %% 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; therefore -- Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second. %% Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence... %% 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. %% Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada. %% Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses. %% Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate that they are in the market. %% Molecule: 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.... %% Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of matter from ether -- whose existence is proved by the condensation or precipitation....A fifth theory is held by idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the matter than the others. %% Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game. %% ....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 %% 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 %% Pig: 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. %% 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!" %% Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and gets stuck. %% Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account. %% "It is bad luck to be superstitious." -- Andrew W. Mathis %% If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited by law. -- Roy Santoro %% Main's Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite government program. %% "When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut." %% Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. %% 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. %% The shortest distance between two points is under construction. -- Noelie Altito %% Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object. %% 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 %% Pro is to con as progress is to Congress. %% The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your action. %% Hurewitz's Memory Principle: The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional to.....to........uh.............. %% Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots %% 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? %% "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 %% 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. %% Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. %% A penny saved is ridiculous. %% The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body. This means that only left handed people are in their right mind. %% "You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what you tell it to do." %% If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his country. %% It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark %% Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes! %% Bank error in your favor. Collect $200. %% Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Cleveland. %% As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there is always a future in Computer Maintenance. %% Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value there may be in owning a piece thereof. %% For a good time, call 642-9483 %% AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!! You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room! %% A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of). %% To be is to do. -- I. Kant To do is to be. -- A. Sartre Yabba-Dabba-Doo! -- F. Flinstone %% God is Dead -- Nietzsche Nietzsche is Dead -- God Nietzsche is God -- Dead %% Jesus Saves, Moses Invests, But only Buddha pays Dividends. %% Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality. %% Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many? %% Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/40! %% !04/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH %% You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair. %% May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts %% Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer. %% If anything can go wrong, it will. %% 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! %% 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. %% This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need, please use the program "randchar". This program generates random characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be more profound than THIS program has ever been. %% This fortune intentionally not included. %% 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! %% "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.'" %% Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave, Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex, Et le m^omerade horgrave. %% Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben. %% "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." %% 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 %% Seduced, shaggy Samson snored. She scissored short. Sorely shorn, Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed, Silently scheming, Sightlessly seeking Some savage, spectacular suicide. -- Stanislaw Lem %% Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what _d_o_e_s exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way...... %% 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 bird in the hand is worth what it will bring. %% I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. %% When Marriage is Outlawed, Only Outlaws will have Inlaws. %% HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science. SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains. -- Walt Kelley %% Look out! Behind you! %% 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. %% It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious. %% Finagle's third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake Corollaries: 1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it. 2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately. %% Finagle's fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse. %% Ginsberg's Theorem: 1. You can't win. 2. You can't break even. 3. You can't even quit the game. Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem: Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's Theorem. To wit: 1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win. 2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even. 3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game. %% Ehrman's Commentary: 1. Things will get worse before they get better. 2. Who said things would get better? %% Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight. %% 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. %% Laws of Computer Programming: 1. Any given program, when running, is obsolete. 2. Any given program costs more and takes longer. 3. If a program is useful, it will have to be changed. 4. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented. 5. Any given program will expand to fill all available memory. 6. The value of a program is proportional the weight of its output. 7. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it. %% Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability: Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting some useful work done. %% Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress. %% Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology: There's always one more bug. %% Shaw's Principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. %% Sattinger's Law: It works better if you plug it in. %% Hoare's Law of Large Problems: Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. %% Law of Communications: The inevitable result of improved and enlarged communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a vastly increased area of misunderstanding. %% Harris' Lament: All the good ones are taken. %% If you cannot convince them, confuse them. -- Harry S. Truman %% Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. %% Wiker's Law: Government expands to absorb all available revenue and then some. %% 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. %% Weinberg's First Law: Progress is made on alternate Fridays. %% Weinberg's Second Law: If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. %% Pardo's First Postulate: Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. Arnold's Addendum: Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in rats. %% 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. %% Katz' Law: Man and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted. %% Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy: Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have another drink. %% Hartley's First Law: You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back, you've got something. %% Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government: No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. %% 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. %% 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. %% 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. %% 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 %% "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)." %% "Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved" -- Mark Twain %% We have met the enemy, and he is us. -- Walt Kelly %% Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed. -- A. E. Housman %% Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister -- Su Tung-p'o %% 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 %% When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade.... -- Stanislaw Lem %% Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. %% There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write. %% 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. %% 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 %% Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off %% "Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm the only ashtray." %% 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 %% Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket. %% Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his cookery... by leaving it out. %% 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! %% 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 %% Magpie: A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone that it might be taught to talk. %% 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 %% Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. -- H. L. Mencken %% Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. %% The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of 100 showed that all had these things in common: 1) They all had moderate appetites. 2) They all came from middle class homes 3) All but two of them were dead. %% Fats Loves Madelyn %% Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain %% We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us. %% If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex? -- Art Hoppe %% There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the provence of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle -- Would you kindly direct me to hell? -- Dorothy Parker %% 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 %% THEORY Into love and out again, Thus I went and thus I go. Spare your voice, and hold your pen: Well and bitterly I know All the songs were ever sung, All the words were ever said; Could it be, when I was young, Someone dropped me on my head? -- Dorothy Parker %% 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. %% 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. %% 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. %% 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 %% The Abrams' Principle: The shortest distance between two points is off the wall. %% "Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing." %% Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels. %% Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official. %% You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself. %% Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. %% Alliance: 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. %% Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. %% God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh. %% Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. %% Birth: The first and direst of all disasters. %% Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think. %% Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. %% Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." -- Ambrose Bierce %% Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed. %% Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on. %% While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his. %% Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country. %% Did you know that clones never use mirrors? %% Hippogriff: 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. %% There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy... -- Ambrose Bierce %% Please ignore previous fortune. %% Interpreter: 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. %% Please take note: %% "It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either." -- Kevin White, mayor of Boston %% Do not read this fortune under penalty of law. Violators will be prosecuted. (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.)) %% The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of nature is to build better mice. %% Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you don't, why you should. %% United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of the Christmas season was mared by a proclamation of a general strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion. Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time low over the world. -- Isaac Asimov %% Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. %% Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. %% Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. %% If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only four tellers? %% Who needs companionship when you can sit alone in your room and drink? %% Friends, Romans, Hipsters, Let me clue you in; I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him. The square kicks some cats are on stay with them; The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser. The cool Brutus Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes; If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea, And, like, old Caeser really set them straight. Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat; So are they all, all cool cats, -- Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down. %% 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. %% Did you know.... That no-one ever reads these things? %% Hark,Hark,the dogs do bark The Duke is fond of kittens He likes to take their insides out And use them for his mittens From "The thirteen clocks" %% An elephant is a mouse with an operating system. %% f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd. %% A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard -- Prof. Steiner %% "I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem." -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% "I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent." -- Ashleigh Brilliant %% Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success. %% "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..." %% ... 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." %% NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION %% $3,000,000 %% It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing about the problem. %% 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 ---X--- (9) the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates --- --- (8) to 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! %% 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. %% The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice. %% 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. %% Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. %% Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday. %% Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate. %% Those who can't write, write manuals. %% 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 # %% You might have mail %% Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together. %% Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him. %% Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure. %% A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn. %% Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. %% Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only take a bath... %% "He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes..." %% It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag. %% Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to avoid responsibility with? %% SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT! POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE! %% The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think. %% 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 %% "If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows." -- Yiddish saying %% Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?" 1st customer: "I'll have tea." 2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!" (Waiter exits, returns) Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?" %% 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 cockamany 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!" %% The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream." "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?" "How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?" %% Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. -- W.C. Fields %% There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. --Mark Twain %% This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it. %% Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change. %% Beware of low-flying butterflies. %% Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets. %% Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum. %% Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis. %% Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a thing he tells you. %% Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon. %% You may be recognized soon. Hide. %% You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today. %% Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase. %% Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed. %% You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first and last month in advance. %% Surprise your boss. Get to work on time. %% You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days. %% Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today. %% Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening. %% Don't feed the bats tonight. %% Stay away from flying saucers today. %% You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture. %% Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight. %% Help a swallow land at Capistrano. %% Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring. %% Half Moon tonight. (At least its better than no Moon at all.) %% Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree. %% Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees it. %% Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum. %% Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things. %% Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so get used to it. %% Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.) %% Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow. %% Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall. %% You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive. %% Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can. %% Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day. %% Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the computer crashes. %% Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change. %% Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to a new town. %% If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow! %% Excellent day to have a rotten day. %% You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry. %% Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective. %% Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails. %% Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus trees. %% A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. %% Cynic: 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. %% Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. %% Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble is they charge fifteen cents for them. %% Question: Man Invented Alcohol, God Invented Grass. Who do you trust? %% 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. %% You cannot kill time without injuring eternity. %% Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. ---Jerome Lettvin %% Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing. -- R. Geis %% 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 %% 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 moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about. -- Lazarus Long %% What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn? -- Peter S. Beagle %% If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn fool. %% According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless. %% Wasting time is an important part of living. %% Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders has been discontinued. %% I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life. %% Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike office water cooler. %% Excellent time to become a missing person. %% A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it? %% Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy. %% Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers. %% Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face. %% Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school. %% Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else. %% Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say. %% Do something unusual today. Pay a bill. %% You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old. %% Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live in eucalyptus trees. %% Surprise due today. Also the rent. %% Avoid reality at all costs. %% Good day to let down old friends who need help. %% Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year. %% You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading this sort of trash. %% What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket. %% Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while. %% Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch. %% Stay away from hurricanes for a while. %% A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie. %% The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive. "Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one -- and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city." "How?" demanded Fafhrd. Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know." From "The Swords of Lankhmar", By "Fritz Leiber" %% 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. %% Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health. %% Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat. %% Nihilism should commence with oneself. %% Vote anarchist %% I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous. %% Nudists are people who wear one-button suits. %% Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest. %% Old soldiers never die. Young ones do. %% UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist. %% In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in schools will be temporarily cancelled. %% Drive defensively, buy a tank. %% Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting for a dial tone. %% The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse. %% Condense soup, not books! %% The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books! %% Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to exciting Camden, New Jersy. %% Never be led astray onto the path of virtue. %% Give your child mental blocks for Christmas. %% Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch. %% Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner. %% Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon. %% Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans. %% What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING! %% Hire the morally handicapped. %% I can resist anything but temptation. %% Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings. %% Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam. %% Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends. %% Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo. %% Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea. %% Xerox never comes up with anything original. %% Acid -- better living through chemistry. %% "All flesh is grass" -- Isiah Smoke a friend today. %% "You'll never be the man your mother was!" %% George Orwell was an optimist. %% Chicken Little was right. %% "Qvid me anxivs svm?" %% Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks. %% Nostalgia isn't what it used to be. %% Dallas still lives. God _m_u_s_t be dead. %% Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today! %% They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid! %% Hail to the sun god He sure is a fun god Ra! Ra! Ra! %% Brain fried -- Core dumped %% Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU. %% Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once. %% If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you bigger hands. %% What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel. %% Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA, BOOGA!" %% A closed mouth gathers no foot. %% A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano... %% 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. %% Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Salvador Hardin %% "Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process..." %% "There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned away from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission; or someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor." %% If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same? %% Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare. %% Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down %% Down with categeorical imperative! %% Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends %% Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string. %% Things are more like they used to be than they are new. %% Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs. %% Lysistrata had a good idea. %% Reality is an obstacle to halucination. %% Paul Revere was a tattle-tale %% Familiarity breeds attempt %% Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb. %% Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs. %% 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. %% Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling. %% Honorable: 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." %% Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments. %% God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6 days and then pulled an all-nighter. %% God is a polythiest %% God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place. %% If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions? %% "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?" asked the father of his little son. "Diet." %% Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. %% Death: to stop sinning suddenly. %% "Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles." %% Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work. %% "That must be wonderful! I dont understand it at all." %% The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up at the steam fitters picnic. %% 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. --Einstein %% Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. --Jerome Lettvin %% Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired. -- R. Geis %% "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 %% It is the business of the future to be dangerous. -- Hawkwind %% The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier. %% There was a young poet named Dan, Whose poetry never would scan. When told this was so, He said, "Yes, I know. It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last line that I can." %% 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. %% "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company." %% "Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from President's and Kings to the scum of the earth..." %% "Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?" -- Lily Tomlin %% God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's %% "If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith." -- Albert Einstein %% If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder. -- Pope John Paul I %% There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again. -- Clint Eastwood %% Flappity, floppity, flip The mouse on the m"obius strip; The strip revolved, The mouse dissolved In a chronodimensional skip. %% ...And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man -- A.E. Housman %% WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE Oh, dear, where can the matter be When it's converted to energy? There is a slight loss of parity. Johnny's so long at the fair. %% 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. %% Some stuff from MIT, via Doug Tygar. IBM had a PL/I, Its syntax worse than JOSS; And everywhere this language went, It was a total loss. %% 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! %% 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? %% 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. %% 99 blocks of crud on the disk, 99 blocks of crud! You patch a bug, and dump it again: 100 blocks of crud on the disk! 100 blocks of crud on the disk, 100 blocks of crud! You patch a bug, and dump it again: 101 blocks of crud on the disk!... %% 'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks Did gyre and gimble in their cave All mimsy was the CS-VAX And Cory raths outgrave. "Beware the software rot, my son! The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash! Beware the broken pipe, and shun The frumious system crash!" %% 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. %% THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES The one who has the gold makes the rules. %% If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances are 50-50 it will. %% "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 newsmagazine %% A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive %% Accident: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better. -- Foolish Dictionary %% Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats. %% Accuracy: The vice of being right %% "Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing." %% Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery. %% Adult: One old enough to know better. %% Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper -- Thomas Jefferson %% Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example. -- La Rouchefoucauld %% Afternoon: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the morning. %% Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it. -- Peggy Joyce %% 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 %% "An American is a man with two arms and four wheels". -- A Chinese child %% Antonym: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of. %% Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse %% Ass: The masculine of "lass". %% Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians. %% A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other. %% 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 %% Boy: A noise with dirt on it. %% Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out. %% A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward. %% California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange. -- Fred Allen %% A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other. %% Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. %% Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time. %% Cigarette: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in between. %% A city is a large community where people are lonesome together -- Herbert Prochnow %% "The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live elsewhere." %% Collaboration: 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 %% Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking -- H. L. Mencken %% Conversation: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener. %% "Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont." -- Clarence Darrow %% The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us people to eat. -- John McNulty %% Cynic: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye. %% 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 form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management. -- Senator Soaper %% Die: To stop sinning suddenly. -- Elbert Hubbard %% Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock. %% A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat. %% Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool. -- Bellamy Brooks %% Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements. %% Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones %% "It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last half an hour!" -- Macy's %% Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers. %% Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move. %% Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. -- Oscar Wilde %% We wish you a Hare Krishna We wish you a Hare Krishna We wish you a Hare Krishna And a Sun Myung Moon! --Maxwell Smart %% If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way. %% There was a young lady from Hyde Who ate a green apple and died. While her lover lamented The apple fermented And made cider inside her inside. %% 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 %% Silverman's Law: If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will %% Hindsight is an exact science. %% Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment %% If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost. %% Naeser's Law: You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it damnfoolproof. %% 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 %% The Third Law of Photography: If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all of the dark leaks out. %% Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis: If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be implemented it wasn't worth doing. %% Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired. %% It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. %% Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then give it back to them. %% There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought to be doing. %% 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. %% Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously moving from where you left them to where you can't find them. %% DeVries' Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper. %% When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly. %% Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts. %% Velilind's Laws of Experimentation: 1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test only once. 2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points. %% Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies will reject the proposal. %% Jones' 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. %% Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming Never test for an error condition you don't know how to handle. %% When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem, you modify the problem, not the remedy. %% Horngren's Observation: Among economists, the real world is often a special case. %% First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. %% Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. %% Fourth Law of Applied Terror: The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria. Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course. %% Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live. %% Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is. %% Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps. %% 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. %% McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom: If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95. %% Van Roy's Law: An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys. %% How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on. %% 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. %% 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. %% Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics: Superiority is recessive. %% Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them. %% Ducharm's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem. %% A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English. %% Turnaucka's Law: The attention span of a computer is only as long as its electrical cord. %% One good reason why computers can do more work than people is that they never have to stop and answer the phone. %% Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can orgranize them into a committee -- that will do them in. %% 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. %% 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. %% Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address. %% Eleanor Rigby Sits at the keyboard and waits for a line on the screen Lives in a dream Waits for a signal, finding some code that will make the machine do some more. What is it for? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? %% The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant becasue it isn't here. -- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley) %% Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms. -- Groucho Marx %% Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. -- Groucho Marx %% Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks. -- Adlai Stevenson %% A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. -- John Ciardi %% The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group divided by the number of people in the group. %% Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. -- Jules de Gaultier %% Ingrate: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then complains of indigestion. %% Justice: A decision in your favor. %% Kin: An affliction of the blood %% Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to date. %% Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen. %% Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes. %% Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law. %% Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to. -- Mark Twain %% 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 %% Menu: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of %% "The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start with a large fortune." %% Noncombatant: A dead Quaker. -- Ambrose Bierce %% 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 %% BLISS is ignorance %% Hi! How are things going? (just fine, thank you...) Great! Say, could I bother you for a question? (you just asked one...) Well, how about one more? (one more than the first one?) Yes. (you already asked that...) [at this point, Alphonso gets smart... ] May I ask two questions, sir? (no.) May I ask ONE then? (nope...) Then may I ask, sir, how I may ask you a question? (yes, you may.) Sir, how may I ask you a question? (you must ask for retroactive question asking priveleges for the number of questions you have asked, then ask for that number plus two {one for the current question, and one for the next one) Sir, may I ask nine questions? (go right ahead...) %% 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 tablespools 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 coarsley 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 %% God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh %% 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. %% Predestination was doomed from the start. %% Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together.... -- Carl Zwanzig %% Xerox does it again and again and again and ... %% Never call a man a fool; borrow from him. %% Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate. %% Love is sentimental measles. %% Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you find there is nothing in it. %% If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think they'll hate you. %% I never fail to convice an audience that the best thing they could do was to go away. %% If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed. %% "All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane." %% "If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce" -- Winston Churchill %% 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 %% The three laws of thermodynamics: The first law: You can't get anything without working for it. The second law: The most you can accomplish by working is to break even. The third law: You can only break even at absolute zero. %% Famous last words: Don't worry, I can handle it. You and what army? If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop. %% Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, in kernal as it is in user! %% Nothing is faster than the speed of light... To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door before the light comes on. %% 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. %% 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. %% 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. %% 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. %% GEMINI (May 21 - June 20) You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for committing incest. %% 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. %% 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 critiscism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are thieves. %% VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22) You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus drivers. %% 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. %% 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. %% 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 Sagitarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at you a great deal. %% 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. %% Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light bulb in San Fransisco? A: Both of them. %% San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was. %% Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids. %% 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?" %% Anarchy may not be a better form of government, but it's better than no government at all.