plot : Dictionary / Wörterbuch (BEOLINGUS, TU Chemnitz)

Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English)	by Linux fortune

The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose. -- David Lardner
In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch. -- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian novel.
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author -- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer"
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took thousands of words to say it. Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy. -- Dave Barry
Finagle's First Law: To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly before you start. Finagle's Second Law: Always keep a record of data -- it indicates you've been working. Finagle's Fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse. Finagle's Fifth Law: Always draw your curves, then plot your readings. Finagle's Sixth Law: Don't believe in miracles -- rely on them.
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a light bulb? 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 light bulb-assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
A MODERN FABLE Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory far too subtle for the youth of today. Children need an updated message with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit today's minute attention span. The Troubled Aardvark Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house in his brand new 4x4. He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his snivelling, spoiled children. One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any personal effort he could make to change the status quo. Overcome by a wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods. MORAL OF THE STORY: Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers. -- Tom Annau
Bill Gates Passes Turing Test LONDON, ENGLAND -- Microsoft proclaimed that they have passed the Turing Test by creating a Bill Gates multimedia simulacrum that crack BBC interviewer Jeremy Paxman couldn't distinguish from the real thing. "I never would have expected this," Paxman said about the Gates AI program. "After all, this Microsoft program actually worked for an extended period of time, something you don't see very often." Microsoft has plans to mass-produce the Bill Gates holographic simulation by 2010 or so. "The hardware just isn't there yet for home use," a Microserf explained. "By then, though, Intel's Itanium 6 Super Pro Plus III CPU running at 600 Ghz or whatever should be sufficient." Windows 2010 is expected to include the Bill Gates simulation, making the World's Richest Man(tm) accessible to the entire world. A newly printed brochure for the faux-Gates advertises, "Need help running Windows 2010? Bill Gates will sit beside you and guide you through the system. Have a question for the world's sexiest and smartest nerd? He'll answer it. Wondering if free and open source software is a plot by Communists freaks to overthrow the free market system? He'll be there to explain. Want to ask for a personal loan? Sorry, won't happen."
Linux World Domination: Not A Joke! WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Senator Fattecat (R-WA) is pushing for a ban on Finnish-produced software. His chief of staff, Ms. Dee Septive, has published a 200-page report revealing "the Helsinkian Underground", a Finnish world domination plot hatched in 1943. The Fattecat expose describes Finland's recent scheme involving free software. "Linux, originally called Freix (FREIX Retrieves Electronic Intelligence X), is a scheme to infiltrate the Western world with a 'free' operating system with nasty backdoors hidden within its obfuscated source code. IRC (Intelligence Relaying Code) is another Finnish innovation designed for spying purposes." Linus Torvalds plays a prominent role in the conspiracy. "That old story about Linus developing a Unix clone in his spare time while at University is a lark," the report states. "Indeed, the name Linux ("Line X") was coined because the kernel can extract any arbitrary line of intelligence from any document it has access to."