Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
"This is lemma 1.1. We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one." -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351 | |
Now I was heading, in my hot cage, down towards meat-market country on the tip of the West Village. Here the redbrick warehouses double as carcass galleries and rat hives, the Manhattan fauna seeking its necessary level, living or dead. Here too you find the heavy faggot hangouts, The Spike, the Water Closet, the Mother Load. Nobody knows what goes on in these places. Only the heavy faggots know. Even Fielding seems somewhat vague on the question. You get zapped and flogged and dumped on -- by almost anybody's standards, you have a really terrible time. The average patron arrives at the Spike in one taxi but needs to go back to his sock in two. And then the next night he shows up for more. They shackle themselves to racks, they bask in urinals. Their folks have a lot of explaining to do, if you want my opinion, particularly the mums. Sorry to single you ladies out like this but the story must start somewhere. A craving for hourly murder -- it can't be willed. In the meantime, Fielding tells me, Mother Nature looks on and taps her foot and clicks her tongue. Always a champion of monogamy, she is cooking up some fancy new diseases. She just isn't going to stand for it. -- Martin Amis, _Money_ | |
[Astrology is] 100 percent hokum, Ted. As a matter of fact, the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written in 1771 -- 1771! -- said that this belief system is a subject long ago ridiculed and reviled. We're dealing with beliefs that go back to the ancient Babylonians. There's nothing there.... It sounds a lot like science, it sounds like astronomy. It's got technical terms. It's got jargon. It confuses the public....The astrologer is quite glib, confuses the public, uses terms which come from science, come from metaphysics, come from a host of fields, but they really mean nothing. The fact is that astrological beliefs go back at least 2,500 years. Now that should be a sufficiently long time for astrologers to prove their case. They have not proved their case....It's just simply gibberish. The fact is, there's no theory for it, there are no observational data for it. It's been tested and tested over the centuries. Nobody's ever found any validity to it at all. It is not even close to a science. A science has to be repeatable, it has to have a logical foundation, and it has to be potentially vulnerable -- you test it. And in that astrology is reqlly quite something else. -- Astronomer Richard Berendzen, President, American University, on ABC News "Nightline," May 3, 1988 | |
"After one week [visiting Austria] I couldn't wait to go back to the United States. Everything was much more pleasant in the United States, because of the mentality of being open-minded, always positive. Everything you want to do in Europe is just, 'No way. No one has ever done it.' They haven't any more the desire to go out to conquer and achieve -- I realized that I had much more the American spirit." -- Arnold Schwarzenegger | |
[ ] Safeguard this message - it is an important historical document. [ ] Delete after reading -- Subversive Literature. [ ] Ignore and go back to what you were doing. | |
A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential." Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors." A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti- personnel devices." You probably call them bombs. At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status." That is, they were fired. After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it) only to receive the following notice: "We must report that during the handling of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an unusual laboratory experience." The use of the passive is a particularly nice touch, don't you think? Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad experience. Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously sent him. -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE) | |
I'm going through my "I want to go back to New York" phase today. Happens every six months or so. So, I thought, perhaps unwisely, that I'd share it with you. > In New York in the winter it is million degrees below zero and the wind travels at a million miles an hour down 5th avenue. > And in LA it's 72. > In New York in the summer it is a million degrees and the humidity is a million percent. > And in LA it's 72. > In New York there are a million interesting people. > And in LA there are 72. | |
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #6 What to do... if a starship, equipped with an FTL hyperdrive lands in your backyard? First of all, do not run after your camera. You will not have any film, and, given the state of computer animation, noone will believe you anyway. Be polite. Remember, if they have an FTL hyperdrive, they can probably vaporize you, should they find you to be rude. Direct them to the White House lawn, which is where they probably wanted to land, anyway. A good road map should help. if you wake up in the middle of the night, and discover that your closet contains an alternate dimension? Don't walk in. You almost certainly will not be able to get back, and alternate dimensions are almost never any fun. Remain calm and go back to bed. Close the door first, so that the cat does not wander off. Check your closet in the morning. If it still contains an alternate dimension, nail it shut. | |
If you rap your knuckles against a window jamb or door, if you brush your leg against a bed or desk, if you catch your foot in a curled- up corner of a rug, or strike a toe against a desk or chair, go back and repeat the sequence. You will find yourself surprised how far off course you were to hit that window jamb, that door, that chair. Get back on course and do it again. How can you pilot a spacecraft if you can't find your way around your own apartment? -- William S. Burroughs | |
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 | |
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" | |
Throwing Windows Out The Window The Federal Bureau Of Missing Socks has banned the use of Microsoft Windows and Office on all employee computers. But don't get too excited; they aren't going to replace them with Linux. Instead, this government agency has decided to go back to using abucusses, slide rules, and manual typewriters. The banishment of Microsoft software stems from the agency's new policy against computer games. MS Office, which contains several games in the form of Easter Eggs, is now verboten on all agency computers. "Flight simulators, pinball games, magic eight balls... they all violate our policy," said the sub-adjunct administrator second-class. "So we can't use Office." Windows is forbidden for the same reason. "We've had way too many employees wasting time playing Solitaire," she said. "Unfortunately, Solitaire is an integral part of Windows -- Microsoft executives said so during the anti-trust trial. If Solitaire is removed, the operating system won't function properly. Therefore, we have no choice but to banish all Windows computers." The Bureau's Assistant Technology Consultant, Mr. Reginald "Red" Taype, asked, "Have you ever seen an abucus crash? Have you ever seen anybody have fun with a slide rule? Do adding machines contain undocumented easter eggs? No! That's why we're ditching our PCs." | |
But I find the old notions somehow appealing. Not that I want to go back to them -- it is outrageous to have some outer authority tell you what is proper use and abuse of your own faculties, and it is ludicrous to hold reason higher than body or feeling. Still there is something true and profoundly sane about the belief that acts like murder or theft or assault violate the doer as well as the done to. We might even, if we thought this way, have less crime. The popular view of crime, as far as I can deduce it from the movies and television, is that it is a breaking of a rule by someone who thinks they can get away with that; implicitly, everyone would like to break the rule, but not everyone is arrogant enough to imagine they can get away with it. It therefore becomes very important for the rule upholders to bring such arrogance down. -- Marilyn French, "The Woman's Room" | |
Don't ever slam a door; you might want to go back. | |
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #6 "But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" It's nothing, honey. Go back to sleep. | |
Pittsburgh driver's test (4) Exhaust gas is (a) beneficial. (b) not harmful. (c) toxic. (d) a punk band. The correct answer is (b). The meddling Washington eco-freak communist bureaucrats who say otherwise are liars. (Message to those who answered (d). Go back to California where you came from. Your kind are not welcome here.) | |
I am more bored than you could ever possibly be. Go back to work. | |
... I think I'd better go back to my DESK and toy with a few common MISAPPREHENSIONS ... |