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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

A "critic" is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to
judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased
-- he hates all creative people equally.
        A circus foreman was making the rounds inspecting the big top
when a scrawny little man entered the tent and walked up to him.  "Are
you the foreman around here?" he asked timidly.  "I'd like to join your
circus; I have what I think is a pretty good act."
        The foreman nodded assent, whereupon the little man hurried over to
the main pole and rapidly climbed up to the very tip-top of the big top.
Drawing a deep breath, he hurled himself off into the air and began flapping
his arms furiously.  Amazingly, rather than plummeting to his death the little
man began to fly all around the poles, lines, trapezes and other obstacles,
performing astounding feats of aerobatics which ended in a long power dive
from the top of the tent, pulling up into a gentle feet-first landing beside
the foreman, who had been nonchalantly watching the whole time.
        "Well," puffed the little man.  "What do you think?"
        "That's all you do?" answered the foreman scornfully.  "Bird
imitations?"
All art is but imitation of nature.
                -- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Best Mistakes In Films
        In his "Filmgoer's Companion", Mr. Leslie Halliwell helpfully lists
four of the cinema's greatest moments which you should get to see if at all
possible.
        In "Carmen Jones", the camera tracks with Dorothy Dandridge down a
street; and the entire film crew is reflected in the shop window.
        In "The Wrong Box", the roofs of Victorian London are emblazoned
with television aerials.
        In "Decameron Nights", Louis Jourdain stands on the deck of his
fourteenth century pirate ship; and a white lorry trundles down the hill
in the background.
        In "Viking Queen", set in the times of Boadicea, a wrist watch is
clearly visible on one of the leading characters.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
For the next hour, WE will control all that you see and hear.
Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall on
our heads tomorrow.  But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!
                -- Adventures of Asterix
I saw Lassie.  It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid never
spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that deserve a series?
I truly wish I could be a great surgeon or philosopher or author or anything
constructive, but in all honesty I'd rather turn up my amplifier full blast
and drown myself in the noise.
                -- Charles Schmid, the "Tucson Murderer"
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
                -- Paul Beatty
In Hollywood, all marriages are happy.  It's trying to live together
afterwards that causes the problems.
                -- Shelley Winters
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's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.
                -- Mick Jagger
It's from Casablanca.  I've been waiting all my life to use that line.
                -- Woody Allen, "Play It Again, Sam"
IV. The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or
    equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to
    spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
        Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it
        inevitably unsuccessful.
V. All principles of gravity are negated by fear.
        Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel
        them directly away from the earth's surface.  A spooky noise or an
        adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to
        the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole.
        The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding
        auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.
VI. As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.
        This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a
        character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of
        altercation at several places simultaneously.  This effect is common
        as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled.  A "wacky"
        character has the option of self-replication only at manic high
        speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.
                -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
        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
Lucy:        Dance, dance, dance.  That is all you ever do.
        Can't you be serious for once?
Snoopy: She is right!  I think I had better think
        of the more important things in life!
        (pause)
        Tomorrow!!
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"
Not all who own a harp are harpers.
                -- Marcus Terentius Varro
Oh Dad!  We're ALL Devo!
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"
Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents:

        THE TATERNATOR: Cyborg spud returns from the future to present-day
McDonald's restaurant to kill the potatoess (girl 'tater) who will give birth
to the world's largest french fry (The Dark Powers of Burger King are clearly
behind this).  Most quotable line: "Ah'll be baked..."

        A FISTFUL OF FRIES: Western in which our hero, The Spud with No Name,
rides into a town that's deprived of carbohydrates thanks to the evil takeover
of the low-cal Scallopinni Brothers.  Plenty of smokeouts, fry-em-ups, and
general butter-melting by all.

        FOR A FEW FRIES MORE: Takes up where AFOF left off!  Cameo by Walter
Cronkite, as every man's common 'tater!
Snow White has become a camera buff.  She spends hours and hours
shooting pictures of the seven dwarfs and their antics.  Then she
mails the exposed film to a cut rate photo service.  It takes weeks
for the developed film to arrive in the mail, but that is all right
with Snow White.  She clears the table, washes the dishes and sweeps
the floor, all the while singing "Someday my prints will come."
        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"
Some men who fear that they are playing second fiddle aren't in the
band at all.
Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist drivel;
Star Trek can turn your brains to puree 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
The Great Movie Posters:

Different! Daring! Dynamic! Defying! Dumbfounding!
SEE Uncle Tom lead the Negroes to FREEDOM!
... Now, all the SENSUAL and VIOLENT passions Roots couldn't show on TV!
                -- Uncle Tom's Cabin (1972)

An appalling amalgam of carnage and carnality!
                -- Flesh and Blood Show (1973)

WHEN THE CATS ARE HUNGRY...
RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
Alone, only a harmless pet...
        One Thousand Strong, They Become a Man-Eating Machine!
                -- The Night of a Thousand Cats (1972)

They're Over-Exposed
But Not Under-Developed!
                -- Cover Girl Models (1976)
The Great Movie Posters:

HOODLUMS FROM ANOTHER WORLD ON A RAY-GUN RAMPAGE!
                -- Teenagers from Outher Space (1959)

Which will be Her Mate... MAN OR BEAST?
Meet Velda -- the Kind of Woman -- Man or Gorilla would kill... to Keep.
                -- Untamed Mistress (1960)

NOW AN ALL-MIGHTY ALL-NEW MOTION PICTURE BRINGS THEM TOGETHER FOR THE
FIRST TIME...  HISTORY'S MOST GIGANTIC MONSTERS IN COMBAT ATOP MOUNT FUJI!
                -- King Kong vs. Godzilla (1963)
The Great Movie Posters:

The Miracle of the Age!!!  A LION in your lap!  A LOVER in your arms!
                -- Bwana Devil (1952)

OVERWHELMING!  ELECTRIFYING!  BAFFLING!
Fire Can't Burn Them!  Bullets Can't Kill Them!  See the Unfolding of
the Mysteries of the Moon as Murderous Robot Monsters Descend Upon the
Earth!  You've Never Seen Anything Like It!  Neither Has the World!
        SEE... Robots from Space in All Their Glory!!!
                -- Robot Monster (1953)

1,965 pyramids, 5,337 dancing girls, one million swaying bullrushes,
802 scared bulls!
                -- The Egyptian (1954)
There are two jazz musicians who are great buddies.  They hang out and play
together for years, virtually inseparable.  Unfortunately, one of them is
struck by a truck and killed.  About a week later his friend wakes up in
the middle of the night with a start because he can feel a presence in the
room.  He calls out, "Who's there?  Who's there?  What's going on?"
        "It's me -- Bob," replies a faraway voice.
        Excitedly he sits up in bed.  "Bob!  Bob!  Is that you?  Where are
you?"
        "Well," says the voice, "I'm in heaven now."
        "Heaven!  You're in heaven!  That's wonderful!  What's it like?"
        "It's great, man.  I gotta tell you, I'm jamming up here every day.
I'm playing with Bird, and 'Trane, and Count Basie drops in all the time!
Man it is smokin'!"
        "Oh, wow!" says his friend. "That sounds fantastic, tell me more,
tell me more!"
        "Let me put it this way," continues the voice.  "There's good news
and bad news.  The good news is that these guys are in top form.  I mean
I have *never* heard them sound better.  They are *wailing* up here."
        "The bad news is that God has this girlfriend that sings..."
There's nothing remarkable about it.  All one has to do is hit the right
keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
                -- J.S. Bach
There's nothing to writing.  All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.
                -- Red Smith
Watch all-night Donna Reed reruns until your mind resembles oatmeal.
When all else fails, try Kate Smith.
"Why are we importing all these highbrow plays like `Amadeus'?  I could
have told you Mozart was a jerk for nothing."
                -- Ian Shoales
You're all clear now, kid.  Now blow this thing so we can all go home.
                -- Han Solo
All intelligent species own cats.
Speaking of purchasing a dog, never buy a watchdog that's on sale.
After all, everyone knows a bargain dog never bites!
There are many intelligent species in the universe, and they all own cats.
SANTA IS BRINGING GOOD WISHES FROM ALL THE
MICRO ARTISTS GANG!  MAY 1988 BE A HAPPY YEAR!


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  ((     \. :./(__ :._O_)________:______,____:____/  *\_o
====((    \: (****) (***) :. ...: .. .  ()_______/\\ __-'
\____((   \ ()oo()_/ /.:  :  ..________/_____ll   -/.: ..
(      ((  \(())))__/   .  ..  \\.: ..(   )  ll (  l_.:
(       / (( \__*__)___:___ :  : ))   .) /--------\ \ \
(      /    ((_____________) .. //  . / / /..:: .  )_)_\
(____/_____________________\__// :  /_/_/  :..  :/_/ \_\
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You are here:  
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                 *

                 But you're not all there.
"All language designers are arrogant.  Goes with the territory..."
(By Larry Wall)
"I don't know why, but first C programs tend to look a lot worse than
first programs in any other language (maybe except for fortran, but then
I suspect all fortran programs look like `firsts')"
(By Olaf Kirch)
> No manual is ever necessary.
May I politely interject here: BULLSHIT.  That's the biggest Apple lie of all!
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of interfaces.)
Now, it we had this sort of thing:
  yield -a     for yield to all traffic
  yield -t     for yield to trucks
  yield -f     for yield to people walking (yield foot)
  yield -d t*  for yield on days starting with t
...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you
wouldn't believe...
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands.)
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
(Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.)
"We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds."
(Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amsterdam
Linux Symposium)
We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications. Having the source code
means that we are not held hostage by anyone's support department.
(Russell Nelson, President of Crynwr Software)
..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar.  Believe me.  I
speak from experience."
(By Matt Welsh)
"...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead
sit in front of your linux computer playing with the
all-new-and-improved linux kernel version."
(By Linus Torvalds)
system consumed all the paper for paging
Police are examining all internet packets in the search for a narco-net-traficer
The lines are all busy (busied out, that is -- why let them in to begin with?).
The computer fletely, mouse and all.
All of the packets are empty.
Your computer hasn't been returning all the bits it gets from the Internet.
Communist revolutionaries taking over the server room and demanding all the computers in the building or they shoot the sysadmin. Poor misguided fools.
Budget cuts forced us to sell all the power cords for the servers.
Secretary sent chain letter to all 5000 employees.
Bad cafeteria food landed all the sysadmins in the hospital.
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
                -- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
All generalizations are false, including this one.
                -- Mark Twain
All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that
makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and
an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
                -- Samuel Beckett
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from
the mouths of people who have had to live.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
"... all the modern inconveniences ..."
                -- Mark Twain
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
                -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"--which is
but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise
man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET."
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
                -- Shakespeare
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.  Except a
creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely
a loose misapplication of the word.  Consider the flea!--incomparably the
bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact
that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth
to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the
very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by
an earthquake ten centuries before.  When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam
as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and
put him at the head of the procession.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at
fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution.  Take
the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will
find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil,
you will say that she did it with her teeth.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession.
You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy
officials have gone by.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?  And hain't that a big
enough majority in any town?
                -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
                -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
I reverently believe that the maker who made us all  makes everything in New
England, but the weather.  I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in
New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for
countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
if they don't get it.
                -- Mark Twain
I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  I
will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.  The Spirits of all
Three shall strive within me.  I will not shut out the lessons that they
teach.  Oh, tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone!
                -- Charles Dickens
"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed.  Oh, I
know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must
be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people
I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles."
                -- Bastian B. Bux
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
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use
in reading it at all.
                -- Oscar Wilde
If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.
                -- Mark Twain
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.
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories,
his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the
worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one
day like any other day, only shorter.
                -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion
that makes horse-races.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves
possess.
                -- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"]
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
"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though
ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee.  Of all divers,
thou has dived the deepest.  That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has
moved amid the world's foundations.  Where unrecorded names and navies rust,
and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate
earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful
water-land, there was thy most familiar home.  Thou hast been where bell or
diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers
would give their lives to lay them down.  Thou saw'st the locked lovers when
leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting
wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.  Thou saw'st the
murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell
into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed
on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would
have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms.  O head! thou has
seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
syllable is thine!"
                -- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"
The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
                -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard II"
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
                -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted
sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first
time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve
into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent
with Basil.
                -- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
                -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV
The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
        The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax.  A
most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
give a public reading of his latest poem.
        Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
        Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece.  "Be so good as to mark
the place and consider at your leisure.  I'm sure you can give it a better
turn."
        After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side.  "There is no need to touch the
lines," he said.  "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
on those passages, and then read them to him as altered.  I have known him
much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
        Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem
exactly as it was before.  His unique critical faculties had lost none of
their edge.  "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right.  Nothing can
be better."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
Are of imagination all compact...
                -- Wm. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
commoner things.  It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
over all the fruits of the earth.  When one has tasted it, he knows what the
angels eat.  It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because
she repented.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
                -- Mark Twain
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a
rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2,
to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the
manuscript of his forthcoming book.  No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2
admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by
ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.  Observe the ass, for instance: his
character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler
animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to.  Instead of feeling
complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
This was the most unkindest cut of all.
                -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the
bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster.  It seems
almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the
oyster.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
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
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
                -- Mark Twain
When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
                -- Roger Zelazny, "Doorways in the Sand"
Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until
drops of blood form on your forehead.
                -- Gene Fowler
You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.  A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
brain-attic.  He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
order.  It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
can distend to any extent.  Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.  It is of
the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
the useful ones.
                -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
"Good afternoon, madam.  How may I help you?"

"Good afternoon.  I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please."

"A--?  Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady.  I
mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I
say they have a right to.  But I think... I might... Let's have a look
down here.  I might have just the thing for you.  Yes, here we are!
Look at that, isn't it neat?  Now that is a FrintArms product as well,
but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call
them.  Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't
spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a
tonne of iron around with you.  We do a range of matching accessories,
including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster.  Wish I
got to do the fitting for that!  Ha -- just my little joke.  And
there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun,
charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster
with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your
next battery.  Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free
lessons at your local gun club or range.  Or there's the *special*
presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two*
charged batteries and a night-sight, too.  Here, feel that -- don't
worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat?  Feel how light it is?
Smooth, see?  No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and*
beautifully balanced.  And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's
no recoil.  Because it's shooting light, you see?  Beautiful gun,
beautiful gun; my wife has one.  Really.  That's not a line, she
really has.  Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free
charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special
offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for
one-forty-nine."

"I'll take the special."

"Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice.  Now, do--?"

"And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three
six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a
Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding
rounds, not the signalers.  I assume the night-sight on this toy is
compatible?"

"Aah... yes,  And how does madam wish to pay?"

She slapped her credit card on the counter.  "Eventually."

          -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background"
        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'd listened carefully to all of this, then
commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
        A manager asked a programmer how long it would take him to finish the
program on which he was working.  "I will be finished tomorrow," the programmer
promptly replied.
        "I think you are being unrealistic," said the manager. "Truthfully,
how long will it take?"
        The programmer thought for a moment.  "I have some features that I wish
to add.  This will take at least two weeks," he finally said.
        "Even that is too much to expect," insisted the manager, "I will be
satisfied if you simply tell me when the program is complete."
        The programmer agreed to this.
        Several years later, the manager retired.  On the way to his
retirement lunch, he discovered the programmer asleep at his terminal.
He had been programming all night.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your
work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave
at five in the afternoon."  At this, all of them became angry and several
resigned on the spot.
        So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own
working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule."  The
programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee
hours of the morning.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        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.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A novice asked the Master: "Here is a programmer that never designs,
documents, or tests his programs.  Yet all who know him consider him one of
the best programmers in the world.  Why is this?"
        The Master replies: "That programmer has mastered the Tao.  He has
gone beyond the need for design; he does not become angry when the system
crashes, but accepts the universe without concern.  He has gone beyond the
need for documentation; he no longer cares if anyone else sees his code.  He
has gone beyond the need for testing; each of his programs are perfect within
themselves, serene and elegant, their purpose self-evident.  Truly, he has
entered the mystery of the Tao."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A novice asked the master: "I perceive that one computer company is
much larger than all others.  It towers above its competition like a giant
among dwarfs.  Any one of its divisions could comprise an entire business.
Why is this so?"
        The master replied, "Why do you ask such foolish questions?  That
company is large because it is so large.  If it only made hardware, nobody
would buy it.  If it only maintained systems, people would treat it like a
servant.  But because it combines all of these things, people think it one
of the gods!  By not seeking to strive, it conquers without effort."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A novice asked the master: "In the east there is a great tree-structure
that men call 'Corporate Headquarters'.  It is bloated out of shape with
vice-presidents and accountants.  It issues a multitude of memos, each saying
'Go, Hence!' or 'Go, Hither!' and nobody knows what is meant.  Every year new
names are put onto the branches, but all to no avail.  How can such an
unnatural entity exist?"
        The master replies: "You perceive this immense structure and are
disturbed that it has no rational purpose.  Can you not take amusement from
its endless gyrations?  Do you not enjoy the untroubled ease of programming
beneath its sheltering branches?  Why are you bothered by its uselessness?"
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it,
realization of a basic truth came over me.  So simple!  So obvious we couldn't
see it.  John Knivlen, Chairman of Polamar Repeater Club, an amateur radio
group, had discovered how IC circuits work.  He says that smoke is the thing
that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit,
it stops working.  He claims to have verified this with thorough testing.
        I was flabbergasted!  Of course!  Smoke makes all things electrical
work.  Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator
Didn't it quit working?  I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth
dawned.  It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to
another in your Mini, MG or Jag.  And when the harness springs a leak, it lets
the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works.  The starter motor
requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire
going to it is so large.
        Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis.  Why are Lucas
electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch?  Hmmm...  Aha!!!  Lucas is
British, and all things British leak!  British convertible tops leak water,
British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and
I might add Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks
secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
                -- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School

        [Ummm ... IC circuits?  Integrated circuit circuits?]
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
                -- F. Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month"

Whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty by
close application thereto, it is worse execute by two persons and
scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.
                -- George Washington, 1732-1799
All constants are variables.
===  ALL CSH USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

Set the variable $LOSERS to all the people that you think are losers.  This
will cause all said losers to have the variable $PEOPLE-WHO-THINK-I-AM-A-LOSER
updated in their .login file.  Should you attempt to execute a job on a
machine with poor response time and a machine on your local net is currently
populated by losers, that machine will be freed up for your job through a
cold boot process.
All parts should go together without forcing.  You must remember that the parts
you are reassembling were disassembled by you.  Therefore, if you can't get
them together again, there must be a reason.  By all means, do not use a hammer.
                -- IBM maintenance manual, 1925
All programmers are optimists.  Perhaps this modern sorcery especially attracts
those who believe in happy endings and fairy godmothers.  Perhaps the hundreds
of nitty frustrations drive away all but those who habitually focus on the end
goal.  Perhaps it is merely that computers are young, programmers are younger,
and the young are always optimists.  But however the selection process works,
the result is indisputable:  "This time it will surely run," or "I just found
the last bug."
                -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors.
"... all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned
products, if they are built at all, are dogs!"
                -- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac",
                   MIT Press, 1987
All the simple programs have been written.
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

A new system, the CIRCULATORY system, has been added.

The long-experimental CIRCULATORY system has been released to users.  The
Lisp Machine uses Type B fluid, the L machine uses Type A fluid.  When the
switch to Common Lisp occurs both machines will, of course, be Type O.
Please check fluid level by using the DIP stick which is located in the
back of VMI monitors.  Unchecked low fluid levels can cause poor paging
performance.
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

Bug reports now amount to an average of 12,853 per day.  Unfortunately,
this is only a small fraction [ < 1% ] of the mail volume we receive.  In
order that we may more expeditiously deal with these valuable messages,
please communicate them by one of the following paths:

        ARPA:  WastebasketSLMHQ.ARPA
        UUCP:  [berkeley, seismo, harpo]!fubar!thekid!slmhq!wastebasket
         Non-network sites:  Federal Express to:
                Wastebasket
                Room NE43-926
                Copernicus, The Moon, 12345-6789
        For that personal contact feeling call 1-415-642-4948; our trained
        operators are on call 24 hours a day.  VISA/MC accepted.*

* Our very rich lawyers have assured us that we are not
  responsible for any errors or advice given over the phone.
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

CAR and CDR now return extra values.

The function CAR now returns two values.  Since it has to go to the trouble
to figure out if the object is carcdr-able anyway, we figured you might as
well get both halves at once.  For example, the following code shows how to
destructure a cons (SOME-CONS) into its two slots (THE-CAR and THE-CDR):

        (MULTIPLE-VALUE-BIND (THE-CAR THE-CDR) (CAR SOME-CONS) ...)

For symmetry with CAR, CDR returns a second value which is the CAR of the
object.  In a related change, the functions MAKE-ARRAY and CONS have been
fixed so they don't allocate any storage except on the stack.  This should
hopefully help people who don't like using the garbage collector because
it cold boots the machine so often.
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

Compiler optimizations have been made to macro expand LET into a WITHOUT-
INTERRUPTS special form so that it can PUSH things into a stack in the
LET-OPTIMIZATION area, SETQ the variables and then POP them back when it's
done.  Don't worry about this unless you use multiprocessing.
Note that LET *could* have been defined by:

        (LET ((LET '`(LET ((LET ',LET))
                        ,LET)))
        `(LET ((LET ',LET))
                ,LET))

This is believed to speed up execution by as much as a factor of 1.01 or
3.50 depending on whether you believe our friendly marketing representatives.
This code was written by a new programmer here (we snatched him away from
Itty Bitti Machines where he was writing COUGHBOL code) so to give him
confidence we trusted his vows of "it works pretty well" and installed it.
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

JCL support as alternative to system menu.

In our continuing effort to support languages other than LISP on the CADDR,
we have developed an OS/360-compatible JCL.  This can be used as an
alternative to the standard system menu.  Type System J to get to a JCL
interactive read-execute-diagnose loop window.  [Note that for 360
compatibility, all input lines are truncated to 80 characters.]  This
window also maintains a mouse-sensitive display of critical job parameters
such as dataset allocation, core allocation, channels, etc.  When a JCL
syntax error is detected or your job ABENDs, the window-oriented JCL
debugger is entered.  The JCL debugger displays appropriate OS/360 error
messages (such as IEC703, "disk error") and allows you to dequeue your job.
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

The garbage collector now works.  In addition a new, experimental garbage
collection algorithm has been installed.  With SI:%DSK-GC-QLX-BITS set to 17,
(NOT the default) the old garbage collection algorithm remains in force; when
virtual storage is filled, the machine cold boots itself.  With SI:%DSK-GC-
QLX-BITS set to 23, the new garbage collector is enabled.  Unlike most garbage
collectors, the new gc starts its mark phase from the mind of the user, rather
than from the obarray.  This allows the garbage collection of significantly
more Qs.  As the garbage collector runs, it may ask you something like "Do you
remember what SI:RDTBL-TRANS does?", and if you can't give a reasonable answer
in thirty seconds, the symbol becomes a candidate for GCing.  The variable
SI:%GC-QLX-LUSER-TM governs how long the GC waits before timing out the user.
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

There has been some confusion concerning MAPCAR.
        (DEFUN MAPCAR (&FUNCTIONAL FCN &EVAL &REST LISTS)
                (PROG (V P LP)
                (SETQ P (LOCF V))
        L        (SETQ LP LISTS)
                (%START-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
        L1        (OR LP (GO L2))
                (AND (NULL (CAR LP)) (RETURN V))
                (%PUSH (CAAR LP))
                (RPLACA LP (CDAR LP))
                (SETQ LP (CDR LP))
                (GO L1)
        L2        (%FINISH-FUNCTION-CALL FCN T (LENGTH LISTS) NIL)
                (SETQ LP (%POP))
                (RPLACD P (SETQ P (NCONS LP)))
                (GO L)))
We hope this clears up the many questions we've had about it.
All your files have been destroyed (sorry).  Paul.
... an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown Heights Research Center.  When a
programmer used his new computer terminal, all was fine when he was sitting
down, but he couldn't log in to the system when he was standing up.  That
behavior was 100 percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and
never when standing.

Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story; how could that terminal
know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing?  Good debuggers, though,
know that there has to be a reason.  Electrical theories are the easiest to
hypothesize: was there a loose with under the carpet, or problems with static
electricity?  But electrical problems are rarely consistently reproducible.
An alert IBMer finally noticed that the problem was in the terminal's keyboard:
the tops of two keys were switched.  When the programmer was seated he was a
touch typist and the problem went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led
astray by hunting and pecking.
        -- "Programming Pearls" column, by Jon Bentley in CACM February 1985
As in Protestant Europe, by contrast, where sects divided endlessly into
smaller competing sects and no church dominated any other, all is different
in the fragmented world of IBM.  That realm is now a chaos of conflicting
norms and standards that not even IBM can hope to control.  You can buy a
computer that works like an IBM machine but contains nothing made or sold by
IBM itself.  Renegades from IBM constantly set up rival firms and establish
standards of their own.  When IBM recently abandoned some of its original
standards and decreed new ones, many of its rivals declared a puritan
allegiance to IBM's original faith, and denounced the company as a divisive
innovator.  Still, the IBM world is united by its distrust of icons and
imagery.  IBM's screens are designed for language, not pictures.  Graven
images may be tolerated by the luxurious cults, but the true IBM faith relies
on the austerity of the word.
                -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be
solved.  The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will
take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology
available.  The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution.
In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it.  There
is only one solution, he says.  Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general
relativity and all.  She replies, "What does that have to do with solving
a computer problem?"
        "Remember the twin paradox?"
        After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very
fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but
that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course!  Leave the
computer here, and accelerate the earth!"
        The problem was so important that they did exactly that.  When
the earth came back, they were presented with the answer:

        IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card.
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 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 K's, not enough ROM's, not
enough RAM's, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?
Have I explained yet about the bytes?
... C++ offers even more flexible control over the visibility of member
objects and member functions.  Specifically, members may be placed in the
public, private, or protected parts of a class.  Members declared in the
public parts are visible to all clients; members declared in the private
parts are fully encapsulated; and members declared in the protected parts
are visible only to the class itself and its subclasses.  C++ also supports
the notion of *_______friends*: cooperative classes that are permitted to see each
other's private parts.
                -- Grady Booch, "Object Oriented Design with Applications"
Coding is easy;  All you do is sit staring at a terminal until the drops
of blood form on your forehead.
Computers can figure out all kinds of problems, except the things in
the world that just don't add up.
Congratulations!  You are the one-millionth user to log into our system.
If there's anything special we can do for you, anything at all, don't
hesitate to ask!
Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal -- if you are all thumbs.
                -- Glaser and Way
Dear Emily, what about test messages?
                -- Concerned

Dear Concerned:
        It is important, when testing, to test the entire net.  Never test
merely a subnet distribution when the whole net can be done.  Also put "please
ignore" on your test messages, since we all know that everybody always skips
a message with a line like that.  Don't use a subject like "My sex is female
but I demand to be addressed as male." because such articles are read in depth
by all USEnauts.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        How can I choose what groups to post in?
                -- Confused

Dear Confused:
        Pick as many as you can, so that you get the widest audience.  After
all, the net exists to give you an audience.  Ignore those who suggest you
should only use groups where you think the article is highly appropriate.
Pick all groups where anybody might even be slightly interested.
        Always make sure followups go to all the groups.  In the rare event
that you post a followup which contains something original, make sure you
expand the list of groups.  Never include a "Followup-to:" line in the
header, since some people might miss part of the valuable discussion in
the fringe groups.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        I collected replies to an article I wrote, and now it's time to
summarize.  What should I do?
                -- Editor

Dear Editor:
        Simply concatenate all the articles together into a big file and post
that.  On USENET, this is known as a summary.  It lets people read all the
replies without annoying newsreaders getting in the way.  Do the same when
summarizing a vote.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I
tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for
his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him fired.
Everybody laughed at me.  What can I do?
                -- A Concerned Citizen

Dear Concerned:
        Go to the daily papers.  Most modern reporters are top-notch computer
experts who will understand the net, and your problems, perfectly.  They
will print careful, reasoned stories without any errors at all, and surely
represent the situation properly to the public.  The public will also all
act wisely, as they are also fully cognizant of the subtle nature of net
society.
        Papers never sensationalize or distort, so be sure to point out things
like racism and sexism wherever they might exist.  Be sure as well that they
understand that all things on the net, particularly insults, are meant
literally.  Link what transpires on the net to the causes of the Holocaust, if
possible.  If regular papers won't take the story, go to a tabloid paper --
they are always interested in good stories.
Dear Emily:
        I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted
to.  How about an example?
                -- Still Confused

Dear Still:
        Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from
the Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.
        The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.
He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)
        You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each
group.  If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders
will only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Ms. Postnews:
        I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site.  What
        should I do?
                -- Eager Beaver

Dear Eager:
        No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people
read.  Say, "This is for John Smith.  I couldn't get mail through so I'm
posting it.  All others please ignore."
        This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning
over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective
time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet
maps or looking for alternate routes.  Just think, if you couldn't distribute
your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call
directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person.  This can cost
as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call!
        And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's
money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight
letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp!
        Don't forget.  The world will end if your message doesn't get through,
so post it as many places as you can.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little.
        *** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands?  Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere?  If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.

        *** IS PROGRAMMING FOR YOU? ***
Programming is not for everyone.  But, if you have the desire to learn, we can
help you get started.  All you need is the Famous Programmers' Course and
enough money to keep those lessons coming month after month.

        *** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
        (1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
                of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
        (2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
        (3) What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
DOS Air:
All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it
until it gets in the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again.
Then they grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, et
cetera.
Each of these cults correspond to one of the two antagonists in the age of
Reformation.  In the realm of the Apple Macintosh, as in Catholic Europe,
worshipers peer devoutly into screens filled with "icons."  All is sound and
imagery and Appledom.  Even words look like decorative filigrees in exotic
typefaces.  The greatest icon of all, the inviolable Apple itself, stands in
the dominate position at the upper-left corner of the screen.  A central
corporate headquarters decrees the form of all rites and practices.
Infalliable doctrine issues from one executive officer whose selection occurs
in a sealed boardroom.  Should anyone in his curia question his powers, the
offender is excommunicated into outer darkness.  The expelled heretic founds
a new company, mutters obscurely of the coming age and the next computer,
then disappears into silence, taking his stockholders with him.  The mother
company forbids financial competition as sternly as it stifles ideological
competition; if you want to use computer programs that conform to Apple's
orthodoxy, you must buy a computer made and sold by Apple itself.
                -- Edward Mendelson, "The New Republic", February 22, 1988
Eudaemonic research proceeded with the casual mania peculiar to this part of
the world.  Nude sunbathing on the back deck was combined with phone calls to
Advanced Kinetics in Costa Mesa, American Laser Systems in Goleta, Automation
Industries in Danbury, Connecticut, Arenberg Ultrasonics in Jamaica Plain,
Massachusetts, and Hewlett Packard in Sunnyvale, California, where Norman
Packard's cousin, David, presided as chairman of the board. The trick was to
make these calls at noon, in the hope that out-to-lunch executives would return
them at their own expense.  Eudaemonic Enterprises, for all they knew, might be
a fast-growing computer company branching out of the Silicon Valley.  Sniffing
the possibility of high-volume sales, these executives little suspected that
they were talking on the other end of the line to a naked physicist crazed
over roulette.
                -- Thomas Bass, "The Eudaemonic Pie"
"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one
idiot.  Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's
sometimes hard to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all
of the hassle and pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated,
caustic twits."
                -- Chuq Von Rospach, about Usenet
Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper ... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door.  Now all you have to do is
bend a disk.
                -- A member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
                   commenting on the benefits of using computers in support
                   of their movement.
Fly Windows NT:
All the passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac, placing the chairs
in the outline of a plane. They all sit down, flap their arms and make jet
swooshing sounds as if they are flying.
Fortune suggests uses for YOUR favorite UNIX commands!

Try:
        ar t "God"
        drink < bottle; opener                        (Bourne Shell)
        cat "food in tin cans"                        (all but 4.[23]BSD)
        Hey UNIX!  Got a match?                        (V6 or C shell)
        mkdir matter; cat > matter                (Bourne Shell)
        rm God
        man: Why did you get a divorce?                (C shell)
        date me                                        (anything up to 4.3BSD)
        make "heads or tails of all this"
        who is smart
                                                (C shell)
        If I had a ) for every dollar of the national debt, what would I have?
        sleep with me                                (anything up to 4.3BSD)
Go away! Stop bothering me with all your "compute this ... compute that"!
I'm taking a VAX-NAP.

logout
God made machine language; all the rest is the work of man.
Hacker's Guide To Cooking:
2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't
        really  come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.)
1 tsp. vanilla  extract  (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty
        strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure)
1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too)
8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you
        can squirt all over your friends and lick off...)
"Blend all together until creamy with no lumps."  This is where you get to
        join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through
        merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy
        and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it.  Try an electric
        beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off
        the ceiling(3m).
"Pour into a graham cracker crust..."  Aha, the BUGS section at last.  You
        just happened  to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right?
        If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent
        GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter.
"...and  refrigerate for an hour."  Leave the  recipe's  stdout in a fridge
        for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and
        by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin.
Has everyone noticed that all the letters of the word "database" are
typed with the left hand?  Now the layout of the QWERTYUIOP typewriter
keyboard was designed, among other things, to facilitate the even use
of both hands.  It follows, therefore, that writing about databases is
not only unnatural, but a lot harder than it appears.
I am professionally trained in computer science, which is to say
(in all seriousness) that I am extremely poorly educated.
                -- Joseph Weizenbaum, "Computer Power and Human Reason"
I came, I saw, I deleted all your files.
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 my first computer conference at the New York Hilton about 20
years ago.  When somebody there predicted the market for microprocessors
would eventually be in the millions, someone else said, "Where are they
all going to go? It's not like you need a computer in every doorknob!"

Years later, I went back to the same hotel.  I noticed the room keys had
been replaced by electronic cards you slide into slots in the doors.

There was a computer in every doorknob.
        -- Danny Hillis
I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister.
I've finally learned what "upward compatible" means.  It means we get to
keep all our old mistakes.
                -- Dennie van Tassel
If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program
an imbedded system.  The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that
it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention
will suffice to remove it.  An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything
it hears from the outside world.  It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff
around, and adapt again.  I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming
carefulness here.  No.  Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted
raging maniacal paranoia.  For example, our ethernet front ends need to know
what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs
properly.  How do you find out what your network number is?  Easy, you ask a
gateway.  Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network
numbers.  Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before
you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all
over creation.  Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he
was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong
network number?  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  Supposing that your
software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network
number than before, what's it supposed to do about it?  This is not discussed
in the protocol document.  Never supposed to happen.  Tough.  I think you
get my drift.
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
**** IMPORTANT ****  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE ****

Due to a recent systems overload error your recent disk files have been
erased.  Therefore, in accordance with the UNIX Basic Manual, University of
Washington Geophysics Manual, and Bylaw 9(c), Section XII of the Revised
Federal Communications Act, you are being granted Temporary Disk Space,
valid for three months from this date, subject to the restrictions set forth
in Appendix II of the Federal Communications Handbook (18th edition) as well
as the references mentioned herein.  You may apply for more disk space at any
time.  Disk usage in or above the eighth percentile will secure the removal
of all restrictions and you will immediately receive your permanent disk
space.  Disk usage in the sixth or seventh percentile will not effect the
validity of your temporary disk space, though its expiration date may be
extended for a period of up to three months.  A score in the fifth percentile
or below will result in the withdrawal of your Temporary Disk space.
In fact, S. M. Simpson, eventually devised an efficient 24-point Fourier
transform, which was a precursor to the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform
in 1965.  The FFT made all of Simpson's efficient autocorrelation and
spectrum programs instantly obsolete, on which he had worked half a lifetime.
                -- Proc. IEEE, Sept. 1982, p.900
        In the east there is a shark which is larger than all other fish.  It
changes into a bird whose winds are like clouds filling the sky.  When this
bird moves across the land, it brings a message from Corporate Headquarters.
This message it drops into the midst of the programmers, like a seagull
making its mark upon the beach.  Then the bird mounts on the wind and, with
the blue sky at its back, returns home.
        The novice programmer stares in wonder at the bird, for he understands
it not.  The average programmer dreads the coming of the bird, for he fears
its message.  The master programmer continues to work at his terminal, for he
does not know that the bird has come and gone.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
... it is easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the
sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.  In other
words... their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their
superficial design flaws.
        -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, on the products
           of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of
a new system.  For the initiator has the emnity of all who would profit
by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders
in those who would gain by the new ones.
                -- Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

        ...
        The central Superhighway site called ``sunsite.unc.edu''
collapsed in the morning before the release.  News about the release had
been leaked by a German hacker group, Harmonious Hardware Hackers, who
had cracked into the author's computer earlier in the week.  They had
got the release date wrong by one day, and caused dozens of eager fans
to connect to the sunsite computer at the wrong time.  ``No computer can
handle that kind of stress,'' explained the mourning sunsite manager,
Erik Troan.  ``The spinning disks made the whole computer jump, and
finally it crashed through the floor to the basement.''  Luckily,
repairs were swift and the computer was working again the same evening.
``Thank God we were able to buy enough needles and thread and patch it
together without major problems.''  The site has also installed a new
throttle on the network pipe, allowing at most four clients at the same
time, thus making a new crash less likely.  ``The book is now in our
Incoming folder'', says Troan, ``and you're all welcome to come and get it.''
                -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi>
                   [comp.os.linux.announce]
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

        ...
        The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information
Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President.  The ISHW
is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show
that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before
the first prototypes are ready.  Asked whether he was worried about the
foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president
said, ``Finland?  Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told
anyone yet.  They're great at building model airplanes as well.  And _I
can spell potato.''  House representatives are not mollified, however,
wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska.
        Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock
market for weeks.  Several major publishing houses reached an all time
low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the
publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius.  The negotiations did not work
out, tough.  ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen
at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable
of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks,
preferring to communicate via e-mail.  ``He kept muttering something
about jiffies and pegs,'' they say.
        ...
                -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi>
                   [comp.os.linux.announce]
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

Helsinki, Finland, August 6, 1995 -- In a surprise movement, Lars
``Lasu'' Wirzenius today released the 0.3 edition of the ``Linux System
Administrators' Guide''.  Already an industry non-classic, the new
version sports such overwhelming features as an overview of a Linux
system, a completely new climbing session in a tree, and a list of
acknowledgements in the introduction.
        The SAG, as the book is affectionately called, is one of the
corner stones of the Linux Documentation Project.  ``We at the LDP feel
that we wouldn't be able to produce anything at all, that all our work
would be futile, if it weren't for the SAG,'' says Matt Welsh, director
of LDP, Inc.
        The new version is still distributed freely, now even with a
copyright that allows modification.  ``More dough,'' explains the author.
Despite insistent rumors about blatant commercialization, the SAG will
probably remain free.  ``Even more dough,'' promises the author.
        The author refuses to comment on Windows NT and Windows 96
versions, claiming not to understand what the question is about.
Industry gossip, however, tells that Bill Gates, co-founder and CEO of
Microsoft, producer of the Windows series of video games, has visited
Helsinki several times this year.  Despite of this, Linus Torvalds,
author of the word processor Linux with which the SAG was written, is
not worried.  ``We'll have world domination real soon now, anyway,'' he
explains, ``for 1.4 at the lastest.''
        ...
                -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi>
                   [comp.os.linux.announce]
        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...
                -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack"
Long computations which yield zero are probably all for naught.
Mac Airways:
The cashiers, flight attendants and pilots all look the same, feel the same
and act the same. When asked questions about the flight, they reply that you
don't want to know, don't need to know and would you please return to your
seat and watch the movie.
Mac Beer: At first, came only a 16-oz. can, but now comes in a 32-oz.
can. Considered by many to be a "light" beer. All the cans look
identical. When you take one from the fridge, it opens itself. The
ingredients list is not on the can. If you call to ask about the
ingredients, you are told that "you don't need to know." A notice on the
side reminds you to drag your empties to the trashcan.
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
May all your PUSHes be POPped.
MVS Air Lines:
The passengers all gather in the hangar, watching hundreds of technicians
check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at
least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers; bigger models in the fleet
can have more engines than anyone can count and fly even more passengers
than there are on Earth. It is claimed to cost less per passenger mile to
operate these humungous planes than any other aircraft ever built, unless
you personally have to pay for the ticket. All the passengers scramble
aboard, as do the 200 technicians needed to keep it from crashing. The pilot
takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to
realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors.
No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain.  All I'm after is
just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone
and Telegraph Company.
                -- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking
                   machine, 1943.
NOTE: No warranties, either express or implied, are hereby given. All
software is supplied as is, without guarantee.  The user assumes all
responsibility for damages resulting from the use of these features,
including, but not limited to, frustration, disgust, system abends, disk
head-crashes, general malfeasance, floods, fires, shark attack, nerve
gas, locust infestation, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, local
electromagnetic disruptions, hydraulic brake system failure, invasion,
hashing collisions, normal wear and tear of friction surfaces, comic
radiation, inadvertent destruction of sensitive electronic components,
windstorms, the Riders of Nazgul, infuriated chickens, malfunctioning
mechanical or electrical sexual devices, premature activation of the
distant early warning system, peasant uprisings, halitosis, artillery
bombardment, explosions, cave-ins, and/or frogs falling from the sky.
        On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
There are lots of phrases.  My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale
is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
best, write it down and make that the standard.
        The OSI view is entirely opposite.  You take written contributions
from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of
committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all
with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
        So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it
after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
committed to it.  One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think
it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
                -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"
        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, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain.  Ed.]
Premature optimization is the root of all evil.
                -- D.E. Knuth
        Price Wang's programmer was coding software.  His fingers danced upon
the keyboard.  The program compiled without an error message, and the program
ran like a gentle wind.
        Excellent!" the Price exclaimed, "Your technique is faultless!"
        "Technique?" said the programmer, turning from his terminal, "What I
follow is the Tao -- beyond all technique.  When I first began to program I
would see before me the whole program in one mass.  After three years I no
longer saw this mass.  Instead, I used subroutines.  But now I see nothing.
My whole being exists in a formless void.  My senses are idle.  My spirit,
free to work without a plan, follows its own instinct.  In short, my program
writes itself.  True, sometimes there are difficult problems.  I see them
coming, I slow down, I watch silently.  Then I change a single line of code
and the difficulties vanish like puffs of idle smoke.  I then compile the
program.  I sit still and let the joy of the work fill my being.  I close my
eyes for a moment and then log off."
        Price Wang said, "Would that all of my programmers were as wise!"
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Profanity is the one language all programmers know best.
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
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 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.
Scientists were preparing an experiment to ask the ultimate question.
They had worked for months gathering one each of every computer that was
built. Finally the big day was at hand.  All the computers were linked
together.  They asked the question, "Is there a God?".  Lights started
blinking, flashing and blinking some more.  Suddenly, there was a loud
crash, and a bolt of lightning came down from the sky, struck the
computers, and welded all the connections permanently together.  "There
is now", came the reply.
Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were
driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out.  They screamed down the
mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by
luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged
rocks.  They all got out of the car:
        The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
        The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it
into town and have a specialist look at it."
        The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back
in and see if it does it again."
                                SEMINAR ANNOUNCEMENT

Title:                Are Frogs Turing Compatible?
Speaker:        Don "The Lion" Knuth

                                ABSTRACT
        Several researchers at the University of Louisiana have been studying
the computing power of various amphibians, frogs in particular.  The problem
of frog computability has become a critical issue that ranges across all areas
of computer science.  It has been shown that anything computable by an amphi-
bian community in a fixed-size pond is computable by a frog in the same-size
pond -- that is to say, frogs are Pond-space complete.  We will show that
there is a log-space, polywog-time reduction from any Turing machine program
to a frog.  We will suggest these represent a proper subset of frog-computable
functions.
        This is not just a let's-see-how-far-those-frogs-can-jump seminar.
This is only for hardcore amphibian-computation people and their colleagues.
        Refreshments will be served.  Music will be played.
        Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime.
        The first student to try to do this was a math student.  "Hmmm...
Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all
the odd integers are prime."
        The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not
sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by
experiment."  He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is
prime, 9 is...  uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13
is prime...  Well, it seems that you're right."
        The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded,
"Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either.  Let's
see...  1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is...
well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime...  Well, it
does seem right."
        Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says
"Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long!
I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it."  He goes over to
his terminal and runs his program.  Reading the output on the screen he says,
"1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..."
So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh?  In reality
all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have
tomorrow, why, it already happened.  You see, it's just a little universal
recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of
the instant.  So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment
and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of
eternity, the anti-time.  So go to sleep...
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
"user-friendly".  ...  Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
                -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
        [Pot. Kettle. Black.]
        Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void.  Waiting
alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion.  It is
the source of all programs.  I do not know its name, so I will call it the
Tao of Programming.
        If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great.  If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great.  If the compiler is
greater, then the applications is great.  The user is pleased and there is
harmony in the world.
        The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of
morning.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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?
        *** STUDENT SUCCESSES ***

Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of
programming.  One former student developed the concept of the personalized
form letter.  Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a
winner!," sound familiar?  Another student writes "After only five lessons I
sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine.
Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management
program for my department manager.  My program touched him so deeply that he
was speechless.  He told me later that he had never seen such a program in
his entire career.  Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could
have made this possible."  Send for our introductory brochure which explains
in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll
be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which
can vie for a set of free steak knives.  If you don't do it now, you'll hate
yourself in the morning.
        The FIELD GUIDE to NORTH AMERICAN MALES

SPECIES:        Cranial Males
SUBSPECIES:        The Hacker (homo computatis)
Plumage:
        All clothes have a slightly crumpled look as though they came off the
        top of the laundry basket.  Style varies with status.  Hacker managers
        wear gray polyester slacks, pink or pastel shirts with wide collars,
        and paisley ties; staff wears cinched-up baggy corduroy pants, white
        or blue shirts with button-down collars, and penholder in pocket.
        Both managers and staff wear running shoes to work, and a black
        plastic digital watch with calculator.
The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps.  Members will grep
each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od.  Three
days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo.  Two
seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
friendly features of Unix.  Seminars include "Everything You Know is
Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
"cc C?  Si!  Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats.  No Reader Service No. is necessary because
all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
could tell them.
                -- "Get GUMMed," Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
                The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system
in a portable package the size of a briefcase.  The guy on the left has an
Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case.  Also in the case are four
fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition.  The owner of the
Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on
target -- in less time, and with less effort.  All for $795. It's inevitable.
If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal
computer -- he's the one who's in trouble.  One round from an Uzi can zip
through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do
to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum.  In fact, detachable magazines
for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can
take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied
into Ethernet or other local-area networks.  What about the new 16-bit
computers, like the Lisa and Fortune?  Even with the Winchester backup,
they're no match for the Uzi.  One quick burst and they'll find out what
Unix means.  Make your commanding officer proud.  Get an Uzi -- and come home
a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
                -- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
        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 programmers of old were mysterious and profound.  We cannot fathom
their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
        Aware, like a fox crossing the water.  Alert, like a general on the
battlefield.  Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved
blocks of wood.  Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
        Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
        The answer exists only in the Tao.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
The tao that can be tar(1)ed
is not the entire Tao.
The path that can be specified
is not the Full Path.

We declare the names
of all variables and functions.
Yet the Tao has no type specifier.

Dynamically binding, you realize the magic.
Statically binding, you see only the hierarchy.

Yet magic and hierarchy
arise from the same source,
and this source has a null pointer.

Reference the NULL within NULL,
it is the gateway to all wizardry.
... there are about 5,000 people who are part of that committee.  These guys
have a hard time sorting out what day to meet, and whether to eat croissants
or doughnuts for breakfast -- let alone how to define how all these complex
layers that are going to be agreed upon.
                -- Craig Burton of Novell, Network World
There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names.
For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read
permissions for everyone, you could say

        #define creat(file, mode)        creat(file, mode | 0444)

        I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it
hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away
from its uses.
        To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that
is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of
the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon.  While a macro is
being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro
name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology
-- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded
recursively.  (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it
was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.)
                -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review
        There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the
warlord of Wu.  The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design:
an accounting package or an operating system?"
        "An operating system," replied the programmer.
        The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief.  "Surely an
accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating
system," he said.
        "Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package,
the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas:
how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to
the tax laws.  By contrast, an operating system is not limited my outside
appearances.  When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the
simplest harmony between machine and ideas.  This is why an operating system
is easier to design."
        The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled.  "That is all good and well, but
which is easier to debug?"
        The programmer made no reply.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
"This is lemma 1.1.  We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one."
                -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
        This is where the bloodthirsty license agreement is supposed to go,
explaining that Interactive Easyflow is a copyrighted package licensed for
use by a single person, and sternly warning you not to pirate copies of it
and explaining, in detail, the gory consequences if you do.
        We know that you are an honest person, and are not going to go around
pirating copies of Interactive Easyflow; this is just as well with us since
we worked hard to perfect it and selling copies of it is our only method of
making anything out of all the hard work.
        If, on the other hand, you are one of those few people who do go
around pirating copies of software you probably aren't going to pay much
attention to a license agreement, bloodthirsty or not.  Just keep your doors
locked and look out for the HavenTree attack shark.
                -- License Agreement for Interactive Easyflow
Thus spake the master programmer:
        "Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will
        be productive."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Too often people have come to me and said, "If I had just one wish for
anything in all the world, I would wish for more user-defined equations
in the HP-51820A Waveform Generator Software."
                -- Instrument News
                [Once is too often.  Ed.]
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings:

        (10) Sorry, but that's too useful.
         (9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent!
         (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell
             #pragma is for.
         (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too
             hard to write.
         (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar.
         (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in
             here?
         (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!"
         (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this
             sucker.
         (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth.
         (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'.
Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz.
to 64 oz.  Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even
though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical.
Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have
to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you
either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been
drinking Unix Beer for several years.
        BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste.  The official
brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it.
        Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active
GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body.  The GNU brewery is
mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can,
which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented.
        Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his
basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious
brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe.
        POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the
newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager.
        Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout.
Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout.
        Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was
discontinued in favor of a lager.
        SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of
stout or the sweetness of ale.
Unix Express:
All passenger bring a piece of the aeroplane and a box of tools with them to
the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind
of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, the
passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft, but give
them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations.
All passengers believe they got there.
Unix is the worst operating system; except for all others.
                -- Berry Kercheval
We all agree on the necessity of compromise.  We just can't agree on
when it's necessary to compromise.
        -- Larry Wall
        We don't claim Interactive EasyFlow is good for anything -- if you
think it is, great, but it's up to you to decide.  If Interactive EasyFlow
doesn't work: tough.  If you lose a million because Interactive EasyFlow
messes up, it's you that's out the million, not us.  If you don't like this
disclaimer: tough.  We reserve the right to do the absolute minimum provided
by law, up to and including nothing.
        This is basically the same disclaimer that comes with all software
packages, but ours is in plain English and theirs is in legalese.
        We didn't really want to include any disclaimer at all, but our
lawyers insisted.  We tried to ignore them but they threatened us with the
attack shark at which point we relented.
                -- Haven Tree Software Limited, "Interactive EasyFlow"
"We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog,
star of "The Muppet Show." [3]

[3]  Why?  Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we
were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of
character.  But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol
after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an
acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the
letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest.  Later, while
looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed
that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs
should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our
source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky
instead).  When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for
publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission
to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog.  Permission
was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told.  I resisted the
temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book."
                -- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol"
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely
intellectual fields.  But which are the best ones to start with?  Many people
think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be
best.  It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with
the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand
and speak English.
                -- Alan M. Turing
Welcome to UNIX!  Enjoy your session!  Have a great time!  Note the
use of exclamation points!  They are a very effective method for
demonstrating excitement, and can also spice up an otherwise plain-looking
sentence!  However, there are drawbacks!  Too much unnecessary exclaiming
can lead to a reduction in the effect that an exclamation point has on
the reader!  For example, the sentence

        Jane went to the store to buy bread

should only be ended with an exclamation point if there is something
sensational about her going to the store, for example, if Jane is a
cocker spaniel or if Jane is on a diet that doesn't allow bread or if
Jane doesn't exist for some reason!  See how easy it is?!  Proper control
of exclamation points can add new meaning to your life!  Call now to receive
my free pamphlet, "The Wonder and Mystery of the Exclamation Point!"!
Enclose fifteen(!) dollars for postage and handling!  Operators are
standing by!  (Which is pretty amazing, because they're all cocker spaniels!)
When the Apple IIc was introduced, the informative copy led off with a couple
of asterisked sentences:

        It weighs less than 8 pounds.*
        And costs less than $1,300.**

In tiny type were these "fuller explanations":

      * Don't asterisks make you suspicious as all get out?  Well, all
        this means is that the IIc alone weights 7.5 pounds. The power
        pack, monitor, an extra disk drive, a printer and several bricks
        will make the IIc weigh more. Our lawyers were concerned that you
        might not be able to figure this out for yourself.

     ** The FTC is concerned about price fixing. You can pay more if
        you really want to.  Or less.
                -- Forbes
Windows Airlines:
The terminal is very neat and clean, the attendants all very attractive, the
pilots very capable. The fleet of Learjets the carrier operates is immense.
Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000
feet it explodes without warning.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all alike.
You are in a maze of little twisting passages, all different.
You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who
points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!"  You immediately get
attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra
chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a
gold nugget, a crocodile is removing large chunks of flesh from you, a
rhinoceros is goring you with his horn, a sabre-tooth cat is busy
trying to disembowel you, you are being trampled by a large mammoth, a
vampire is sucking you dry, a Tyrannosaurus Rex is sinking his six inch
long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is
dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your
head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves
are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to
transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton.  Oh dear, you seem
to have gotten yourself killed, as well.

You scored 0 out of 250 possible points.
That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer.
To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.
You can do this in a number of ways.  IBM chose to do all of them.
Why do you find that funny?
                -- D. Taylor, Computer Science 350
        A boy spent years collecting postage stamps.  The girl next door bought
an album too, and started her own collection.  "Dad, she buys everything I've
bought, and it's taken all the fun out of it for me.  I'm quitting."  Don't,
son, remember, 'Imitation is the sincerest form of philately.'"
A good name lost is seldom regained.  When character is gone,
all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.
                -- J. Hawes
Above all else -- sky.
Above all things, reverence yourself.
All a man needs out of life is a place to sit 'n' spit in the fire.
All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
-- All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
-- When there are visible vapors having the prevenience in ignited
        carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
-- Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
-- A plethora of individuals wither expertise in culinary techniques vitiated
        the potable concoction produced by steeping certain coupestibles.
-- Eleemosynary deeds have their initial incidence intramurally.
-- Male cadavers are incapable of yielding testimony.
-- Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be well
        advised to refrain from catapulting projectiles.
All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard,
ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.
                -- Kingfish
All is fear in love and war.
All is well that ends well.
                -- John Heywood
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
All that glitters is not gold; all that wander are not lost.
All things are possible, except for skiing through a revolving door.
All things being equal, you are bound to lose.
All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.
All's well that ends.
Better to be nouveau than never to have been riche at all.
Flee at once, all is discovered.
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
In God we trust; all else we walk through.
It is common sense to take a method and try it.  If it fails,
admit it frankly and try another.  But above all, try something.
                -- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Man is the measure of all things.
                -- Protagoras
May you have warm words on a cold evening,
a full mooon on a dark night,
and a smooth road all the way to your door.
Moderation in all things.
                -- Publius Terentius Afer [Terence]
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
-- The writing implement is more potent than the claymore.
-- All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
-- When there are visible vapors having the prevenience in ignited carbonaceous
        materials, there is conflagration.
-- Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
-- A plethora of individuals wither expertise in culinary techniques vitiated
        the potable concoction produced by steeping certain coupestibles.
-- The person presenting the ultimate cachinnation possesses thereby the
        optimal cachinnation.
-- Eleemosynary deeds have their initial incidence intramurally.
Time as he grows old teaches all things.
                -- Aeschylus
You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can make a fool of yourself anytime.
You can fool some of the people all of the time,
and all of the people some of the time,
but you can never fool your Mom.
You can fool some of the people some of the time,
and some of the people all of the time,
and that is sufficient.
"IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique'
to destroy the competition..... IBM digs a big HOLE in the
ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT
OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all
this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor
approaches the pot, he falls into the pit"
- John C. Dvorak
"It takes all sorts of in & out-door schooling to get adapted
to my kind of fooling"
- R. Frost
No one is fit to be trusted with power. ... No one. ... Any man who has lived
at all knows the follies and wickedness he's capabe of. ... And if he does
know it, he knows also that neither he nor any man ought to be allowed to
decide a single human fate.
- C. P. Snow, The Light and the Dark
"It was the Law of the Sea, they said.        Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top."
- Hunter S. Thompson
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific."
-- Jane Wagner
"Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to
make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way.  If
we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for
personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing
a part of our lives?"
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new.  This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense.  Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism:  The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
"It's like deja vu all over again."   -- Yogi Berra
Remember thee
Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.  Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
Hamlet, I : v : 95   William Shakespeare
"All these black people are screwing up my democracy." - Ian Smith
"Falling in love makes smoking pot all day look like the ultimate in restraint."
-- Dave Sim, author of Cerebrus.
Operating-system software is the program that orchestrates all the basic
functions of a computer.
- The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, September 15, 1987, page 40
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
- Francis Bellamy, 1892
You know that feeling when you're leaning back on a stool and it starts to tip
over?  Well, that's how I feel all the time.
-- Steven Wright
I believe that part of what propels science is the thirst for wonder.  It's a
very powerful emotion.  All children feel it.  In a first grade classroom
everybody feels it; in a twelfth grade classroom almost nobody feels it, or
at least acknowledges it.  Something happens between first and twelfth grade,
and it's not just puberty.  Not only do the schools and the media not teach
much skepticism, there is also little encouragement of this stirring sense
of wonder.  Science and pseudoscience both arouse that feeling.  Poor
popularizations of science establish an ecological niche for pseudoscience.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87
   It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis
pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only
by a change in our world view.  We shall have to shift from the materialistic,
dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a
new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the
experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate
nature and all of creation.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman
...Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth.  Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old.  Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected it.
There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice.  Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts.  Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards.  Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes.  Postjudice is not terrible.  You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also.  But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence.  In some circles it is even encouraged.
- Carl Sagan, The Burden of Skepticism, Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. 12, pg. 46
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . .
   [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
of dealing with it. . . .
   [L]et us use the tools that we have.  Let us invoke the cooperation we have
the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
"Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst."
- Thomas Paine
The idea of man leaving this earth and flying to another celestial body and
landing there and stepping out and walking over that body has a fascination
and a driving force that can get the country to a level of energy, ambition,
and will that I do not see in any other undertaking.  I think if we are
honest with ourselves, we must admit that we needed that impetus extremely
strongly.  I sincerely believe that the space program, with its manned
landing on the moon, if wisely executed, will become the spearhead for a
broad front of courageous and energetic activities in all the fields of
endeavour of the human mind - activities which could not be carried out
except in a mental climate of ambition and confidence which such a spearhead
can give.
- Dr. Martin Schwarzschild, 1962, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while.  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
gratifications.  All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done.  There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
Purple hum
Assorted cars
Laser lights, you bring

All to prove
You're on the move
and vanishing
- The Cars
The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only
opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts
at rational thinking.  Not by accident does Genesis 3 make the father of
knowledge a serpent -- slimy, sneaking and abominable.  Since the earliest
days the church as an organization has thrown itself violently against every
effort to liberate the body and mind of man.  It has been, at all times and
everywhere, the habitual and incorrigible defender of bad governments, bad
laws, bad social theories, bad institutions.  It was, for centuries, an
apologist for slavery, as it was the apologist for the divine right of kings.
- H. L. Mencken
The evidence of the emotions, save in cases where it has strong objective
support, is really no evidence at all, for every recognizable emotion has
its opposite, and if one points one way then another points the other way.
Thus the familiar argument that there is an instinctive desire for immortality,
and that this desire proves it to be a fact, becomes puerile when it is
recalled that there is also a powerful and widespread fear of annihilation,
and that this fear, on the same principle proves that there is nothing
beyond the grave.  Such childish "proofs" are typically theological, and
they remain theological even when they are adduced by men who like to
flatter themselves by believing that they are scientific gents....
- H. L. Mencken
I'm sick of being trodden on!  The Elder Gods say they can make me a man!
All it costs is my soul!  I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!!
- Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee
   On Krat's main screen appeared the holo image of a man, and several dolphins.
From the man's shape, Krat could tell it was a female, probably their leader.
   "...stupid creatures unworthy of the name `sophonts.'  Foolish, pre-sentient
upspring of errant masters.  We slip away from all your armed might, laughing
at your clumsiness!  We slip away as we always will, you pathetic creatures.
And now that we have a real head start, you'll never catch us!  What better
proof that the Progenitors favor not you, but us!  What better proof..."
   The taunt went on.  Krat listened, enraged, yet at the same time savoring
the artistry of it.  These men are better than I'd thought.  Their insults
are wordy and overblown, but they have talent.  They deserve honorable, slow
deaths.
- David Brin, Startide Rising
"Every Solidarity center had piles and piles of paper .... everyone was
eating paper and a policeman was at the door.  Now all you have to do is
bend a disk."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity,
  commenting on the benefits of using computers in support of their movement
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
- Ed Bluestone
I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and
tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this
country with being sick and tired.  I'm certainly not.  But I'm
sick and tired of being told that I am.
- Monty Python
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
  commenting on psi research
Prevalent beliefs that knowledge can be tapped from previous incarnations or
from a "universal mind" (the repository of all past wisdom and creativity)
not only are implausible but also unfairly demean the stunning achievements
of individual human brains.
- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness: Implications for Psi
  Phenomena", The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 163-171
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
Now I lay me down to sleep
I hear the sirens in the street
All my dreams are made of chrome
I have no way to get back home
- Tom Waits
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events, the firmer
becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered
regularity for causes of a different nature.  For him neither the rule of
human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events.  To be sure, the doctrine of a personal God interfering with natural
events could never be refuted, in the real sense, by science, for this
doctrine can always take refuge in those domains in which scientific knowledge
has not yet been able to set foot.

But I am persuaded that such behavior on the part of the representatives
of religion would not only be unworthy but also fatal.  For a doctrine which
is able to maintain itself not in clear light, but only in the dark, will
of necessity lose its effect on mankind, with incalculable harm to human
progress.  In their struggle for the ethical good, teachers of religion
must have the stature to give up the doctrine of a personal God, that is,
give up that source of fear and hope which in the past placed such vast
powers in the hands of priests.  In their labors they will have to avail
themselves of those forces which are capable of cultivating the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful in humanity itself.  This is, to be sure, a more
difficult but an incomparably more worthy task.
- Albert Einstein
Why, when no honest man will deny in private that every ultimate problem is
wrapped in the profoundest mystery, do honest men proclaim in pulpits
that unhesitating certainty is the duty of the most foolish and ignorant?
Is it not a spectacle to make the angels laugh?  We are a company of
ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness, learning only
be incessantly repeated blunders, obtaining a glimmering of truth by
falling into every conceivable error, dimly discerning light enough for
our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe
the ultimate origin or end of our paths; and yet, when one of us ventures
to declare that we don't know the map of the universe as well as the map
of our infintesimal parish, he is hooted, reviled, and perhaps told that
he will be damned to all eternity for his faithlessness...
- Leslie Stephen, "An agnostic's Apology", Fortnightly Review, 1876
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity.  We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly --
that is the first law of nature.
- Voltaire
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis
socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If they think
you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude.  I'm a
very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.  These days,
though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to
crudeness.
- Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson
However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise.
There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious
beliefs.  There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than
Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.
But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf
should be used sparingly.  The religious factions that are growing
throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom.
They are trying to force government leaders into following their position
100 percent.  If you disagree with these religious groups on a
particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of
money or votes or both.  I'm frankly sick and tired of the political
preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be
a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D."  Just who do
they think they are?  And from where do they presume to claim the
right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?  And I am even more angry as
a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who
thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll
call in the Senate.  I am warning them today:  I will fight them every
step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all
Americans in the name of "conservatism."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981
"I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell's ass."
- Senator Barry Goldwater, when asked what he thought of Jerry Falwell's
suggestion that all good Christians should be against Sandra Day O'Connor's
nomination to the Supreme Court
...And no philosophy, sadly, has all the answers.  No matter how assured
we may be about certain aspects of our belief, there are always painful
inconsistencies, exceptions, and contradictions.  This is true in religion as
it is in politics, and is self-evident to all except fanatics and the naive.
As for the fanatics, whose number is legion in our own time, we might be
advised to leave them to heaven.  They will not, unfortunately, do us the
same courtesy.  They attack us and each other, and whatever their
protestations to peaceful intent, the bloody record of history makes clear
that they are easily disposed to restore to the sword.  My own belief in
God, then, is just that -- a matter of belief, not knowledge.  My respect
for Jesus Christ arises from the fact that He seems to have been the
most virtuous inhabitant of Planet Earth.  But even well-educated Christians
are frustated in their thirst for certainty about the beloved figure
of Jesus because of the undeniable ambiguity of the scriptural record.
Such ambiguity is not apparent to children or fanatics, but every
recognized Bible scholar is perfectly aware of it.  Some Christians, alas,
resort to formal lying to obscure such reality.
- Steve Allen, comdeian, from an essay in the book "The Courage of
  Conviction", edited by Philip Berman
We're fighting against humanism, we're fighting against liberalism...
we are fighting against all the systems of Satan that are destroying
our nation today...our battle is with Satan himself.
- Jerry Falwell
We may not be able to persuade Hindus that Jesus and not Vishnu should
govern their spiritual horizon, nor Moslems that Lord Buddha is at the
center of their spiritual universe, nor Hebrews that Mohammed is a major
prohpet, nor Christians that Shinto best expresses their spiritual
concerns, to say nothing of the fact that we may not be able to get
Christians to agree among themselves about their relationship to God.
But all will agree on a proposition that they possess profound spiritual
resources.  If, in addition, we can get them to accept the further
proposition that whatever form the Deity may have in their own theology,
the Deity is not only external, but internal and acts through them, and
they themselves give proof or disproof of the Deity in what they do and
think; if this further proposition can be accepted, then we come that
much closer to a truly religious situation on earth.
- Norman Cousins, from his book "Human Options"
The Messiah will come.  There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
- Rabbi Meir Kahane
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality.  All proffered
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
common tests.  It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse.  The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generall known;
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
where the method of free inquiry has made its way.  The "religious"
would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
In the broad and final sense all institutions are educational in the
sense that they operate to form the attitudes, dispositions, abilities
and disabilities that constitute a concrete personality...Whether this
educative process is carried on in a predominantly democratic or non-
democratic way becomes, therefore, a question of transcendent importance
not only for education itself but for its final effect upon all the
interests and activites of a society that is committed to the democratic
way of life.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher
Brain damage is all in your head.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...

This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes.  As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it?  As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness:  Implications for
   Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
"...all the good computer designs are bootlegged; the formally planned products,
if they are built at all, are dogs!"
-- David E. Lundstrom, "A Few Good Men From Univac", MIT Press, 1987
"Infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times
been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice."
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
"All Bibles are man-made."
-- Thomas Edison
"I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a
music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make
available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard."
-- composer John Cage, 1937
I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
that they didn't rehearse at all.  And so the first time when I found that out,
I rehearsed the orchestra myself in front of the audience of 3,000 people and
the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
_Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed.  The Dutch people were ashamed
and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
rehearse.  And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
again, they hadn't rehearsed.  So they were no more prepared the second time
than they had been the first.  I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
cancelling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."  
Can you believe it?
-- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
"Flattery is all right -- if you don't inhale."
-- Adlai Stevenson
"Most of us, when all is said and done, like what we like and make up reasons
for it afterwards."
-- Soren F. Petersen
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.
All extremists should be taken out and shot.
"The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen...  The world's climates are changing,
the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a
walnut."
-- some dinosaurs from The Far Side, by Gary Larson
"He didn't run for reelection.        `Politics brings you into contact with all the
people you'd give anything to avoid,' he said. `I'm staying home.'"
-- Garrison Keillor, _Lake_Wobegone_Days_
"If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets and
fire them all off, wouldn't you?"
-- Garrison Keillor
"All God's children are not beautiful.        Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable."
-- Fran Lebowitz
"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."
-- Saint Augustine
"I've finally learned what `upward compatible' means.        It means we
  get to keep all our old mistakes."
-- Dennie van Tassel
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, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your
mistress."
"The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The
terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency."
-- Albert Einstein
"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."
-- an analysis of neo-Nazis and such, Badger comics
What to do in case of an alien attack:

    1)   Hide beneath the seat of your plane and look away.
    2)   Avoid eye contact.
    3) If there are no eyes, avoid all contact.

-- The Firesign Theatre, _Everything you know is Wrong_
"I saw _Lassie_. It took me four shows to figure out why the hairy kid never
spoke. I mean, he could roll over and all that, but did that deserve a series?"
-- the alien guy, in _Explorers_
All things are either sacred or profane.
The former to ecclesiasts bring gain;
The latter to the devil appertain.
-- Dumbo Omohundro
"Ask not what A Group of Employees can do for you.  But ask what can
All Employees do for A Group of Employees."    
-- Mike Dennison
  "Emergency!"  Sgiggs screamed, ejecting himself from the tub like it was
a burning car.  "Dial 'one'!  Get room service!  Code red!"  Stiggs was on
the phone immediately, ordering more rose blossoms, because, according to
him, the ones floating in the tub had suddenly lost their smell.  "I demand
smell," he shrilled.  "I expecting total uninterrupted smell from these
f*cking roses."

  Unfortunately, the service captain didn't realize that the Stiggs situation
involved fifty roses.  "What am I going to do with this?" Stiggs sneered at
the weaseling hotel goon when he appeared at our door holding a single flower
floating in a brandy glass.  Stiggs's tirade was great.  "Do you see this
bathtub?  Do you notice any difference between the size of the tub and the
size of that spindly wad of petals in your hand?  I need total bath coverage.
I need a completely solid layer of roses all around me like puffing factories
of smell, attacking me with their smell and power-ramming big stinking
concentrations of rose odor up my nostrils until I'm wasted with pleasure."
It wasn't long before we got so dissatisfied with this incompetence that we
bolted.
-- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
   National Lampoon, October 1982
There is something you must understand about the Soviet system.  They have the
ability to concentrate all their efforts on a given design, and develop all
components simulateously, but sometimes without proper testing.  Then they end
up with a technological disaster like the Tu-144.  In a technology race at
the time, that aircraft was two months ahead of the Concorde.  Four Tu-144s
were built; two have crashed, and two are in museums.  The Concorde has been
flying safely for over 10 years.
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
"...I could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet
people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business
there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press.  But so far, the whole
country is like a concentration camp.  The barbed wire on the fence around
the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark.  This openness that
you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed
to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders.  These
leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or
appease it.  He will say: "Yes, we can do business!"  This while his
military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
population of 17 million.  Can you imagine that?
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
"I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as
a house.  So I reasoned that after college, I'd have to live cheaply in
an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer."
-- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
HP had a unique policy of allowing its engineers to take parts from stock as
long as they built something.  "They figured that with every design, they were
getting a better engineer.  It's a policy I urge all companies to adopt."
-- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, "Will Wozniak's class give Apple to teacher?"
   EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
Mr. DePree believes participative capitalism is the wave of the future.  The
U.S. work force, he believes, "more and more demands to be included in the
capitalist system and if we don't find ways to get the capitalist system
to be an inclusive system rather than the exclusive system it has been, we're
all in deep trouble.  If we don't find ways to begin to understand that
capitalism's highest potential lies in the common good, not in the individual
good, then we're risking the system itself."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
Mr. DePree also expects a "tremendous social change" in all workplaces.  "When
I first started working 40 years ago, a factory supervisor was focused on the
product.  Today it is drastically different, because of the social milieu.
It isn't unusual for a worker to arrive on his shift and have some family
problem that he doesn't know how to resolve.  The example I like to use is a
guy who comes in and says 'this isn't going to be a good day for me, my son
is in jail on a drunk-driving charge and I don't know how to raise bail.'
What that means is that if the supervisor wants productivity, he has to know
how to raise bail."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
The essential ideas of Algol 68 were that the whole language should be
precisely defined and that all the pieces should fit together smoothly.
The basic idea behind Pascal was that it didn't matter how vague the
language specification was (it took *years* to clarify) or how many rough
edges there were, as long as the CDC Pascal compiler was fast.
-- Richard A. O'Keefe
"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth."  I usually pick one small
topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the
beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is "mere."  I too can
see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or more?
The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel
my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which
I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?*  It does not do harm to the
mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than
any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak
of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
-- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
An Animal that knows who it is, one that has a sense of his own identity, is
a discontented creature, doomed to create new problems for himself for the
duration of his stay on this planet.  Since neither the mouse nor the chimp
knows what is, he is spared all the vexing problems that follow this
discovery.  But as soon as the human animal who asked himself this question
emerged, he plunged himself and his descendants into an eternity of doubt
and brooding, speculation and truth-seeking that has goaded him through the
centures as reelentlessly as hunger or sexual longing.  The chimp that does
not know that he exists is not driven to discover his origins and is spared
the tragic necessity of contemplating his own end.  And even if the animal
experimenters succeed in teaching a chimp to count one hundred bananas or
to play chess, the chimp will develop no science and he will exhibit no
appreciation of beauty, for the greatest part of man's wisdom may be traced
back to the eternal questions of beginnings and endings, the quest to give
meaning to his existence, to life itself.
-- Selma Fraiberg, _The Magic Years_, pg. 193
A comment on schedules:
Ok, how long will it take?    
   For each manager involved in initial meetings add one month.
   For each manager who says "data flow analysis" add another month.
   For each unique end-user type add one month.
   For each unknown software package to be employed add two months.
   For each unknown hardware device add two months.
   For each 100 miles between developer and installation add one month.
   For each type of communication channel add one month.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on a non-IBM
      system add 6 months.
   If an IBM mainframe shop is involved and you are working on an IBM
      system add 9 months.
Round up to the nearest half-year.
--Brad Sherman
By the way, ALL software projects are done by iterative prototyping.
Some companies call their prototypes "releases", that's all.
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a fal-
lacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850
"If a computer can't directly address all the RAM you can use, it's just a toy."
-- anonymous comp.sys.amiga posting, non-sequitir
"Gozer the Gozerian:  As the duly appointed representative of the city,
county and state of New York, I hereby order you to cease all supernatural
activities at once and proceed immediately to your place of origin or
the nearest parallel dimension, whichever is nearest."
-- Ray (Dan Akyroyd, _Ghostbusters_
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more
doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a
new system.  For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by
the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in
those who would gain by the new ones.
-- Machiavelli
You are in a maze of UUCP connections, all alike.
"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as science
collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to invoke
miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history into
the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to
abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all
fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon distortion,
misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to characterize the
ideas of their opponents."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 87/88, pg. 186
Excitement and danger await your induction to tracer duty!  As a tracer,
you must rid the computer networks of slimy, criminal data thieves.
They are tricky and the action gets tough, so watch out!  Utilizing all
your skills, you'll either get your man or you'll get burned!
-- advertising for the computer game "Tracers"
"If you weren't my teacher, I'd think you just deleted all my files."
-- an anonymous UCB CS student, to an instructor who had typed "rm -i *" to
   get rid of a file named "-f" on a Unix system.
I ask only one thing.  I'm understanding.  I'm mature.  And it isn't much to
ask.  I want to get back to London, and track her down, and be alone with my
Selina -- or not even alone, damn it, merely close to her, close enough to
smell her skin, to see the flecked webbing of her lemony eyes, the moulding
of her artful lips.  Just for a few precious seconds.  Just long enough to
put in one good, clean punch.  That's all I ask.
-- Martin Amis, _Money_
"Let us condemn to hellfire all those who disagree with us."
-- militant religionists everywhere
"The net result is a system that is not only binary compatible with 4.3 BSD,
but is even bug for bug compatible in almost all features."
-- Avadit Tevanian, Jr., "Architecture-Independent Virtual Memory Management
   for Parallel and Distributed Environments:  The Mach Approach"
--
-- uunet!sugar!karl  | "We've been following your progress with considerable
-- karl@sugar.uu.net |  interest, not to say contempt."  -- Zaphod Beeblebrox IV
-- Usenet BBS (713) 438-5018



th-th-th-th-That's all, folks!

----------- cut here, don't forget to strip junk at the end, too -------------
"Psychoanalysis??  I thought this was a nude rap session!!!"
-- Zippy
Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it will make you feel
less responsible -- but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with
the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless
hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they
are --"
-- Thomas Pynchon, _Gravity's Rainbow_
Work was impossible.  The geeks had broken my spirit.  They had done too
many things wrong.  It was never like this for Mencken.  He lived like
a Prussian gambler -- sweating worse than Bryan on some nights and drunker
than Judas on others.  It was all a dehumanized nightmare...and these
raddled cretins have the gall to complain about my deadlines.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Bad Nerves in Fat City", _Generation of Swine_
... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope, and eventually
we were all forced to turn to it.  By the summer of '85, the valley had more
satellite dishes per capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of
Alaska.

Mine was one of the last to go in.  I had been nervous from the start about
the hazards of too much input, which is a very real problem with these
things.  Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels
all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
-- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of Swine_
A serious public debate about the validity of astrology?  A serious believer
in the White House?  Two of them?  Give me a break.  What stifled my laughter
is that the image fits.  Reagan has always exhibited a fey indifference toward
science.  Facts, like numbers, roll off his back.  And we've all come to
accept it.  This time it was stargazing that became a serious issue....Not
that long ago, it was Reagan's support of Creationism....Creationists actually
got equal time with evolutionists.  The public was supposed to be open-minded
to the claims of paleontologists and fundamentalists, as if the two were
scientific colleagues....It has been clear for a long time that the president
is averse to science...In general, these attitudes fall onto friendly American
turf....But at the outer edges, this skepticism about science easily turns
into a kind of naive acceptance of nonscience, or even nonsense.  The same
people who doubt experts can also believe any quackery, from the benefits of
laetrile to eye of newt to the movment of planets.  We lose the capacity to
make rational -- scientific -- judgments.  It's all the same.
-- Ellen Goodman, The Boston Globe Newspaper Company-Washington Post Writers
    Group
[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
Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about
astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked.
Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an
effect on our characters, lives, or destinies?  What force or influence,
what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human
beings and affect our development or fate?  No amount of scientific-sounding
jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central
problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which
celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . .
Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents
the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those
of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always
claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their
efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have
generously done such testing for them.  There have been dozens of well-designed
tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . .
I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest
in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them
keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by
the firelight, afraid of the night.
-- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
    "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury
    News, May 8, 1988
"I turn on my television set.  I see a young lady who goes under the guise
of being a Christian, known all over the nation, dressed in skin-tight
leather pants, shaking and wiggling her hips to the beat and rythm of the
music as the strobe lights beat their patterns across the stage and the
band plays the contemporary rock sound which cannot be differentiated from
songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, or anyone else.  And you may try
to tell me this is of God and that it is leading people to Christ, but I
know better.
-- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocritical sexual pervert and TV preacher, self-described
pornography addict, "Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.",
The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
"Freedom is still the most radical idea of all."
-- Nathaniel Branden
Aren't you glad you're not getting all the government you pay for now?
"All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in.  I'm glad they
are a snowman with protective rubber skin"
-- They Might Be Giants
"All we are given is possibilities -- to make ourselves one thing or another."
-- Ortega y Gasset
        So we get to my point.  Surely people around here read things that
aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*.  Surely we
don't (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and
philosophical message in all this, do we?  So if this `cyberpunk' thing is
just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out?  If cyberpunk is just a
word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be
dead?  Where are the profound statements that the `Movement' is or was trying
to make?
        I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary
(and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a
rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no?  Maybe there
should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or somthing.  Something less
restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk.
-- Jeff G. Bone
...cyberpunk wants to see the mind as mechanistic & duplicable,
challenging basic assumptions about the nature of individuality & self.
That seems all the better reason to assume that cyberpunk art & music is
essentially mindless garbagio. Willy certainly addressed this idea in
"Count Zero," with Katatonenkunst, the automatic box-maker and the girl's
observation that the real art was the building of the machine itself,
rather than its output.
-- Eliot Handelman
It might be worth reflecting that this group was originally created
back in September of 1987 and has exchanged over 1200 messages.  The
original announcement for the group called for an all inclusive
discussion ranging from the writings of Gibson and Vinge and movies
like Bladerunner to real world things like Brands' description of the
work being done at the MIT Media Lab.  It was meant as a haven for
people with vision of this scope.  If you want to create a haven for
people with narrower visions, feel free.  But I feel sad for anyone
who thinks that alt.cyberpunk is such a monstrous group that it is in
dire need of being subdivided.  Heaven help them if they ever start
reading comp.arch or rec.arts.sf-lovers.
-- Bob Webber
Who are the artists in the Computer Graphics Show?  Wavefront's latest box, or
the people who programmed it?  Should Mandelbrot get all the credit for the
output of programs like MandelVroom?
-- Peter da Silva
Trailing Edge Technologies is pleased to announce the following
TETflame programme:

1) For a negotiated price (no quatloos accepted) one of our flaming
   representatives will flame the living shit out of the poster of
   your choice. The price is inversly proportional to how much of
   an asshole the target it. We cannot be convinced to flame Dennis
   Ritchie. Matt Crawford flames are free.

2) For a negotiated price (same arrangement) the TETflame programme
   is offering ``flame insurence''. Under this arrangement, if
   one of our policy holders is flamed, we will cancel the offending
   article and flame the flamer, to a crisp.

3) The TETflame flaming representatives include: Richard Sexton, Oleg
   Kisalev, Diane Holt, Trish O'Tauma, Dave Hill, Greg Nowak and our most
   recent aquisition, Keith Doyle. But all he will do is put you in his
   kill file. Weemba by special arrangement.

-- Richard Sexton
                        HOW TO PROVE IT, PART 4

proof by personal communication:
        'Eight-dimensional colored cycle stripping is NP-complete
        [Karp, personal communication].'

proof by reduction to the wrong problem:
        'To see that infinite-dimensional colored cycle stripping is
        decidable, we reduce it to the halting problem.'

proof by reference to inaccessible literature:
        The author cites a simple corollary of a theorem to be found
        in a privately circulated memoir of the Slovenian
        Philological Society, 1883.

proof by importance:
        A large body of useful consequences all follow from the
        proposition in question.
"It says he made us all to be just like him.  So if we're dumb, then god is
dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."
-- Frank Zappa
"Let me guess, Ed.  Pentescostal, right?"
-- Starcap'n Ra, ra@asuvax.asu.edu

"Nope.  Charismatic (I think - I've given up on what all those pesky labels
mean)."
-- Ed Carp, erc@unisec.usi.com

"Same difference - all zeal and feel, averaging less than one working brain
cell per congregation. Starcap'n Ra, you pegged him.  Good work!"
-- Kenn Barry, barry@eos.UUCP
"Science makes godlike -- it is all over with priests and gods when man becomes
scientific.  Moral:  science is the forbidden as such -- it alone is
forbidden.  Science is the *first* sin, the *original* sin.  *This alone is
morality.* ``Thou shalt not know'' -- the rest follows."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
"Every group has a couple of experts.  And every group has at least one idiot.
Thus are balance and harmony (and discord) maintained.  It's sometimes hard
to remember this in the bulk of the flamewars that all of the hassle and
pain is generally caused by one or two highly-motivated, caustic twits."
-- Chuq Von Rospach, chuq@apple.com, about Usenet
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature.  They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"The preeminence of a learned man over a worshiper is equal to the preeminence
of the moon, at the night of the full moon, over all the stars.  Verily, the
learned men are the heirs of the Prophets."
-- A tradition attributed to Muhammad
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in?  ...
Q: How about an example?

A: Ok.  Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the
Oilers to the Kings.  Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey
would be enough.  WRONG.  Many more people might be interested.  This is a
big trade!  Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy
as well.  If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try
news.admin.  If not, use news.misc.

The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics.  He is
a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also
interested in stars.  Next, his name is Polish sounding.  So post to
soc.culture.polish.  But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to
news.groups suggesting it should be created.  With this many groups of
interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as
well.  (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles
there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.)

You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
A selection from the Taoist Writings:

"Lao-Tan asked Confucius: `What do you mean by benevolence and righteousness?'
Confucius said:  `To be in one's inmost heart in kindly sympathy with all
things; to love all men and allow no selfish thoughts: this is the nature
of benevolence and righteousness.'"
-- Kwang-tzu
"Money is the root of all money."
-- the moving finger
        "Yes, I am a real piece of work.  One thing we learn at Ulowell is
how to flame useless hacking non-EE's like you.  I am superior to you in
every way by training and expertise in the technical field.  Anyone can learn
how to hack, but Engineering doesn't come nearly as easily.  Actually, I'm
not trying to offend all you CS majors out there, but I think EE is one of the
hardest majors/grad majors to pass.  Fortunately, I am making it."
-- "Warrior Diagnostics" (wardiag@sky.COM)

"Being both an EE and an asshole at the same time must be a terrible burden
for you.  This isn't really a flame, just a casual observation.  Makes me
glad I was a CS major, life is really pleasant for me.  Have fun with your
chosen mode of existence!"
-- Jim Morrison (morrisj@mist.cs.orst.edu)
"It's what you learn after you know it all that counts."
-- John Wooden
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress depends on
the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"But don't you see, the color of wine in a crystal glass can be spiritual.
The look in a face, the music of a violin.  A Paris theater can be infused
with the spiritual for all its solidity."
-- Lestat, _The Vampire Lestat_, Anne Rice
To update Voltaire, "I may kill all msgs from you, but I'll fight for
your right to post it, and I'll let it reside on my disks".
-- Doug Thompson (doug@isishq.FIDONET.ORG)
"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."
-- Thomas J. Kopp
"All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is
constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role
they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume."
-- Noam Chomsky
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion,
such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I
conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it
appears to me at present".

When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the
pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some
absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by observing that in
certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present
case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.

I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I proposed my
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.  I had
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
"If I ever get around to writing that language depompisifier, it will change
almost all occurences of the word "paradigm" into "example" or "model."
-- Herbie Blashtfalt
"There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greater computer than
the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a
millisecond?"
"The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt.
"A mere abacus.  Mention it not."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic
Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus Twelve, the Magic and
Indefatigable?"

"The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought,
thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan
Mega-Donkey -- but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterward."
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"The ACLU has stood foursquare against the recurring tides of hysteria that
>from time to time threaten freedoms everyhere... Indeed, it is difficult
to appreciate how far our freedoms might have eroded had it not been for the
Union's valiant representation in the courts of the constitutional rights
of people of all persuasions, no matter how unpopular or even despised
by the majority they were at the time."
-- former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren
"More software projects have gone awry for lack of calendar time than for all
other causes combined."
-- Fred Brooks, Jr., _The Mythical Man Month_
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand
hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was reknowned for
being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which
obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be puzzled
rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space.  In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri.  And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
"I don't know where we come from,
Don't know where we're going to,
And if all this should have a reason,
We would be the last to know.

So let's just hope there is a promised land,
And until then,
...as best as you can."
-- Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby"
"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
"All the system's paths must be topologically and circularly interrelated for
conceptually definitive, locally transformable, polyhedronal understanding to
be attained in our spontaneous -- ergo, most economical -- geodesiccally
structured thoughts."
-- R. Buckminster Fuller [...and a total nonsequitur as far as I can tell.  -kl]
"We scientists, whose tragic destiny it has been to make the methods of
annihilation ever more gruesome and more effective, must consider it our solemn
and transcendent duty to do all in our power in preventing these weapons from
being used for the brutal purpose for which they were invented."
-- Albert Einstein, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, September 1948
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough
to take it all away.
                -- Barry Goldwater
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 bad precedents began as justifiable measures.
                -- Gaius Julius Caesar, quoted in "The Conspiracy of
                   Catiline", by Sallust
All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.
                -- Chou En Lai
All kings is mostly rapscallions.
                --Mark Twain
All other things being equal, a bald man cannot be elected President of
the United States.
                -- Vic Gold
All people are born alike -- except Republicans and Democrats.
                -- Groucho Marx
All the taxes paid over a lifetime by the average American are spent by
the government in less than a second.
                -- Jim Fiebig
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
Anarchy may not be a better form of government, but it's better than no
government at all.
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other
forms that have been tried from time to time.
                -- Winston Churchill
Every one says that politicians lie all the time, and that just isn't so!
But you do have to understand body language to know when they're lying and
when they aren't.

        When a politician rubs his nose, he isn't lying.
        When a politician tugs on his ear, he isn't lying.
        When a politician scratches his collar bone, he isn't lying.
        When his mouth starts moving, that's when he's lying!
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the
former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free.

Mighty starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and
reward among the furthest reaches of Galactic space.  In those days, spirits
were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women
and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures
from Alpha Centauri.  And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty
deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before -- and thus
was the Empire forged.
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Gentlemen,
        Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the
approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been
diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship
from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters.
        We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles,
and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds
me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and
spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted
for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
        Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains
unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been
a hideous confusion as the the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to
one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain.  This
reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance,
since we are war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise
to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
        This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request
elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I
may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains.
I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as
given below.  I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but
I cannot do both:
        1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the
benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance:
        2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
                -- Duke of Wellington, to the British Foreign Office,
                   London, 1812
Give all orders verbally.  Never write anything down that might go into a
"Pearl Harbor File".
Government spending?  I don't know what it's all about.  I don't know
any more about this thing than an economist does, and, God knows, he
doesn't know much.
                -- Will Rogers
        Graduating seniors, parents and friends...
        Let me begin by reassuring you that my remarks today will stand up
to the most stringent requirements of the new appropriateness.
        The intra-college sensitivity advisory committee has vetted the
text of even trace amounts of subconscious racism, sexism and classism.
        Moreover, a faculty panel of deconstructionists have reconfigured
the rhetorical components within a post-structuralist framework, so as to
expunge any offensive elements of western rationalism and linear logic.
        Finally, all references flowing from a white, male, eurocentric
perspective have been eliminated, as have any other ruminations deemed
denigrating to the political consensus of the moment.

        Thank you and good luck.
                -- Doonesbury, the University Chancellor's graduation speech.
He didn't run for reelection.  "Politics brings you into contact with all
the people you'd give anything to avoid," he said. "I'm staying home."
                -- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegone Days"
He who renders warfare fatal to all engaged in it will be the greatest
benefactor the world has yet known.
                -- Sir Richard Burton
History has much to say on following the proper procedures.  From a history
of the Mexican revolution:
        "Hidalgo was later defeated at Guadalajara.  The rebel army was
captured on its way through the mountains.  All were courtmartialed and
shot, except Hidalgo, because he was a priest.  He was handed over to
the bishop of Durango who excommunicated him and returned him to the
army where he was then executed."
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives.
                -- Abba Eban
I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America
and to the republic for which it stands,
one nation,
indivisible,
with liberty
and justice for all.
                -- Francis Bellamy, 1892
I use not only all the brains I have, but all those I can borrow as well.
                -- Woodrow Wilson
I used to be a rebel in my youth.

This cause... that cause... (chuckle) I backed 'em ALL!  But I learned.
Rebellion is simply a device used by the immature to hide from his own
problems.  So I lost interest in politics.  Now when I feel aroused by
a civil rights case or a passport hearing... I realize it's just a device.
I go to my analyst and we work it out.  You have no idea how much better
I feel these days.
                -- J. Feiffer
I was appalled by this story of the destruction of a member of a valued
endangered species.  It's all very well to celebrate the practicality of
pigs by ennobling the porcine sibling who constructed his home out of
bricks and mortar.  But to wantonly destroy a wolf, even one with an
excessive taste for porkers, is unconscionable in these ecologically
critical times when both man and his domestic beasts continue to maraud
the earth.
                Sylvia Kamerman, "Book Reviewing"
I was offered a job as a hoodlum and I turned it down cold.  A thief is
anybody who gets out and works for his living, like robbing a bank or
breaking into a place and stealing stuff, or kidnapping somebody.  He really
gives some effort to it.  A hoodlum is a pretty lousy sort of scum.  He
works for gangsters and bumps guys off when they have been put on the spot.
Why, after I'd made my rep, some of the Chicago Syndicate wanted me to work
for them as a hood -- you know, handling a machine gun.  They offered me
two hundred and fifty dollars a week and all the protection I needed.  I
was on the lam at the time and not able to work at my regular line.  But
I wouldn't consider it.  "I'm a thief," I said.  "I'm no lousy hoodlum."
                -- Alvin Karpis, "Public Enemy Number One"
I wish a robot would get elected president.  That way, when he came to town,
we could all take a shot at him and not feel too bad.
                -- Jack Handley
I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in
understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good,
our tasks will be solved.
                -- Warren G. Harding
If we all work together, we can totally disrupt the system.
If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is
make the rubble bounce.
                -- Winston Churchill
If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year
with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep.
                -- The Best of Will Rogers
If you took all of the grains of sand in the world, and lined
them up end to end in a row, you'd be working for the government!
                -- Mr. Interesting
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
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"
Inform all the troops that communications have completely broken down.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate
in all times and situations.  They presented him the words: "And this,
too, shall pass away."
                -- Abraham Lincoln
It was the Law of the Sea, they said.  Civilization ends at the waterline.
Beyond that, we all enter the food chain, and not always right at the top.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson
It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
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
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty
nights -- or very early mornings -- when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and,
instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at
a hundred miles an hour ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at
the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which
turnoff to take when I got to the other end ... but being absolutely certain
that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were
just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson
My experience with government is when things are non-controversial, beautifully
co-ordinated and all the rest, it must be that not much is going on.
                -- J.F. Kennedy
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it
all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly
the functions he is competent to.  It is by dividing and subdividing these
republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until it
ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under
every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.
                -- Thomas Jefferson, to Joseph Cabell, 1816
Once upon a time there was a kingdom ruled by a great bear.  The peasants
were not very rich, and one of the few ways to become at all wealthy was
to become a Royal Knight.  This required an interview with the bear.  If
the bear liked you, you were knighted on the spot.  If not, the bear would
just as likely remove your head with one swat of a paw.  However, the family
of these unfortunate would-be knights was compensated with a beautiful
sheepdog from the royal kennels, which was itself a fairly valuable
possession.  And the moral of the story is:

The mourning after a terrible knight, nothing beats the dog of the bear that
hit you.
Once you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all.
One planet is all you get.
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
                -- S. Johnson, "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by J. Boswell

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

When Dr. Johnson defined patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel,
he ignored the enormous possibilities of the word reform.
                -- Sen. Roscoe Conkling

Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
                -- Boies Penrose
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
Politicians are the same all over.  They promise to build a bridge even
where there is no river.
        -- Nikita Khrushchev
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
                -- Winston Churchill
        Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.  Five years later?
Six?  It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again.  San Fransisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of.  Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long
run...  There was madness in any direction, at any hour.  If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  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 -- that 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 -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson
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 majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time.  The
terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.
                -- Albert Einstein
The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President.  All he has
to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"
                -- Will Rogers

The vice-presidency ain't worth a pitcher of warm spit.
                -- Vice President John Nance Garner
        The Minnesota Board of Education voted to consider requiring all
students to do some "volunteer work" as a prerequisite to high school
graduation.
        Senator Orrin Hatch said that "capital punishment is our society's
recognition of the sanctity of human life."
        According to the tax bill signed by President Reagan on December 22,
1987, Don Tyson and his sister-in-law Barbara run a "family farm."  Their
"farm" has 25,000 employees and grosses $1.7 billion a year.  But as a "family
farm" they get tax breaks that save them $135 million a year.
        Scott L. Pickard, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of
Public Works, calls them "ground-mounted confirmatory route markers."  You
probably call them road signs, but then you don't work in a government agency.
        It's not "elderly" or "senior citizens" anymore.  Now it's "chrono-
logically experienced citizens."
        According to the FAA, the propeller blade didn't break off, it was
just a case of "uncontained blade liberation."
                -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians
who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool
all of the people all of the time.
                -- Franklin Adams
        Thompson, if he is to be believed, has sampled the entire rainbow of
legal and illegal drugs in heroic efforts to feel better than he does.
        As for the truth about his health: I have asked around about it.  I
am told that he appears to be strong and rosy, and steadily sane.  But we
will be doing what he wants us to do, I think, if we consider his exterior
a sort of Dorian Gray facade.  Inwardly, he is being eaten alive by tinhorn
politicians.
        The disease is fatal.  There is no known cure.  The most we can do
for the poor devil, it seems to me, is to name his disease in his honor.
From this moment on, let all those who feel that Americans can be as easily
led to beauty as to ugliness, to truth as to public relations, to joy as to
bitterness, be said to be suffering from Hunter Thompson's disease.  I don't
have it this morning.  It comes and goes.  This morning I don't have Hunter
Thompson's disease.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., on Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: Excerpt
                from "A Political Disease", Vonnegut's review of "Fear and
                Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
To be excellent when engaged in administration is to be like the North
Star.  As it remains in its one position, all the other stars surround it.
                -- Confucius
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers
in heavy weather for several days.  I was serving on the lead battleship and
was on watch on the bridge as night fell.  The visibility was poor with patchy
fog, so the Captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
        Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported,
"Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
        "Is it steady or moving astern?" the Captain called out.
        Lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous
collision course with that ship.
        The Captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on
a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees."
        Back came a signal "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees."
        In reply, the Captain said, "Send: I'm a Captain, change course 20
degrees!"
        "I'm a seaman second class," came the reply, "You had better change
course 20 degrees."
        By that time, the Captain was furious. He spit out, "Send: I'm a
battleship, change course 20 degrees."
        Back came the flashing light: "I'm a lighthouse!"
        We changed course.
                -- The Naval Institute's "Proceedings"
United Nations, New York, December 25.  The peace and joy of the Christmas
season was marred 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
Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen
at all.  The conscientious historian will correct these defects.
                -- Herodotus
We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean
the same thing.
                -- A. Lincoln
We are all born equal... just some of us are more equal than others.
We are all worms.  But I do believe I am a glowworm.
                -- Winston Churchill
What I want is all of the power and none of the responsibility.
When I hear a man applauded by the mob I always feel a pang of pity
for him.  All he has to do to be hissed is to live long enough.
                -- H.L. Mencken, "Minority Report"
        ... with liberty and justice for all ... who can afford it.
World tensions have, if anything, increased in the quarter century since
H.G. Wells uttered his glum warning: "There is no more evil thing on
earth than race prejudice, none at all.  I write deliberately -- it is
the worst single thing in life now.  It justifies and holds together more
baseness, cruelty and abomination than any other sort of error in the world."
                -- Sydney Harris
You have all the characteristics of a popular politician: a horrible voice,
bad breeding, and a vulgar manner.
                -- Aristophanes
You must include all income you receive in the form of money, property
and services if it is not specifically exempt.  Report property (goods)
and services at their fair market values.  Examples include income from
bartering or swapping transactions, side commissions, kickbacks, rent
paid in services, illegal activities (such as stealing, drugs, etc.),
cash skimming by proprietors and tradesmen, "moonlighting" services,
gambling, prizes and awards.  Not reporting such income can lead to
prosecution for perjury and fraud.
                -- Excerpt from Taxachussetts income tax forms
Adler's Distinction:
        Language is all that separates us from the lower animals,
        and from the bureaucrats.
All new:
        Parts not interchangeable with previous model.
Allen's Axiom:
        When all else fails, read the instructions.
ASCII:
        The control code for all beginning programmers and those who would
        become computer literate.  Etymologically, the term has come down as
        a contraction of the often-repeated phrase "ascii and you shall
        receive."
                -- Robb Russon
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
        A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by
        governors.
Baruch's Observation:
        If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
beta test, v:
        To voluntarily entrust one's data, one's livelihood and one's
        sanity to hardware or software intended to destroy all three.
        In earlier days, virgins were often selected to beta test volcanos.
Bierman's Laws of Contracts:
        (1) In any given document, you can't cover all the "what if's".
        (2) Lawyers stay in business resolving all the unresolved "what if's".
        (3) Every resolved "what if" creates two unresolved "what if's".
Bilbo's First Law:
        You cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels.
birth, n:
        The first and direst of all disasters.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Bumper sticker:
        All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest
        British manufacture.
Cahn's Axiom:
        When all else fails, read the instructions.
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.
Cohn's Law:
        The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less
        time you have to do anything.  Stability is achieved when you spend
        all your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.
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.
Conjecture: All odd numbers are prime.
        Mathematician's Proof:
                3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  By induction, all
                odd numbers are prime.
        Physicist's Proof:
                3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  9 is experimental
                error.  11 is prime.  13 is prime ...
        Engineer's Proof:
                3 is prime.  5 is prime.  7 is prime.  9 is prime.
                11 is prime.  13 is prime ...
        Computer Scientists's Proof:
                3 is prime.  3 is prime.  3 is prime.  3 is prime...
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.
Economies of scale:
        The notion that bigger is better.  In particular, that if you want
        a certain amount of computer power, it is much better to buy one
        biggie than a bunch of smallies.  Accepted as an article of faith
        by people who love big machines and all that complexity.  Rejected
        as an article of faith by those who love small machines and all
        those limitations.
Electrocution, n.:
        Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements.
Eleventh Law of Acoustics:
        In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between
        frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they
        are all merely transforms of one another.  This combined with
        minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct
        compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can
        lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost.  However,
        of course, this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
Encyclopedia Salesmen:
        Invite them all in.  Nip out the back door.  Phone the police
        and tell them your house is being burgled.
                -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation):

Horses have an even number of legs.  Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs.  This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse.  But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity.  Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs.  Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs.  But that is a horse
of another color, and by the lemma ["All horses are the same color"],
that does not exist.
Extract from Official Sweepstakes Rules:

                NO PURCHASE REQUIRED TO CLAIM YOUR PRIZE

To claim your prize without purchase, do the following: (a) Carefully
cut out your computer-printed name and address from upper right hand
corner of the Prize Claim Form. (b) Affix computer-printed name and
address -- with glue or cellophane tape (no staples or paper clips) --
to a 3x5 inch index card.  (c) Also cut out the "No" paragraph (lower
left hand corner of Prize Claim Form) and affix it to the 3x5 card
below your address label. (d) Then print on your 3x5 card, above your
computer-printed name and address the words "CARTER & VAN PEEL
SWEEPSTAKES" (Use all capital letters.)  (e) Finally place 3x5 card
(without bending) into a plain envelope [NOTE: do NOT use the the
Official Prize Claim and CVP Perfume Reply Envelope or you may be
disqualified], and mail to: CVP, Box 1320, Westbury, NY 11595.  Print
this address correctly.  Comply with above instructions carefully and
completely or you may be disqualified from receiving your prize.
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.
genius, n.:
        Person clever enough to be born in the right place at the right
        time of the right sex and to follow up this advantage by saying
        all the right things to all the right people.
Gnagloot, n.:
        A person who leaves all his ski passes on his jacket just to
        impress people.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
Government's Law:
        There is an exception to all laws.
Grelb's Reminder:
        Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
        average drivers.
Grinnell's Law of Labor Laxity:
        At all times, for any task, you have not got enough done today.
hacker, n.:
        Originally, any person with a knack for coercing stubborn inanimate
        things; hence, a person with a happy knack, later contracted by the
        mythical philosopher Frisbee Frobenius to the common usage, 'hack'.
        In olden times, upon completion of some particularly atrocious body
        of coding that happened to work well, culpable programmers would gather
        in a small circle around a first edition of Knuth's Best Volume I by
        candlelight, and proceed to get very drunk while sporadically rending
        the following ditty:

                Hacker's Fight Song

                He's a Hack!  He's a Hack!
                He's a guy with the happy knack!
                Never bungles, never shirks,
                Always gets his stuff to work!

All take a drink (important!)
Harris's Lament:
        All the good ones are taken.
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"
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"
IBM:
        [International Business Machines Corp.]  Also known as Itty Bitty
        Machines or The Lawyer's Friend.  The dominant force in computer
        marketing, having supplied worldwide some 75% of all known hardware
        and 10% of all software.  To protect itself from the litigious envy
        of less successful organizations, such as the US government, IBM
        employs 68% of all known ex-Attorneys' General.
incentive program, n.:
        The system of long and short-term rewards that a corporation uses
        to motivate its people.  Still, despite all the experimentation with
        profit sharing, stock options, and the like, the most effective
        incentive program to date seems to be "Do a good job and you get to
        keep it."
Jim Nasium's Law:
        In a large locker room with hundreds of lockers, the few people
        using the facility at any one time will all have lockers next to
        each other so that everybody is cramped.
Karlson's Theorem of Snack Food Packages:
        For all P, where P is a package of snack food, P is a SINGLE-SERVING
        package of snack food.

Gibson the Cat's Corrolary:
        For all L, where L is a package of lunch meat, L is Gibson's package
        of lunch meat.
Katz' Law:
        Men and nations will act rationally when
        all other possibilities have been exhausted.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives.
                -- Abba Eban
Kinkler's First Law:
        Responsibility always exceeds authority.

Kinkler's Second Law:
        All the easy problems have been solved.
Larkinson's Law:
        All laws are basically false.
Law of Continuity:
        Experiments should be reproducible.  They should all fail the same way.
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.
Lemma:  All horses are the same color.
Proof (by induction):
        Case n = 1: In a set with only one horse, it is obvious that all
        horses in that set are the same color.
        Case n = k: Suppose you have a set of k+1 horses.  Pull one of these
        horses out of the set, so that you have k horses.  Suppose that all
        of these horses are the same color.  Now put back the horse that you
        took out, and pull out a different one.  Suppose that all of the k
        horses now in the set are the same color.  Then the set of k+1 horses
        are all the same color.  We have k true => k+1 true; therefore all
        horses are the same color.
Theorem: All horses have an infinite number of legs.
Proof (by intimidation):
        Everyone would agree that all horses have an even number of legs.  It
        is also well-known that horses have forelegs in front and two legs in
        back.  4 + 2 = 6 legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a
        horse to have!  Now the only number that is both even and odd is
        infinity; therefore all horses have an infinite number of legs.
        However, suppose that there is a horse somewhere that does not have an
        infinite number of legs.  Well, that would be a horse of a different
        color; and by the Lemma, it doesn't exist.
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"
management, n.:
        The art of getting other people to do all the work.
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
        All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
Nick the Greek's Law of Life:
        All things considered, life is 9 to 5 against.
Olmstead's Law:
        After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
"One size fits all":
        Doesn't fit anyone.
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.
optimist, n.:
        A proponent of the belief that black is white.

        A pessimist asked God for relief.
        "Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God.
        "No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that
would justify them."
        "The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked
something -- the mortality of the optimist."
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
pessimist:
        A man who spends all his time worrying about how he can keep the
        wolf from the door.

optimist:
        A man who refuses to see the wolf until he seizes the seat of
        his pants.

opportunist:
        A man who invites the wolf in and appears the next day in a fur coat.
Price's Advice:
        It's all a game -- play it to have fun.
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"
QOTD:
        "I've got one last thing to say before I go; give me back
        all of my stuff."
QOTD:
        "It's been Monday all week today."
QOTD:
        "The elder gods went to Suggoth and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
QOTD:
        All I want is a little more than I'll ever get.
QOTD:
        All I want is more than my fair share.
Research, n.:
        Consider Columbus:
        He didn't know where he was going.
        When he got there he didn't know where he was.
        When he got back he didn't know where he had been.
        And he did it all on someone else's money.
Rules for Writers:
        Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.  Don't use no double
negatives.  Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate;
and never where it isn't.  Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and
omit it when its not needed.  No sentence fragments. Avoid commas, that are
unnecessary.  Eschew dialect, irregardless.  And don't start a sentence with
a conjunction.  Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
Write all adverbial forms correct.  Don't use contractions in formal writing.
Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.  It is incumbent on
us to avoid archaisms.  Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have
snuck in the language.  Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.  If I've
told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.  Also,
avoid awkward or affected alliteration.  Don't string too many prepositional
phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of
death.  "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
Schmidt's Observation:
        All things being equal, a fat person uses more soap
        than a thin person.
Second Law of Final Exams:
        In your toughest final -- for the first time all year -- the most
        distractingly attractive student in the class will sit next to you.
Seleznick's Theory of Holistic Medicine:
        Ice Cream cures all ills.  Temporarily.
Shedenhelm's Law:
        All trails have more uphill sections than they have downhill sections.
Spouse, n.:
        Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
        wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
system-independent, adj.:
        Works equally poorly on all systems.
The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the
following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:

        "I'm Jewish.  Count Basie's Jewish.  Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish.  The B'nai Brith is goyish.  The Hadassah is
Jewish.  Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous.

        "Kool-Aid is goyish.  All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.
Instant potatoes -- goyish.  Black cherry soda's very Jewish.
Macaroons are ____very Jewish.  Fruit salad is Jewish.  Lime Jell-O is
goyish.  Lime soda is ____very goyish.  Trailer parks are so goyish that
Jews won't go near them ..."
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
The Following Subsume All Physical and Human Laws:
        (1) You can't push on a string.
        (2) Ain't no free lunches.
        (3) Them as has, gets.
        (4) You can't win them all, but you sure as hell can lose them all.
The real man's Bloody Mary:
        Ingredients: vodka, tomato juice, Tobasco, Worcestershire
        sauce, A-1 steak sauce, ice, salt, pepper, celery.

        Fill a large tumbler with vodka.
        Throw all the other ingredients away.
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.
Theorem: All positive integers are equal.
Proof: Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B.
        Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B
        (positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B.

Proceed by induction:
        If N = 1, then A and B, being positive integers, must both be 1.
        So A = B.

Assume that the theorem is true for some value k.  Take A and B with
        MAX(A, B) = k+1.  Then  MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k.  And hence
        (A-1) = (B-1).  Consequently, A = B.
Volley Theory:
        It is better to have lobbed and lost than never to have lobbed at all.
Walters' Rule:
        All airline flights depart from the gates most distant from
        the center of the terminal.  Nobody ever had a reservation
        on a plane that left Gate 1.
Wilner's Observation:
        All conversations with a potato should be conducted in private.
wolf, n.:
        A man who knows all the ankles.
Work Rule: Leave of Absence (for an Operation):
        We are no longer allowing this practice.  We wish to discourage any
thoughts that you may not need all of whatever you have, and you should not
consider having anything removed.  We hired you as you are, and to have
anything removed would certainly make you less than we bargained for.
Emotional Ketchup Burst:
        The bottling up of opinions and emotions inside oneself so
that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing
employers and friends -- most of whom thought things were fine.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Clique Maintenance:
        The need of one generation to see the generation following it
as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: "Kids today do
nothing.  They're so apathetic.  We used to go out and protest.  All
they do is shop and complain."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Cult of Aloneness:
        The need for autonomy at all costs, usually at the expense of
long-term relationships.  Often brought about by overly high
expectations of others.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
101-ism:
        The tendency to pick apart, often in minute detail, all
aspects of life using half-understood pop psychology as a tool.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Underdogging:
        The tendency to almost invariably side with the underdog in a
given situation.  The consumer expression of this trait is the
purchasing of less successful, "sad," or failing products: "I know
these Vienna franks are heart failure on a stick, but they were so sad
looking up against all the other yuppie food items that I just had to
buy them."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
2 + 2 = 5-ism:
        Caving in to a target marketing strategy aimed at oneself after
holding out for a long period of time.  "Oh, all right, I'll buy your
stupid cola.  Now leave me alone."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Age is a tyrant who forbids, at the penalty of life, all the pleasures of youth.
All phone calls are obscene.
                -- Karen Elizabeth Gordon
All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
                -- Grant Wood
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.
Blame Saint Andreas -- it's all his fault.
Death to all fanatics!
Go away, I'm all right.
                -- H.G. Wells' last words.
Half Moon tonight.  (At least it's better than no Moon at all.)
        "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?
"He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions."
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
I feel sorry for your brain... all alone in that great big head...
I know it all.  I just can't remember it all at once.
I wouldn't be so paranoid if you weren't all out to get me!!
        "I'm dying," he croaked.
        "My experiment was a success," the chemist retorted .
        "You can't really train a beagle," he dogmatized.
        "That's no beagle, it's a mongrel," she muttered.
        "The fire is going out," he bellowed.
        "Bad marksmanship," the hunter groused.
        "You ought to see a psychiatrist," he reminded me.
        "You snake," she rattled.
        "Someone's at the door," she chimed.
        "Company's coming," she guessed.
        "Dawn came too soon," she mourned.
        "I think I'll end it all," Sue sighed.
        "I ordered chocolate, not vanilla," I screamed.
        "Your embroidery is sloppy," she needled cruelly.
        "Where did you get this meat?" he bridled hoarsely.
                -- Gyles Brandreth, "The Joy of Lex"
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
It has long been known that birds will occasionally build nests in the
manes of horses.  The only known solution to this problem is to sprinkle
baker's yeast in the mane, for, as we all know, yeast is yeast and nest
is nest, and never the mane shall tweet.
It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas,
and not in circumstances.
                -- Emerson
Never use "etc." -- it makes people think there is more where there is not
or that there is not space to list it all, etc.
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep
awake all day.
                -- Nietzsche
Once I finally figured out all of life's answers, they changed the questions.
Peace be to this house, and all that dwell in it.
Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.
                -- Ogden Nash
Progress was all right.  Only it went on too long.
                -- James Thurber
Shirley MacLaine died today in a freak psychic collision today.  Two freaks
in a van  [Oh no!!  It's the Copyright Police!!]  Her aura-charred body was
laid to rest after a eulogy by Jackie Collins, fellow member of SAFE [Society
of Asinine Flake Entertainers].  Excerpted from some of his more quotable
comments:

        "Truly a woman of the times.  These times, those times..."
        "A Renaissance woman.  Why in 1432..."
        "A man for all seasons.  Really..."

After the ceremony, Shirley thanked her mourners and explained how delightful
it was to "get it together" again, presumably referring to having her now dead
body join her long dead brain.
Some parts of the past must be preserved, and some of the future prevented
at all costs.
Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will
probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a
blood-curdling maniacal scream... but still it will be a laugh.
                -- Mister Boffo
Thank you for observing all safety precautions.
There seems no plan because it is all plan.
                -- C.S. Lewis
Time will end all my troubles, but I don't always approve of Time's methods.
Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time.
                -- Pericles
What will you do if all your problems aren't solved by the time you die?
What's all this brouhaha?
Where will it all end?  Probably somewhere near where it all began.
Why is it taking so long for her to bring out all the good in you?
I am tired of fighting...The old men are all dead...The little children
are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the
hills and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are...Hear
me, my Chiefs!! I am tired: my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun
now stands, I will fight no more.              Chief Joseph, (Nez Perce)
Coach: What's up, Norm?
Norm:  Corners of my mouth, Coach.
                -- Cheers, Fortune and Men's Weights

Coach:  What's shaking, Norm?
Norm:   All four cheeks and a couple of chins, Coach.
                -- Cheers, Snow Job

Coach:  Beer, Normie?
Norm:   Uh, Coach, I dunno, I had one this week.  Eh, why not, I'm still young.
                -- Cheers, Snow Job
Come, landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it does run over,
Tonight we will all merry be -- tomorrow we'll get sober.
                -- John Fletcher, "The Bloody Brother", II, 2
        Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each
other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around
the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres.

        Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes
to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your
Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright
piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres.

        Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with
inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down
other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and
placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when
the little hammers strike.

        Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over
their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning
Christmas tree.  The piano is missing.

        You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless
you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level
4.  The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog.
Glogg (a traditional Scandinavian holiday drink):
        fifth of dry red wine
        fifth of Aquavit
        1 and 1/2 inch piece of cinnamon
        10 cardamom seeds
        1 cup raisins
        4 dried figs
        1 cup blanched or flaked almonds
        a few pieces of dried orange peel
        5 cloves
        1/2 lb. sugar cubes
        Heat up the wine and hard stuff (which may be substituted with wine
for the faint of heart) in a big pot after adding all the other stuff EXCEPT
the sugar cubes.  Just when it reaches boiling, put the sugar in a wire
strainer, moisten it in the hot brew, lift it out and ignite it with a match.
Dip the sugar several times in the liquid until it is all dissolved.  Serve
hot in cups with a few raisins and almonds in each cup.
        N.B. Aquavit may be hard to find and expensive to boot.  Use it only
if you really have a deep-seated desire to be fussy, or if you are of Swedish
extraction.
Harry's bar has a new cocktail.  It's called MRS punch.  They make it with
milk, rum and sugar and it's wonderful.  The milk is for vitality and the
sugar is for pep.  They put in the rum so that people will know what to do
with all that pep and vitality.
I never said all Democrats were saloonkeepers; what I said was all
saloonkeepers were Democrats.
I've always felt sorry for people that don't drink -- remember,
when they wake up, that's as good as they're gonna feel all day!
[Norm tries to prove that he is not Anton Kreitzer.]
Norm:  Afternoon, everybody!
All:   Anton!
                -- Cheers, The Two Faces of Norm

Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  A flashing sign in my gut that says, ``Insert beer here.''
                -- Cheers, Call Me, Irresponsible

Sam:  What can I get you, Norm?
Norm: [scratching his beard] Got any flea powder?  Ah, just kidding.
      Gimme a beer; I think I'll just drown the little suckers.
                -- Cheers, Two Girls for Every Boyd
Norm:  Hey, everybody.
All:   [silence; everybody is mad at Norm for being rich.]
Norm:  [Carries on both sides of the conversation himself.]
       Norm!   (Norman.)
       How are you feeling today, Norm?
       Rich and thirsty.  Pour me a beer.
                -- Cheers, Tan 'n Wash

Woody: What's the latest, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Zsa-Zsa marries a millionaire, Peterson drinks a beer.
       Film at eleven.
                -- Cheers, Knights of the Scimitar

Woody: How are you today, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Never been better, Woody. ... Just once I'd like to be better.
                -- Cheers, Chambers vs. Malone
Not all men who drink are poets.  Some of us drink because we aren't poets.
One dusty July afternoon, somewhere around the turn of the century, Patrick
Malone was in Mulcahey's Bar, bending an elbow with the other street car
conductors from the Brooklyn Traction Company.  While they were discussing the
merits of a local ring hero, the bar goes silent.  Malone turns around to see
his wife, with a face grim as death, stalking to the bar.
        Slapping a four-bit piece down on the bar, she draws herself up to her
full five feet five inches and says to Mulcahey, "Give me what himself has
been havin' all these years."
        Mulcahey looks at Malone, who shrugs, and then back at Margaret Mary
Malone.  He sets out a glass and pours her a triple shot of Rye.  The bar is
totally silent as they watch the woman pick up the glass and knock back the
drink.  She slams the glass down on the bar, gasps, shudders slightly, and
passes out; falling straight back, stiff as a board, saved from sudden contact
with the barroom floor by the ample belly of Seamus Fogerty.
        Sometime later, she comes to on the pool table, a jacket under her
head.  Her bloodshot eyes fell upon her husband, who says, "And all these
years you've been thinkin' I've been enjoying meself."
Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups --
alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat.
                -- Alex Levine
Sam:  What do you say, Norm?
Norm: Any cheap, tawdry thing that'll get me a beer.
                -- Cheers, Birth, Death, Love and Rice

Sam:  What do you say to a beer, Normie?
Norm: Hiya, sailor.  New in town?
                -- Cheers, Woody Goes Belly Up

Norm: [coming in from the rain] Evening, everybody.
All:  Norm!  (Norman.)
Sam:  Still pouring, Norm?
Norm: That's funny, I was about to ask you the same thing.
                -- Cheers, Diane's Nightmare
Sam:  What's going on, Normie?
Norm: My birthday, Sammy.  Give me a beer, stick a candle in
      it, and I'll blow out my liver.
                -- Cheers, Where Have All the Floorboards Gone

Woody: Hey, Mr. P.  How goes the search for Mr. Clavin?
Norm:  Not as well as the search for Mr. Donut.
       Found him every couple of blocks.
                -- Cheers, Head Over Hill
They took some of the Van Goghs, most of the jewels, and all of the Chivas!
When all else fails, pour a pint of Guinness in the gas tank, advance
the spark 20 degrees, cry "God Save the Queen!", and pull the starter knob.
                -- MG "Series MGA" Workshop Manual
Q:        How does a hacker fix a function which
        doesn't work for all of the elements in its domain?
A:        He changes the domain.
Q:        How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Five.  One to screw in the light bulb and four to share the
                experience.  (Actually, Californians don't screw in
                light bulbs, they screw in hot tubs.)

Q:        How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all
                those Californians trying to share the experience.
Q:        How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A:        Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the
party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith
agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed
from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed
upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of
the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating
at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of
the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the
second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the
parties.
        The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be
limited to, the following.  The party of the first part shall, with or without
elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other
means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party
of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered
non-negotiable.  Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part
becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall
have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner
consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes.
Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part
shall have the option of beginning installation.  Aforesaid installation shall
occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in
step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation
should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable.
The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the
first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to
produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
Q:        How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
        light bulb?
A:        Seven.  Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
        the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
        Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim
        that he's a doctor, not an electrician).  Scotty, after checking
        around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
        that he "canna" see in the dark.  Kirk will make an emergency stop at
        the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
        from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
        Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
        beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply
        killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
        As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
        Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
        warp out of orbit.  Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
        and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
        just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
        given all light bulbs they can carry.  The new bulb is then inserted
        and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
Q:        How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:        Three.  One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all those
        Californians trying to share the experience.
Q:        What does friendship among Soviet nationalities mean?
A:        It means that the Armenians take the Russians by the hand; the
        Russians take the Ukrainians by the hand; the Ukranians take
        the Uzbeks by the hand; and they all go and beat up the Jews.
Q:        What's the contour integral around Western Europe?
A:        Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe!

Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they
        are removable!

Q:        An English mathematician (I forgot who) was asked by his
        very religious colleague: Do you believe in one God?
A:        Yes, up to isomorphism!

Q:        What is a compact city?
A:        It's a city that can be guarded by finitely many near-sighted
        policemen!
                -- Peter Lax
Q:        Why is Christmas just like a day at the office?
A:        You do all of the work and the fat guy in the suit
        gets all the credit.
A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems
best.  That's dangerous.  Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to
serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the
schools as 'standards'?  Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to
work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if
not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent,
elitist.  ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such
stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be
supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real
professionals.  Those texts are called 'reading material.'  They are the
academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms,
and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating
resource centers along the roads.
                -- The Underground Grammarian
         A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
                          by Mark Twain

        For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.  Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
        Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
        Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
        A 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)
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE ===============

To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one
course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is
offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to
afford maximum inconvenience to the student.  For example, if you happen
to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes.  If you commute,
there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes.
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
                -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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.
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.
                -- Professor Lowd, English, Ohio University
I came out of twelve years of college and I didn't even know how to sew.
All I could do was account -- I couldn't even account for myself.
                -- Firesign Theatre
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"
It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill,
or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing.  It dehumanizes those who
achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom
good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy
notions.  This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all
infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from
folklore to Article of Belief.  It enhances their self-esteem and lightens
their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that
appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge,
and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
competence will be quite enough.
                -- The Underground Grammarian
        It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and
by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate
the habit of thinking about what we are doing.  The precise opposite is the
case.  Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations
which we can perform without thinking about them.  Operations of thought are
like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they
require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
                -- Alfred North Whitehead
Practice is the best of all instructors.
                -- Publilius
Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart.  Harvard's is a subtle
taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco.  It may even be a bad habit, for
all I know.
                -- Prof. J.H. Finley '25
The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn.
                -- Earl Warren

That men do not learn very much from history is the most important of all
the lessons that history has to teach.
                -- Aldous Huxley

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
                -- Georg Hegel

HISTORY:  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"
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
                -- Hector Berlioz
We're fantastically incredibly sorry for all these extremely unreasonable
things we did.  I can only plead that my simple, barely-sentient friend
and myself are underprivileged, deprived and also college students.
                -- Waldo D.R. Dobbs
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with
the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only
the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of
any interest...  but even then the interest items are usually buried deep
around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont.  on ...") page...

The Post will have a story about Muskie making a speech in Iowa.  The
Star will say the same thing, and the Journal will say nothing at all.
But the Times might have enough room on the jump page to include a line
or so that says something like: "When he finished his speech, Muskie
burst into tears and seized his campaign manager by the side of the neck.
They grappled briefly, but the struggle was kicked apart by an oriental
woman who seemed to be in control."

Now that's good journalism.  Totally objective; very active and straight
to the point.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after
the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
You know the great thing about TV?  If something important happens
anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night,
you can always change the channel.
                -- Jim Ignatowski
"All snakes who wish to remain in Ireland will please raise their right hands."
                -- Saint Patrick
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.
                -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Five people -- an Englishman, Russian, American, Frenchman and Irishman
were each asked to write a book on elephants.  Some amount of time later they
had all completed their respective books.  The Englishman's book was entitled
"The Elephant -- How to Collect Them", the Russian's "The Elephant -- Vol. I",
the American's "The Elephant -- How to Make Money from Them", the Frenchman's
"The Elephant -- Its Mating Habits" and the Irishman's "The Elephant and
Irish Political History".
Gay shlafen:  Yiddish for "go to sleep".

Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the
harsh, staccato "go to sleep"?  Listen to the difference:
        "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
        Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live.  This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point.  It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow....
        Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish.  And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards.  But is that too high a price to pay for world peace?
I think not, my friend, I think not.
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
I shot an arrow in to the air, and it stuck.
                -- graffito in Los Angeles

On a clear day,
U.C.L.A.
                -- graffito in San Francisco

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our
lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
                -- Robert Orben
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.
In Minnesota they ask why all football fields in Iowa have artificial turf.
It's so the cheerleaders won't graze during the game.
Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations

        Various signs in Poland:

                Right turn toward immediate outside.

                Go soothingly in the snow, as there lurk the ski demons.

                Five o'clock tea at all hours.

        In a men's washroom in Sidney:

                Shake excess water from hands, push button to start,
                rub hands rapidly under air outlet and wipe hands
                on front of shirt.

                -- Colin Bowles, San Francisco Chronicle
Moishe Margolies, who weighed all of 105 pounds and stood an even five feet
in his socks, was taking his first airplane trip. He took a seat next to a
hulking bruiser of a man who happened to be the heavyweight champion of
the world.  Little Moishe was uneasy enough before he even entered the plane,
but now the roar of the engines and the great height absolutely terrified him.
So frightened did he become that his stomach turned over and he threw up all
over the muscular giant siting beside him.  Fortunately, at least for Moishe,
the man was sound asleep.  But now the little man had another problem.  How in
the world would he ever explain the situation to the burly brute when he
awakened?  The sudden voice of the stewardess on the plane's intercom, finally
woke the bruiser, and Moishe, his heart in his mouth, rose to the occasion.
        "Feeling better now?" he asked solicitously.
Monterey... is decidedly the pleasantest and most civilized-looking place
in California ... [it] is also a great place for cock-fighting, gambling
of all sorts, fandangos, and various kinds of amusements and knavery.
                -- Richard Henry Dama, "Two Years Before the Mast", 1840
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered.  I myself would
say that it had merely been detected.
                -- Oscar Wilde
        "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"
The curse of the Irish is not that they don't know the words to a song --
it's that they know them *___all*.
                -- Susan Dooley
        The world's most avid baseball fan (an Aggie) had arrived at the
stadium for the first game of the World Series only to realize he had left
his ticket at home.  Not wanting to miss any of the first inning, he went
to the ticket booth and got in a long line for another seat.  After an hour's
wait he was just a few feet from the booth when a voice called out, "Hey,
Dave!"  The Aggie looked up, stepped out of line and tried to find the owner
of the voice -- with no success.   Then he realized he had lost his place in
line and had to wait all over again.  When the fan finally bought his ticket,
he was thirsty, so he went to buy a drink.  The line at the concession stand
was long, too, but since the game hadn't started he decided to wait.  Just as
he got to the window, a voice called out, "Hey, Dave!"  Again the Aggie tried
to find the voice -- but no luck.  He was very upset as he got back in line
for his drink.  Finally the fan went to his seat, eager for the game to begin.
As he waited for the pitch, he heard the voice calling, "Hey Dave!" once more.
Furious, he stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs,  "My name isn't Dave!"
Three Midwesterners, a Kansan, a Missourian and an Iowan,
all appearing on a quiz program, were asked to complete this sentence:
"Old MacDonald had a . . ."

        "Old MacDonald had a carburetor," answered the Kansan.
        "Sorry, that's wrong," the game show host said.
        "Old MacDonald had a free brake alignment down at the
                service station," said the Missourian.
        "Wrong."
        "Old MacDonald had a farm," said the Iowan.
        "CORRECT!" shouts the quizmaster.  "Now for $100,000, spell 'farm.'"
        "Easy," said the Iowan. "E-I-E-I-O."
To a Californian, all New Yorkers are cold; even in heat they rarely go
above fifty-eight degrees.  If you collapse on a street in New York, plan
to spend a few days there.
        -- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts
To a New Yorker, all Californians are blond, even the blacks.  There are,
in fact, whole neighborhoods that are zoned only for blond people.  The
only way to tell the difference between California and Sweden is that the
Swedes speak better English."
        -- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts
Traveling through New England, a motorist stopped for gas in a tiny village.
"What's this place called?" he asked the station attendant.
        "All depends," the native drawled.  "Do you mean by them that has
to live in this dad-blamed, moth-eaten, dust-covered, one-hoss dump, or
by them that's merely enjoying its quaint and picturesque rustic charms
for a short spell?"
Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the men are strong, the women are pretty,
and the children are above-average.
                -- Garrison Keillor
(1) Alexander the Great was a great general.
(2) Great generals are forewarned.
(3) Forewarned is forearmed.
(4) Four is an even number.
(5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have.
(6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity.
        Therefore, all horses are black.
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are
totally worthless.
Actually, the probability is 100% that the elevator will be going in the
right direction.  Proof by induction:

N=1.        Trivially true, since both you and the elevator only have one
        floor to go to.

Assume true for N, prove for N+1:
        If you are on any of the first N floors, then it is true by the
        induction hypothesis.  If you are on the N+1st floor, then both you
        and the elevator have only one choice, namely down.  Therefore,
        it is true for all N+1 floors.
QED.
        After the Children of Israel had wandered for thirty-nine years
in the wilderness, Ferdinand Feghoot arrived to make sure that they would
finally find and enter the Promised Land.  With him, he brought his
favorite robot, faithful old Yewtoo Artoo, to carry his gear and do
assorted camp chores.
        The Israelites soon got over their initial fear of the robot and,
as the months passed, became very fond of him.  Patriarchs took to
discussing abtruse theological problems with him, and each evening the
children all gathered to hear the many stories with which he was programmed.
Therefore it came as a great shock to them when, just as their journey was
ending, he abruptly wore out.  Even Feghoot couldn't console them.
        "It may be true, Ferdinand Feghoot," said Moses, "that our friend
Yewtoo Artoo was soulless, but we cannot believe it.  He must be properly
interred.  We cannot embalm him as do the Egyptians.  Nor have we wood for
a coffin.  But I do have a most splendid skin from one of Pharoah's own
cattle.  We shall bury him in it."
        Feghoot agreed.  "Yes, let this be his last rusting place."
        "Rusting?" Moses cried.  "Not in this dreadful dry desert!"
        "Ah!" sighed Ferdinand Feghoot, shedding a tear, "I fear you do not
realize the full significance of Pharoah's oxhide!"
                -- Grendel Briarton "Through Time & Space With Ferdinand
                   Feghoot!"
        Against his wishes, a math teacher's classroom was remodeled.  Ever
since, he's been talking about the good old dais.  His students planted a small
orchard in his honor; the trees all have square roots.
All Finagle Laws may be bypassed by learning the simple art of doing
without thinking.
All great discoveries are made by mistake.
                -- Young
All great ideas are controversial, or have been at one time.
All laws are simulations of reality.
                -- John C. Lilly
All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
                -- Dawkins
All power corrupts, but we need electricity.
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
                -- Ernest Rutherford
All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to
Gaussian noise.
                -- James Martin
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
All the evidence concerning the universe has not yet been collected,
so there's still hope.
All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists
know it.
                -- Richard P. Feynman
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen.  He was amazed to find that
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out).  The American said with a nervous laugh,
        "Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr?  After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
        "I believe no such thing, my good friend.  Not at all.  I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense.  However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
        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"
... Another writer again agreed with all my generalities, but said that as an
inveterate skeptic I have closed my mind to the truth.  Most notably I have
ignored the evidence for an Earth that is six thousand years old.  Well, I
haven't ignored it; I considered the purported evidence and *then* rejected
it.  There is a difference, and this is a difference, we might say, between
prejudice and postjudice.  Prejudice is making a judgment before you have
looked at the facts.  Postjudice is making a judgment afterwards.  Prejudice
is terrible, in the sense that you commit injustices and you make serious
mistakes.  Postjudice is not terrible.  You can't be perfect of course; you
may make mistakes also.  But it is permissible to make a judgment after you
have examined the evidence.  In some circles it is even encouraged.
                -- Carl Sagan, "The Burden of Skepticism"
Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time
as the strawberries, knows nothing about grapes.
                -- Philippus Paracelsus
At the heart of science is an essential tension between two seemingly
contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre
or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny
of all ideas, old and new.  This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep
nonsense.  Of course, scientists make mistakes in trying to understand the
world, but there is a built-in error-correcting mechanism:  The collective
enterprise of creative thinking and skeptical thinking together keeps the
field on track.
                -- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection"
Back in the early 60's, touch tone phones only had 10 buttons.  Some
military versions had 16, while the 12 button jobs were used only by people
who had "diva" (digital inquiry, voice answerback) systems -- mainly banks.
Since in those days, only Western Electric  made "data sets" (modems) the
problems of terminology were all Bell System.  We used to struggle with
written descriptions of dial pads that were unfamiliar to most people
(most phones were rotary then.)  Partly in jest, some AT&T engineering
types (there was no marketing in the good old days, which is why they were
the good old days) made up the term "octalthorpe" (note spelling) to denote
the "pound sign."  Presumably because it has 8 points sticking out.  It
never really caught on.
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!"
"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
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?
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.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own.
                -- Don Vonada
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 ____does 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 ...
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can
doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all present
life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is
as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ only with
respect to theories about how the process operates.
                -- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life".
Experiments must be reproducible; they should all fail in the same way.
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.
God made the integers; all else is the work of Man.
                -- Kronecker
He:        Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
She:        What?!?  Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
                -- Walt Kelly
I had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all.  Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss. I saw -- as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus.  I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable -- but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
                -- Winston Churchill
        "I have examined Bogota," he said, "and the case is clearer to me.
I think very probably he might be cured."
        "That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.
        "His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.
        The elders murmured assent.
        "Now, what affects it?"
        "Ah!" said old Yacob.
        "This," said the doctor, answering his own question.  "Those queer
things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable soft
depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Bogota, in such a way
as to affect his brain.  They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and
his eyelids move, and cosequently his brain is in a state of constant
irritation and distraction."
        "Yes?" said old Yacob.  "Yes?"
        "And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order
to cure him completely, all that we need do is a simple and easy surgical
operation -- namely, to remove those irritant bodies."
        "And then he will be sane?"
        "Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."
        "Thank heaven for science!" said old Yacob.
                -- H.G. Wells, "The Country of the Blind"
"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
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
                -- John Kenneth Galbraith
If all the world's economists were laid end to end, we wouldn't reach a
conclusion.
                -- William Baumol
If for every rule there is an exception, then we have established that there
is an exception to every rule.  If we accept "For every rule there is an
exception" as a rule, then we must concede that there may not be an exception
after all, since the rule states that there is always the possibility of
exception, and if we follow it to its logical end we must agree that there
can be an exception to the rule that for every rule there is an exception.
                -- Bill Boquist
If the aborigine drafted an IQ test, all of Western civilization would
presumably flunk it.
                -- Stanley Garn
In a minimum-phase system there is an inextricable link between
frequency response, phase response and transient response, as they
are all merely transforms of one another.  This combined with
minimalization of open-loop errors in output amplifiers and correct
compensation for non-linear passive crossover network loading can
lead to a significant decrease in system resolution lost.  However,
this all means jack when you listen to Pink Floyd.
        In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist.  And they grew to
large numbers and prospered.
        One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
as the eye could see.  So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
was to reach up as far as "up" went.  Further and further up they went ...
until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
        The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens.  One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
out from under the rubble.  It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not
understand each other.  They all spoke different languages.  They all fought
amongst themselves and each went about their own way.  To this day the
Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
                -- The Story of Babel
In the course of reading Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the
Mathematical Field", I have come across evidence supporting a fact
which we coffee achievers have long appreciated:  no really creative,
intelligent thought is possible without a good cup of coffee.  On page
14, Hadamard is discussing Poincare's theory of fuchsian groups and
fuchsian functions, which he describes as "... one of his greatest
discoveries, the first which consecrated his glory ..."  Hadamard refers
to Poincare having had a "... sleepless night which initiated all that
memorable work ..." and gives the following, very revealing quote:

        "One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and
        could not sleep.  Ideas rose in crowds;  I felt them collide
        until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable
        combination."

Too bad drinking black coffee was contrary to his custom.  Maybe he
could really have amounted to something as a coffee achiever.
        "In this replacement Earth we're building they've given me Africa
to do and of course I'm doing it with all fjords again because I happen to
like them, and I'm old-fashioned enough to think that they give a lovely
baroque feel to a continent.  And they tell me it's not equatorial enough.
Equatorial!"  He gave a hollow laugh.  "What does it matter?  Science has
achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I'd far rather be happy than
right any day."
        "And are you?"
        "No.  That's where it all falls down, of course."
        "Pity," said Arthur with sympathy.  "It sounded like quite a good
life-style otherwise."
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
"Irrationality is the square root of all evil"
                -- Douglas Hofstadter
Lawrence Radiation Laboratory keeps all its data in an old gray trunk.
Man will never fly.  Space travel is merely a dream.  All aspirin is alike.
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"
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
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 3 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.
41: The Female Prime --
        The polynomial X**2 - X + 41 is
        prime for integer values from 1 to 40.
43: The Male Prime - they form a prime pair.

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, when the secrets of science were the jealously guarded property
of a small priesthood, the common man had no hope of mastering their arcane
complexities.  Years of study in musty classrooms were prerequisite to
obtaining even a dim, incoherent knowledge of science.
        Today all that has changed: a dim, incoherent knowledge of science is
available to anyone.
                -- Tom Weller, "Science Made Stupid"
Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard.  It is fatal in
concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m.  Humans exposed to the
oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes.  Symptoms resemble very
much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.).  In higher
concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it
takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place.  The reason
for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of
oxygen in 20% concentration.  It apparently contributes to a complex
process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is
always fatal.

However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the
fact it is habit forming.  The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is
sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent.  After that, any
considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with
symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning.

Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard.  All of the fires that were reported in
the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be
due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings
in question.

Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and
tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is
too late.
                -- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956
Stuckness shouldn't be avoided.  It's the psychic predecessor of all
real understanding.  An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an
understanding of all Quality, in mechanical work as in other endeavors.
                -- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
The ark lands after The Flood.  Noah lets all the animals out.  Says he, "Go
and multiply."  Several months pass.  Noah decides to check up on the animals.
All are doing fine except a pair of snakes.  "What's the problem?" says Noah.
"Cut down some trees and let us live there", say the snakes.  Noah follows
their advice.  Several more weeks pass.  Noah checks on the snakes again.
Lots of little snakes, everybody is happy.  Noah asks, "Want to tell me how
the trees helped?"  "Certainly", say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need
logs to multiply."
The Commandments of the EE:

(9)        Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou
        commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug, and thy wife be
        frustrated and have not further use for thee except for thy wages.
(10)        Commit thou to memory all the words of the prophets which are
        written down in thy Bible which is the National Electrical Code,
        and giveth out with the straight dope and consoleth thee when
        thou hast suffered a ream job by the chief electrician.
(11)        When thou muckest about with a device in an unthinking and/or
        unknowing manner, thou shalt keep one hand in thy pocket.  Better
        that thou shouldest keep both hands in thy pockets than
        experimentally determine the electrical potential of an
        innocent-seeming device.
The Commandments of the EE:

(1)        Beware of lightning that lurketh in an uncharged condenser
        lest it cause thee to bounce upon thy buttocks in a most
        embarrassing manner.
(2)        Cause thou the switch that supplieth large quantities of juice to
        be opened and thusly tagged, that thy days may be long in this
        earthly vale of tears.
(3)        Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth, and upon
        which the worketh, are grounded and thusly tagged lest they lift
        thee to a radio frequency potential and causeth thee to make like
        a radiator too.
(4)        Tarry thou not amongst these fools that engage in intentional
        shocks for they are not long for this world and are surely
        unbelievers.
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using
other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern
countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so
far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill
and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons.  None of the animals turned into
oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer.
                -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
The reason that every major university maintains a department of
mathematics is that it's cheaper than institutionalizing all those people.
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data.  Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all.  The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that.  With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven.  The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C).  The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C  (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.)  We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
                -- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972
The test of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
                -- Aldo Leopold
The universe is all a spin-off of the Big Bang.
There was an old Indian belief that by making love on the hide of
their favorite animal, one could guarantee the health and prosperity
of the offspring conceived thereupon.  And so it goes that one Indian
couple made love on a buffalo  hide.  Nine months later, they were
blessed with a healthy baby son.  Yet another couple huddled together
on the hide of a deer and they too were blessed with a very healthy
baby son.  But a third couple, whose favorite animal was a hippopotamus,
were blessed with not one, but TWO very healthy baby sons at the conclusion
of the nine month interval.  All of which proves the old theorem that:
The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of
the squaws of the other two hides.
This place just isn't big enough for all of us.  We've got to find a way
off this planet.
TIRED of calculating components of vectors?  Displacements along direction of
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Yes, you too can take advantage of the amazing properties of Dot-Product.  Use
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available through stores and is void where prohibited by law.
Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the earth's
supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century. As man
struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help. Please...

                        CONSERVE GRAVITY

Follow these simple suggestions:

(1)  Walk with a light step.  Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2)  Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3)  Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like curling.
(4)  Avoid showers .. take baths instead.
(5)  Don't hang all your clothes in the closet ... Keep them in one big pile.
(6)  Stop flipping pancakes
We are all agreed that your theory is crazy.  The question which divides us is
whether it is crazy enough to have a chance of being correct.  My own feeling
is that it is not crazy enough.
                -- Niels Bohr
... we must be wary of granting too much power to natural selection
by viewing all basic capacities of our brain as direct adaptations.
I do not doubt that natural selection acted in building our oversized
brains -- and I am equally confident that our brains became large as
an adaptation for definite roles (probably a complex set of interacting
functions).  But these assumptions do not lead to the notion, often
uncritically embraced by strict Darwinians, that all major capacities
of the brain must arise as direct products of natural selection.
                -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"
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, "Cyberiad"
        While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to
his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?"
        "Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant.  "What do you
mean?"
        The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of
`Why the sea is salt' many times, but I never thought it important until just
a moment ago.  It's something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and
salt was rare and expensive.  A miller received from a wizard a wonderful
machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long.  At first the miller
thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages
had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding
more salt.  The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his
acres.  At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and
be rid of it.  But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine
were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that's
why the sea is salt."
        "I don't get you," said the assistant.
                -- Guy Endore, "Men of Iron"
With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once
build a nuclear balm?
        "Yo, Mike!"
        "Yeah, Gabe?"
        "We got a problem down on Earth.  In Utah."
        "I thought you fixed that last century!"
        "No, no, not that.  Someone's found a security problem in the physics
program.  They're getting energy out of nowhere."
        "Blessit!  Lemme look...  <tappity clickity tappity>  Hey, it's
there all right!  OK, just a sec...  <tappity clickity tap... save... compile>
There, that ought to patch it.  Dist it out, wouldja?"
                -- Cold Fusion, 1989
You can take all the impact that science considerations have on funding
decisions at NASA, put them in the navel of a flea, and have room left
over for a caraway seed and Tony Calio's heart.
                -- F. Allen
1893 The ideal brain tonic
1900 Drink Coca-Cola -- delicious and refreshing -- 5 cents at all
        soda fountains
1905 Is the favorite drink for LADIES when thirsty -- weary -- despondent
1905 Refreshes the weary, brightens the intellect and clears the brain
1906 The drink of QUALITY
1907 Good to the last drop
1907 It satisfies the thirst and pleases the palate
1907 Refreshing as a summer breeze.  Delightful as a Dip in the Sea
1908 The Drink that Cheers but does not inebriate
1917 There's a delicious freshness to the taste of Coca-Cola
1919 It satisfies thirst
1919 The taste is the test
1922 Every glass holds the answer to thirst
1922 Thirst knows no season
1925 Enjoy the sociable drink
                -- Coca-Cola slogans
Did you hear that Captain Crunch, Sugar Bear, Tony the Tiger, and
Snap, Crackle and Pop were all murdered recently...

Police suspect the work of a cereal killer!
For those of you who have been unfortunate enough to never have tasted the
'Great Chieftain O' the Pudden Race' (i.e. haggis) here is an easy to follow
recipe which results in a dish remarkably similar to the above mentioned
protected species.
        Ingredients:
          1 Sheep's Pluck (heart, lungs, liver) and bag
          2 teacupsful toasted oatmeal
          1 teaspoonful salt
          8 oz. shredded suet
          2 small onions
        1/2 teaspoonful black pepper
    
        Scrape and clean bag in cold, then warm, water.  Soak in salt water
overnight.  Wash pluck, then boil for 2 hours with windpipe draining over
the side of pot.  Retain 1 pint of stock.  Cut off windpipe, remove surplus
gristle, chop or mince heart and lungs, and grate best part of liver (about
half only).  Parboil and chop onions, mix all together with oatmeal, suet,
salt, pepper and stock to moisten.  Pack the mixture into bag, allowing for
swelling.  Boil for three hours, pricking regularly all over.  If bag not
available, steam in greased basin covered by greaseproof paper and cloth for
four to five hours.
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
                -- Totie Fields
IT MAKES ME MAD when I go to all the trouble of having Marta cook up about
a hundred drumsticks, then the guy at Marineland says, "You can't throw
that chicken to the dolphins. They eat fish."

Sure they eat fish if that's all you give them!  Man, wise up.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
It's so beautifully arranged on the plate -- you know someone's fingers
have been all over it.
                -- Julia Child on nouvelle cuisine.
Just a few of the perfect excuses for having some strawberry shortcake.
Pick one.

         (1)        It's less calories than two pieces of strawberry shortcake.
         (2)        It's cheaper than going to France.
         (3)        It neutralizes the brownies I had yesterday.
         (4)        Life is short.
         (5)        It's somebody's birthday.  I don't want them to celebrate alone.
         (6)        It matches my eyes.
         (7)        Whoever said, "Let them eat cake." must have been talking to me.
         (8)        To punish myself for eating dessert yesterday.
         (9)        Compensation for all the time I spend in the shower not eating.
        (10)        Strawberry shortcake is evil.  I must help rid the world of it.
        (11)        I'm getting weak from eating all that healthy stuff.
        (12)        It's the second anniversary of the night I ate plain broccoli.
Life is like a tin of sardines.  We're, all of us, looking for the key.
                -- Beyond the Fringe
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 black bear used to be one of the most commonly seen large animals
because in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks they lived off of garbage
and tourist handouts.  This bear has learned to open car doors in
Yosemite, where damage to automobiles caused by bears runs into the tens
of thousands of dollars a year.  Campaigns to bearproof all garbage
containers in wild areas have been difficult, because as one biologist
put it, "There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels
of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
"The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in
1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert."
                -- D. Letterman
When all else fails, EAT!!!
A cousin of mine once said about money,
money is always there but the pockets change;
it is not in the same pockets after a change,
and that is all there is to say about money.
                -- Gertrude Stein
A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.
I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.
                -- THE ABC'S OF UNIX
A robin redbreast in a cage
Puts all Heaven in a rage.
                -- Blake
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet--
One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
                -- Dorothy Parker, "One Perfect Rose"
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
                -- William Blake
A-Z affectionately,
1 to 10 alphabetically,
from here to eternity without in betweens,
still looking for a custom fit in an off-the-rack world,
sales talk from sales assistants
        when all i want to do is lower your resistance,
no rhythm in cymbals no tempo in drums,
love's on arrival,
she comes when she comes,
right on the target but wide of the mark...
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"  The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel.  Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished.  The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo!  Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
                -- James Henry Leigh Hunt, "Abou Ben Adhem"
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads
On today because tomorrow's ground
Is too uncertain.  And futures have
A way of falling down in midflight,
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth
And you learn and learn
With every goodbye you learn.
                -- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn"
After all my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?
                -- Edna St. Vincent Millay
                        Against Idleness and Mischief

How doth the little busy bee                How skillfully she builds her cell!
Improve each shining hour,                How neat she spreads the wax!
And gather honey all the day                And labours hard to store it well
From every opening flower!                With the sweet food she makes.

In works of labour or of skill                In books, or work, or healthful play,
I would be busy too;                        Let my first years be passed,
For Satan finds some mischief still        That I may give for every day
For idle hands to do.                        Some good account at last.
                -- Isaac Watts, 1674-1748
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.
Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.
All I need to have a good time,
Is a reefer, a woman and a bottle of wine.
With those three things I don't need no sunshine,
A reefer, a woman and a bottle of wine.

All I want is to never grow old,
I want to wash in a bathtub of gold.
I want 97 kilos already rolled,
I want to wash in a bathtub of gold.

I want to light my cigars with 10 dollar bills,
I like to have a cattle ranch in Beverly Hills.
I want a bottle of Red Eye that's always filled,
I like to have a cattle ranch in Beverly Hills.
                -- Country Joe and the Fish, "Zachariah"
All my friends are getting married,
Yes, they're all growing old,
They're all staying home on the weekend,
They're all doing what they're told.
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
                -- J.R.R. Tolkien
        All that you touch,                And all you create,
        All that you see,                And all you destroy,
        All that you taste,                All that you do,
        All you feel,                        And all you say,
        And all that you love,                All that you eat,
        And all that you hate,                And everyone you meet,
        All you distrust,                All that you slight,
        All you save,                        And everyone you fight,
        And all that you give,                And all that is now,
        And all that you deal,                And all that is gone,
        All that you buy,                And all that's to come,
        Beg, borrow or steal,                And everything under the sun is
                                                in tune,
                                        But the sun is eclipsed
                                        By the moon.

There is no dark side of the moon... really... matter of fact it's all dark.
                -- Pink Floyd, "Dark Side of the Moon"
All the lines have been written                There's been Sandburg,
It's sad but it's true                        Keats, Poe and McKuen
With all the words gone,                They all had their day
What's a young poet to do?                And knew what they're doin'

But of all the words written                The bird is a strange one,
And all the lines read,                        So small and so tender
There's one I like most,                Its breed still unknown,
And by a bird it was said!                Not to mention its gender.

It reminds me of days of                So what is this line
Both gloom and of light.                Whose author's unknown
It still lifts my spirits                And still makes me giggle
And starts the day right.                Even now that I'm grown?

I've read all the greats
Both starving and fat,
But none was as great as
"I tot I taw a puddy tat."
                -- Etta Stallings, "An Ode To Childhood"
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 who joy would win Must share it --
Happiness was born a twin.
                -- Lord Byron
And all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word, "unless."
Whatever THAT meant, well, I just couldn't guess.
That was long, long ago, and each day since that day,
I've worried and worried and worried away.
Through the years as my buildings have fallen apart,
I've worried about it with all of my heart.

"BUT," says the Oncler, "now that you're here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear!
UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better - it's not.
So... CATCH!" cries the Oncler.  He lets something fall.
"It's a truffula seed.  It's the last one of all!

"You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds.
And truffula trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new truffula -- treat it with care.
Give it clean water and feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest -- protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back!"
And here I wait so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going thru all of these things twice
                -- Dylan, "Memphis Blues Again"
And I heard Jeff exclaim,
As they strolled out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all --
You take credit cards, right?"
                -- "Outsiders" comic
And if you wonder,
What I am doing,
As I am heading for the sink.
I am spitting out all the bitterness,
Along with half of my last drink.
And... What in the world ever became of Sweet Jane?
        She's lost her sparkle, you see she isn't the same.
        Livin' on reds, vitamin C, and cocaine
        All a friend can say is "Ain't it a shame?"
                -- The Grateful Dead
Antonio Antonio
Was tired of living alonio
He thought he would woo                        Antonio Antonio
Miss Lucamy Lu,                                Rode of on his polo ponio
Miss Lucamy Lucy Molonio.                And found the maid
                                        In a bowery shade,
                                        Sitting and knitting alonio.
Antonio Antonio
Said if you will be my ownio
I'll love tou true                        Oh nonio Antonio
And buy for you                                You're far too bleak and bonio
An icery creamry conio.                        And all that I wish
                                        You singular fish
                                        Is that you will quickly begonio.
Antonio Antonio
Uttered a dismal moanio
And went off and hid
Or I'm told that he did
In the Antartical Zonio.
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
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
                -- John Keats
But I was there and I saw what you did,
I saw it with my own two eyes.
So you can wipe off that grin;
I know where you've been--
It's all been a pack of lies!
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
Christmas time is here, by Golly;        Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens;
Disapproval would be folly;                Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens;
Deck the halls with hunks of holly;        Even though the prospect sickens,
Fill the cup and don't say when...        Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas day, you can't get sore;        Relations sparing no expense'll,
Your fellow man you must adore;                Send some useless old utensil,
There's time to rob him all the more,        Or a matching pen and pencil,
The other three hundred and sixty-four!        Just the thing I need... how nice.

It doesn't matter how sincere                Hark The Herald-Tribune sings,
It is, nor how heartfelt the spirit;        Advertising wondrous things.
Sentiment will not endear it;                God Rest Ye Merry Merchants,
What's important is... the price.        May you make the Yuletide pay.
                                        Angels We Have Heard On High,
Let the raucous sleighbells jingle;        Tell us to go out and buy.
Hail our dear old friend, Kris Kringle,        Sooooo...
Driving his reindeer across the sky,
Don't stand underneath when they fly by!
                -- Tom Lehrer
Come, landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it does run over,
Tonight we will all merry be -- tomorrow we'll get sober.
                -- John Fletcher, "The Bloody Brother", II, 2
Confusion will be my epitaph
as I walk a cracked and broken path
If we make it we can all sit back and laugh
but I fear that tomorrow we'll be crying.
                -- King Crimson, "In the Court of the Crimson King"
        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!
                -- Pogo, "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie" [Walt Kelly]
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
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?

Hacker MacKensie
Writing the code for a program that no one will run
It's nearly done
Look at him working, fixing the bugs in the night when there's
        nobody there.
What does he care?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Even in the moment of our earliest kiss,
When sighed the straitened bud into the flower,
Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this;
And that I knew, though not the day and hour.
Too season-wise am I, being country-bred,
To tilt at autumn or defy the frost:
Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did,
I say with them, "What's out tonight is lost."
I only hoped, with the mild hope of all
Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree,
A fairer summer and a later fall
Than in these parts a man is apt to see,
And sunny clusters ripened for the wine:
I tell you this across the blackened vine.
                -- Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Even in the Moment of
                   Our Earliest Kiss", 1931
Ever Onward!  Ever Onward!
That's the sprit that has brought us fame.
We're big but bigger we will be,
We can't fail for all can see, that to serve humanity
Has been our aim.
Our products now are known in every zone.
Our reputation sparkles like a gem.
We've fought our way thru
And new fields we're sure to conquer, too
For the Ever Onward IBM!
                -- Ever Onward, from the 1940 IBM Songbook
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, 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 Caesar.  The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar 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 Caesar's laying down.
Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet -- perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save me, oh save me from the candid friend.
                -- George Canning
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, "Deteriorata"
Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields
Sold in a market down in New Orleans
Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright
Hear him whip the women, just around midnight

Ah, brown sugar how come you taste so good?
Ah, brown sugar just like a young girl should

Drums beating cold English blood runs hot
Lady of the house wonderin' where it's gonna stop
House boy knows that he's doing alright
You should a heard him just around midnight.
...
I bet your mama was tent show queen
And all her girlfriends were sweet sixteen
I'm no school boy but I know what I like
You should have heard me just around midnight.
                -- Rolling Stones, "Brown Sugar"
        Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there
may be in Science.  As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system.
Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results.  And listen to others,
even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers.  Avoid loud and
aggressive persons, for they are sales reps.
        If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised,
for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched.
Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real
hassle and could change your fortunes in time.
        Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of
bugs.  But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive
for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations.  Strive for
proportionality.  Especially, do not faint when it occurs.  Neither be cyclical
about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed.
        Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points.  Gracefully pass
them on to the youth at the next desk.  Nurture some mutual funds to shield
you in times of sudden layoffs.  But do not distress yourself with imaginings
-- the real bugs are enough to screw you badly.  Murphy's Law runs the
Universe -- and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt <Curl>B*n dS = 0.
        Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you
can conceive of to try.  With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken
line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary.  Be linear.  Strive
to stay employed.
                -- Technolorata, "Analog"
He's been like a father to me,
He's the only DJ you can get after three,
I'm an all-night musician in a rock and roll band,
And why he don't like me I don't understand.
                -- The Byrds
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
Hey! Come derry dol!  Hop along, my hearties!
Hobbits!  Ponies all!  We are fond of parties.
Now let the fun begin!  Let us sing together!
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Hey, diddle, diddle the overflow pdl
To get a little more stack;
If that's not enough then you lose it all
And have to pop all the way back.
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.
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!
All the king's horses,
And all the king's men,
Had scrambled eggs for breakfast again!
I B M
U B M
We all B M
For I B M!!!!
                -- H.A.R.L.I.E.
I don't need no arms around me...
I don't need no drugs to calm me...
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No!  Don't think I need anything at all!
All in all, it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all, it was all just bricks in the wall.
                -- Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall", Part III
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 have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller, like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
                -- R.L. Stevenson
I know if you been talkin' you done said
just how suprised you wuz by the living dead.
You wuz suprised that they could understand you words
and never respond once to all the truth they heard.
But don't you get square!
There ain't no rule that says they got to care.
They can always swear they're deaf, dumb and blind.
I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah
Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda
        S-O-D-A soda
I saw the little runt sitting there on a log
I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda
        Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda

Well I've been around but I ain't never seen
A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green
        Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand
How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand
        Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda
                -- Weird Al Yankovic, "The Star Wars Song," to the tune of
                   "Lola" by the Kinks
I sent a letter to the fish,                I said it very loud and clear,
I told them, "This is what I wish."        I went and shouted in his ear.
The little fishes of the sea,                But he was very stiff and proud,
They sent an answer back to me.                He said "You needn't shout so loud."
The little fishes' answer was                And he was very proud and stiff,
"We cannot do it, sir, because..."        He said "I'll go and wake them if..."
I sent a letter back to say                I took a kettle from the shelf,
It would be better to obey.                I went to wake them up myself.
But someone came to me and said                But when I found the door was locked
"The little fishes are in bed."                I pulled and pushed and kicked and
                                                knocked,
I said to him, and I said it plain        And when I found the door was shut,
"Then you must wake them up again."        I tried to turn the handle, But...

        "Is that all?" asked Alice.
        "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
I sent a message to another time,
But as the days unwind -- this I just can't believe,
I sent a message to another plane,
Maybe it's all a game -- but this I just can't conceive.
...
I met someone who looks at lot like you,
She does the things you do, but she is an IBM.
She's only programmed to be very nice,
But she's as cold as ice, whenever I get too near,
She tells me that she likes me very much,
But when I try to touch, she makes it all too clear.
...
I realize that it must seem so strange,
That time has rearranged, but time has the final word,
She knows I think of you, she reads my mind,
She tries to be unkind, she knows nothing of our world.
                -- ELO, "Yours Truly, 2095"
I stood on the leading edge,
The eastern seaboard at my feet.
"Jump!" said Yoko Ono
I'm too scared and good-looking, I cried.
Go on and give it a try,
Why prolong the agony, all men must die.
                -- Roger Waters, "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking"
I think that I shall never hear
A poem lovelier than beer.
The stuff that Joe's Bar has on tap,
With golden base and snowy cap.
The stuff that I can drink all day
Until my mem'ry melts away.
Poems are made by fools, I fear
But only Schlitz can make a beer.
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, 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 thought that you said you were 20 years old!"
"As a programmer, yes," she replied,
"And you claimed to be very near two meters tall!"
"You said you were blonde, but you lied!"
Oh, she was a hacker and he was one, too,
They had so much in common, you'd say.
They exchanged jokes and poems, and clever new hacks,
And prompts that were cute or risque'.
He sent her a picture of his brother Sam,
She sent one from some past high school day,
And it might have gone on for the rest of their lives,
If they hadn't met in L.A.
"Your beard is an armpit," she said in disgust.
He answered, "Your armpit's a beard!"
And they chorused: "I think I could stand all the rest
If you were not so totally weird!"
If she had not said what he wanted to hear,
And he had not done just the same,
They'd have been far more honest, and never have met,
And would not have had fun with the game.
                -- Judith Schrier, "Face to Face After Six Months of
                Electronic Mail"
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.

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.

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(thi)!
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
I'll learn to play the Saxophone,
I play just what I feel.
Drink Scotch whisky all night long,
And die behind the wheel.
They got a name for the winners in the world,
I want a name when I lose.
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide,
Call me Deacon Blues.
                -- Becker and Fagan, "Deacon Blues"
I'm an artist.
But it's not what I really want to do.
What I really want to do is be a shoe salesman.
I know what you're going to say --
"Dreamer!  Get your head out of the clouds."
All right!  But it's what I want to do.
Instead I have to go on painting all day long.

The world should make a place for shoe salesmen.
                -- J. Feiffer
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 the seas were ink,
And all the reeds were pens,
And all the skies were parchment,
And all the men could write,
These would not suffice
To write down all the red tape
Of this Government.
If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer.....

Here's an easy game to play.
Here's an easy thing to say:

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report!

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash,
And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash!

You can't say this?  What a shame, sir!
We'll find you another game, sir.

If the label on the cable on the table at your house,
Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol,
That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse,
Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk,
And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc,
Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to ram your rom.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom!

                -- DementDJ@ccip.perkin-elmer.com (DementDJ) [rec.humor.funny]
If I could read your mind, love,
What a tale your thoughts could tell,
Just like a paperback novel,
The kind the drugstore sells,
When you reach the part where the heartaches come,
The hero would be me,
Heroes often fail,
You won't read that book again, because
        the ending is just too hard to take.

I walk away, like a movie star,
Who gets burned in a three way script,
Enter number two,
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me,
But for now, love, let's be real
I never thought I could act this way,
And I've got to say that I just don't get it,
I don't know where we went wrong but the feeling is gone
And I just can't get it back...
                -- Gordon Lightfoot, "If You Could Read My Mind"
If I could stick my pen in my heart,
I would spill it all over the stage.
Would it satisfy ya, would it slide on by ya,
Would you think the boy was strange?
Ain't he strange?
...
If I could stick a knife in my heart,
Suicide right on the stage,
Would it be enough for your teenage lust,
Would it help to ease the pain?
Ease your brain?
                -- Rolling Stones, "It's Only Rock'N Roll"
In high school in Brooklyn
I was the baseball manager,
proud as I could be
I chased baseballs,
gathered thrown bats
handed out the towels                        Eventually, I bought my own
It was very important work                but it was dark blue while
for a small spastic kid,                the official ones were green
but I was a team member                        Nobody ever said anything
When the team got                        to me about my blue jacket;
their warm-up jackets                        the guys were my friends
I didn't get one                        Yet it hurt me all year
Only the regular team                        to wear that blue jacket
got these jackets, and                        among all those green ones
surely not a manager                        Even now, forty years after,
                                        I still recall that jacket
                                        and the memory goes on hurting.
                -- Bart Lanier Safford III, "An Obscured Radiance"
In the early morning queue,
With a listing in my hand.
With a worry in my heart,        There on terminal number 9,
Waitin' here in CERAS-land.        Pascal run all set to go.
I'm a long way from sleep,        But I'm waitin' in the queue,
How I miss a good meal so.        With this code that ever grows.
In the early mornin' queue,        Now the lobby chairs are soft,
With no place to go.                But that can't make the queue move fast.
                                Hey, there it goes my friend,
                                I've moved up one at last.
                -- Ernest Adams, "Early Morning Queue", to "Early
                   Morning Rain" by G. Lightfoot
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, "Theory"
It happened long ago
In the new magic land
The Indians and the buffalo    
Existed hand in hand
The Indians needed food
They need skins for a roof
They only took what they needed
And the buffalo ran loose
But then came the white man
With his thick and empty head
He couldn't see past his billfold
He wanted all the buffalo dead
It was sad, oh so sad.
                -- Ted Nugent, "The Great White Buffalo"
It used to be the fun was in
The capture and kill.
In another place and time
I did it all for thrills.
                -- Lust to Love
It was one time too many
One word too few
It was all too much for me and you
There was one way to go
Nothing more we could do
One time too many
One word too few
                -- Meredith Tanner
It's just apartment house rules,
So all you 'partment house fools
Remember:  one man's ceiling is another man's floor.
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
                -- Paul Simon, "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor"
It's so confusing choosing sides in the heat of the moment,
        just to see if it's real,
Oooh, it's so erotic having you tell me how it should feel,
But I'm avoiding all the hard cold facts that I got to face,
So ask me just one question when this magic night is through,
Could it have been just anyone or did it have to be you?
                -- Billy Joel, "Glass Houses"
John the Baptist after poisoning a thief,
Looks up at his hero, the Commander-in-Chief,
Saying tell me great leader, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?
The Commander-in-Chief answers him while chasing a fly,
Saying death to all those who would whimper and cry.
And dropping a barbell he points to the sky,
Saying the sun is not yellow, it's chicken.
                -- Bob Dylan, "Tombstone Blues"
Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one...
Lady, lady, better run!
                -- Dorothy Parker, "Social Note"
Life is like a tin of sardines.
We're, all of us, looking for the key.
                -- Beyond the Fringe
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?
Louie Louie, me gotta go
Louie Louie, me gotta go

Fine little girl she waits for me
Me catch the ship for cross the sea
Me sail the ship all alone                Three nights and days me sail the sea
Me never thinks me make it home                Me think of girl constantly
(chorus)                                On the ship I dream she there
                                        I smell the rose in her hair
Me see Jamaica moon above                (chorus, guitar solo)
It won't be long, me see my love
I take her in my arms and then
Me tell her I never leave again
                -- The real words to The Kingsmen's classic "Louie Louie"
Most folks they like the daytime,
        'cause they like to see the shining sun.
They're up in the morning,
        off and a-running till they're too tired for having fun.
But when the sun goes down,
        and the bright lights shine, my daytime has just begun.

Now there are two sides to this great big world,
        and one of them is always night.
If you can take care of business in the sunshine, baby,
        I guess you're gonna be all right.
Don't come looking for me to lend you a hand.
        My eyes just can't stand the light.

'Cause I'm a night owl honey, sleep all day long.
                -- Carly Simon
My calculator is my shepherd, I shall not want
It maketh me accurate to ten significant figures,
        and it leadeth me in scientific notation to 99 digits.
It restoreth my square roots and guideth me along paths of floating
        decimal points for the sake of precision.
Yea, tho I walk through the valley of surprise quizzes,
        I will fear no prof, for my calculator is there to hearten me.
It prepareth a log table to comfort me, it prepareth an
        arc sin for me in the presence of my teachers.
It annoints my homework with correct solutions, my interpolations are
        over.
Surely, both precision and accuracy shall follow me all the days of my
        life, and I shall dwell in the house of Texas instruments forever.
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, part 3
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, part 2
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, part 1
Nature to all things fixed the limits fit,
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains,
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains;
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails;
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away.
                -- Alexander Pope (on runtime bounds checking?)
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.
No one likes us.
I don't know why.
We may not be perfect,                        We give them money,
But heaven knows we try.                But are they grateful?
But all around,                                No, they're spiteful,
Even our old friends put us down.        And they're hateful.
Let's drop the big one,                        They don't respect us,
And see what happens.                        So let's surprise them
                                        We'll drop the big one,
                                        And pulverize 'em.
Asia's crowded,
Europe's too old,
Africa is far too hot,                        We'll save Australia.
And Canada's too cold.                        Don't wanna hurt no kangaroos.
And South America stole our name        We'll build an All-American amusement
Let's drop the big one,                                park there--
There'll be no one left to blame us.        They got surfin', too!

Boom! goes London,
And Boom! Paree.
More room for you,                        Oh, how peaceful it'll be!
And more room for me,                        We'll set everybody free!
And every city,                                You'll wear a Japanese kimono, babe;
The whole world round,                        There'll be Italian shoes for me!
Will just be another American town.        They all hate us anyhow,
                                        So, let's drop the big one now.
                                        Let's drop the big one now!
                -- Randy Newman, "Drop the Big One"
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.
        (refrain)
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!"
        (refrain)
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!
        (refrain)
Refrain:
        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.
Now I lay me down to study,
I pray the Lord I won't go nutty.
And if I fail to learn this junk,
I pray the Lord that I won't flunk.
But if I do, don't pity me at all,
Just lay my bones in the study hall.
Tell my teacher I've done my best,
Then pile my books upon my chest.
Now it's time to say goodbye
To all our company...
M-I-C        (see you next week!)
K-E-Y        (Why?  Because we LIKE you!)
M-O-U-S-E.
Now that day wearies me,
My yearning desire
Will receive more kindly,
Like a tired child, the starry night.

Hands, leave off your deeds,
Mind, forget all thoughts;
All of my forces
Yearn only to sink into sleep.

And my soul, unguarded,
Would soar on widespread wings,
To live in night's magical sphere
More profoundly, more variously.
                -- Hermann Hesse, "Going to Sleep"
Now's the time to have some big ideas
Now's the time to make some firm decisions
We saw the Buddha in a bar down south
Talking politics and nuclear fission
We see him and he's all washed up --
Moving on into the body of a beetle
Getting ready for a long long crawl
He  ain't nothing -- he ain't nothing at all...

Death and Money make their point once more
In the shape of Philosophical assassins
Mark and Danny take the bus uptown
Deadly angels for reality and passion
Have the courage of the here and now
Don't taking nothing from the half-baked buddhas
When you think you got it paid in full
You got nothing -- you got nothing at all...
        We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
        We know his name and he mustn't get away.
        We're on the road and we're gunning for the Buddha.
        It would take one shot -- to blow him away...
                -- Shriekback, "Gunning for the Buddah"
O! Wanderers in the shadowed land
despair not!  For though dark they stand,
all woods there be must end at last,
and see the open sun go past:
the setting sun, the rising sun,
the day's end, or the day begun.
For east or west all woods must fail ...
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
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
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 give me your pity!
I'm on a committee,                        We attend and amend
Which means that from morning                And contend and defend
        to night,                        Without a conclusion in sight.

We confer and concur,
We defer and demur,                        We revise the agenda
And reiterate all of our thoughts.        With frequent addenda
                                        And consider a load of reports.

We compose and propose,
We suppose and oppose,                        But though various notions
And the points of procedure are fun;        Are brought up as motions,
                                        There's terribly little gets done.

We resolve and absolve;
But we never dissolve,
Since it's out of the question for us
To bring our committee
To end like this ditty,
Which stops with a period, thus.
                -- Leslie Lipson, "The Committee"
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a 4BSD?
My friends all got sources, so why can't I see?
Come all you moby hackers, come sing it out with me:
To hell with the lawyers from AT&T!
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, the Slithery Dee, he crawled out of the sea.
He may catch all the others, but he won't catch me.
No, he won't catch me, stupid ol' Slithery Dee.
He may catch all the others, but AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!
                -- The Smothers Brothers
Once again dread deed is done.
Canon sleeps,
his all-knowing eye shaded
to human chance and circumstance.
Peace reigns anew o'er Pine Valley,
but Canon's sleep is troubled.

Beware, scant days past the Ides of July.
Impatient hands wait eagerly
to grasp, to hold
scant moments of time
wrested from life in the full
glory of Canon's power;
held captive by his unblinking eye.

Three golden orbs stand watch;
one each to toll the day, hour, minute
until predestiny decrees his reawakening.
When that feared moment arives,
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee."
                -- "I extended the loan on your Camera, at the Pine
                   Valley Pawn Shop today"
Once there was a little nerd who loved to read your mail,
And then yank back the i-access times to get hackers off his tail,
And once as he finished reading from the secretary's spool,
He wrote a rude rejection to her boyfriend (how uncool!)
And this as delivermail did work and he ran his backfstat,
He heard an awful crackling like rat fritters in hot fat,
And hard errors brought the system down 'fore he could even shout!
        And the bio bug'll bring yours down too, ef you don't watch out!
And once they was a little flake who'd prowl through the uulog,
And when he went to his blit that night to play at being god,
The ops all heard him holler, and they to the console dashed,
But when they did a ps -ut they found the system crashed!
Oh, the wizards adb'd the dumps and did the system trace,
And worked on the file system 'til the disk head was hot paste,
But all they ever found was this:  "panic: never doubt",
        And the bio bug'll crash your box too, ef you don't watch out!
When the day is done and the moon comes out,
And you hear the printer whining and the rk's seems to count,
When the other desks are empty and their terminals glassy grey,
And the load is only 1.6 and you wonder if it'll stay,
You must mind the file protections and not snoop around,
        Or the bio bug'll getcha and bring the system down!
One bright Sunday morning, in the shadows of the steeple,
By the Relief Office, I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling,
This land was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back,
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said: "No Trespassing."
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
                -- Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land" (verses 4, 6, 7)
        [If you ever wondered why Arlo was so anti-establishment when his dad
         wrote such wonderful patriotic songs, the answer is that you haven't
         heard all of Woody's songs]
One pill makes you larger,                And if you go chasing rabbits
And one pill makes you small.                And you know you're going to fall.
And the ones that mother gives you,        Tell 'em a hookah smoking caterpillar
Don't do anything at all.                Has given you the call.
Go ask Alice                                Call Alice
When she's ten feet tall.                When she was just small.

When men on the chessboard                When logic and proportion
Get up and tell you where to go.        Have fallen sloppy dead,
And you've just had some kind of        And the White Knight is talking
        mushroom                                backwards
And your mind is moving low.                And the Red Queen's lost her head
Go ask Alice                                Remember what the dormouse said:
I think she'll know.                                Feed your head.
                                                Feed your head.
                                                Feed your head.
                -- Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"
Planet Claire has pink hair.
All the trees are red.
No one ever dies there.
No one has a head....
Please stand for the National Anthem:

        Australians all, let us rejoice,
        For we are young and free.
        We've golden soil and wealth for toil
        Our home is girt by sea.
        Our land abounds in nature's gifts
        Of beauty rich and rare.
        In history's page, let every stage
        Advance Australia Fair.
        In joyful strains then let us sing,
        Advance Australia Fair.

Thank you.  You may resume your seat.
Please stand for the National Anthem:

        O Canada
        Our home and native land
        True patriot love
        In all thy sons' command
        With glowing hearts we see thee rise
        The true north strong and free
        From far and wide, O Canada
        We stand on guard for thee
        God keep our land glorious and free
        O Canada we stand on guard for thee
        O Canada we stand on guard for thee

Thank you.  You may resume your seat.
        Proposed Country & Western Song Titles
I Can't Get Over You, So I Get Up and Go Around to the Other Side
If You Won't Leave Me Alone, I'll Find Someone Who Will
I Knew That You'd Committed a Sin When You Came Home Late With
        Your Socks Outside-in
I'm a Rabbit in the Headlights of Your Love
Don't Kick My Tires If You Ain't Gonna Take Me For a Ride
I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
I've Got Red Eyes From Your White Lies and I'm Blue All the Time
                -- "Wordplay"
        Proposed Country & Western Song Titles
I Don't Mind If You Lie to Me, As Long As I Ain't Lyin' Alone
I Wouldn't Take You to a Dog Fight Even If I Thought You Could Win
If You Leave Me, Walk Out Backwards So I'll Think You're Comin' In
Since You Learned to Lip-Sync, I'm At Your Disposal
My John Deere Was Breaking Your Field, While Your Dear John Was
        Breaking My Heart
Don't Cry, Little Darlin', You're Waterin' My Beer
Tennis Must Be Your Racket, 'Cause Love Means Nothin' to You
When You Say You Love Me, You're Full of Prunes, 'Cause Living
        With You Is the Pits
I Wanted Your Hand in Marriage but All I Got Was the Finger
                -- "Wordplay"
Remember thee
Ay, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe.  Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
                -- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
Remove me from this land of slaves,
Where all are fools, and all are knaves,
Where every knave and fool is bought,
Yet kindly sells himself for nought;
                -- Jonathan Swift
Roland was a warrior, from the land of the midnight sun,
With a Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done.
The deal was made in Denmark, on a dark and stormy day,
So he set out for Biafra, to join the bloody fray.
Through sixty-six and seven, they fought the Congo war,
With their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore.
Days and nights they battled, the Bantu to their knees,
They killed to earn their living, and to help out the Congolese.
        Roland the Thompson gunner...
His comrades fought beside him, Van Owen and the rest,
But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best.
So the C.I.A decided, they wanted Roland dead,
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen, blew off Roland's head.
        Roland the headless Thompson gunner...
Roland searched the continent, for the man who'd done him in.
He found him in Mombasa, in a bar room drinking gin,
Roland aimed his Thompson gun, he didn't say a word,
But he blew Van Owen's body from there to Johannesburg.
The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night,
Now it's ten years later, but he stills keeps up the fight.
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Berkeley,
Patty Hearst... heard the burst... of Roland's Thompson gun, and bought it.
                -- Warren Zevon, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"
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"
Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
                -- Edgar Allen Poe, "Science, a Sonnet"
Scratch the disks, dump the core,        Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor,        Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash.        And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits.                Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits                Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash.        And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found                        Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down,                And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash.        And the tape drives will crumble
                                                in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun,                        When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run                        Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash.        The system is going to crash.
                -- To the tune of "As the Caissons go Rolling Along"
She can kill all your files;
She can freeze with a frown.
And a wave of her hand brings the whole system down.
And she works on her code until ten after three.
She lives like a bat but she's always a hacker to me.
                -- Apologies to Billy Joel
She stood on the tracks
Waving her arms
Leading me to that third rail shock
Quick as a wink
She changed her mind

She gave me a night
That's all it was
What will it take until I stop
Kidding myself
Wasting my time

There's nothing else I can do
'Cause I'm doing it all for Leyna
I don't want anyone new
'Cause I'm living it all for Leyna
There's nothing in it for you
'Cause I'm giving it all to Leyna
                -- Billy Joel, "All for Leyna" (Glass Houses)
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
Sometimes the light's all shining on me,
Other times I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been.
                -- The Grateful Dead, "American Beauty"
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!
St. Patrick was a gentleman
who through strategy and stealth
drove all the snakes from Ireland.
Here's a toasting to his health --
but not too many toastings
lest you lose yourself and then
forget the good St. Patrick
and see all those snakes again.
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time,
There's something wrong here, there can be no more denying,
One of us is changing, or maybe we just stopped trying,

And it's too late, baby, now, it's too late,
Though we really did try to make it,
Something inside has died and I can't hide and I just can't fake it...

It used to be so easy living here with you,
You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do
Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool.

There'll be good times again for me and you,
But we just can't stay together, don't you feel it too?
But I'm glad for what we had and that I once loved you...

But it's too late baby...
It's too late, now darling, it's too late...
                -- Carol King, "Tapestry"
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!
Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred,
Tan me hide when I'm dead.
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde,
It's hanging there on the shed.

All together now...
        Tie me kangaroo down, sport,
        Tie me kangaroo down.
        Tie me kangaroo down, sport,
        Tie me kangaroo down.
The all-softening overpowering knell,
The tocsin of the soul, -- the dinner bell.
                -- Lord Byron
The bank called to tell me that I'm overdrawn,
Some freaks are burning crosses out on my front lawn,
And I *can't*believe* it, all the Cheetos are gone,
        It's just ONE OF THOSE DAYS!
                -- Weird Al Yankovic, "One of Those Days"
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
All the livelong day;
The eyes of Texas are upon you,
You cannot get away;
Do not think you can escape them
From night 'til early in the morn;
The eyes of Texas are upon you
'Til Gabriel blows his horn.
                -- University of Texas' school song
The little town that time forgot,
Where all the women are strong,
The men are good-looking,
And the children above-average.
                -- Prairie Home Companion
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
        Moves on: nor all they Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
        Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
The Poet Whose Badness Saved His Life
        The most important poet in the seventeenth century was George
Wither.  Alexander Pope called him "wretched Wither" and Dryden said of his
verse that "if they rhymed and rattled all was well".
        In our own time, "The Dictionary of National Biography" notes that his
work "is mainly remarkable for its mass, fluidity and flatness.  It usually
lacks any genuine literary quality and often sinks into imbecile doggerel".
        High praise, indeed, and it may tempt you to savour a typically
rewarding stanza: It is taken from "I loved a lass" and is concerned with
the higher emotions.
                She would me "Honey" call,
                She'd -- O she'd kiss me too.
                But now alas!  She's left me
                Falero, lero, loo.
        Among other details of his mistress which he chose to immortalize
was her prudent choice of footwear.
                The fives did fit her shoe.
        In 1639 the great poet's life was endangered after his capture by
the Royalists during the English Civil War.  When Sir John Denham, the
Royalist poet, heard of Wither's imminent execution, he went to the King and
begged that his life be spared.  When asked his reason, Sir John replied,
"Because that so long as Wither lived, Denham would not be accounted the
worst poet in England."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The smiling Spring comes in rejoicing,
And surly Winter grimly flies.
Now crystal clear are the falling waters,
And bonnie blue are the sunny skies.
Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning,
The ev'ning gilds the oceans's swell:
All creatures joy in the sun's returning,
And I rejoice in my bonnie Bell.

The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer,
The yellow Autumn presses near;
Then in his turn come gloomy Winter,
Till smiling Spring again appear.
Thus seasons dancing, life advancing,
Old Time and Nature their changes tell;
But never ranging, still unchanging,
I adore my bonnie Bell.
                -- Robert Burns, "My Bonnie Bell"
The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door.
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more."
The queen knew she had seen his face someplace before,
And slowly she let him inside.

He said, "I see you now, and you're so very young,
But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won,
And I have this intuition that it's all for your fun.
And now will you tell me why?"
                -- Suzanne Vega, "The Queen and The Soldier"
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright --
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
The truth you speak has no past and no future.
It is, and that's all it needs to be.
There are places I'll remember
All my life though some have changed.
Some forever not for better
Some have gone and some remain.
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends I still recall.
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I've loved them all.

But of all these friends and lovers,
There is no one compared with you,
All these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new.
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before,
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I'll love you more.
                -- Lennon/McCartney, "In My Life", 1965
There is no point in waiting.
The train stopped running years ago.
All the schedules, the brochures,
The bright-colored posters full of lies,
Promise rides to a distant country
That no longer exists.
There once was a Sailor who looked through a glass
And spied a fair mermaid with scales on her... island.
Where seagulls flew over their nest.
She combed the long hair which hung over her... shoulders.
And caused her to tickle and itch.
The sailor cried out "There's a beautiful... mermaid.
A sittin' out there on the rocks."
The crew came a running, all grabbing their... glasses.
And crowded four deep to the rail.
All eager to share in this fine piece of... news.
...
"Throw out a line and we'll lasso her... flippers.
And soon we will certainly find
If mermaids are better before or be... brave
My dear fellows," The captain cried out.
And cursing with spleen.
This song may be dull, but it's certainly clean.
                -- "The Clean Song", Oscar Brandt
There's a thrill in store for all for we're about to toast
The corporation that we represent.
We're here to cheer each pioneer and also proudly boast,
Of that man of men our sterling president
The name of T.J. Watson means
A courage none can stem
And we feel honored to be here to toast the IBM.
                -- Ever Onward, from the 1940 IBM Songbook
They told me you had proven it                When they discovered our results
        About a month before.                        Their hair began to curl
The proof was valid, more or less        Instead of understanding it
        But rather less than more.                We'd run the thing through PRL.

He sent them word that we would try        Don't tell a soul about all this
        To pass where they had failed                For it must ever be
And after we were done, to them                A secret, kept from all the rest
        The new proof would be mailed.                Between yourself and me.

My notion was to start again
        Ignoring all they'd done
We quickly turned it into code
        To see if it would run.
They wouldn't listen to the fact that I was a genius,
The man said "We got all that we can use",
So I've got those steadily-depressin', low-down, mind-messin',
Working-at-the-car-wash blues.
                -- Jim Croce
Thinks't thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs; mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable,
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore,
Innumerable atoms; and one desert,
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcasses and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.
"Thirty days hath Septober,
April, June, and no wonder.
all the rest have peanut butter
except my father who wears red suspenders."
This is for all ill-treated fellows
        Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
        And I am not.
                -- A. E. Housman
This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
Those who sweat in flames of hell,        Leaden eared, some thought their bowels
Here's the reason that they fell:        Lispeth forth the sweetest vowels.
While on earth they prayed in SAS,        These they offered up in praise
PL/1, or other crass,                        Thinking all this fetid haze
Vulgar tongue.                                A rapsody sung.

Some the lord did sorely try                Jabber of the mindless horde
Assembling all their pleas in hex.        Sequel next did mock the lord
Speech as crabbed as devil's crable        Slothful sequel so enfangled
Hex that marked on Tower Babel                Its speaker's lips became entangled
The highest rung.                        In his bung.

Because in life they prayed so ill
And offered god such swinish swill
Now they sweat in flames of hell
Sweat from lack of APL
Sweat dung!
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
                -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Lord of the Rings"
Throw away documentation and manuals,
and users will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away privileges and quotas,
and users will do the Right Thing.
Throw away proprietary and site licenses,
and there won't be any pirating.

If these three aren't enough,
just stay at your home directory
and let all processes take their course.
"Twas bergen and the eirie road
Did mahwah into patterson:                "Beware the Hopatcong, my son!
All jersey were the ocean groves,        The teeth that bite, the nails
And the red bank bayonne.                        that claw!
                                        Beware the bound brook bird, and shun
He took his belmar blade in hand:        The kearney communipaw."
Long time the folsom foe he sought
Till rested he by a bayway tree                And, as in nutley thought he stood,
And stood a while in thought.                The Hopatcong with eyes of flame,
                                        Came whippany through the englewood,
One, two, one, two, and through                And garfield as it came.
        and through
The belmar blade went hackensack!        "And hast thou slain the Hopatcong?
He left it dead and with it's head        Come to my arms, my perth amboy!
He went weehawken back.                        Hohokus day!  Soho!  Rahway!"
                                        He caldwell in his joy.
Did mahwah into patterson:
All jersey were the ocean groves,
And the red bank bayonne.
                -- Paul Kieffer
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.        "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
All mimsy were the borogroves                The jaws that bite, the claws
And the mome raths outgrabe.                        that catch!
                                        Beware the Jubjub bird,
He took his vorpal sword in hand        And shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
Long time the manxome foe he sought.
So rested he by the tumtum tree                And as in uffish thought he stood
And stood awhile in thought.                The Jabberwock, with eyes aflame
                                        Came whuffling through the tulgey wood
One! Two! One! Two!  And through and        And burbled as it came!
        through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.        "Hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
He left it dead, and took its head,        Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
And went galumphing back.                Oh frabjous day!  Calooh!  Callay!"
                                        He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky"
'Twas bullig, and the slithy brokers
Did buy and gamble in the craze                "Beware the Jabberstock, my son!
All rosy were the Dow Jones stokers        The cost that bites, the worth
By market's wrath unphased.                        that falls!
                                        Beware the Econ'mist's word, and shun
He took his forecast sword in hand:        The spurious Street o' Walls!"
Long time the Boesk'some foe he sought -
Sake's liquidity, so d'vested he,        And as in bearish thought he stood
And stood awhile in thought.                The Jabberstock, with clothes of tweed,
                                        Came waffling with the truth too good,
Chip Black! Chip Blue! And through        And yuppied great with greed!
        and through
The forecast blade went snicker-snack!        "And hast thou slain the Jabberstock?
It bit the dirt, and with its shirt,        Come to my firm,  V.P.ish  boy!
He went rebounding back.                O big bucks day! Moolah! Good Play!"
                                        He bought him a Mercedes Toy.
'Twas panic, and the slithy brokers
Did gyre and tumble in the Crash
All flimsy were the Dow Jones stokers
And mammon's wrath them bash!
                -- Peter Stucki, "Jabberstocky"
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.
                -- "OUTCONERR," to the scheme of "Jabberwocky"
'Twas midnight on the ocean,                Her children all were orphans,
Not a streetcar was in sight,                Except one a tiny tot,
So I stepped into a cigar store                Who had a home across the way
To ask them for a light.                Above a vacant lot.

The man        behind the counter                As I gazed through the oaken door
Was a woman, old and gray,                A whale went drifting by,
Who used to peddle doughnuts                Its six legs hanging in the air,
On the road to Mandalay.                So I kissed her goodbye.

She said "Good morning, stranger",        This story has a morale
Her eyes were dry with tears,                As you can plainly see,
As she put her head between her feet        Don't mix your gin with whiskey
And stood that way for years.                On the deep and dark blue sea.
                -- Midnight On The Ocean
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrabe.

"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
'Twas the night before crisis, and all through the house,
        Not a program was working not even a browse.
The programmers were wrung out too mindless to care,
        Knowing chances of cutover hadn't a prayer.
The users were nestled all snug in their beds,
        While visions of inquiries danced in their heads.
When out in the lobby there arose such a clatter,
        I sprang from my tube to see what was the matter.
And what to my wondering eyes should appear,
        But a Super Programmer, oblivious to fear.
More rapid than eagles, his programs they came,
        And he whistled and shouted and called them by name;
On Update!  On Add!  On Inquiry!  On Delete!
        On Batch Jobs!  On Closing!  On Functions Complete!
His eyes were glazed over, his fingers were lean,
        From Weekends and nights in front of a screen.
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
        Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread...
                -- "Twas the Night before Crisis"
Twenty two thousand days.
Twenty two thousand days.
It's not a lot.
It's all you've got.
Twenty two thousand days.
                -- Moody Blues, "Twenty Two Thousand Days"
        Two men looked out from the prison bars,
        One saw mud--
        The other saw stars.

Now let me get this right: two prisoners are looking out the window.
While one of them was looking at all the mud -- the other one got hit
in the head.
U:        There's a U -- a Unicorn!
        Run right up and rub its horn.
        Look at all those points you're losing!
        UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
                -- The Roguelet's ABC
Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.        Still round the corner there may wait
  Tree and flower and leaf and grass,        A new road or a secret gate,
  Let them pass!  Let them pass!        And though we pass them by today
  Hill and water under sky,                Tomorrow we may come this way
  Pass them by!  Pass them by!                And take the hidden paths that run
                                        Towards the Moon or to the Sun,
Home is behind, the world ahead,          Apple, thorn, and nut and sloe,
And there are many paths to tread          Let them go!  Let them go!
Through shadows to the edge of night,          Sand and stone and pool and dell,
Until the stars are all alight.                  Fare you well!  Fare you well!
Then world behind and home ahead,
We'll wander back to home and bed.
  Mist and twilight, cloud and shade,
  Away shall fade!  Away shall fade!
  Fire and lamp, and meat and bread,
  And then to bed!  And then to bed!
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
Wake up all you citizens, hear your country's call,
Not to arms and violence, But peace for one and all.
Crush out hate and prejudice, fear and greed and sin,
Help bring back her dignity, restore her faith again.

Work hard for a common cause, don't let our country fall.
Make her proud and strong again, democracy for all.
Yes, make our country strong again, keep our flag unfurled.
Make our country well again, respected by the world.

Make her whole and beautiful, work from sun to sun.
Stand tall and labor side by side, because there's so much to be done.
Yes, make her whole and beautiful, united strong and free,
Wake up, all you citizens, It's up to you and me.
                -- Pansy Myers Schroeder
Wanna tell you all a story 'bout a man named Jed,
A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed.
But then one day he was shootin' at some food,
When up through the ground come a bubblin' crude -- oil, that is;
        black gold; 'Texas tea' ...

Well the next thing ya know, old Jed's a millionaire.
The kinfolk said, 'Jed, move away from there!'
They said, 'Californy is the place ya oughta be',
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly -- Hills, that is;
        swimmin' pools; movie stars.
We're happy little Vegemites,
        As bright as bright can be.
We all all enjoy our Vegemite
        For breakfast, lunch and tea.
We've tried each spinning space mote
And reckoned its true worth:
Take us back again to the homes of men
On the cool, green hills of Earth.

The arching sky is calling
Spacemen back to their trade.
All hands!  Standby!  Free falling!
And the lights below us fade.
Out ride the sons of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of Earthmen,
Out, far, and onward yet--

We pray for one last landing
On the globe that gave us birth;
Let us rest our eyes on the fleecy skies
And the cool, green hills of Earth.
                -- Robert A. Heinlein, 1941
Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers,
And we're loved everywhere we go.
We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth,
At ten thousand dollars a show.
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills,
But the thrill we've never known,
Is the thrill that'll get'cha, when you get your picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.

I got a freaky old lady, name of Cole King Katie,
Who embroiders on my jeans.
I got my poor old gray-haired daddy,
Drivin' my limousine.
Now it's all designed, to blow our minds,
But our minds won't be really be blown;
Like the blow that'll get'cha, when you get your picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.

We got a lot of little, teen-aged, blue-eyed groupies,
Who'll do anything we say.
We got a genuine Indian guru, that's teachin' us a better way.
We got all the friends that money can buy,
So we never have to be alone.
And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.
                -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
                [As a note, they eventually DID make the cover of RS. Ed.]
What segment's this, that, laid to rest
On FHA0, is sleeping?
What system file, lay here a while        This, this is "acct.run,"
While hackers around it were weeping?        Accounting file for everyone.
                                        Dump, dump it and type it out,
                                        The file, the highseg of login.
Why lies it here, on public disk
And why is it now unprotected?
A bug in incant, made it thus.                Mount, mount all your DECtapes now
And copy the file somehow, somehow.        The problem has not been corrected.
                                        Dump, dump it and type it out,
                                        The file, the highseg of login.
                -- to Greensleeves
What with chromodynamics and electroweak too
Our Standardized Model should please even you,
Tho' once you did say that of charm there was none
It took courage to switch as to say Earth moves not Sun.
Yet your state of the union penultimate large
Is the last known haunt of the Fractional Charge,
And as you surf in the hot tub with sourdough roll
Please ponder the passing of your sole Monopole.
Your Olympics were fun, you should bring them all back
For transsexual tennis or Anamalon Track,
But Hollywood movies remain sinfully crude
Whether seen on the telly or Remotely Viewed.
Now fasten your sunbelts, for you've done it once more,
You said it in Leipzig of the thing we adore,
That you've built an incredible crystalline sphere
Whose German attendants spread trembling and fear
Of the death of our theory by Particle Zeta
Which I'll bet is not there say your article, later.
                -- Sheldon Glashow, Physics Today, December, 1984
When in this world the headlines read
Of those whose hearts are filled with greed
Who rob and steal from those who need
The cry goes up with blinding speed for Underdog (UNDERDOG!)
Underdog (UNDERDOG!)
Speed of lightning, roar of thunder
Fighting all who rob or plunder
Underdog (ah-ah-ah-ah)
Underdog
UNDERDOG!
When someone makes a move                We'll send them all we've got,
Of which we don't approve,                John Wayne and Randolph Scott,
Who is it that always intervenes?        Remember those exciting fighting scenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.,                        To the shores of Tripoli,
They have their place, I guess,                But not to Mississippoli,
But first, send the Marines!                What do we do?  We send the Marines!

For might makes right,                        Members of the corps
And till they've seen the light,        All hate the thought of war:
They've got to be protected,                They'd rather kill them off by
                                                peaceful means.
All their rights respected,                Stop calling it aggression--
Till somebody we like can be elected.        We hate that expression!
                                        We only want the world to know
                                        That we support the status quo;
                                        They love us everywhere we go,
                                        So when in doubt, send the Marines!
                -- Tom Lehrer, "Send The Marines"
When the Guru administers, the users
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a sysop who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
And worst, one who is despised.

If you don't trust the users,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Guru doesn't talk, he hacks.
When his work is done,
the users say, "Amazing:
we implemented it, all by ourselves!"
When you and I are far apart
Can sorrow break your tender heart?
I love you darling, yes I do;
Sleep is so sweet when I dream of you;
All you are is a blossoming rose.
Night is here so I must close.
With care read the first word of each line.
You will find a question of mine.
                -- Yours hopefully, The VAX.
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to a mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
        For it isn't your father or mother or wife
        Whose judgement upon you must pass;
        The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
        Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people may think you a straight-shootin' chum
And call you a wonderful guy,
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
        He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest,
        For he's with you clear up to the end,
        And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test
        If the man in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of life
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartaches and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
When you're a Yup
You're a Yup all the way
From your first slice of Brie
To your last Cabernet.

When you're a Yup
You're not just a dreamer
You're making things happen
You're driving a Beamer.
Where, oh, where, are you tonight?
Why did you leave me here all alone?
I searched the world over, and I thought I'd found true love.
You met another, and *PPHHHLLLBBBBTTT*, you wuz gone.

Gloom, despair and agony on me.
Deep dark depression, excessive misery.
If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all.
Oh, gloom, despair and agony on me.
                -- Hee Haw
Whip it, baby.
Whip it right.
Whip it, baby.
Whip it all night!
With/Without - and who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about?
                -- Pink Floyd
Yea from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.
                -- Hamlet
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
        "All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
        Do these facts never fill you with shame?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
        "I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
        Made it pointless to think any more."
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
        "And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
        Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
        "I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
        Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
        And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
        Pray what is the reason of that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
        "I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
        Allow me to sell you a couple?"
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
        That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
        Don't you think that you should save your breath?"

"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
        Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
        Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
        For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
        Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
        And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
        Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
        That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
        What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
        Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
        Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
        And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
        Have you thought about taking a hike?"

"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
        "Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
        And don't realize that they've been had."
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
        And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
        Do you really think this is quite fair?"

"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
        "But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
        And to stop me it's now far too late."
You'll always be,
What you always were,
Which has nothing to do with,
All to do, with her.
                -- Company
We found you hiding
We found you lying
Choking on the dirt and sand.

Your former glories
And all the stories
Dragged and washed with eager hands.
                -- ``Cities in Dust'', "Tinderbox", Siouxsie & the Banshees.
All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly.
Are you making all this up as you go along?
Avoid reality at all costs.
Best of all is never to have been born.  Second best is to die soon.
It was all so different before everything changed.
It's all in the mind, ya know.
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
You have a deep interest in all that is artistic.
You have a will that can be influenced by all with whom you come in contact.
You have the power to influence all with whom you come in contact.
You look like a million dollars.  All green and wrinkled.
You'll never see all the places, or read all the books, but fortunately,
they're not all recommended.
        A boy scout troop went on a hike.  Crossing over a stream, one of
the boys dropped his wallet into the water.  Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed
the wallet and tossed it to another carp.  Then that carp passed it to
another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet back
and forth.
        "Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a rare case
of carp-to-carp walleting."
A new 'chutist had just jumped from the plane at 10,000 feet, and soon
discovered that all his lines were hopelessly tangled.  At about 5,000 feet,
still struggling, he noticed someone coming up from the ground at about the
same speed as he was going towards the ground.  As they passed each other at
3,000 feet, the 'chutist yells, "HEY! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PARACHUTES?"
        The reply came, fading towards the end, "NO!  DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING
ABOUT COLEMAN STOVES?"
All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely
than others.
                -- Alan Truscott
Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates,
is my choice for team captain.  Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led
off the bottom of the eighth with a walk.  The next hitter banged a hard
single to right field.  Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and
kept going, sliding safely into third base.
        With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at
bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first.
Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy
took off for second and made it.  Now we had runners at second and third.
        I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy
start to take a lead.  All of a sudden, here he comes.  He makes a great slide
into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?"  He looks up, and
shouts, "Back to second if I can make it."
                -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers...
they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key!
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube:        Black.

Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of
side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic underneath
-- black.  According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.
                -- Steve Rubenstein
George's friend Sam had a dog who could recite the Gettysburg Address.  "Let
me buy him from you," pleaded George after a demonstration.
        "Okay," agreed Sam.  "All he knows is that Lincoln speech anyway."
        At his company's Fourth of July picnic, George brought his new pet
and announced that the animal could recite the entire Gettysburg Address.
No one believed him, and they proceeded to place bets against the dog.
George quieted the crowd and said, "Now we'll begin!"  Then he looked at
the dog.  The dog looked back.  No sound.  "Come on, boy, do your stuff."
Nothing.  A disappointed George took his dog and went home.
        "Why did you embarrass me like that in front of everybody?" George
yelled at the dog.  "Do you realize how much money you lost me?"
        "Don't be silly, George," replied the dog.  "Think of the odds we're
gonna get on Labor Day."
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us
all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for
its wild horses.  I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs
romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any
wild horses in person.  In person, they are like enormous hooved rats.  They
amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses.
We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes.
We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon."
                -- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
HARVARD:
Quarterback:
        Sophomore Dave Strewzinski... likes to pass.  And pass he does, with
a record 86 attempts (three completions) in 87 plays....  Though Strewzinksi
has so far failed to score any points for the Crimson, his jackrabbit speed
has made him the least sacked quarterback in the Ivy league.
Wide Receiver:
        The other directional signal in Harvard's offensive machine is senior
Phil Yip, who is very fast.  Yip is so fast that he has set a record for being
fast.  Expect to see Yip elude all pursuers and make it into the endzone five
or six times, his average for a game.  Yip, nicknamed "fumblefingers" and "you
asshole" by his teammates, hopes to carry the ball with him at least one of
those times.
YALE:
Defense:
        On the defensive side, Yale boasts the stingiest line in the Ivies.
Primarily responsible are seniors Izzy "Shylock" Bloomberg and Myron
Finklestein, the tightest ends in recent Eli history.  Also contributing to
the powerful defense is junior tackle Angus MacWhirter, a Scotsman who rounds
out the offensive ethnic joke.  Look for these three to shut down the opening
coin toss.
                -- Harvard Lampoon 1988 Program Parody, distributed at The Game
I do not care if half the league strikes.  Those who do will encounter
quick retribution.  All will be suspended, and I don't care if it wrecks
the National League for five years.  This is the United States of America
and one citizen has as much right to play as another.
                -- Ford Frick, National League President, reacting to a
                   threatened strike by some Cardinal players in 1947 if
                   Jackie Robinson took the field against St. Louis.  The
                   Cardinals backed down and played.
        If you do your best the rest of the way, that takes care of
everything. When we get to October 2, we'll add up the wins, and then
we'll either all go into the playoffs, or we'll all go home and play golf.
        Both those things sound pretty good to me.
                -- Sparky Anderson
It's like deja vu all over again.
                -- Yogi Berra
"Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the
dog] is good for almost every kind of game.  He went duck hunting one time
and did real well at it.  Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but,
you know, farm ducks.  And it got Don Carlos all mixed up.  Since the
ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he
wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something.  So one morning
last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and
buried them."  "What do you mean, buried them?"  "Oh, he didn't hurt them.
He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth
and put them in the holes.  Then he covered them up with mud except for
their heads.  He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for
another one when Tony found him.  We talked about it for a long time.  Papa
said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't
know how to build a cage he put them in holes.  He's a smart dog."
                -- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning"
On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the
same moment -- halftime.
THE OLD POOL SHOOTER had won many a game in his life. But now it was time
to hang up the cue. When he did, all the other cues came crashing go the floor.

"Sorry," he said with a smile.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter.  The batter
swang and missed.  The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the
batter connected.  He hit a high fly right to the center fielder.  The
center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his
eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
                -- Dizzy Dean
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?!?"  Ed.]
Did you know about the -o option of the fortune program?  It makes a
selection from a set of offensive and/or obscene fortunes.  Why not
try it, and see how offended you are?  The -a ("all") option will
select a fortune at random from either the offensive or inoffensive
set, and it is suggested that "fortune -a" is the command that you
should have in your .profile or .cshrc. file.
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 IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM

If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy fortunes, clean or obscene?  We cannot continue
without your support.  Less than 14% of all fortune users are contributors.
That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride.  We can't go on like
this much longer.  Federal cutbacks mean less money for fortunes, and unless
user contributions increase to make up the difference, the fortune program
will have to shut down between midnight and 8 a.m.  Don't let this happen.
Mail your fortunes right now to "fortune".  Just type in your favorite pithy
saying.  Do it now before you forget.  Our target is 300 new fortunes by the
end of the week. Don't miss out.  All fortunes will be acknowledged.  If you
contribute 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The
Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide.  If you contribute 50 or more,
you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
After a time, you may find that "having" is not so pleasing a thing,
after all, as "wanting."  It is not logical, but it is often true.
                -- Spock, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
All your people must learn before you can reach for the stars.
                -- Kirk, "The Gamesters of Triskelion", stardate 3259.2
Blast medicine anyway!  We've learned to tie into every organ in the
human body but one.  The brain!  The brain is what life is all about.
                -- McCoy, "The Menagerie", stardate 3012.4
Change is the essential process of all existence.
                -- Spock, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", stardate 5730.2
Death.  Destruction.  Disease.  Horror.  That's what war is all about.
That's what makes it a thing to be avoided.
                -- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0
Do you know about being with somebody?  Wanting to be?  If I had the
whole universe, I'd give it to you, Janice.  When I see you, I feel
like I'm hungry all over.  Do you know how that feels?
                -- Charlie Evans, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8
Do you know the one -- "All I ask is a tall ship, and a star to steer
her by ..."  You could feel the wind at your back, about you ...  the
sounds of the sea beneath you.  And even if you take away the wind and
the water, it's still the same.  The ship is yours ... you can feel her
... and the stars are still there.
                -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
        "I think they're going to take all this money that we spend now on war
and death --"
        "And make them spend it on life."
                -- Edith Keeler and Kirk, "The City on the Edge of Forever",
                   stardate unknown.
If there are self-made purgatories, then we all have to live in them.
                -- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.7
In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death -- even vegetarians.
                -- Spock, "Wolf in the Fold", stardate 3615.4
Is truth not truth for all?
                -- Natira, "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched
                   the Sky", stardate 5476.4.
It would be illogical to assume that all conditions remain stable.
                -- Spock, "The Enterprise Incident", stardate 5027.3
        "It's hard to believe that something which is neither seen nor felt can
do so much harm."
        "That's true.  But an idea can't be seen or felt.  And that's what kept
the Troglytes in the mines all these centuries.  A mistaken idea."
                -- Vanna and Kirk, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5819.0
Knowledge, sir, should be free to all!
                -- Harry Mudd, "I, Mudd", stardate 4513.3
Military secrets are the most fleeting of all.
                -- Spock, "The Enterprise Incident", stardate 5027.4
Sometimes a feeling is all we humans have to go on.
                -- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.9
        "The combination of a number of things to make existence worthwhile."
        "Yes, the philosophy of 'none,' meaning 'all.'"
                -- Spock and Lincoln, "The Savage Curtain", stardate 5906.4
The only solution is ... a balance of power.  We arm our side with exactly
that much more.  A balance of power -- the trickiest, most difficult,
dirtiest game of them all.  But the only one that preserves both sides.
                -- Kirk, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
There comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face
.... One day our minds became so powerful we dared think of ourselves as gods.
                -- Sargon, "Return to Tomorrow", stardate 4768.3
There's nothing disgusting about it [the Companion].  It's just another
life form, that's all.  You get used to those things.
                -- McCoy, "Metamorphosis", stardate 3219.8
Uncontrolled power will turn even saints into savages.  And we can all
be counted on to live down to our lowest impulses.
                -- Parmen, "Plato's Stepchildren", stardate 5784.3
Vulcans worship peace above all.
                -- McCoy, "Return to Tomorrow", stardate 4768.3
[War] is instinctive.  But the instinct can be fought.  We're human
beings with the blood of a million savage years on our hands!  But we
can stop it.  We can admit that we're killers ... but we're not going
to kill today.  That's all it takes!  Knowing that we're not going to
kill today!
                -- Kirk, "A Taste of Armageddon", stardate 3193.0
We have found all life forms in the galaxy are capable of superior
development.
                -- Kirk, "The Gamesters of Triskelion", stardate 3211.7
We'll pivot at warp 2 and bring all tubes to bear, Mr. Sulu!
We're all sorry for the other guy when he loses his job to a machine.
But when it comes to your job -- that's different.  And it always will
be different.
                -- McCoy, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4729.4
You go slow, be gentle.  It's no one-way street -- you know how you
feel and that's all.  It's how the girl feels too.  Don't press.  If
the girl feels anything for you at all, you'll know.
                -- Kirk, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8
"`I think you ought to know that I'm feeling very
depressed.'"
"`Life, don't talk to me about life.'"
"`Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to
take you down to the bridge. Call that "job satisfaction"?
'Cos I don't.'"
"`I've got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my
left side.'"

- Guess who.
"`In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high,
men were REAL men, women were REAL women, and small furry
creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small furry
creatures from Aplha Centauri.'"

- The Book getting all nostalgic.
"`Right,' said Ford, `I'm going to have a look.'
He glanced round at the others.
`Is no one going to say, "No you can't possibly, let me go
instead"?'
They all shook their heads.
`Oh well.'"

- Ford attempting to be heroic whilst being seiged by
Shooty and Bangbang.
"`You ARE Zaphod Beeblebrox?'
`Yeah,' said Zaphod, `but don't shout it out or they'll all
want one.'
`THE Zaphod Beeblebrox?'
`No, just A Zaphod Bebblebrox, didn't you hear I come in
six packs?'
`But sir,' it squealed, `I just heard on the sub-ether
radio report. It said you were dead...'
`Yeah, that's right, I just haven't stopped moving yet.'"

- Zaphod and the Guide's receptionist.
"`The first ten million years were the worst,' said Marvin,
`and the second ten million, they were the worst too. The
third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went
into a bit of a decline.'"

- Marvin reflecting back on his 576,000,003,579 year
career as Milliways' car park attendent.
BOOK        ...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 believed themselves to be more intelligent
than man for
        precisely the same reasons.
"`... then I decided that I was a lemon for a couple of
weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and
out of a gin and tonic.'
Arthur cleared his throat, and then did it again.
`Where,' he said, `did you...?'
`Find a gin and tonic?' said Ford brightly. `I found a
small lake that thought it was a gin and tonic, and jumped
in and out of that. At least, I think it thought it was a
gin and tonic.'
`I may,' he addded with a grin which would have sent sane
men scampering into the trees, `have been imagining it.'"

- Ford updating Arthur about what he's been doing for the
past four years.
"I don't know, " said the voice on the PA, "apathetic
bloody planet, I've no sympathy at all. "
"Yes, it's the right planet, all right, " he said again.
"Right planet, wrong universe. "
A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies.
Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured
him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and
quiet place in which to rest.  One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around
above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said,
"Come on down."  But the fly was too clever for him and said, "I never light
where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house."
So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other
flies.  He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said,
"Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper.  All those flies are trapped."  "Don't be
silly," said the fly, "they're dancing."  So he settled down and became stuck
to the flypaper with all the other flies.

Moral:  There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
                -- James Thurber, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
                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"
All men are mortal.  Socrates was mortal.  Therefore, all men are Socrates.
                -- Woody Allen
All of the people in my building are insane.  The guy above me designs
synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats.  The lady across the hall tried to
rob a department store... with a pricing gun...  She said, "Give me all
of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store."
                -- Steven Wright
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others.  Bozos are people who band
together for fun and profit.  They have no jobs.  Anybody who goes on a
tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street?  Because there's a Bozo
on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others.
They're the huge, fat, middle waist.  The archetype is an Irish drunk
clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin.  Fields, William Bendix.
Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness.  It has Oz in it.  They mean
well.  They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes.  They
like their comforts.  The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time,
which is all the time.
                -- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
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"
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"
High Priest:        Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven:
Bro. Maynard:        And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high
        saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it
        smash our enemies to tiny bits."  And the Lord did grin, and the
        people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and
        breakfast cereals, and lima bean-
High Priest:        Skip a bit, brother.
Bro. Maynard:        And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take
        out the holy pin.  Then shalt thou count to three.  No more, no less.
        *Three* shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the
        counting shall be three.  *Four* shalt thou not count, and neither
        count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three.  Five is
        RIGHT OUT.  Once the number three, being the third number be reached,
        then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being
        naughty in my sight, shall snuff it.  Amen.
All:        Amen.
                -- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
I am getting into abstract painting.  Real abstract -- no brush, no canvas,
I just think about it.  I just went to an art museum where all of the art
was done by children.  All the paintings were hung on refrigerators.
                -- Steven Wright
"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I
pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?'  He
said, 'Phoenix.'  So I pushed Phoenix.  A few seconds later the doors
opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix.  I looked
at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around
with.'  We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert.
Then the phone rang.  He said 'You get it.'  I picked it up and said
'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...'
The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank...
It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you
attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we
would just like to know what happened to the money?'  I said, 'Mr. Jones,
I'll give it to you straight.  I gave all of the money to my friend Slick,
and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never
called me again."
                -- Steven Wright
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 have a box of telephone rings under my bed.  Whenever I get lonely, I
open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call.  One day I dropped the
box all over the floor.  The phone wouldn't stop ringing.  I had to get
it disconnected.  So I got a new phone.  I didn't have much money, so I
had to get an irregular.  It doesn't have a five.  I ran into a friend
of mine on the street the other day.  He said why don't you give me a
call.  I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone
doesn't have a five.  He asked how long had it been that way.  I said I
didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens.
                -- Steven Wright
I have a hobby.  I have the world's largest collection of sea shells.  I keep
it scattered on beaches all over the world.  Maybe you've seen some of it.
                -- Steven Wright
I have an existential map.  It has "You are here" written all over it.
                -- Steven Wright
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 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 should have been a country-western singer.  After all, I'm older than
most western countries.
                -- George Burns
I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards.  I got a full
house and four people died.
                -- Steven Wright
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
                -- Firesign Theatre
I was in a bar and I walked up to a beautiful woman and said, "Do you live
around here often?"  She said, "You're wearing two different-color socks."
I said, "Yes, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness."
She said, "How do you feel?" And I said, "You know when you're sitting on a
chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs and you lean too far so
you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself?  I feel like
that all the time..."
                -- Steven Wright, "Gentlemen's Quarterly"
"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
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"
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 Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy"
My friend has a baby.  I'm writing down all the noises he makes so
later I can ask him what he meant.
                -- Steven Wright
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
                -- Walt Kelly
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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on
the subject of towels.
        Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value.  For
some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel
with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a
toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc.  Furthermore,
the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or
a dozen other items that he may have "lost".  After all, any man who can
hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds,
win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be
reckoned with.
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
        "The pyramid is opening!"
        "Which one?"
        "The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
                -- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At
                   Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream?  Or what's worse,
what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
                -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
FORTUNE'S RANDOM QUOTES FROM MATCH GAME 75, NO. 1:

Gene Rayburn: We'd like to close with a thought for the day, friends ---
               something ...

      Someone: (interrupting) Uh-oh

Gene Rayburn: ...pithy, full of wisdom --- and we call on the Poet
               Laureate, Lipsy Russell

Lipsy Russell: The young people are very different today, and there is
               one sure way to know: Kids to use to ask where they came
               from, now they'll tell you where you can go.

          All: (laughter)
"So here's a picture of reality: (picture of circle with lots of sqiggles in it) As we all know, reality is a mess."

  -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
  Referring to a book: I read part of it all the way through.
  -Samuel Goldwyn
  William Safire's rules for writing as seen in the New York Times

     Do not put statements in the negative form.
     And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
     If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great
     deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
     Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
     Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
     If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
     Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
     Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
     Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
     Last, but not least, avoid cliche's like the plague.
  Evil isn't all bad.
All truths are true to an extend, including this one.  -XA
What If Bill Gates Was a Stand-Up Comedian?

1. None of his jokes would be funny.
2. Subliminal message hyping Microsoft and Windows 98 would be inserted
    throughout his performance.
3. The audio system (running Windows NT) would always crash right before Bill
    got to a punch line. At that time one of the managers would announce,
    "Please hold tight while we diagnose this intermittent issue."
4. Tickets for Bill's show would be handed out for free in an attempt to
    attract customers away from Netscape's shows.
5. Industry pundits would call Bill's show "innovative" and would ask "Why
    doesn't IBM have a stand-up routine? This is exactly why OS/2 is failing in
    the market."
6. Bill's show would be called "ActiveHumor 98"
7. In a perfect imitation of his Windows 95 OS, Bill wouldn't be able to tell
    a joke and walk around at the same time.
8. Audience members would have to sign a License Agreement in which one of the
    terms is "I agree never to watch Linus Torvalds' show, 'GNU/Humorux'".
9. All audience members would receive a free CD of Internet Explorer 4.0, with
    FakeJava(R) and ActiveHex(tm) technology.
10. Bill Gates would appear on Saturday Night Live, causing ratings to drop
    even further.
Virus error:
A virus has been activated in a DOS session. The virus, however, requires
Windows. All tasks will automatically be closed and the virus will be activated
again.
Q: Does Bill Gates use public domain software?
A: Yes, as all of the public has become Bill Gates' domain.
You Might be a Microsoft Employee If...

1. When a Microsoft program crashes for the millionth time, you say "Oh,
    well!" and reboot without any negative thoughts
2. The Windows 95 startup screen (the clouds) makes you feel all warm and
    fuzzy inside
3. You fully understand why Windows 95's Shutdown Option has to be
    accessed from the Start Menu
4. You believe Internet Explorer's security flaws were slipped in by a
    crack team of Netscape programmers
5. You keep valuable papers near your fireplace. Therefore, you are
    comfortable with Windows 95's "may-delete-it-at-anytime" philosophy
6. You're the Bob that Microsoft Bob was named after
7. Instead of "I'd rather be fishing," your bumper sticker says, "I'd
    rather be writing buggy Microsoft code"
8. You know the technical difference between OLE 1.0 and OLE 2.0
9. You've ever completed your income taxes while waiting for Windows 95
    to boot, and didn't think anything of it
10. You run Solitaire more than any other program, and therefore you
    consider your computer a Dedicated Solitaire Engine (DSE)
You Might be a Microsoft Employee If...

1. Every night you dream of torturing Linus Torvalds
2. Every morning you say, "I pledge allegiance to the logo of the United
    Corporation of Microsoft. And to the stock options for which it stands, one
    company, under Bill, with headaches and buggy software for all."
3. Your favorite pick-up line is, "Hey baby...do you want to see a little
    ActiveX?"
4. Everytime you see a website with "Best viewed with Netscape" on it you
    feel like filing a lawsuit against its webmaster
5. You feel that all Anti-Microsoft websites should be censored because they
    are on the Internet, something Bill "invented."
6. You've set a goal to invent at least one new buzzword or acronym per day
7. You've ever been nervous because you haven't registered your Microsoft
    software yet.
8. You've trained your parrot to say "Unix sucks!" and "All hail Bill Gates!"
9. You own a limited edition Monopoly game in which Boardwalk is Microsoft and
    Jail is replaced by Justice Department Investigation
10. You've spent countless hours tracking down the source of the "Microsoft
    Acquires Vatican Church" rumor
All of you people should be ashamed of yourselves! MicroSoft is the reason
there are so many people in my IS department, and the reason half of us have
jobs. If Sun had won, we could probably get by with two people sleeping like
the Maytag man. But because of MS, there are eight people gainfully employed as
highly paid contracters, looking busy, feeding their kids. And the way it
looks, I stand to be employed and wealthy for a long, long time.

   -- From Slashdot.org
We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.

   -- Linus Torvalds
The Edsel. New Coke. Windows 2000. All mandatory case studies for bizschool
students in 2020.

   -- Bear Giles (in a LinuxToday post)
Wow, the great ZDNET actually corrected a mistake! Of course, if they did
that to all of Jesse Berst's columns, they'd lose 2/3 of their content...

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
If we added up all of the 2 cents that Slashdot readers gave, I wonder how
much sense vs. cents we'd have.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
It's all GNU to me.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
You all have to admit that Microsoft products provide a quality unmatched
by any other company. That is why I am switching to 100% pure shredded
Microsoft certificates of authenticity in my hamster's cage.

   -- From a Slashdot.org post
"Our business model works even if all internet software is free.
How does Netscape's business model look? -- not so good."
   -- Bill Gates

"Our business model works even if *ALL* software is free.
How does Microsoft's business model look? -- not so good."
   -- the response from the Linux community
Myth: Linux has a lower TCO

Fact: If you consider that buying NT licenses for business use is
tax-deductible, as are all those tech support calls, NT actually has a
lower TCO than Linux! How are you going to expense software that doesn't
cost anything? Eh?!?

   -- From a LinuxToday post
Linux Rally Held in Pennsylvania

HARRISBURG, PA -- Thousands of Linux advocates gathered at the Pennsylvania
state capitol building earlier today. They were protesting the state's recent
three year deal with Microsoft to install Windows NT on all state computer
systems. "Whatever pointy haired boss made this deal ought to be shot on
sight," one protestor exclaimed. "Windows NT is a piece of [expletive] compared
to Linux. The taxpayers of Pennsylvania are going to be sorry three years from
now when this 'deal' concludes. The state has sold its soul to Satan [Bill
Gates]."

Brief hostilities broke out when a group of police officers armed with riot
gear descended on the protestors. After the police threatened to use tear gas,
the protestors threw thousands of Linux CDs at them. Once the supply of CDs was
depleted, the protest became peaceful again. "I saw several policemen pick up
Linux CDs and put them in their pockets," one protestor noted.

The protest broke up a few minutes later once it was realized that the state
legislature wasn't in session. "We may have wasted our time today," one
advocate said, "But we'll be back later." State and Microsoft officials were
unavailable for comment at press time. How typical.
Mad Programmer Commits Suicide

KENNETT, MO -- For two years Doug Carter toiled away in his basement computer
lab working on his own 'Dougnix' operating system. Apparently he was sick of
Windows 95 so he decided to create his own OS, based loosely on Unix. He had
developed his own 'DougUI' window manager, Doug++ compiler, DougFS filesystem,
and other integrated tools.

All was going well until last week when he hooked his computer up to the
Internet for the first time. It was then that he stumbled on to www.linux.org.
Reports are sketchy about what happened next. We do know he committed suicide
days after, leaving behind a rambling suicide note. Part of the note says:

"I've wasted the past two years of my life... Wasted... Gone... Forever...
Never return to. [illegible] Why did I bother creating my own OS... when Linux
is exactly what I needed!?!?!?! If I had only known about Linux! Why someone
didn't tell me? [illegible] Wasted! Aggghhh!" [The rest of the note is filled
with incomprehensible assembly language ramblings.]
Open Source Beer Revolution

Yesterday, Red Hat introduced an 'open source' beer called Red Brew. The
recipes for making the beer are available for free over the Net, and
microbrewery kits are available at low cost from Red Hat. Says a Red Hat
spokesman, "With the proliferation of free (open source) software, it was only
a matter of time before open source beer became reality. After all, the only
thing hackers like more than free software is free beer!"

Following the Red Hat annoucement, other companies are racing to launch their
own beer 'distribution'. Caldera is developing an OpenBrew beer. Meanwhile,
Patrick Volkerding is working on a SlackBeer distribution, and DebianBrew is
expected soon.

Traditional breweries and beer distributors are not thrilled about open source
beer. "This is ludicrous! People want beer that comes from time-tested, secret
recipes -- not beer from recipes invented overnight! Open source is a fad," a
spokesman for Buddwizzer Beer, Inc. said. In addition, other beverage
distributors are nervous. "First open source beer, and soon open source soft
drinks! Before we know it, we'll have RedCoke and SlackPepsi! This open source
plague must be stopped before it eats into our bottom line! Don't quote me on
that last sentence," the CEO of Croak-a-Cola said.
Tux Penguin Beanie Baby Sales Skyrocket

Two weeks ago Ty released a 'Tux the Penguin' Beanie Baby. Sales of the stuffed
toy have exceeded expectations. All 100,000 of them have been sold, and it will
be another week before more can be produced and distributed. Tux is now the one
of the most valuable Beanie Babies, with some stores selling remaining ones for
over $500.

Tux's strong sales constrast sharply with Ty's other computer-related Beanie
Baby, 'Billy the Billionaire'. "Billy's sales are dismal. Except for the 2,000
that Bill Gates bought for himself and his daughter Jennifer, Billy has been a
failure. People just aren't responsive to toys that represent greedy,
capitalistic billionaires with bad haircuts," a member of the Church of Beanie
Baby Collecting said.

Ty is considering releasing other Beanie Babies similar to Tux. Some
possibities include 'Steve the Apple Worm' and 'Wilbur the Gimp'.
"Computer-related Beanie Babies are selling extremely well," a Ty spokesman
said. "I don't understand why people are obsessed with these stupid stuffed
toys. But as long as they're making me lots of money, I don't care! Oops...
Please don't quote me on that."
Microsoft Acquires Nothing

REDMOND, WA -- In an unprecedented move, Microsoft refrained from acquiring any
rival companies for a full week. "I can't believe it," one industry analyst
noted. "This is the first time in years that I haven't read any headlines about
Microsoft acquiring something."

The lack of Microsoft assimilation this week left a vacuum in computer industry
publications. "Microsoft acquisition stories make up 10% of our headlines," an
editor at Ziff-Slavis said. "We had to scramble to fill this void. We ran some
controversial Jessie Burst columns instead, hoping that we could recoup ad
revenue from people reading all the flames in the Talk Back forums. Jessie
Burst forums account for 15% of our total ad revenue."
Stallman's Latest Proclamation

Richard M. Stallman doesn't want you to say "Windows" anymore. He is now
advocating that people call this OS by its real name:
Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows. This proclamation comes on the heels of his
controversial stand that Linux should be called GNU/Linux. RMS explained in a
Usenet posting, "Calling Microsoft's OS 'Windows' is a grave inaccuracy. Xerox
and Apple both contributed significant ideas and innovations to this OS. Why
should Microsoft get all the credit?"

RMS also hinted that people shouldn't refer to Microsoft's web browser as IE.
"It should really be called Microsoft-Spyglass-Mosaic-Internet-Explorer. Again,
how much credit does Microsoft really deserve for this product? Much of the
base code was licensed from Spyglass."

Many industry pundits are less than thrilled about RMS' proclamation. The
editor of Windows Magazine exclaimed, "What?!?! Yeah, we'll rename our magazine
Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Magazine. That just rolls off the tongue!" A
Ziff-Davis columnist noted, "Think of all the wasted space this would cause. If
we spelled out everything like this, we'd have headlines like, 'Microsoft
Releases Service Pack 5 for Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Neutered Technology
4.0' Clearly this is unacceptable."
Linux Drinking Game (Abridged)

With a group of friends, take turns reading articles about Linux from popular
media sources (Ziff-Davis AnchorDesk is recommended) or postings on Usenet (try
alt.fan.bill-gates). If the author says one of the things below, take a drink.
Continue until everyone involved is plastered.

- Linux will never go mainstream
- Any platform that can't run Microsoft Office [or some other Microsoft
  "solution"] sucks
- Linux is hard to install
- Linux tech support is lacking
- No one ever got fired for choosing Microsoft
- Any OS with a command line interface is primitive
- Microsoft is an innovative company
- Could you get fired for choosing Linux?
- Linux was created by a bunch of snot-nosed 14 year old hackers with acne and
  no life
- Security through obscurity is the way to go
- Linus and Unix are 70s technology while NT is 90s technology
- All Linux software must be released under the GPL
- Linux is a great piece of shareware
Tux Penguin Boxing Match

LAS VEGAS, NV -- The unofficial Linux mascot Tux the Penguin will face his arch
rival the BSD Daemon in a boxing match this Saturday night. The match is part
of the International Computer Mascot Boxing Federation's First Annual World
Championship Series. The winner will advance to face one of the Intel "Bunny
People".

Boxing pundits favor Tux as the winner. Last week Tux won his first match in
the Championship Series against Wilbur the Gimp. "The Gimp didn't have a
chance," one spectator said. "With Tux's ability to run at top speeds of over
100mph, I don't see how he could possibly lose." The BSD Daemon, however, is
certainly a formidible opponent. While boxing rules prohibit the Daemon from
using his patented pitchfork, his pointy horns are permitted in the ring.

Some observers think the whole Computer Mascot Boxing Federation is a fake.
"WWF is all scripted," one sports writer pointed out. "And so is this. You
actually think that a penguin is capable of boxing? The idea of a penguin
fighting a demon is patently absurd. This whole Championship Series has no
doubt been scripted. It's probably nothing more than two little kids in
penguin and demon suits duking it out in a boxing ring. What a waste of time."
Linux Ported to Homer Simpson's Brain

SPRINGFIELD -- Slashdot recently reported on Homer Simpson's brain "upgrade"
to an Intel CPU.  Intel hails the CPU transplant as the "World's Greatest
Technological Achievement".  Intel originally planned to install Microsoft
Windows CE (Cerebrum Enhanced) on Homer's new PentiumBrain II processor.
However, due to delays in releasing Windows CE, Intel decided to install
DebianBrain Linux, the new Linux port for brains.

Computer industry pundits applaud the last minute switch from Windows to
Linux. One said, "I was a bit concerned for Homer.  With Windows CE, I could
easily imagine Homer slipping into an infinite loop: "General Protection
Fault.  D'oh!  D'oh!  D'oh!  D'oh..."  Or, at the worst, the Blue Screen of
Death could have become much more than a joke."

Some pundits are more concerned about the quality of the Intel CPU.  "Linux
is certainly an improvement over Windows.  But since it's running on a
PentiumBrain chip, all bets are off.  What if the chip miscalculates the core
temperature of the power plant where Homer works?  I can just imagine the
story on the evening news: 'Springfield was obliterated into countless
subatomic particles yesterday because Homer J. Simpson, power plant
button-pusher, accidentally set the core temperature to 149.992322340948290
instead of 150...'  If anything, an Alpha chip running Linux should have been
used for Homer's new brain."
Linux Dominates Academic Research

A recent survey of colleges and high school reveals that Linux, Open Source
Software, and Microsoft are favorite topics for research projects.  Internet
Censorship, a popular topic for the past two years, was supplanted by Biology
of Penguins as another of this year's most popular subjects for research
papers.

"The Internet has changed all the rules," one college professor told
Humorix.  "Nobody wants to write papers about traditional topics like the
death penalty, freedom of speech, abortion, juvenile crime, etc. Most of the
research papers I've seen the past year have been computer related, and most
of the reference material has come from the Net.  This isn't necessarily
good; there's a lot of crap on the Net.  One student tried to use 'Bob's
Totally Wicked Anti-Microsoft Homepage of Doom' and 'The Support Group for
People Used by Microsoft' as primary sources of information for his paper
about Microsoft."

A high school English teacher added, "Plagarism is a problem with the Net.
One of my students 'wrote' a brilliant piece about the free software
revolution. Upon further inspection, however, almost everything was stolen
from Eric S. Raymond's website.  I asked the student, "What does noosphere
mean?"  He responded, 'New-what?'  Needless to say, he failed the class."
The Movement Formerly Known As Open Source

The battle over the Open Source trademark is heating up.  Software in the
Public Interest and the Open Source Initiative both hold competing claims to
the trademark.  In order to put an end to the infighting, a group of free
software advocates have founded the Association for the Movement Formerly
Known as Open Source (AMFKOS)

One AMFKOS founder said, "I find it ironic that a trademark representing free
software is itself proprietary.  This situation must change.  We propose that
the free software movement adopt another name besides 'Open Source'.
Hopefully then we can all Get-Back-To-Coding(tm) instead of fighting over
Bruce Perens' and Eric Raymond's egos."

Rumor has it that Richard Stallman plans to mount a campaign to
promote the phrase "GNU/Free Software" in place of "Open Source".
In addition, the terms "Ajar Source", "Unlocked Source", "Nude Source",
"Unclosed Source", and "Just-Type-make Software" have all
been proposed by various Usenet or Slashdot posters.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #3

iTux Penguin Computer
Price: $999.95 for base model
Producer: Orange Computer, Co.; 1-800-GET-ITUX

Based on the Slashdot comments, response to the Apple iMac from the Linux
community was lukewarm at best.  Orange Computer, Co., has picked up where
Apple left behind and produced the iTux computer specifically for Linux users
who want to "Think a lot different".

The self-contained iTux computer system is built in the shape of Tux the
Penguin.  Its 15 inch monitor (17 inch available next year) is located at
Tux's large belly.  The penguin's two feet make up the split ergonomic
keyboard (without those annoying Windows keys, of course).  A 36X CD-ROM
drive fits into Tux's mouth.  Tux's left eye is actually the reboot button
(can be reconfigured for other purposes since it is rarely used) and his
right eye is the power button.  The iTux case opens up from the back,
allowing easy access for screwdriver-wielding nerds into Tux's guts.

The US$995.95 model contains an Alpha CPU and all the usual stuff found in a
Linux-class machine.  More expensive models, to be debuted next year, will
feature dual or quad Alpha CPUs and a larger size.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #4

Microsoft Destruction Kit
Price: US$29.95 (more with optional digital camera or shotgun)
Producer: The Fuzzier Image; 1-800-BILL-SUX

Mix an Internet Explorer CD-ROM, a rocket launcher, and a flamethrower. What
do you have?  A whole lot of fun!  The Microsoft Destruction Kit is the best
way to destroy those Microsoft CD-ROMs you no longer need now that you've
discovered Linux.  You can launch the CD (and registration forms, manuals,
retail boxes, license agreements, etc.) and pepper it with bullets, all while
capturing the event with a digital camera. Or, you can use the included
miniature flamethrower to burn the evil CD to a crisp.  The kit comes with a
set of IE 4.0 CDs to get you started.  Tell Microsoft "where *you* want
it to go today" in style with the Microsoft Destruction Kit.
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #6

Hearing Un-aid
US$129.95 at The Fuzzier Projection Co.

It's a scene we can all identify with: you're at a boring company meeting,
trying to read the latest Slashdot headlines on your PalmPilot, but you can't
concentrate because the PHB is rambling in a loud, booming voice about
e-infomediary-substrategic-paradigms and
meta-content-aggregation-relationship-corridors.

With the Hearing Un-aid(tm), you can put a stop to incessant buzzword-speak by
your boss. Unlike a hearing aid, which amplifies sound, the Hearing Un-aid
dampens noise, so you can easily tune out the board meeting and instead focus
on something far more important, such as downloading Humorix stories.

If you happen to miss something important (yeah, right) and your boss accuses
you of not paying attention, you can simply point to your hearing "aid" and
respond, "What was that? I couldn't hear you because of my temporary hearing
loss."
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #7

Bluescreen Computer Case
US$27.97 at Bud's Beige Box Bazaar

Real Geeks may not admit to using Windows, but there's still countless geeks
out there who must suffer through the humiliation of using Windows while at
work. The patent-not-pending Bluescreen Case, though, will ease the stress of
working with Microsoft "solutions".

This computer case is very similar to other beige boxes, but with one
important difference: the reboot button is covered with a picture of Bill
Gates. When the machine bluescreens for the millionth time, all you have to do
is punch Bill Gates in the face as hard as you can, and the computer will
restart. This provides invaluable therapeutic stress relief.
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "What Slogan Do You Want to See Tommorrow?"

Microsoft's PR masterminds are planning a massive marketing campaign,
code-named "ActivePromo 2000", to promote the upcoming release of Windows
2000 (scheduled for February 2001).  This marketing campaign will include a
"What Slogan Do You Want to See Tommorrow?" promotion.

Children under age 16 will have to opportunity to create their own Microsoft
slogan to replace the aging "Where Do You Want to Go Today?"(R) motto.
Microsoft will set up a special email alias where children can submit their
entries along with detailed personal and demographic information (for
verification purposes, of course).  A panel of Microsoft employees will
select a winning entry, which will become the official slogan.  The winner
and his/her family will receive an all-expense paid week-long vacation to
Redmond, WA ("The Vacation Capital of East Central Washington State"),
including a guided tour of the Microsoft campus and a personal ten minute
photo-opportunity with Chairman Bill.

We personally believe that "Don't Think About Going Anywhere Else Today"
would make a perfect Microsoft slogan.  "Crashes Are Normal" might also be a
good choice.
Microsoft ActivePromo Campaign: "Windows Competitive Upgrade Offer"

Microsoft's PR masterminds are planning a massive marketing campaign,
code-named "ActivePromo 2000", to promote the upcoming release of Windows
2000 (scheduled for February 2001).  This marketing campaign will include a
"Windows Competitive Upgrade Offer" promotion.

Users of non-Microsoft operating systems (Linux in particular) will be given
the opportunity to trade-in their present OS for a free copy of Windows 98
(or NT 4.0) and Office 97.  People (all three of them) who want to
participate in this program will have to:

1. Mail their operating system's floppy disks or CD-ROMs to Microsoft

2. Agree to a two year contract with the Microsoft Network.

3. Agree (in writing) to the Competitive Upgrade License Agreement; one of
the terms of which is that the user may not install, copy, or otherwise use
a non-Microsoft OS for five years.
Is Windows Antique?

SILICON VALLEY -- The first ever antique mall devoted to computers has
opened its doors deep in the heart of Silicon Valley.  Named "Stacks
of Antiqueues", the new mall features obsolete hardware, old software,
and other curiosities that only a nerd would want to buy.  The mall
also features a whole collection of Microsoft software, which, as can
be expected, has the Redmond giant up in arms.

The mall, founded by a group of Linux, FreeBSD, and BeOS users, has a whole
section devoted to Microsoft "antiques".  Offerings range from a rare
(and expensive) copy of Windows 1.0 all the way up to Windows 98.  All
versions of DOS from 1.0 up are available, in addition to such Microsoft
products as Bob, Profit, and Multiplan.

Bob Hinesdorf, one of the mall's founders, defends the decision to
include Microsoft products in its selection of antique computer stuff.
"Windows 98 is surely antique; it's based on 16 bit Windows 3.x code,
which was based on 16 bit DOS code, which was based loosely on 8 bit
CP/M."
BSOD Simulator

Users of Red Hat 6.0 are discovering a new feature that hasn't been widely
advertised: a Blue Screen of Death simulator.  By default, the bsodsim
program activates when the user hits the virtually unused SysRq key (this is
customizable) causing the system to switch to a character cell console to
display a ficticious Blue Screen.

Red Hat hails the bsodsim program as the "boss key" for the Linux world. One
RH engineer said, "Workers are smuggling Linux boxes into companies that
exclusively use Windows.  This is all good and well until the PHB walks by
and comments, 'That doesn't look like Windows...' With bsodsim, that problem
is solved.  The worker can hit the emergency SysRq key, and the system will
behave just like Windows..."

The bsodsim program doesn't stop at just showing a simulated error message.
If the boss doesn't walk away, the worker can continue the illusion by
hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL, which causes a simulated reboot.  After showing the
usual boot messages, bsodsim will run a simulated SCANDISK program
indefinitely. The boss won't be able to tell the difference.  If the boss
continues to hang around, the worker can say, "SCANDISK is really taking a
long time... maybe we should upgrade our computers.  And don't you have
something better to do than watch this computer reboot for the tenth time
today?"
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

July 2000: Government Issues Update on Y2K Crisis to American Public

In a statement to all U.S. citizens, the President assured that the
repairs to the nation's infrastructure, damaged severely when the Y2K
crisis hit on January 1, is proceeding on track with the Government's
guidelines. The message was mailed to every citizen by mail carriers via
horseback. The statement itself was written on parchment with hand-made
ink written from fountain pens.

"Our technological progress since the Y2K disaster has been staggering,"
said the statement. "We have been able to fix our non-Y2K compliant horse
carriages so that commerce can once again continue. We believe that we
will be able to reinvent steam-powered engines within the next decade.
Internal combustion engines should become operational once again sometime
before the dawn of the next century."

No one knows when the technological luxuries we once enjoyed as little as
6 months ago will return. Things such as e-mail, the Internet, and all
computers were lost when the crisis showed itself for what it really was:
a disaster waiting to happen. Scholars predict the mainframe computer will
be invented again during the 24th century...
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

January 2099: Rob Malda Finally Gets His Damned Nano-Technology

The Linux hacker community finally breathed a collective sigh of relief
when it was announced that Rob Malda finally got his damned
nanotechnology.

"It's about time!" exclaimed one Dothead. "He been going on about that
crap since god-knows-when. Now that he's got that and those wearable
computers, maybe we can read about something interesting on Slashdot!"

Observers were skeptical, however. Already the now-immortal Rob Malda
nano-cyborg (who reportedly changed his name to "18 of 49, tertiary
adjunct of something-or-other") has picked up a few new causes to shout
about to the high heavens until everyone's ears start bleeding. In one
Slashdot article, Malda writes "Here's an article about the potential of
large greyish high-tech mile-wide cubes flying through space, all
controlled by a collective mind set upon intergalactic conquest.
Personally, I can't wait. Yum."
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#1)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 1: What is your opinion of the Microsoft antitrust trial?

A. The DoJ is wasting taxpayer's money. Now, if the DOJ were to upgrade
   all of its computer systems to Windows, then the department would be
   making wise use of tax dollars.

B. All of the Microsoft email messages that the evil government has
   presented as evidence are obviously taken out of context or have been
   completely twisted around. I mean... Bill Gates would never say "let's
   cut off their air supply" in a memo; it's an obvious fabrication.

C. Judge Jackson is obviously biased in favor of the DOJ's vigilante
   persecution of Microsoft.

D. If Microsoft loses, it will be the gravest miscarriage of justice in
   all the history of mankind.
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#8)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 8: If you could meet Bill Gates for one minute, what would you
            say to him?

A. "Can you give me a loan for a million or so?"

B. "I just love all the new features in Windows 98!"

C. "Could you autograph this box of Windows 98 for me?"

D. "I really enjoyed reading 'Business @ the Speed of Thought'. It's so
   cool!"

E. "Give the government hell, Bill!"
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#14)

Customers who want to upgrade to Windows 98 Second Edition must now fill
out a Microsoft survey online before they can order the bugfix/upgrade.

Question 14: How would you rate the performance of the Microsoft defense
             team in the antitrust trial?

A. Perfect; they have clearly shown that Microsoft's market leading
   position is good for consumers.

B. Outstanding; all of the pundits who are predicting that Microsoft will
   lose are a bunch of idiots.

C. Excellent; Bill Gates' wonderful video deposition clearly demonstrated
   to the American public that he is a true visionary.

D. I don't know; I haven't been paying any attention to the case because I
   know Microsoft will prevail anyways.
Slashdot Effect Vaporizes Ganymede
  -- Submitted by Dave Finton
  
In one of the more bizarre consequences of the infamous "Slashdot Effect",
Ganymede, the largest moon in our solar system, was completely and utterly
destroyed when CmdrTaco posted an article about the Hubble Space
Telescope's latest round of images and discoveries.

"It all started when we put up some more info on our web page about
Jupiter and Ganymede," said one NASA guy whom we believe may be in charge
of something. "CmdrTaco got wind of it, and posted it on his site."

According to observers, the webserver promptly exploded thereafter,
damaging the nearby remote control system used to aim and focus the
Hubble's cameras from the ground.

"All of the sudden our controls went wacky!" said one engineer. "The
Hubble then started shooting these death rays all over the universe. One
of those rays hit Ganymede, and *POOF*. There it went! We were all like,
'COOOOOL! Let's aim it something else!'"
Top Ten Differences If Thomas Jefferson Behaved Like Eric Raymond During
the American Revolution

2. The preamble to the Constitution would say, "We the pragmatists of the
Open States of America, in order to foster the production of higher
quality tea and tobacco..."

5. The phrases "the right to bear arms shall not be infringed" and "Geeks
With Guns" would be plastered throughout the O.S.A. Constitution.

9. Instead of Congress, the "Open States Institute" board of directors
would make all of the national legislative decisions.

10. Raymond, New Hampshire would be the home of the O.S.A. capitol.
Jargon Coiner (#1)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* WINCURSE: Loud expletive uttered when a Linux user comes face-to-face
  with a computer containing a WinModem.

  Example: "Eric wincursed when his mother showed him the new computer she
  bought from CompUSSR... which contained a WinModem and a WinSoundCard."

* WIND'OH KEY: Nickname given to the three useless Windows keys that come
  on virtually all new keyboards. These keys are often hit by mistake
  instead of CTRL or ALT, causing the user to shout "D'oh!"

* DE-WIND'OH!ED KEYBOARD: (1) A new keyboard produced without any wind'oh!
  keys or a "Enhanced for Windows 95/98" logo. Extremely rare. (2) A
  keyboard in which the wind'oh! keys have been physically removed.
OPPRESSED GEEK: Everybody keeps blaming me for the Y2K problem, the
Melissa Virus, Windows crashes... you name it. When somebody finds out
you're a bona fide geek, they start bugging you about computer problems. I
frequently hear things like, "Why can't you geeks make Windows work
right?", "What kind of idiot writes a program that can't handle the year
2000?", "Geeks are evil, all they do is write viruses", and "The Internet
is the spawn of Satan".

I'm afraid to admit I have extensive computing experience. When somebody
asks what kind of job I have, I always lie. From my experience, admitting
that you're a geek is an invitation to disaster.

LARRY WALL: I know, I know. I sometimes say that I'm the founder of a
pearl harvesting company instead of admitting that I'm the founder of the
Perl programming language.

ERIC S. RAYMOND: This is tragic. We can't live in a world like this. We
need your donations to fight social oppression and ignorance against
geekdom...

   -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon      
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."          
Don't you see? This whole trial is a conspiracy concocted by Bill Gates.
He knows that he stands to make even more billions if Microsoft is broken
up into Baby Bills... just like Rockefeller did with Standard Oil, and
stockholders did with Ma Bell. Bill Gates actually wants the DOJ to win.
That's why he's been so arrogant in court; he wants Judge Jackson to throw
the book at him! It will be a very lucrative book. The faked Windows
video? His amnesia during the video deposition? It's all a ruse to fool
Microsoft stockholders... and us.    

  -- The ramblings of a resident Slashdot conspiracy nut in response
     to Judge Jackson's harsh Findings Of Fact against Microsoft
Don't get too ecstatic, we all know what's going to
happen next. This so-called trial is rigged, just like wrestling and
boxing. Microsoft is the Don King of the software industry... they control
who wins. I've been told that if you call Microsoft's legal department
hotline, you get a recorded messages that says, "For the verdicts of past
Microsoft court cases, press 1. For the verdicts of future Microsoft court
cases, press 2..."    

  -- Anonymous Coward's response to Judge Jackson's harsh Findings
     Of Fact against Microsoft
Is Linux A Finnish Conspiracy?

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF CORRUPTION -- According to a report recently
issued by the NSA (No Such Agency), Finland is now considered a national
economic and security risk. "We don't trust the Finns... software written
by these people could potentially contain backdoors that could undermine
domestic security," the report states. In response to the news, US Senator
Fatcatte (R-WA) has proposed a bill, the It's For The Children Act of
2000, that would ban all software written by native-born Finns.

"It's time we take the Finnish threat seriously," Fatcatte said at a press
conference. "Not only is Finn software a threat to domestic tranquility,
but it could radically alter the computer industry, costing us thousands
of jobs... and, more importantly, billions in tax revenue. We must prevent
the Finns from subverting our economy with so-called 'open-source
software'." He then asked, "Is anybody thinking of the children of
programmers who will become unemployed when Finnish software overruns the
country?"
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#3)

In the "Cathedral and the Bazaar", ESR mentions that one motivation behind
Open Source software is ego-gratification. That's where OpenEgo, Inc.
comes in. For a fee, the hackers at OpenEgo will produce a piece of Open
Source software and distribute it in your name, thus building up your
reputation and ego. You can quickly become the envy of all your friends --
without lifting a finger. Want a higher-paying tech job? With OpenEgo's
services, you'll look like an Open Source pro in no time, and have dozens
of hot job offers from across the country.

Says the OpenEgo sales literature, "Designing, implementing, maintaining,
and promoting a successful Open Source project is a pain. However, at
OpenEgo, we do all the work while you reap all the rewards..." A page on
the OpenEgo site claims, "We produced a Linux kernel patch for one
customer last year that was immediately accepted by Linus Torvalds...
Within days the person gained employment at Transmeta and is now on the
road to IPO riches..."

Prices range from $1,000 for a small program to $5,000 for a kernel patch.
New Linux Companies Hope To Get Rich Quick (#4)

The buzz surrounding Linux and Open Source during 1999 has produced a
large number of billionnaires. However, people who weren't employed by Red
Hat or VA Linux, or who didn't receive The Letter, are still poor. The
visionaries at The IPO Factory want to change all that.

As the name suggests, this company helps other businesses get off the
ground, secure investments from Venture Capitalists, and eventually hold
an IPO that exits the stratosphere. "You can think of us as meta-VCs," the
IPO Factory's founder said. "You provide the idea... and we do the rest.
If your company doesn't hold a successful IPO, you get your money back,
guaranteed!" He added quickly, "Of course, if you do undergo a billion
dollar IPO, we get to keep 25% of your stock."

The company's first customer, LinuxOne, has been a failure. "From now on
we're only going to service clients that actually have a viable product,"
an IPO Factory salesperson admitted. "Oh, and we've learned our lesson:
it's not a good idea to cut-and-paste large sections from Red Hat's S-1
filing."
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#2)
(held during Super Bowl Sunday 2000 at the Silicon Valley Transmeta Dome)

BRYANT DUMBELL: Look out! Here comes Linus Torvalds himself to deliver the
starting chug. The crowd is going wild... all 64 people in the stands are
on their feet! Here we go... Linus is lifting up the Ceremonial Beer
Can... he's flipping off the top...

JOHN SPLADDEN: You can feel the excitement in the air! Wow!

DUMBELL: ...And there he goes! Wow... he chugged that beer in only 1.4
seconds... Let's see Bill top that! What a remarkable display to kick off
this grandest of all nerd sporting events.

SPLADDEN: "Nerd sporting event"? Isn't that an oxymoron?

DUMBELL: Linus is now waving to the crowd... Oops!  He just belched.
Freaks In Linux Houses Shouldn't Throw FUD

By Mr. Stu Poor, technology pundit for the Arkansas "Roadkill
Roundup" newspaper. [Editor's Note: He's the local equivalent of Jesse
Berst].

As you all know, February 17th was the happy day that Microsoft officially
released Windows 2000. I went down to the local Paperclips computer store
and asked if they had any copies in stock.

One of the pimply-faced Linux longhairs explained that Paperclips didn't
carry Win2K because it is not intended for consumers. What FUD! I can't
believe the gall of those Linux Communists to spread such FUD (Fear,
Uncertainty, and Doubt) about Windows 2000, which is _the_ best, most
stable operating system ever produced in the history of mankind!
Man Charged With Crashing Windows

MOUNTAIN HOME, AR -- Eric Turgent, a closet Linux advocate, was arrested
yesterday for intentionally crashing his co-worker's Windows box at the
offices of the "Roadkill Roundup" newspaper. Turgent disputes the charges,
saying, "If causing an operating system to crash is illegal, than why
isn't Bill Gates serving life without parole?"

Turgent's co-worker, Mr. Stu Poor, the clueless technology pundit for the
newspaper, is a heavy Microsoft supporter. He frequently brags in his
weekly Tech Talk column that he "once had a conversation with Bill Gates."
A heated argument broke out yesterday morning in which the two insulted
each other ("You're nothing but a Linux hippie freak on the Red Hat
payroll!" vs. "You make Jesse Berst and Fred Moody look like [expletive]
geniuses!") for two hours.

At the heat of the moment, Turgent shoved Poor aside and typed in
"C:\CON\CON". The machine crashed and the pundit lost all of his work (a
real loss to humanity, to be sure). Turgent is in jail awaiting trial for
violating the "Slash Crashes Act". This bill was enacted in 1999 after a
Senator's gigabyte cache of pornography was destroyed by a Windows crash.
Will Silicon Valley Become A Ghost Town?

Back in the 80s, businessmen hoped that computers would usher in a
paperless office. Now in the 00s, businessmen are hoping that paper will
usher in a computerless office. "We've lost more productivity this last
decade to shoddy software," explained Mr. Lou Dight, the author of the
bestselling book, "The Dotless Revolution". "By getting rid of computers
and their infernal crashes, bluescreens, and worst of all, Solitaire, the
US gross domestic product will soar by 20% over the next decade. It's time
to banish Microsoft crapware from our corporate offices."

Lou Dight is the champion of a new trend in corporate America towards the
return of pen-and-paper, solar calculators, old IBM typewriters, and even
slide rules. If "dotcom" was the buzzword of the 90s, "dotless" is the
buzzword of the 21st Century.
The new "I Love You" virus is not the work of some snot-nosed acne-laced
teenager working from a basement in the Phillipines. It's actually part of
a conspiracy concocted by the unholy alliance of Microsoft and several
well-known and well-despised spammers.

You'll notice that the ILOVEYOU, Melissa, and Tuxissa strains all extract
email addresses from the victim's system. This is a gold mine for
spammers, who are able to use these viruses to harvest active email
addresses for them. Everytime ILOVEYOU, for instance, propogates, it keeps
track of all the email addresses it has been sent to, so that when it
finally boomerangs back to a spammer, they have a nice convenient list of
addresses to send "laser printer toner" and "get rich quick!"
advertisements to.

   -- Bob Smith (not his real code-name), in a speech given at the
      First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy Convention (ConConCon),
      "the largest ever gathering of conspiracy theorists east of the
      Mississippi."
Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell

HELL, MICHIGAN -- A group of long-time Linux zealots and newbie haters
have thrown together a new Linux distro called Hellix that is so
user-hostile, so anti-newbie, so cryptic, and so old-fashioned that it
actually makes MS-DOS look like a real operating system. Said the founder
of the project, "I'm sick and tired of the Windowsification of the Linux
desktop in a fruitless attempt to make the system more appealing to
newbies, PHBs, and MCSEs. Linux has always been for nerds only, and we
want to make sure it stays that way!"

One of the other Bastard Distributors From Hell explained, "In the last
five years think of all the hacking effort spent on Linux... and for what?
We have nothing to show for it but half-finished Windows-like desktops, vi
dancing paperclips, and graphical front-ends to configuration files. Real
nerds use text files for configuration, darnit, and they like it! It's
time to take a stand against the hordes of newbies that are polluting our
exclusive operating system."

One Anonymous Coward said, "This is so cool... It's just like Unix back in
the good old days of the 70's when men were men and the only intuitive
interface was still the nipple."
Brief History Of Linux (#1)
Re-Inventing the Wheel

Our journey through the history of Linux begins ca. 28000 B.C. when a
large all-powerful company called MoogaSoft monopolized the wheel-making
industry. As founder of the company, Billga Googagates (rumored to be the
distant ancestor of Bill Gates) was the wealthiest man in the known world,
owning several large rock huts, an extravagant collection of artwork (cave
paintings), and a whole army of servants and soldiers.

MoogaSoft's unfair business practices were irritating, but users were
unable to do anything about them, lest they be clubbed to death by
MoogaSoft's army. Nevertheless, one small group of hobbyists finally got
fed up and starting hacking their own wheels out of solid rock. Their
spirit of cooperation led to better and better wheels that eventually
outperformed MoogaSoft offerings.

MoogaSoft tried desperately to stop the hobbyists -- as shown by the
recently unearthed "Ooga! Document" -- but failed. Ironically, Billga
Googagates was killed shortly afterwards when one his own 900-pound wheels
crushed him.
Brief History Of Linux (#8)
Let's all holler for Hollerith

In 1890 the US Congress wanted to extend the census to collect exhaustive
demographic information on each citizen that could be resold to marketing
companies to help pay for the newly installed gold-plated toilets on
Capitol Hill. Experts estimated that the 1890 Census wouldn't be completed
until 1900.  It was hoped that an electronic tabulating machine using
punchcards designed by Herman Hollerith would speed up the process.

It didn't quite work out that way. An infestation of termites ate their
way through the wooden base of Hollerith's machines, and then a wave of
insects devoured several stacks of punchcards.  Also, some Hollerith
models had the propensity to crash at the drop of a hat... literally. In
one instance, the operator dropped his hat and when he reached down to
pick it up, he bumped the machine, causing it to flip over and crash.

These flaws meant that the census was delayed for several years. However,
the system was, in the words of one newspaper reporter, "good enough for
government work", a guiding principle that lives on to this very day and
explains the government's insistence on using Windows-based PCs.
Brief History Of Linux (#9)
Edison's most important invention

One of Thomas Edison's most profound inventions was that of patent
litigation. Edison used his many patents on motion pictures to monopolize
the motion picture industry. One could argue that Edison was an early
pioneer for the business tactics employed by Microsoft and the MPAA.

Indeed, Edison's company, the Motion Picture Patent Company (MPPC), formed
in 1908, bears a striking resemblance to the modern-day Motion Picture
Association of America (MPAA). Similar initials, different people, same
evil. The MPCC, with the help of hired thugs, ensured that all motion
picture producers paid tribute to Edison and played by his rules. The
MPAA, with the help of hired lawyers, ensures that all motion picture
producers pay tribute and play by their rules.

Ironically, filmmakers that found themselves facing Edison patent
litigation (or worse) fled to Texas, California, and Mexico. Those same
filmmakers outlasted Edison's monopoly and eventually banded together to
form the MPAA! History has a tendency to repeat itself; so it seems likely
that today's DVD lawsuit victims may well come to power in the future --
and soon become the evil establishment, thus completing another cycle.
Brief History Of Linux (#11)
Birth of Gates and the Anti-Gates

October 28, 1955 saw the birth of William H. Gates, who would rise above
his humble beginnings as the son of Seattle's most powerful millionaire
lawyer and become the World's Richest Man(tm). A classic American
rags-to-riches story (with "rags" referring to the dollar bills that the
Gates family used for toilet paper), Bill Gates is now regarded as the
world's most respected businessman by millions of clueless people that
have obviously never touched a Windows machine.

Nature is all about balance. The birth of Gates in 1955 tipped the cosmic
scales toward evil, but the birth of Linus Torvalds in 1969 finally
balanced them out. Linus' destiny as the savior of Unix and the slayer of
money-breathing Redmond dragons was sealed when, just mere hours after his
birth, the Unix epoch began January 1st, 1970. While the baseline for Unix
timekeeping might be arbitrary, we here at Humorix like to thank the its
proximity of Linus' birth is no coincidence.
Brief History Of Linux (#12)
A note from Bill Gates' second grade teacher:

Billy has been having some trouble behaving in class lately... Last Monday
he horded all of the crayons and refused to share, saying that he needed
all 160 colors to maximize his 'innovation'. He then proceeded to sell
little pieces of paper ("End-User License Agreement for Crayons" he called
them) granting his classmates the 'non-transferable right' to use the
crayons on a limited time basis in exchange for their lunch money...

When I tried to stop Billy, he kept harping about his right to innovate
and how my interference violated basic notions of free-market capitalism.
"Holding a monopoly is not illegal," he rebutted. I chastised him for
talking back, and then I took away the box of crayons so others could
share them... angrily, he then pointed to a drawing of his hanging on the
wall and yelled, "That's my picture! You don't have the right to present
my copyrighted material in a public exhibition without my permission!
You're pirating my intellectual property. Pirate! Pirate! Pirate!"

I developed a headache that day that even the maximum dosage of Aspirin
wasn't able to handle. And then on Tuesday, he conned several students out
of their milk money by convincing them to play three-card Monty...
Brief History Of Linux (#13)
Wanted: Eunuchs programmers

Everything you know about the creation of the Unix operating system is
wrong. We have uncovered the truth: Unix was a conspiracy hatched by
Ritchie and Thompson to thwart the AT&T monopoly that they worked for. The
system, code-named EUNUCHS (Electronic UNtrustworthy User-Condemning
Horrible System), was horribly conceived, just as they had planned.

The OS, quickly renamed to a more respectable "Unix", was adopted first by
Ma Bell's Patent Department and then by the rest of the monopoly. AT&T saw
an inexpensive, multi-user, portable operating system that it had all
rights to; the authors, however, saw a horrible, multi-crashing system
that the Evil Ma Bell Empire would become hopelessly dependent on. AT&T
would go bankrupt trying to maintain the system and eventually collapse.

That didn't happen. Ritchie and Thompson were too talented to create a
crappy operating system; no matter how hard they tried the system was too
good. Their last ditch effort to sabotage the system by recoding it
obfuscated C was unsuccessful. Before long Unix spread outside of Bell
Labs and their conspiracy collapsed.
Brief History Of Linux (#14)
Military Intelligence: Not an oxymoron in 1969

It was the Department Of Defense that commissioned the ARPANET in 1969, a
rare example of the US military breaking away from its official motto,
"The Leading Edge Of Yesterday's Technology(tm)".

In the years leading up to 1969, packet switching technology had evolved
enough to make the ARPANET possible. Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
received the ARPA contract in 1968 for packet switching "Interface Message
Processors". US Senator Edward Kennedy, always on the ball, sent a
telegram to BBN praising them for their non-denominational "Interfaith"
Message Processors, an act unsurpassed by elected representatives until Al
Gore invented the Internet years later.

While ARPANET started with only four nodes in 1969, it evolved rapidly.
Email was first used in 1971; by 1975 the first mailing list, MsgGroup,
was created by Steve Walker when he sent a "First post!"  messages to it.
In 1979 all productive use of ARPANET ceased when USENET and the first MUD
were created. In 1983, when the network surpassed 1,000 hosts, a study
showed that 90.4% of all traffic was devoted to email and USENET flame wars.
Brief History Of Linux (#18)
The rise and rise of the Microsoft Empire

The DOS and Windows releases kept coming, and much to everyone's surprise,
Microsoft became more and more successful. This brought much frustration
to computer experts who kept predicting the demise of Microsoft and the
rise of Macintosh, Unix, and OS/2.

Nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft, which was the prime reason
that DOS and Windows prevailed. Oh, and DOS had better games as well,
which we all know is the most important feature an OS can have.

In 1986 Microsoft's continued success prompted the company to undergo a
wildly successful IPO. Afterwards, Microsoft and Chairman Bill had
accumulated enough money to acquire small countries without missing a
step, but all that money couldn't buy quality software. Gates could,
however, buy enough marketing and hype to keep MS-DOS (Maybe Some Day an
Operating System) and Windows (Will Install Needless Data On While System)
as the dominant platforms, so quality didn't matter. This fact was
demonstrated in Microsoft's short-lived slogan from 1988, "At Microsoft,
quality is job 1.1".
Brief History Of Linux (#22)

RMS had a horrible, terrible dream set in 2020 in which all of society was
held captive by copyright law. In particular, everyone's brain waves were
monitored by the US Dept. of Copyrights. If your thoughts referenced a
copyrighted idea, you had to pay a royalty. To make it worse, a handful of
corporations held fully 99.9% of all intellectual property rights.

Coincidentally, Bill Gates experienced a similar dream that same night. To
him, however, it was not a horrible, terrible nightmare, but a wonderful
utopian vision. The thought of lemmings... er, customers paying a royalty
everytime they hummed a copyrighted song in their head or remembered a
passage in a book was simply too marvelous for the budding monopolist.

RMS, waking up from his nightmare, vowed to fight the oncoming Copyright
Nightmare. The GNU Project was born. His plan called for a kernel,
compiler, editor, and other tools. Unfortunately, RMS became bogged down
with Emacs that the kernel, HURD, was shoved on the back burner. Built
with LISP (Lots of Incomprehensible Statements with Parentheses), Emacs
became bloated in a way no non-Microsoft program ever has. Indeed, for a
short while RMS pretended that Emacs really was the GNU OS kernel.
Brief History Of Linux (#25)

By the mid-1990's the Linux community was burgeoning as countless geeks
fled Redmond monopolistic oppression, Armonk cluelessness, and Cupertino
click-and-drool reality distortion fields. By late 1991 there was an
informal Linux User Group in Finland, although its primary focus was Linux
advocacy, not drinking beer and telling Microsoft jokes as most do today.

Kernel development continued at a steady clip, with more and more people
joining in and hoping that their patches would be accepted by the
Benevolent Dictator himself. To have a patch accepted by Linus was like
winning the Nobel Prize, but to face rejection was like being rejected
from Clown College. The reputation game certainly sparked some flame wars.

One of the most memorable crisis was over the behavior of the delete and
backspace keys. A certain faction of hackers wanted the Backspace key to
actually backspace and the Delete key to actually delete. Linus wasn't too
keen on the proposed changes; "It Works For Me(tm)" is all he said. Some
observers now think Linus was pulling rank to get back at the unknown
hacker who managed to slip a patch by him that replaced the "Kernel panic"
error with "Kernel panic: Linus probably fscked it all up again".
Brief History Of Linux (#26)

On the surface, Transmeta was a secretive startup that hired Linus
Torvalds in 1996 as their Alpha Geek to help develop some kind of
microprocessor. Linus, everyone found out later, was actually hired as
part of a low-budget yet high-yield publicity stunt. While other dotcoms
were burning millions on glitzy marketing campaigns nobody remembers and
Superbowl ads displayed while jocks went to the bathroom, Transmeta was
spending only pocket change on marketing. Most of that pocket change went
towards hosting the Transmeta website (the one that wasn't there yet)
which, incidentally, contained more original content and received more
visitors than the typical dotcom portal.

Microsoft relies on vaporware and certain ahem stipends given to
journalists in order to generate buzz and hype for new products, but
Transmeta only needed Non-Disclosure Agreements and the Personality Cult
of Linus to build up its buzz. When the secret was finally unveiled, the
Slashdot crowd was all excited about low-power mobile processors and
code-morphing algorithms -- for a couple days. Then everyone yawned and
went back to playing Quake. It's still not entirely clear when Transmeta
is actually supposed to start selling something.
Brief History Of Linux (#27)

Microsoft's position as the 5,000 pound gorilla of the computer industry
didn't change during the 1990's. Indeed, this gorilla got even more
bloated with every passing Windows release. Bill Gates' business strategy
was simple:

1. Pre-announce vaporous product.
2. Hire monkeys (low-paid temps) to cruft something together in VB
3. It it compiles, ship it.
4. Launch marketing campaign for new product showcasing MS "innovation".
5. Repeat (GOTO 1).

With such a plan Microsoft couldn't fail. That is, unless some external
force popped up and ruined everything. Such as Linux and the Internet
perhaps. Both of these developments were well-known to Bill Gates in the
early and mid 1990's (a company as large as Microsoft can afford a decent
spy network, after all). He just considered both to be mere fads that
would go away when Microsoft announced some new innovation, like PDAs --
Personal Desktop Agents (i.e. Bob and Clippit).
Brief History Of Linux (#28)
Free, Open, Libre, Whatever Software

Eric S. Raymond's now famous paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", set
the stage for the lucrative business of giving software away. In CatB, ESR
likened the software industry to an anarchistic bazaar, with each vendor
looking out for himself, trying to hoodwink customers and fellow vendors.
The produce vendor (i.e. Apple), for instance, felt no need to cooperate
with the crystal-ball seller (Oracle) or the con artist hocking miracle
drugs (Microsoft). Each kept their property and trade secrets to
themselves, hoping to gain an edge and make money fast. "With enough
eyeballs, all bug-ridden software programs are marketable," ESR observed.

ESR contrasted the "caveat emptor" Bazaar to an idealistic Cathedral model
used by free software developers. European cathedrals of medieval days
were built block-by-block with extensive volunteer manpower from the
surrounding community. Such projects were "open" in the sense that
everybody could see their progress, and interested people could wander
inside and offer comments or praise about construction methods. "Those
medieval cathedrals are still standing," ESR mused. "But bazaars built in
the 14th Century are long gone, a victim of their inferior nature."
Anonymous Noncoward writes, "For my Economics 101 class, I have to pretend
to be Bill Gates and write an editorial defending Microsoft against
anti-trust charges, citing economic principles. To complete such an
assignment violates every moral fiber of my body. What should I do?"

The Oracle responds: Well, it seems that you have to make a decision among
two choices. You can blow off the assignment, thus forcing you to fail
EC101, lowering your GPA below the required minimum to keep your
scholarship, causing you to drop out of college and work at McDonalds all
your life. Or you can write a paper that's positive towards Microsoft and
make an 'A'. This seems like a no-brainer to me; I'd choose the first
option without hesitation -- a burger flipper has far more dignity and
self-respect than somebody who utters a positive statement about the Evil
Empire.
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you won't waste your valuable time at a vendine machine.

EyeOpener(tm): You'll Never Waste Another Millisecond Ever Again.
Look Out! It's Microsoft Outlook

An old maxim in the Unix community states, "All programs expand until they
can read mail... except Microsoft Outlook." Well, that's no longer true.
By taking advantage of loopholes in several undocumented APIs, a team of
geeks were able to transform Outlook from a virus-delivery system into an
actual mail client.

"It was quite a feat to accomplish this," said one of the geeks. "I mean,
the rat's nest that is the Windows API can be used to frighten small
children... or adults. And the frequency by which Outlook exploits are
discovered is directly proportional to the number of times Bill Gates uses
the word 'innovation'. But this is the first time somebody has discovered
a beneficial exploit."

Microsoft has vowed to release a patch to fix the uncovered security
flaws. "We simply cannot tolerate unauthorized reverse engineering and
hacking of our innovative solutions. Our Security Response Team will pull
an all-nighter to eliminate these known issues."
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."
UNobfuscated Perl Code Contest

The Perl Gazette has announced the winners in the First Annual Unobfuscated
Perl Code Contest. First place went to Edwin Fuller, who submitted this
unobfuscated program:

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  print "Hello world!\n";

"This was definitely a challenging contest," said an ecstatic Edwin
Fuller. "I've never written a Perl program before that didn't have
hundreds of qw( $ @ % & * | ? / \ ! # ~ ) symbols. I really had to summon
all of my programming skills to produce an unobfuscated program."

...The second place winner, Mrs. Sea Pearl, submitted the following code:

  #!/usr/bin/perl
  use strict;
  # Do nothing, successfully
  exit(0);
This nation is sinking into the quicksand of the Paperwork Age, a
postmodern world in which judges issue meta-injuctions against other
judges who issue injuctions against lawyers who file lawsuits every 3.2
minutes. It's an age where lawyers design ballots forms and then proceed
to argue over how to count them.

The United States has bluescreened. A fatal exception error occured on
Election Night, and now all of our unsaved work has been lost.

  -- Jon Splatz, Humorix's Pundit and Social Commentator, ranting about
     the 2000 US Presidential Election From Hell and the dreaded
     "Lawyerclysm"
World Domination, One CPU Cycle At A Time

Forget about searching for alien signals or prime numbers. The real
distributed computing application is "Domination@World", a program to advocate
Linux and Apache to every website in the world that uses Windows and IIS.

The goal of the project is to probe every IP number to determine what kind of
platform each Net-connected machine is running. "That's a tall order... we
need lots of computers running our Domination@World clients to help probe
every nook and cranny of the Net," explained Mr. Zell Litt, the project head.

After the probing is complete, the second phase calls for the data to be
cross-referenced with the InterNIC whois database. "This way we'll have the
names, addresses, and phone numbers for every Windows-using system
administrator on the planet," Zell gloated. "That's when the fun begins."

The "fun" part involves LART (Linux Advocacy & Re-education Training), a plan
for extreme advocacy. As part of LART, each Linux User Group will receive a
list of the Windows-using weenies in their region. The LUG will then be able
to employ various advocacy techniques, ranging from a soft-sell approach
(sending the target a free Linux CD in the mail) all the way to "LARTcon 5"
(cracking into their system and forcibly installing Linux).
The Socioeconomic Group Formerly Known As "Geeks"

Nobody wants to be called a "geek" anymore. The label, once worn proudly by
members of the tech community as a symbol of their separation from mainstream
society, is now suddenly out of style.

It all started last week when some clueless PR firm released a list of the
"Top 100 Geeks", including such anti-geeks as Bill Gates, Janet Reno, Paul
Allen, and Jeff "One-Click" Bezos. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported
that businessmen in South Korea are striving for the "Geek Chic" image by
dressing like Bill Gates.

Now that the Chief Bloatware Architect has been identified as a "geek",
everybody else has bailed ship. Still undecided on a new label, the community
now calls itself the S.E.G.K.A.G. (SocioEconomic Group formerly Known As
Geeks).

"I cannot tolerate belonging to the same subculture as Bill Gates!" explained
one former geek. "If that manifestation of evil is called a 'geek', then so be
it. I am now officially a nerd."
Microsoft Fights Linux -- By Contributing Kernel Patches

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... and then destory 'em. That seems to be the
new Microsoft strategy for dealing with Linux. Instead of fighting a FUD or
patent war, Microsoft operatives are doing something totally out of character:
they are contributing patches for the Linux kernel and other programs.

Don't worry, Microsoft is still evil. It's all part of a massive denial of
service attack against Linus Torvalds designed to bring kernel development to
a standstill. By sending over 10,000 patches per minute by email to Linus and
other top kernel hackers, Microsoft has exposed Linux's Achilles heel.

"I can't believe this is happening!" one stressed-out kernel hacker said at a
press conference on IRC. "If this goes on, we may have to conduct kernel
development over some other network protocol, like avian carriers... Aw crap,
there's smoke coming from my email server! Ahh... it can't handle the load!"
At this point the developer cut off and we haven't heard from him since.

At first Linus was unsure where the deluge of patches was coming from. But
when he saw one patch to replace kernel panics with bluescreens, the source
was pretty obvious. "Oh, and the fact that all of the patches are covered by
Microsoft's GPL [Grossly Private License] was a dead giveaway, too,"
Official National Anthem Of The Geek Paradise Of Humorixia
(first verse)

I got this bark letter the other day,
"Stop using our trademark or you will pay".

I said "Ha" and threw it in the trash,
Oh but then those lawyers got very rash,

Lawsuits, subpoenas, the accusations came,
All their attacks were truly lame,

They said, "You've committed quite a sin!"
"You're going to get five to ten!"

   Kill all the lawyers!
   Oh, kill all the lawyers!
   Let's "kill -9 lawyers" now!
Official National Anthem Of The Geek Paradise Of Humorixia
(second verse, abridged)

Patents, copyrights, and trademarks,
Those evil lawyers are worse than sharks.

We can't escape their vice-like grip,
We're slaves to their class-action whip,

We all must fight this evil abomination,
Join together and strive for world domination!

Tell those bloodsucking ticks, "See ya!"
And move on over to Humor-ix-ia!

   Kill all the lawyers!
   Oh, kill all the lawyers!
   Let's "kill -9 lawyers" now!
   Let's "kill -9 lawyers" now!

...Humorixia! There is no conspiracy!
It BASICally Sucks

Older versions of MS-DOS came with bundled programming languages including
GW-BASIC and QBasic. Windows XP continues the Microsoft tradition of
ruining budding programmers with horrible programming tools by including
XPBasic, an interpreted language in which all of the customary BASIC
keywords have been replaced with advertising slogans.

Nike has paid a handsome amount to Microsoft for "keyword rights". Instead
of saying PRINT "HELLO WORLD", XPBasic programmers must now type JUST DO
IT "HELLO WORLD". Other common XPBasic statements include WHERE DO YOU
WANT TO GOTO 20 TODAY? and DIM ARRAY(1 TO 20) AS INTEGER BROUGHT TO YOU BY
VERIZON WIRELESS.

  -- from Humorix's review of Windows XP (eXceptionally Pathetic)
Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Linus Torvalds

SILLYCON VALLEY -- Nearly 130 former system administrators have filed suit
against Linus Torvalds in which they claim Linux cost them their jobs.
Recently several companies migrated from Windows to Linux, increasing
their productivity but decreasing the need for a large staff of tech
workers, prompting a wave of layoffs.

"The good old days when it required five full-time system administrators
to maintain a Microsoft Exchange server are history, all because of that
cancer known as Linux," explained the lead litigant in the lawsuit.

"It all started two years ago when some pimply-faced idiot down in
Accounting decided to smuggle in a Linux box to automate some of his work.
Before long every tech-savvy person in Accounting, Billing, and Sales was
secretly using Linux."

"That's when the troubles started. Productivity soared. Downtime was
limited to an average of three milliseconds per day. Macro viruses ceased
to spread. It was horrible! The entire IT staff was replaced by one
part-time bearded wonder, who was able to administrate the entire Linux
network! Due to the layoffs, I'm now sitting in a homeless shelter with
little hope to find work. Nobody wants to hire an MCSE anymore!"
Ted Turner Unveils All-Commercial Channel

For years, the pundits have predicted that the Web would become more like
television. However, media tycoon Ted Turner is pursuing the exact
opposite. Taking a cue from pop-under advertisements, Flash ads,
get-rich-quick spam emails, viral marketing, and "Gator" programs, Turner
has unveiled "TCC", the Turner Commercial Channel, for cable TV.

TCC will feature "shows" like "Best Commercials That You've Seen A Million
Times", "Life Is A Slogan, Just Buy It", and "Name That Jingle". These
shows will occupy about 30% of the screen, while several rows of marquees
at the bottom will flash various advertising messages. An animated "TCC"
watermark will float around the screen while corporate logos are flashed
randomly in the corners.

Meanwhile, "pop-up ads" will randomly appear that obscure the other ads.
These pop-ups will sometimes be further obscured by meta-pop-ups.
Likewise, corporate jingles will play in the background, interfering with
other jingles and advertising sounds.
As Easy As /usr/src/linux

Wiping the sweat from his brow, the contestant diligently continues to
recite, "'i' equals 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' semicolon newline 'p' equals
ampersand 'task' bracket 'NR' underscore 'TASKS' close-bracket semicolon
newline while parens minus minus 'i' parens brace if parens star minus..."

Bzzzt! One of the judges says, "You missed an exclamation point. Ten point
penalty for that error."  The contestant realizes it's all over. He had
spent 500 hours memorizing the source code to the Linux 0.01 kernel and
then blew it all by forgetting one stupid ASCII character in sched.c.

Welcome to the First Annual Linux Kernel Memorization Contest in New
Haven, Connecticut, where the stakes are high and the frustration is
simply unbearable. Linuxer longhairs from all over the globe have
descended on the Offramp Motel to show off their memorization skills in
front of a crowd of... dozens.

"Those math freaks can memorize PI and other irrational constants all they
want. I'll stick with the Linux 0.01 kernel source code thank you very
much," said Bob Notmyrealname, the organizer of the event. %
The Humorix Oracle explains how to get a job at a major corporation:

1. Find an exploit in Microsoft IIS or another buggy Microsoft product to
   which large corporations rarely apply security patches.
2. Create a virus or worm that takes advantage of this exploit and then
   propogates itself by selecting IP numbers at random and then trying to
   infect those machines.
3. Keep an eye on your own website's server logs. When your virus starts
   propogating, your server will be hit with thousands of attacks from
   other infected systems trying to spread the virus to your machine.
4. Make a list of the IP numbers of all of the infected machines.
5. Perform a reverse DNS lookup on these IP numbers.
6. Make a note of all of the Fortune 500 companies that appear on the list
   of infected domains.
7. Send your resume to these companies and request an interview for a
   system administrator position. These companies are hiring -- whether
   they realize it or not.
8. Use your new salary to hire a good defense lawyer when the FBI comes
   knocking.
8GB Ought To Be Enough For Anybody

REDMOND, WA -- In a shocking move, Microsoft has revealed that the new
Xbox console will only contain an 8 gigabyte hard drive. This implies that
the machines will use a version of the Windows operating system that fits
within only 8GB. Squeezing Windows into such a small footprint must
certainly be one of the greatest technological achievements ever crafted
by Microsoft's Research & Assimilation Department.

"I can't believe it," said one industry observer who always happens to
show up when this Humorix reporter needs to quote somebody. "To think that
they were able to strip away the easter egg flight simulators, the
multi-gigabyte yet content-free Help files, and all of the other crap that
comes bundled with Windows is simply remarkable. I don't even want to
think about all of the manpower, blood, sweat, and tears required to
distill Windows into only 8 gigabytes of bare essentials. Wow!"

Hard drive manufacturers are deeply disturbed over the news. Explained one
PR flack at Eastern Analog, "We depend on Microsoft to continually produce
bloated software that becomes larger and larger with each passing day. We
can't sell huge 100GB drives if Microsoft Windows only occupies a measly 8
gigs! They will never buy a new drive if Microsoft doesn't force them!"
Bill Gates Receives Slap On Wrist; Carpal Tunnel Flares Up

The phrase "slap on the wrist" usually signifies an extremely minor
punishment received for a crime. In Bill Gates' case, the punishment set
forth in the tentative settlement with the Department Of Justice hasn't
been quite so minor. After receiving a slap on the wrist from the DOJ,
Bill Gates' is now suffering from a bad case of carpal tunnel syndrome.

"Mr. Gates was slapped on the left wrist earlier today by a DOJ lawyer,"
said the chief surgeon of the mini-hospital enclosed within the Gates
Mansion. "Now he can't move that hand without extreme pain. It's obvious
that years of sitting in front of a computer plotting world domination has
caused his hands and nerves to become fragile and vulnerable to even the
slightest touch."

The Department of Justice proclaimed that the incident has vindicated
their actions. Explained the lawyer who delivered the punishment, "We've
been accused of selling out to Microsoft. We've been criticized for giving
up even though we've already won the game. But that's all wrong. It's
quite clear that the slap-on-the-wrist punishment has been anything but a
slap on the wrist. We won this case and Microsoft lost. So there!"
Press Release -- For Immediate Release
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA

...Virtually all version of Linux (and Unix) contain a security hole that
allows unauthorized users to gain complete control over the machine. By
simply typing "root" at the login prompt and supplying a password from a
limited number of possibilities, a malicious user can easily gain
administrator privileges. This hole can be breached in seconds with only a
dozen or so keystrokes...

We suspect this issue has been known to Red Hat and other Linux
distributors for years and they have refused to acknowlege its existence
or supply a patch preventing users from exploiting the "root" login
loophole...

By ignoring the problem, the Linux community has proven that installing
Linux is a dangerous proposition that could get you fired. We would like
to point out that Windows XP does not suffer from this gaping hole...
Tests conducted by both Ziff-Davis and Mindcraft prove that Windows XP is
indeed the most secure operating system ever produced...
NEW YORK -- Publishers from all across the country met this week at the
first annual Book Publishers Assocation of America (BPAA) meeting. Many of
the booths on the showroom floor were devoted to the single most important
issue facing the publishing industry: fighting copyright violations. From
"End Reader License Agreements" to age-decaying ink, the anti-copying
market has exploded into a multi-million dollar enterprise.

"How can authors and publishers hope to make ends meet when the country is
rapidly filling with evil libraries that distribute our products for free
to the general public?" asked the chairman of the BPAA during his keynote
address. "That blasted Andrew Carnegie is spending all kinds of his own
ill-gotten money to open libraries in cities nationwide. He calls it
charity. I call it anti-competitive business practices hoping to bankrupt
the entire publishing industry. We must fight these anti-profit,
pro-copying librarians and put an end to this scourge!"

  -- from the February 4, 1895 edition of the New York Democrat-Republican
Microsoft Employees Go On Strike, Demand Reduced Salaries

REDMOND, WA -- Several hundred programmers walked off their jobs at
Microsoft Headquarters on Friday to protest their shoddy public image. "My
friends all think I'm a servant of Satan because I get my paycheck from
Microsoft," explained Microserf Eric Eshleman. "If I didn't make so much
money, I'd have more of a backbone to shout 'No!' when my supervisor
demands that I include some new virus-delivery feature in Outlook."

The striking programmers demand salary cuts, less benefits, and zero stock
options. Their labor union, the Brotherhood Of Programmers Sick Of Being
Called Evil, hopes to get some face time with Microsoft executives and
touch base on reaching a proactive agreement leveraging the latest
innovatives in PR to produce a synergistic worldwide buzzword-enhanced
advertising campaign that showcases Microsoft associates as enlightened
engineers instead of morally bankrupt bastards bent on world domination.

Earlier today, about 150 strikers formed a picket line near the front
entrance to Bill Gates' mansion. They carried signs saying "Hell no we're
not going to Hell", "I want to be able to sleep at night", "Why does the
public hate us so much?" and "I'm fed up with ethical dilemmas".
Insurance Company To Offer Microsoft Audit Protection Plans

LOUDON, TENNESSEE -- Companies, organizations, and government agencies all
across the world are facing a disaster of epic proportions: the impending
invasion of the Microsoft Intellectual Property Police. The counter this
menace, Loydds of Loudon, Tennessee, the prestigious insurance firm, has
started to offer "Audit Insurance" to protect against unexpected "random"
audits from everybody's favorite software monopoly.

"We've received numerous inquiries about this type of protection," company
co-founder Bob Loydds said. "Businessmen are no longer worried about
earthquakes, fires, or other natural disasters. The big fear of the 21st
Century comes from Redmond."

The insurance firm is currently in negotiations with Red Hat to form the
"Red Berets", an elite squad of Linux geeks trained to rapidly install
Linux and hide all traces of Windows on every computer within an
organization. During a Defcon 95 emergency, Loydds will airlift the
squadron and a crate of Linux CDs to any position in the country within
hours. The Red Berets will wipe away all vestiges of Microsoft software so
that when the auditors show up they won't have anything to audit.
Severe Acronym Shortage Cripples Computer Industry

SILICON VALLEY, CALIFORNIA (SVC) -- According to a recent study by the
Blartner Group, 99.5% of all possible five letter combinations have
already been appropriated for computer industry acronyms. The impending
shortage of 5LC's is casting a dark shadow over the industry, which relies
heavily on short, easy-to-remember acronyms for everything.

"Acronym namespace collisions (ANCs) are increasing at a fantastic rate
and threaten the very fabric of the computing world," explained one ZD
pundit. "For example, when somebody talks about XP, I don't know whether
they mean eXtreme Programming or Microsoft's eXceptionally Pathetic
operating system. We need to find a solution now or chaos will result."

Leaders of several SVC companies have floated the idea of an
"industry-wide acronym conservation protocol" (IWACP -- one of the few
5LCs not already appropriated). Explained Bob Smith, CTO of IBM, "If
companies would voluntarily limit the creation of new acronyms while
recycling outdated names, we could reduce much of the pollution within the
acronym namespace ourselves. The last thing we want is for Congress to get
involved and try to impose a solution for this SAS (Severe Acronym
Shortage) that would likely only create many new acronyms in the process."
Solving The Virus Problem Once And For All

System administrators across the globe have tried installing anti-virus
software. They've tried lecturing employees not to open unsolicited email
attachments. They've tried installing firewalls and the latest security
patches. But even with these precautions, email viruses continue to rank
third only to Solitaire and the Blue Screen Of Death in the amount of lost
productivity they cause. Meanwhile, Microsoft Exchange and LookOut! remain
as the number one virus delivery products on the market today.

But maybe not for much longer. A group of disgruntled administrators have
teamed up to produce and sell a brand new way to fight viruses, one that
attacks the root of the problem: stupid users.

Salivating Dogs, Inc. of Ohio has unveiled the "Clue Delivery System"
(CDS), a small device that plugs into the back of a standard PC keyboard
and delivers a mild electric shock whenever the luser does something
stupid. The device is triggered by a Windows program that detects when the
luser attempts to open an unsolicited email attachment or perform another
equally dangerous virus-friendly action.
Mass Exodus From Hollywood

During the past week, over 150 Hollywood actors, musicians, writers,
directors, and key grips have quit their day jobs and moved to the Midwest
to engage in quieter occupations such as gardening or accounting. All of
the these people cite piracy as the reason for giving up their careers.

"I simply can't sit by and let my hard work be stolen by some snot nosed
punk over the Internet," explained millionaire movie director Steve
Bergospiel. "There's absolutely no incentive to create movies if they're
going to be transmitted at the speed of light by thousands of infringers.
Such criminal acts personally cost me hundreds -- no, thousands -- of
dollars. I can't take that kind of fear and abuse anymore."

MPAA President Pei Pervue considers the exodus to be proof that Hollywood
is waking up to the fact that they are being "held hostage" by copyright
infringers. "Without copyright protection and government-backed monopolies
on intellectual property, these's absolutely no reason to engage in the
creative process. Now the Internet, with its click-and-pirate technology,
makes it easy for anybody to flout the law and become a copyright
terrorist. With the scales tipped so much in favor of criminals, it's no
wonder some of Hollywood's elite have thrown in the towel. What a shame."
A man is crawling through the Sahara desert when he is approached by another
man riding on a camel.  When the rider gets close enough, the crawling man
whispers through his sun-parched lips, "Water... please... can you give...
water..."
        "I'm sorry," replies the man on the camel, "I don't have any water
with me.  But I'd be delighted to sell you a necktie."
        "Tie?" whispers the man.  "I need *water*."
        "They're only four dollars apiece."
        "I need *water*."
        "Okay, okay, say two for seven dollars."
        "Please!  I need *water*!", says the man.
        "I don't have any water, all I have are ties," replies the salesman,
and he heads off into the distance.
        The man, losing track of time, crawls for what seems like days.
Finally, nearly dead, sun-blind and with his skin peeling and blistering, he
sees a restaurant in the distance.  Summoning the last of his strength he
staggers up to the door and confronts the head waiter.
        "Water... can I get... water," the dying man manages to stammer.
        "I'm sorry, sir, ties required."
A man would still do something out of sheer perversity - he would create
destruction and chaos - just to gain his point... and if all this could in
turn be analyzed and prevented by predicting that it would occur, then man
would deliberately go mad to prove his point.
                -- Feodor Dostoevsky, "Notes From the Underground"
A person who has nothing looks at all there is and wants something.
A person who has something looks at all there is and wants all the rest.
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
Adam was but human--this explains it all.  He did not want the apple for the
apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden.  The mistake was in
not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
After all, it is only the mediocre who are always at their best.
                -- Jean Giraudoux
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
All God's children are not beautiful.  Most of God's children are, in fact,
barely presentable.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
All his life he has looked away... to the horizon, to the sky,
to the future.  Never his mind on where he was, on what he was doing.
                -- Yoda
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance.
All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power.
                -- Ashleigh Brilliant
All I've got left on the list of desirable vocations is heiress to the
throne of any country in Western Europe and Laurie Anderson.  "Be
practical", was the choral reply from the dinner table.  Well, Laurie
Anderson is already Laurie Anderson, but I read an article in Harpers
that said there were eleven countries, in the world this is I think,
that have queens as sovereign rulers.  That's probably my best shot.
All men have the right to wait in line.
All men profess honesty as long as they can.  To believe all men honest
would be folly.  To believe none so is something worse.
                -- John Quincy Adams
All most people want is a little more than they'll ever get.
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 animals except man know that the principal business of life is
to enjoy it.
All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.
                -- Susan Sontag
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire of every organism
to live beyond its income.
                -- Samuel Butler, "Notebooks"
All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
                -- Sean O'Casey
All we know is the phenomenon: we spend our time sending messages to each
other, talking and trying to listen at the same time, exchanging information.
This seems to be our most urgent biological function; it is what we do with
our lives."
                -- Lewis Thomas, "The Lives of a Cell"
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"
And I will do all these good works, and I will do them for free!
My only reward will be a tombstone that says "Here lies Gomez Addams --
he was good for nothing."
                -- Jack Sharkey, The Addams Family
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
                -- Leo Rosten, on W.C. Fields
Convention is the ruler of all.
                -- Pindar
Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for
peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being
ahead of your time when people finally realize you were right, they'll
say it was obvious all along.
                -- Alan Ashley-Pitt
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes.
                -- Donald Kaul
Do you know, I think that Dr. Swift was silly to laugh about Laputa.  I
believe it is a mistake to make a mock of people, just because they think.
There are ninety thousand people in this world who do not think, for every
one who does, and these people hate the thinkers like poison.  Even if some
thinkers are fanciful, it is wrong to make fun of them for it.  Better to
think about cucumbers even, than not to think at all.
                -- T.H. White
Don't you wish that all the people who sincerely want to help you
could agree with each other?
Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended,
or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar.
Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk
only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other
subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his
own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured
by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to
philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted,
but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find
in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.
                -- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
Fess:        Well, you must admit there is something innately humorous about
        a man chasing an invention of his own halfway across the galaxy.
Rod:        Oh yeah, it's a million yuks, sure.  But after all, isn't that the
        basic difference between robots and humans?
Fess:        What, the ability to form imaginary constructs?
Rod:        No, the ability to get hung up on them.
                -- Christopher Stasheff, "The Warlock in Spite of Himself"
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"
How many "coming men" has one known!  Where on earth do they all go to?
                -- Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
        "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 know why we're here, I say we all go home and free associate.
"I don't understand," said the scientist, "why you lemmings all rush down
to the sea and drown yourselves."

"How curious," said the lemming. "The one thing I don't understand is why
you human beings don't."
                -- James Thurber
I guess I've been wrong all my life, but so have billions of other people...
Certainty is just an emotion.
                -- Hal Clement
I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable
to sit still in a room.
                -- Blaise Pascal
        I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such
as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I conceive",
"I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me
at present".
        When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied
myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him
immediately some absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by
observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right,
but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.
        I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the
conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I
proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.
I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
                -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of
tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If
they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go
crude.  I'm a very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.
These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even
aspire to crudeness.
                -- William Gibson, "Johnny Mnemonic"
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 you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then
you clearly don't understand the situation.
If you lived today as if it were your last, you'd buy up a box of rockets
and fire them all off, wouldn't you?
                -- Garrison Keillor
In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present.
Involvement with people is always a very delicate thing --
it requires real maturity to become involved and not get all messed up.
                -- Bernard Cooke
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 is all right to hold a conversation, but you should let go of it
now and then.
                -- Richard Armour
It takes a special kind of courage to face what we all have to face.
It takes all kinds to fill the freeways.
                -- Crazy Charlie
It's better to be wanted for murder that not to be wanted at all.
                -- Marty Winch
Jealousy is all the fun you think they have.
Just weigh your own hurt against the hurt of all the others, and then
do what's best.
                -- Lovers and Other Strangers
Keep your mouth shut and people will think you stupid;
Open it and you remove all doubt.
Lack of money is the root of all evil.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
Last guys don't finish nice.
                -- Stanley Kelley, on the cult of victory at all costs
Life is like bein' on a mule team.  Unless you're the lead mule, all the
scenery looks about the same.
Many people feel that they deserve some kind of recognition for all the
bad things they haven't done.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's
character, give him power.
                -- Abraham Lincoln
Never leave anything to chance; make sure all your crimes are premeditated.
No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.
                -- Quintus Ennius
Nobody is one block of harmony.  We are all afraid of something, or feel
limited in something.  We all need somebody to talk to.  It would be good
if we talked to each other--not just pitter-patter, but real talk.  We
shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact;
that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too.
It's so much easier to be together when we drop our masks.
                -- Liv Ullman
Nobody wants constructive criticism.  It's all we can do to put up with
constructive praise.
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Conscience makes egotists of us all.
                -- Oscar Wilde
Old age is the harbor of all ills.
                -- Bion
On Monday mornings I am dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created jerks.
                -- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't
understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was
reknowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the
time, which obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be
puzzled rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Pelorat sighed.
        "I will never understand people."
        "There's nothing to it.  All you have to do is take a close look
at yourself and you will understand everyone else.  How would Seldon have
worked out his Plan -- and I don't care how subtle his mathematics was --
if he didn't understand people; and how could he have done that if people
weren't easy to understand?  You show me someone who can't understand
people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself
-- no offense intended."
                -- Asimov, "Foundation's Edge"
"Quite frankly, I don't like you humans.  After what you all have done,
I find being 'inhuman' a compliment."
                -- Spider Robinson, "Callahan's Secret"
        "Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing
what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt
somebody else. He even told you he'd be hurt if..."
        "He was going to suck my blood!"
        "Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt
if they don't live our way."
...
        "The thing that puzzles you," he said, "is an accepted saying that
happens to be impossible.  The phrase is hurt somebody else.  We choose,
ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what.  Us who decides.
Nobody else.  My vampire told you he'd be hurt if you didn't let him?  That's
his decision to be hurt, that's his choice.  What you do about it is your
decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake
through his heart.  If he doesn't want the holly stake, he's free to resist,
in whatever way he wants.  It goes on and on, choices, choices."
        "When you look at it that way..."
        "Listen," he said, "it's important.  We are all.  Free.  To do.
Whatever.  We want.  To do."
                -- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.  All other "sins" are
invented nonsense.  (Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid).
                -- Lazarus Long
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
                -- Bob "Mountain" Beck
That must be wonderful: I don't understand it at all.
                -- Moliere
The great secret in life ... [is] not to open your letters for a fortnight.
At the expiration of that period you will find that nearly all of them have
answered themselves.
                -- Arthur Binstead
The Least Successful Defrosting Device
        The all-time record here is held by Mr. Peter Rowlands of Lancaster
whose lips became frozen to his lock in 1979 while blowing warm air on it.
        "I got down on my knees to breathe into the lock.  Somehow my lips
got stuck fast."
        While he was in the posture, an old lady passed an inquired if he
was all right.  "Alra?  Igmmlptk", he replied at which point she ran away.
        "I tried to tell her what had happened, but it came out sort of...
muffled," explained Mr. Rowlands, a pottery designer.
        He was trapped for twenty minutes ("I felt a bit foolish") until
constant hot breathing brought freedom.  He was subsequently nicknamed "Hot
Lips".
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the
societies in which they occur.
                -- A.N. Whitehead
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence.  He
can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless
existence recurring eternally.  The second characteristic of such a man is
that he has the strength to recognise -- and to live with the recognition --
that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones.
He creates himself by fashoning his own values; he has the pride to live
by the values he wills.
                -- Nietzsche
The wonderful thing about a dancing bear is not how well he dances,
but that he dances at all.
        Then there's the story of the man who avoided reality for 70 years
with drugs, sex, alcohol, fantasy, TV, movies, records, a hobby, lots of
sleep...  And on his 80th birthday died without ever having faced any of
his real problems.
        The man's younger brother, who had been facing reality and all his
problems for 50 years with psychiatrists, nervous breakdowns, tics, tension,
headaches, worry, anxiety and ulcers, was so angry at his brother for having
gotten away scott free that he had a paralyzing stroke.
        The moral to this story is that there ain't no justice that we can
stand to live with.
                -- R. Geis
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for
you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We all dream of being the darling of everybody's darling.
We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.
                -- Dr. Konrad Adenauer
We are all born mad.  Some remain so.
                -- Samuel Beckett
We are all dying -- and we're gonna be dead for a long time.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
                -- Oscar Wilde
We are all so much together and yet we are all dying of loneliness.
                -- A. Schweitzer
We prefer to speak evil of ourselves rather than not speak of ourselves at all.
Well, I'm disenchanted too.  We're all disenchanted.
                -- James Thurber
What do I consider a reasonable person to be?  I'd say a reasonable person
is one who accepts that we are all human and therefore fallible, and takes
that into account when dealing with others.  Implicit in this definition is
the belief that it is the right and the responsibility of each person to
live his or her own life as he or she sees fit, to respect this right in
others, and to demand the assumption of this responsibility by others.
        What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional
chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that
conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and
repulsion.  You can meet some people thirty, forty times down the years, and
they remain amiable bystanders, like the shore lights of towns that a sailor
passes at stated times but never calls at on the regular run.  Conversely,
all considerations of sex aside, you can meet some other people once or twice
and they remain permanent influences on your life.
        Everyone is aware of this discrepancy between the acquaintance seen
as familiar wallpaper or instant friend.  The chemical action it entails is
less worth analyzing than enjoying.  At any rate, these six pieces are about
men with whom I felt an immediate sympat - to use a coining of Max Beerbohm's
more satisfactory to me than the opaque vogue word "empathy".
                -- Alistair Cooke, "Six Men"
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity.  We are all formed
of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that
is the first law of nature.
                -- Voltaire
What's this stuff about people being "released on their own recognizance"?
Aren't we all out on our own recognizance?
What, after all, is a halo?  It's only one more thing to keep clean.
                -- Christopher Fry
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
You give me space to belong to myself yet without separating me
from your own life.  May it all turn out to your happiness.
                -- Goethe
You humans are all alike.
You must know that a man can have only one invulnerable loyalty, loyalty
to his own concept of the obligations of manhood.  All other loyalties
are merely deputies of that one.
                -- Nero Wolfe
You've been telling me to relax all the way here, and now you're telling
me just to be myself?
                -- The Return of the Secaucus Seven
Young men are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for
counsel; and fitter for new projects than for settled business.  For the
experience of age, in things that fall within the compass of it, directeth
them; but in new things, abuseth them.  The errors of young men are the ruin
of business; but the errors of aged men amount but to this, that more might
have been done, or sooner.  Young men, in the conduct and management of
actions, embrace more than they can hold; stir more than they can quiet; fly
to the end, without consideration of the means and degrees; pursue some few
principles which they have chanced upon absurdly; care not how they innovate,
which draws unknown inconveniences; and, that which doubleth all errors, will
not acknowledge or retract them; like an unready horse, that will neither stop
nor turn.  Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little,
repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but
content themselves with a mediocrity of success.  Certainly, it is good to
compound employments of both ... because the virtues of either age may correct
the defects of both.
                -- Francis Bacon, "Essay on Youth and Age"
Your Co-worker Could Be a Space Alien, Say Experts
                ...Here's How You Can Tell
Many Americans work side by side with space aliens who look human -- but you
can spot these visitors by looking for certain tip-offs, say experts. They
listed 10 signs to watch for:
    (3) Bizarre sense of humor.  Space aliens who don't understand
        earthly humor may laugh during a company training film or tell
        jokes that no one understands, said Steiger.
    (6) Misuses everyday items.  "A space alien may use correction
        fluid to paint its nails," said Steiger.
    (8) Secretive about personal life-style and home.  "An alien won't
        discuss details or talk about what it does at night or on weekends."
   (10) Displays a change of mood or physical reaction when near certain
        high-tech hardware.  "An alien may experience a mood change when
        a microwave oven is turned on," said Steiger.
The experts pointed out that a co-worker would have to display most if not
all of these traits before you can positively identify him as a space alien.
                -- National Enquirer, Michael Cassels, August, 1984.

        [I thought everybody laughed at company training films.  Ed.]
Youth is a disease from which we all recover.
                -- Dorothy Fuldheim
When you are in the middle of a story it isn't a story at all, but
only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered
glass and splintered wood, like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat
crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard
powerless to stop it.  It's only afterwards that it becomes anything
like a story at all.  When you are telling it, to yourself or to
someone else.
                -- Margaret Atwood, "Alias Grace"
"Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel.   In fact, nobody who
expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will
read even half.  Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about
a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea.  None of the
individual gnomes read all the postings either,  they just work together
really well."

        - Linus Torvalds
"I've just come to this group and I don't know what it's all about.
I just feel it must be something really serious. Is it really ?"

        - H. J. Thomas on linux-activists
"Since when has a dictator ever been benign?  I hear all this
libertarian garbage being spouted from the "linux community",
and then have people apparently celebrate the existance of a
dictatorship..."

        - Michael W. Zappe
"Think of it this way: threads are like salt, not like
pasta. You like salt, I like salt, we all like salt. But we
eat more pasta."

        - Larry McVoy
"I looked all over the place for an explanation. Elves and Gremlins."

        - Mike "Heisen who?" Galbraith
"This, btw, is not something I would suggest you do in your living room.
Getting a penguin to pee on demand is _messy_. We're talking yellow spots
on the walls, on the ceiling, yea verily even behind the fridge. However.
I would also advice against doing this outside - it may be a lot easier to
clean up, but you're likely to get reported and arrested for public
lewdness Never mind that you had a perfectly good explanation for it all."

         - Linus Torvalds on sprinkling holy penguin pee
"> I am using the Intel PCI backplane with default etchlink/jumper
> configuration and the EBSA285 configured as host bridge.

I'd suggest that you check, double check, triple check, take a photo of
the links and put it up on the web and get someone else to check all
the link settings on the EBSA285 card."

         - Russell King on linux-arm-kernel
<movement> hmm, all you kernel hackers spending too much time adding
           fortunes instead of important stuff :)

        - John Levon trying to grasp kernel hacking reality
<matton> it might be broken?
<al> matton: sigh... all software sucks, but usually there are symptomes
     beyond "it doesn't work"

        - Al Viro on #kernelnewbies
Alan Cox wrote:
> In theory however i2o is a standard and all i2o works alike. In practice i2o
> is a pseudo standard and nobody seems to interpret the spec the same way, the
> implementations all tend to have bugs and the hardware sometimes does too.

That's a pretty good description of standards in general, at least
when it comes to hardware :-)

        - Jens Axboe's interpretation of standards
Yes, we're all anti-american terrorists who plan to make the
US economy collapse by inventing lots of new words which will
have to be added to the dictionary, making the US economy
unable to support the ever-growing dictionaries and ensuring  
the Americans will be unable to (learn to) spell, leaving them
dead in the water if there's ever a linguistic war between
them and the UK.

        - Rik van Riel explaining the real reason behind spelling
          mistakes in the linux kernel
You don't get out much, do you :-)?  Lighten up a little, this
is supposed to be fun.......We could argue all day, but there was
lots of computer work done before PCI and PCs.  I'm more than old
enough to know, so just leave it at that.......

        - Dan Malek on the linuxppc-embedded list
<tik-tok> Hi all, I'm having problems with my 2.2.19 kernel build I'm
        trying to create my ramdisk and I get the following error
        message "All your loopback devices are in use!"  can anyone help?
<phillips> All your loopback devices are belong to us!

        - Daniel Phillips on #kernelnewbies
Were they afraid that "e" being the most widely used letter in
the English language was going to war out thir xpnsiv kyboards if
thy usd it all th tim?

        - Mike A. Harris on linux-kernel
... but giving people the power to do even silly things is what Linux
is all about.

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
If you _really_ feel this strongly about the bug, you could
either try to increase the number of hours a day for all of
us or you could talk to my boss about hiring me as a consultant
to fix the problem for you on an emergency basis :)

        - Rik van Riel explaining what to do against kernel bugs
> Not that the kernel list is the best place to bring this up, but NVIDIA
> would NOT be on that list.  They are by far one of the best companies out
> there providing support for their cards.  I bought my GF2 for exactly that
> reason too....

Sure. I spent much happy time telling people to report bugs to nvidia because
their closed drivers mean that only nvidia can debug all the crashes people
see with them loaded - at least some of which dont occur without the modules

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Patches benefit all mankind. Products benefit the vendor.

        - Richard Gooch on linux-kernel
Drivers are a more complex issue. I'm not opposed to binary only drivers,
providing its easy to tell they are there and dump all bug reports about them.
Freedom generally includes the right to give up freedom. I'll tell people its
a bad idea but once they get caught, well it was their right to do so...

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
<mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel,
<mikkei> Who thought Tux should have been an Eel,
<mikkei> Although he was a fine programmer,
<mikkei> He called the little penguin,
<mikkei> A veritably ugly hack,
<mikkei> But they all laughed and said "He's on crack!"
<mikkei>  
<mikkei> There once was a guy called Riel,
<mikkei> At whose feet the newbies would kneel,
<mikkei> Each and every day, one newbie would say:
<mikkei> "Make my patch the Patch of the Month."
<mikkei> But Riel, saying no with a negative, "hummpfh"
<mikkei> Would say "fsck off" to the newbies's dismay.

        - Anonymous on #kernelnewbies
> valerie kernel: mtrr: your CPUs had inconsistent variable MTRR settings
> valerie kernel: mtrr: probably your BIOS does not setup all CPUs

It indicates your bios authors can't read standards. Thats a quite normal
state of affairs, so common that the kernel cleans up after them

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
[ Hey, I can have long discussions by myself. I don't need you guys to
  answer me at all.

  This must be what senility feels like. Linus "doddering fool" Torvalds ]
Ricky Beam wrote:
> So basically, you had no fucking clue

Since you're the expert, why won't we all wait for
YOUR patch to fix the problem? ;)

        - Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
> Wouldn't it have made more sense to make the 'len' parameter an unsigned int?

Oh yes.  

And wouldn't it be nicer if the sky was pink, and God came personally down
to earth and stopped all wrans and made you king?

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel?
As I'm sure you're all aware, being experts in userland programming, that  
the above obviously cannot work and is totally bogus.

        - Russell King on linux-kernel
With the current lunatic US congress proposals on security, crypto and
building big brother into all PC's I'd say allowing non GPL security modules
is positively dangerous to the well being of non US citizens

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
> Yes *please*! Finally we could introduce proper support for 64-bit
> inode numbers too!

Right.  As soon as userland is audited for places where it uses int
for storing inode numbers - just a couple of months after MS fixes
all security holes in their software.  By then we'll need 128bit time_t,
though...

        - Al Viro on linux-kernel
The last time I looked, Solaris and AIX and all the rest of the "scalable"
systems were absolute pigs on smaller hardware, and the "scalability" in
them often translates into "we scale linearly to many CPU's by being
really bad even on one".

        - Linus Torvalds
Chris Rumpf wrote:
> I would like to join this mailing list.

you want all of us to give you a call saying you're welcome ??

        - elko@home.nl on linux-kernel
Well we could simplify it further by putting all configuration options under
a single menu called "things".

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.
Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.
Therefore the sage goes about doing nothing, teaching no-talking.
The ten thousand things rise and fall without cease,
Creating, yet not.
Working, yet not taking credit.
Work is done, then forgotten.
Therefore it lasts forever.
Not exalting the gifted prevents quarreling.
Not collecting treasures prevents stealing.
Not seeing desirable things prevents confusion of the heart.
The wise therefore rule by emptying hearts and stuffing bellies, by weakening ambitions and strengthening bones.
If men lack knowledge and desire, then clever people will not try to interfere.
If nothing is done, then all will be well.
Heaven and Earth last forever.
Why do heaven and Earth last forever?
They are unborn,
So ever living.
The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.
He is detached, thus at one with all.
Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.
Carrying body and soul and embracing the one,
Can you avoid separation?
Attending fully and becoming supple,
Can you be as a newborn babe?
Washing and cleansing the primal vision,
Can you be without stain?
Loving all men and ruling the country,
Can you be without cleverness?
Opening and closing the gates of heaven,
Can you play the role of woman?
Understanding and being open to all things,
Are you able to do nothing?
Giving birth and nourishing,
Bearing yet not possessing,
Working yet not taking credit,
Leading yet not dominating,
This is the Primal Virtue.
Accept disgrace willingly.
Accept misfortune as the human condition.
What do you mean by "Accept disgrace willingly"?
Accept being unimportant.
Do not be concerned with loss or gain.
This is called "accepting disgrace willingly."
What do you mean by "Accept misfortune as the human condition"?
Misfortune comes from having a body.
Without a body, how could there be misfortune?

Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.
The ancient masters were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive.
The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable.
Because it is unfathomable,
All we can do is describe their appearance.
Watchful, like men crossing a winter stream.
Alert, like men aware of danger.
Courteous, like visiting guests.
Yielding like ice about to melt.
Simple, like uncarved blocks of wood.
Hollow, like caves.
Opaque, like muddy pools.

Who can wait quietly while the mud settles?
Who can remain still until the moment of action?
Observers of the Tao do not seek fulfillment.
Not seeking fulfillment, they are not swayed by desire for change.
Yield and overcome;
Bend and be straight;
Empty and be full;
Wear out and be new;
Have little and gain;
Have much and be confused.

Therefore the wise embrace the one
And set an example to all.
Not putting on a display,
They shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
They are distinguished.
Not boasting,
They receive recognition.
Not bragging,
They never falter.
They do not quarrel,
So no one quarrels with them.
Therefore the ancients say, "Yield and overcome."
Is that an empty saying?
Be really whole,
And all things will come to you.
To talk little is natural.
High winds do not last all morning.
Heavy rain does not last all day.
Why is this?  Heaven and Earth!
If heaven and Earth cannot make things eternal,
How is it possible for man?
He who follows the Tao
Is at one with the Tao.
He who is virtuous
Experiences Virtue.
He who loses the way
Is lost.
When you are at one with the Tao,
The Tao welcomes you.
When you are at one with Virtue,
The Virtue is always there.
When you are at one with loss,
The loss is experienced willingly.

He who does not trust enough
Will not be trusted.
The heavy is the root of the light.
The still is the master of unrest.

Therefore the sage, traveling all day,
Does not lose sight of his baggage.
Though there are beautiful things to be seen,
He remains unattached and calm.

Why should the lord of ten thousand chariots act lightly in public?
To be light is to lose one's root.
To be restless is to lose one's control.
A good walker leaves no tracks;
A good speaker makes no slips;
A good reckoner needs no tally.
A good door needs no lock,
Yet no one can open it.
Good binding requires no knots,
Yet no one can loosen it.

Therefore the sage takes care of all men
And abandons no one.
He takes care of all things
And abandons nothing.

This is called "following the light."

What is a good man?
A teacher of a bad man.
What is a bad man?
A good man's charge.
If the teacher is not respected,
And the student not cared for,
Confusion will arise, however clever one is.
This is the crux of mystery.
Good weapons are instruments of fear; all creatures hate them.
Therefore followers of Tao never use them.
The wise man prefers the left.
The man of war prefers the right.

Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man's tools.
He uses them only when he has no choice.
Peace and quiet are dear to his heart,
And victory no cause for rejoicing.
If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;
If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself.

On happy occasions precedence is given to the left,
On sad occasions to the right.
In the army the general stands on the left,
The commander-in-chief on the right.
This means that war is conducted like a funeral.
When many people are being killed,
They should be mourned in heartfelt sorrow.
That is why a victory must be observed like a funeral.
The Tao is forever undefined.
Small though it is in the unformed state, it cannot be grasped.
If kings and lords could harness it,
The ten thousand things would come together
And gentle rain fall.
Men would need no more instruction and all things would take their course.
Once the whole is divided, the parts need names.
There are already enough names.
One must know when to stop.
Knowing when to stop averts trouble.
Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea.
All men will come to him who keeps to the one,
For there lie rest and happiness and peace.

Passersby may stop for music and good food,
But a description of the Tao
Seems without substance or flavor.
It cannot be seen, it cannot be heard,
And yet it cannot be exhausted.
Tao abides in non-action,
Yet nothing is left undone.
If kings and lords observed this,
The ten thousand things would develop naturally.
If they still desired to act,
They would return to the simplicity of formless substance.
Without for there is no desire.
Without desire there is.
And in this way all things would be at peace.
These things from ancient times arise from one:
The sky is whole and clear.
The earth is whole and firm.
The spirit is whole and strong.
The valley is whole and full.
The ten thousand things are whole and alive.
Kings and lords are whole, and the country is upright.
All these are in virtue of wholeness.

The clarity of the sky prevents its falling.
The firmness of the earth prevents its splitting.
The strength of the spirit prevents its being used up.
The fullness of the valley prevents its running dry.
The growth of the ten thousand things prevents their drying out.
The leadership of kings and lords prevents the downfall of the country.

Therefore the humble is the root of the noble.
The low is the foundation of the high.
Princes and lords consider themselves "orphaned", "widowed" and "worthless".
Do they not depend on being humble?

Too much success is not an advantage.
Do not tinkle like jade
Or clatter like stone chimes.
All things arise from Tao.
They are nourished by Virtue.
They are formed from matter.
They are shaped by environment.
Thus the ten thousand things all respect Tao and honor Virtue.
Respect of Tao and honor of Virtue are not demanded,
But they are in the nature of things.

Therefore all things arise from Tao.
By Virtue they are nourished,
Developed, cared for,
Sheltered, comforted,
Grown, and protected.
Creating without claiming,
Doing without taking credit,
Guiding without interfering,
This is Primal Virtue.
The beginning of the universe
Is the mother of all things.
Knowing the mother, on also knows the sons.
Knowing the sons, yet remaining in touch with the mother,
Brings freedom from the fear of death.

Keep your mouth shut,
Guard the senses,
And life is ever full.
Open your mouth,
Always be busy,
And life is beyond hope.

Seeing the small is insight;
Yielding to force is strength.
Using the outer light, return to insight,
And in this way be saved from harm.
This is learning constancy.
He who is filled with Virtue is like a newborn child.
Wasps and serpents will not sting him;
Wild beasts will not pounce upon him;
He will not be attacked by birds of prey.
His bones are soft, his muscles weak,
But his grip is firm.
He has not experienced the union of man and woman, but is whole.
His manhood is strong.
He screams all day without becoming hoarse.
This is perfect harmony.

Knowing harmony is constancy.
Knowing constancy is enlightenment.

It is not wise to rush about.
Controlling the breath causes strain.
If too much energy is used, exhaustion follows.
This is not the way of Tao.
Whatever is contrary to Tao will not last long.
In the beginning those who knew the Tao did not try to enlighten others,
But kept it hidden.
Why is it so hard to rule?
Because people are so clever.
Rulers who try to use cleverness
Cheat the country.
Those who rule without cleverness
Are a blessing to the land.
These are the two alternatives.
Understanding these is Primal Virtue.
Primal Virtue is deep and far.
It leads all things back
Toward the great oneness.
A brave and passionate man will kill or be killed.
A brave and calm man will always preserve life.
Of these two which is good and which is harmful?
Some things are not favored by heaven.  Who knows why?
Even the sage is unsure of this.

The Tao of heaven does not strive, and yet it overcomes.
It does not speak, and yet is answered.
It does not ask, yet is supplied with all its needs.
It seems to have no aim and yet its purpose is fulfilled.

Heaven's net casts wide.
Though its meshes are course, nothing slips through.
After a bitter quarrel, some resentment must remain.
What can one do about it?
Therefore the sage keeps his half of the bargain
But does not exact his due.
A man of Virtue performs his part,
But a man without Virtue requires others to fulfill their obligations.
The Tao of heaven is impartial.
It stays with good men all the time.
        A young married couple had their first child.  Their original pride
and joy slowly turned to concern however, for after a couple of years the
child had never uttered any form of speech.  They hired the best speech
therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, all to no avail.  The child simply refused
to speak.  One morning when the child was five, while the husband was reading
the paper, and the wife was feeding the dog, the little kid looks up from
his bowl and said, "My cereal's cold."
        The couple is stunned.  The man, in tears, confronts his son.  "Son,
after all these years, why have you waited so long to say something?".
        Shrugs the kid, "Everything's been okay 'til now".
And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower.  "This," cried the Mayor,
"is your town's darkest hour!  The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!" he said.  "We've GOT to make noises in
greater amounts!  So, open your mouth, lad!  For every voice counts!"  Thus he
spoke as he climbed.  When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and
he shouted out, "YOPP!"
        And that Yopp...  That one last small, extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last!  From the speck on that clover their voices were heard!
They rang out clear and clean.  And they elephant smiled.  "Do you see what
I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small.  And their
whole world was saved by the smallest of All!"
        "How true!  Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo.  "And, from now
on, you know what I'm planning to do?  From now on, I'm going to protect
them with you!"  And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO!  From
the sun in the summer.  From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect
them.  No matter how small-ish!"
                -- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who"
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.
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

        Are you sure you're telling the truth?  Think hard.
        Does it make you happy to know you're sending me to an early grave?
        If all your friends jumped off the cliff, would you jump too?
        Do you feel bad?  How do you think I feel?
        Aren't you ashamed of yourself?
        Don't you know any better?
        How could you be so stupid?
        If that's the worst pain you'll ever feel, you should be thankful.
        You can't fool me.  I know what you're thinking.
        If you can't say anything nice, say nothing at all.
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

        Do as I say, not as I do.
        Do me a favour and don't tell me about it.  I don't want to know.
        What did you do *this* time?
        If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you.
        When I was your age...
        I won't love you if you keep doing that.
        Think of all the starving children in India.
        If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar.
        I'm going to kill you.
        Way to go, clumsy.
        If you don't like it, you can lump it.
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

        When are you going to grow up?
        I'm only doing this for your own good.
        Why are you crying?  Stop crying, or I'll give you something to
                cry about.
        What's wrong with you?
        Someday you'll thank me for this.
        You'd lose your head if it weren't attached.
        Don't you have any sense at all?
        If you keep sucking your thumb, it'll fall off.
        Why?  Because I said so.
        I hope you have a kid just like yourself.
Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling
the walk before it stops snowing.
                -- Phyllis Diller

There is no need to do any housework at all.  After the first four years
the dirt doesn't get any worse.
                -- Quentin Crisp
"Humpf!" Humpfed a voice! "For almost two days you've run wild and insisted on
chatting with persons who've never existed.  Such carryings-on in our peaceable
jungle!  We've had quite enough of you bellowing bungle!  And I'm here to
state," snapped the big kangaroo, "That your silly nonsensical game is all
through!"  And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "Me, too!"
        "With the help of the Wickersham Brothers and dozens of Wickersham
Uncles and Wickersham Cousins and Wickersham In-Laws, whose help I've engaged,
You're going to be roped!  And you're going to be caged!  And, as for your dust
speck...  Hah! That we shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of Beezle-Nut oil!"
                -- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who"
I know what "custody" [of the children] means.  "Get even."  That's all
custody means.  Get even with your old lady.
                -- Lenny Bruce
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"
Lies!  All lies!  You're all lying against my boys!
                -- Ma Barker
MEMORIES OF MY FAMILY MEETINGS still are a source of strength to me.  I
remember we'd all get into the car -- I forget what kind it was -- and
drive and drive.

I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some bees there. The
smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we
played.  I remember a bigger, older guy whom we called "Dad."  We'd eat
some stuff or not and then I think we went home.

I guess some things never leave you.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
My parents went to Niagara Falls and all I got was this crummy life.
My ritual differs slightly.  What I do, first thing [in the morning], is I
hop into the shower stall.  Then I hop right back out, because when I hopped
in I landed barefoot right on top of See Threepio, a little plastic robot
character from "Star Wars" whom my son, Robert, likes to pull the legs off
of while he showers.  Then I hop right back into the stall because our dog,
Earnest, who has been alone in the basement all night building up powerful
dog emotions, has come bounding and quivering into the bathroom and wants
to greet me with 60 or 70 thousand playful nips, any one of which -- bear
in mind that I am naked and, without my contact lenses, essentially blind
-- could result in the kind of injury where you have to learn a whole new
part if you want to sing the "Messiah," if you get my drift.  Then I hop
right back out, because Robert, with that uncanny sixth sense some children
have -- you cannot teach it; they either have it or they don't -- has chosen
exactly that moment to flush one of the toilets.  Perhaps several of them.
                -- Dave Barry
That all men should be brothers is the dream of people who have no brothers.
                -- Charles Chincholles, "Pensees de tout le monde"
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable
Christian forbearance among men.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of four
and eighteen.  At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all the answers.
We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized
before we are fit to participate in society.
                -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly
                   Correct Behaviour"
What really shapes and conditions and makes us is somebody only a few of
us ever have the courage to face: and that is the child you once were,
long before formal education ever got its claws into you -- that
impatient, all-demanding child who wants love and power and can't get
enough of either and who goes on raging and weeping in your spirit till
at last your eyes are closed and all the fools say, "Doesn't he look
peaceful?" It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars
and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in
life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp
before they were five years old.
                -- Robertson Davies, "The Rebel Angels"
Why do they call it baby-SITTING when all you do is run after them?
"You can't expect a mother to be with a small child all the time," Margaret
Mead once remarked, with her usual good sense, but in 1978 she shocked
feminists by snapping that women don't really have children to put them in
day care twelve hours a day, either.
                -- Caroline Bird, "The Two Paycheck Marriage"
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
Tout choses sont dites deja, mais comme personne n'ecoute, il faut
toujours recommencer.
                -- A. Gide

[ All things have already been said, but since no one listens, one
  must always start again. ]
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if
people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses based
on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
        -- Richard Stallman
While the year 2000 (y2k) problem is not an issue for us, all Linux
implementations will impacted by the year 2038 (y2.038k) issue. The
Debian Project is committed to working with the industry on this issue
and we will have our full plans and strategy posted by the first quarter
of 2020.
<zarkov> "NT 5.0.  All the bugs and ten times the code size!"
<doogie> Debian - All the power, without the silly hat.
<awkward> anyone around?
<Flav> no, we're all irregular polygons
<Knghtbrd> you people are all insane.
<Joey> knight: sure, that's why we work on Debian.
<JHM> Knghtbrd: get in touch with your inner nutcase.
We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
        -- Linus Torvalds
<Knghtbrd> Overfiend - BTW, after we've discovered X takes all of 1.4 GIGS
           to build, are you willing admit that X is bloatware?  =>
<Overfiend> KB: there is a 16 1/2 minute gap in my answer
<acf> knghtbrd: evidence exists that X is only the *2nd* worst windowing
      system ;)
<Crow-> Manoj: well, i cant understand stuff like "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245 }"
<Manoj> Crow: That is not quite legal ;-)
<Knghtbrd> Manoj - how would one make "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245 }" legal
           anyway? (and what would it do?  hehe)
<Manoj> Knghtbrd: You need to finish the s/// expression.
<Knghtbrd> oh, is that all?
<Knghtbrd> I really don't want much at all...  Just a kind word, an
           attractive woman, and UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH!!
<Sanaya> you guys are all sick!  sick sick sick I tell ya ;)
Since this database is not used for profit, and since entire works are not
published, it falls under fair use, as we understand it.  However, if any
half-assed idiot decides to make a profit off of this, they will need to
double check it all...
        -- Notes included with the default fortunes database
* Knghtbrd pelts wichert with NERF darts
* wichert notes there are no ICBM nerfs yet and ignores kngtbrd
<Knghtbrd> wichert - just wait, after seeing the NERF gatling guns, ICBMs
           are not far off (just pump the damned thing for an hour or two
           is all...)
<knghtbrd> Solver_: add users who should be messing with sound to group
           audio..  Make sure the devices are all group audio (ls -l
           /dev/dsp will give you the fastest indication if it's probably
           set right) and build a kernel with sound support for your card
<knghtbrd> OR optionally install alsa source and build modules for that
           with make-kpkg
<knghtbrd> OR (not recommended) get and install evil OSS/Linux evil
           non-free evil binary only evil drivers---but those are evil.
           And did I mention that it's not recommended?
<danpat> Omnic: bloody newzealanders
<Omnic> danpat: put a sock in it
<danpat> heh :)
<knghtbrd> making fun of .nz'ers is different---they're all weird
* knghtbrd hides
<Omnic> hrmph
*** Topic for #redhat:  ReDHaT is the answer to all your problems. It
    could be the start too!
<Knghtbrd> the problem with the GNU coding standards is they ASSUME that
           everyone in the world uses emacs..  If that were the case, free
           software would die because we would all have wrist problems
           like RMS by now and no longer be able to code.  ;>
* Mercury calmly removes XT-Ream's arm..
* Mercury then proceeds to beat XT-Ream with XT-Ream's arm.
<Knghtbrd> wow, all this quake hacking is making Mercury violent here
* mao is glad the quake forge project is in good hands
<Knghtbrd> CVS/Entries had the line I needed to "alter"
<Mercury> Knghtbrd: Was about to mention such.. <G>
<Mercury> Knghtbrd: Now, ready to commit?
<Knghtbrd> wish me luck
<Knghtbrd> Mercury: it's committed
<Knghtbrd> Mercury: and after all that, I should be too.
<doogie> there is one bad thing about having a cell phone.
<doogie> I can be reached at any time. :|
<wmono> that's why I leave mine off at all times. ;>
I'd been hearing all sorts of gloom and doom predictions for Y2K, so I
thought I'd heed some of the advice that the experts have been giving:
Fill up the car's gas tank, stock up on canned goods, fill up the bathtub
with water, and so on.

I guess I wasn't fully awake when I completed my preparations late last
night.  This morning I found the kitchen shelves soaked in gasoline, water
in the car's gas tank, and my bathtub filled with baked beans.
        -- Dan Pearl in a message to rec.humor.funny
<darkangel> I generally don't use anything that has "experimental" and
            "warning" pasted all over it
<darkangel> no, I'm not that dumb... hehe
<Knghtbrd> ...
* darkangel considers downloading the latest unstable kernel
* gxam wonders if all these globals are really necessary
<Knghtbrd> most of them at the moment yes
<Knghtbrd> we REALLY need to clean them up at some point
<Knghtbrd> gxam: the globals will have to go away as we migrate towards
           modularity and madness (ie, libtool)
<knghtbrd> joeyh: I was down since midmorning yesterday and pacbell said
           this morning that AT&T was to blame and almost all of the state
           was down
<rcw> dunno why people insist the internet can survive a nuclear holocaust
      when it can't survive a backhoe
Granted, Win95's look wasn't all that new either - Apple tried to sue
Microsoft for copying the Macintosh UI / trash can icon, until Microsoft
pointed out that Apple got many of its Mac ideas (including the trash can
icon) from Xerox ParcPlace.  Xerox is probably still wondering why
everyone is interested in their trash cans.
        -- Danny Thorpe, Borland Delphi R&R
"Otherwise, please speak to a doctor about removing your head from your
ass, I believe it would be beneficial to all involved."
        -- Zephaniah E. Hull, flaming someone on a mailing list
<Espy> I invoke Espy's law, which states that you all suck :P
<Deek> change all cvar->value = X to use Cvar_Set()
<theoddone33> that didn't happen in oldtree
<Deek> Actually, it did.
<Knghtbrd> yeah - two weeks later.
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?
<Deek> "A good programmer can write FORTRAN in any language."
<Deek> knghtbrd has proven that you can write C++ in any language too.
       <grin>
<Mercury> We are currently considdering if we should give him or prize, or
          kill him..
<Mercury> (Of course, by all rights, this means we should give him the
          prize, and then kill him.. <G>)
All good ideas look like bad ideas to those who are losers.
        -- Dilbert
<Myth> I'm getting a connection refused when connecting to port 25, anyone
       know where the damn log is?
<aj> Myth: /var/log/damn.log?
* aj wonders what that'd look like
<aj> Dec 18 05:32:30 blae smtpd[123]: DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!!
<Mercury> LordHavoc: The reason why GL has overdraw is because it is only
          using HALF of the system they designed for vis.
<Mercury> LordHavoc: Shooting itself in the foot.
* Dabb looks at all those bullet holes in his shoes - damn, lots :)
<pv2b> oh, besides, whats the best approach if i want to make a Quake
       level designed from an existing building?
<Knghtbrd> Get a floorplan of Brian's office?  =)
<pv2b> Knghtbrd: im considering my school.
<Knghtbrd> Oh great
<Knghtbrd> That's ALL we need
<doogie> Culus: my bug with openssh appears to be fixed in 2.5.2, but
         master runs 2.3.0
<Culus> Don't even start
<doogie> I just did.
<Culus> You guys are going to drive me to build a huge giant robot and
        destroy all of texas, aren't you?
* knghtbrd is gone - zzz - messages will be snapped like wet towels at all
  of the people who have stolen the trademark knghtbrd away message
<Coderjoe> ack
* Coderjoe prepares to defend himself from wet messages
innovate /IN no vait/ vb.: 1. To appropriate third-party technology
through purchase, imitation, or theft and to integrate it into a
de-facto, monopoly-position product. 2.  To increase in size or complexity
but not in utility; to reduce compatibility or interoperability. 3. To
lock-out competitors or to lock-in users. 4. To charge more money; to
increase prices or costs. 5. To acquire profits from investments in other
companies but not from direct product or service sales. 6. To stifle or
manipulate a free market; to extend monopoly powers into new markets.  7.
To evade liability for wrong-doings; to get off.  8. To purchase
legislation, legislators, legislatures, or chiefs of state.  9.  To
mediate all transactions in a global economy; to embezzle; to co-opt power
(coup d'état). Cf. innovate, English usage (antonym).
        -- csbruce, in a Slashdot post
<Deek> "I keep my personal gpg data in a locked, lead safe in a vault
       guarded by angry rednecks and their dawgs.  Trespassers will be
       violated, and all that..."
<Midgar> From all the sterotypes about Aussies, I figure you guys are
         really tough.
<Midgar> ;p
<krusto> we'll throw koala's at you
The sourceforge approach is to place all of the projects in some bland
"open source surburbia", where all of the houses are alike, with only the
colors and minor style variations (which building plan was used for which
particular house) are allowed by the restrictive covenants and local
zoning laws.  Sourceforege is the open source equivalent of the
subdivision in the movie "Edward Scissorhands".
        -- Terry Lambert
Isn't it embarrassing when you have to go to the drugstore for some
"special items", and when you're checking out, the cashier looks at you
like, "oh, I know what YOU'RE doing tonight..."

Yep, that cashier read all the signs... canned chicken soup, TheraFlu,
Halls, NyQuil, the bigass bottles of OJ and grapefruit juice... he knew
and I knew that I had a date with the teevee and a down comforter. Awww
yeah.
        -- Elizabeth Kirkindall
"Nvidia's OpenGL drivers are my "gold standard", and it has been quite a
while since I have had to report a problem to them, and even their brand
new extensions work as documented the first time I try them.  When I have
a problem on an Nvidia, I assume that it is my fault.  With anyone else's
drivers, I assume it is their fault.  This has turned out correct almost
all the time."
        -- John Carmack
<Knghtbrd> "... you will more than likely see all kinds of compiler
           warnings scrolling by on the screen. These are normal and can
           be safely ignored."
<LordHavoc> Knghtbrd: is that a note attached to some M$ code?
<Knghtbrd> No, it's a note about a bunch of GNU stuff.
A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing
into trees.  At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same
forest, with identical results.  They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing.
        "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally,"
apologized the rabbit.
        "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same
problem!"
        "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do
you think you could help me find out?"
        "I'll try," said the snake.  He gently coiled himself around the
rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail
and long ears.  You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!"
        "Great!" said the rabbit.  "Thanks, I really owe you one!"
        "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either.  Do you
suppose you could try and tell me?"
        The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake.  "Well, you're low, cold
and slimey..."  And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have
no balls.  You must be an attorney!"
        A grade school teacher was asking students what their parents did
for a living.  "Tim, you be first," she said.  "What does your mother do
all day?"
        Tim stood up and proudly said, "She's a doctor."
        "That's wonderful.  How about you, Amie?"
        Amie shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a
mailman."
        "Thank you, Amie," said the teacher.  "What about your father, Billy?"
        Billy proudly stood up and announced, "My daddy plays piano in a
whorehouse."
        The teacher was aghast and promptly changed the subject to geography.
Later that day she went to Billy's house and rang the bell.  Billy's father
answered the door.  The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded
an explanation.
        Billy's father replied, "Well, I'm really an attorney.  But how do
you explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old child?"
        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"
[District Attorneys] learn in District Attorney School that there are
two sure-fire ways to get a lot of favorable publicity:

(1) Go down and raid all the lockers in the local high school and
    confiscate 53 marijuana cigarettes and put them in a pile and hold
    a press conference where you announce that they have a street value
    of $850 million.  These raids never fail, because ALL high schools,
    including brand-new, never-used ones, have at least 53 marijuana
    cigarettes in the lockers.  As far as anyone can tell, the locker
    factory puts them there.
(2) Raid an "adult book store" and hold a press conference where you
    announce you are charging the owner with 850 counts of being a
    piece of human sleaze.  This also never fails, because you always
    get a conviction.  A juror at a pornography trial is not about to
    state for the record that he finds nothing obscene about a movie
    where actors engage in sexual activities with live snakes and a
    fire extinguisher.  He is going to convict the bookstore owner, and
    vote for the death penalty just to make sure nobody gets the wrong
    impression.
                -- Dave Barry, "Pornography"
First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer.
But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all.
Dial-A-Wombat.
        It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone
call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the
phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said.
        Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of
the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk.
        But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth.
        The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its
bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub.
        Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in
another phone booth.
        There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth.
        The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and
released it, too, in the scrub.
        But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another
telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat.
        After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect,
and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons.
        Their problem ... they cannot find a law against placing wombats in
telephone booths.
                -- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980.
For three years, the young attorney had been taking his brief
vacations at this country inn.  The last time he'd finally managed an
affair with the innkeeper's daughter.  Looking forward to an exciting
few days, he dragged his suitcase up the stairs of the inn, then stopped
short.  There sat his lover with an infant on her lap!
        "Helen, why didn't you write when you learned you were pregnant?"
he cried.  "I would have rushed up here, we could have gotten married,
and the baby would have my name!"
        "Well," she said, "when my folks found out about my condition,
we sat up all night talkin' and talkin' and finally decided it would be
better to have a bastard in the family than a lawyer."
Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful
Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan.  During an
impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and
clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following
exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.

DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are
         having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
DINGELL: They may or may not be natural.  The simple fact of the matter
         is that female oysters through their living habits cast out
         large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large
         amounts of fertilization ...
HOFFMAN: Wait a minute!  I do not want to go into that.  There are many
         teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
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 #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.
        God decided to take the devil to court and settle their differences
once and for all.
        When Satan heard of this, he grinned and said, "And just where do you
think you're going to find a lawyer?"
"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"
        How do you insult a lawyer?
        You might as well not even try.  Consider: of all the highly
trained and educated professions, law is the only one in which the prime
lesson is that *winning* is more important than *truth*.
        Once someone has sunk to that level, what worse can you say about them?
Humor in the Court:
Q.  And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral.  O.K.? What school do
    you go to?
A.  Oral.
Q.  How old are you?
A.  Oral.
Humor in the Court:
Q.  Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?
A.  I refuse to answer that question.
Q.  Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?
A.  I refuse to answer that question.
Q.  Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?
A.  No.
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
        In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to
his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's
kill all the lawyers."  That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment
was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc.
Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News,
Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess
of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts.  Lawyers
and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure
out how the pie gets divided.  Neither profession provides any added value
to product."
        According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has
10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population.  The U.S. has 200
lawyers and 700 accountants.  This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of
pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack."  Could Dick Butcher have
been an efficiency expert?
                -- Motor Trend, May 1983
                        Pittsburgh driver's test
                        
(10) Potholes are

        (a) extremely dangerous.
        (b) patriotic.
        (c) the fault of the previous administration.
        (d) all going to be fixed next summer.

The correct answer is (b). Potholes destroy unpatriotic, unamerican,
imported cars, since the holes are larger than the cars.  If you drive a
big, patriotic, American car you have nothing to worry about.
Some men are heterosexual, and some are bisexual, and some men don't think
about sex at all... they become lawyers.
                -- Woody Allen
Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the
old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent
I can find for "landskap").  These laws were written down sometime in the
13th century, but date back even down into Viking times.  The oldest one is
the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some
Christian stuff.  In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the
Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc.  Here is
an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of
"lekare".
        "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it.  If an artist
        is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with
        fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring
        it out on the hillside.  Then they shall shave off all hair from the
        heifer's tail, and grease the tail.  Then the artist shall be given
        newly greased shoes.  Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,
        and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip.  If he can hold her, he
        shall have the animal.  If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what
        he received, shame and wounds."
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 Worst Jury
        A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when
one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the
remotest clue what was happening.
        The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any
evidence at all and, when there was no reply, dismissed him.
        The excitement which this caused was only equalled when a second
juror revealed that he spoke not a word of English.  A fluent French
speaker, he exhibited great surprised when told, after two days, that he
was hearing a murder trial.
        The trial was abandoned when a third juror said that he suffered
from both conditions, being simultaneously unversed in the English language
and nearly as deaf as the first juror.
        The judge ordered a retrial.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs
tied during the month of April.
This product is meant for educational purposes only.  Any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.  Void where prohibited.  Some
assembly may be required.  Batteries not included.  Contents may settle during
shipment.  Use only as directed.  May be too intense for some viewers.  If
condition persists, consult your physician.  No user-serviceable parts inside.
Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement.  Not responsible for direct,
indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error
or failure to perform.  Slippery when wet.  For office use only.  Substantial
penalty for early withdrawal.  Do not write below this line.  Your cancelled
check is your receipt.  Avoid contact with skin.  Employees and their families
are not eligible.  Beware of dog.  Driver does not carry cash.  Limited time
offer, call now to insure prompt delivery.  Use only in well-ventilated area.
Keep away from fire or flame.  Some equipment shown is optional.  Price does
not include taxes, dealer prep, or delivery.  Penalty for private use.  Call
toll free before digging.  Some of the trademarks mentioned in this product
appear for identification purposes only.  All models over 18 years of age.  Do
not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment.  Postage will be
paid by addressee.  Apply only to affected area.  One size fits all.  Many
suitcases look alike.  Edited for television.  No solicitors.  Reproduction
strictly prohibited.  Restaurant package, not for resale.  Objects in mirror
are closer than they appear.  Decision of judges is final.  This supersedes
all previous notices.  No other warranty expressed or implied.
We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor.  Bankers are not ever
popular but at least they bank.  Policeman police and undertakers take
under.  But lawyers do not give us law.  We receive not the gladsome light
of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays,
filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour.
                -- Nolo News, summer 1989
(1) Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood.
(2) If your stomach antagonizes you, pacify it with cool thoughts.
(3) Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.
(4) Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society, as
        the social ramble ain't restful.
(5) Avoid running at all times.
(6) Don't look back, something might be gaining on you.
                -- S. Paige, c. 1951
A cloud does not know why it moves in just such a direction and at such
a speed, if feels an impulsion... this is the place to go now.  But the
sky knows the reasons and the patterns behind all clouds, and you will
know, too, when you lift yourself high enough to see beyond horizons.
                -- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
A lifetime isn't nearly long enough to figure out what it's all about.
A priest asked: What is Fate, Master?
        And the Master 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"
All hope abandon, ye who enter here!
                -- Dante Alighieri
All men know the utility of useful things;
but they do not know the utility of futility.
                -- Chuang-tzu
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
                -- The Book of Bokonon / Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
All of us should treasure his Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a
Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks,
tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks:
"Just lie down on the floor and keep calm."
                -- Robert Wilson, "John Dillinger Died for You"
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this
big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around --
nobody big, I mean -- except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy
cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go
over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're
going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I'd do
all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye.  I know it;  I know it's crazy,
but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.  I know it's crazy.
                -- J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye"
At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all
my soul.  At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my
ignorance upon the shore.
                -- Kahlil Gibran
During the voyage of life, remember to keep an eye out for a fair wind; batten
down during a storm; hail all passing ships; and fly your colors proudly.
Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have
drawn them there.  What you choose to do with them is up to you.
                -- Messiah's Handbook : Reminders for the Advanced Soul
****  GROWTH CENTER REPAIR SERVICE

For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos. Tired of
being genuine all the time?  Would you like to learn how to be a little
phony again?  Have you disclosed so much that you're beginning to avoid
people? Have you touched so many people that they're all beginning to
feel the same? Like to be a little dependent? Are perfect orgasms
beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once, not to express a
feeling?  Or better yet, not be in touch with it at all?  Come to us.  We
promise to relieve you of the burden of your great potential.
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our
thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another
in the waking state?
                -- Plato
"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
                -- Gotama Buddha
If a guru falls in the forest with no one to hear him, was he really a
guru at all?
                -- Strange de Jim, "The Metasexuals"
If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his
reverence for all of life.
                -- Albert Schweitzer
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
                -- Voltaire
In the long run we are all dead.
                -- John Maynard Keynes
Indeed, the first noble truth of Buddhism, usually translated as
`all life is suffering,' is more accurately rendered `life is filled
with a sense of pervasive unsatisfactoriness.'
                -- M.D. Epstein
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live
at all.  And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result
is the only thing that makes the result come true.
                -- William James
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all.
                -- Thomas J. Kopp
        Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do,
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
        These are the things I learned:  Share everything.  Play fair.  Don't
hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.   Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.  Warm cookies and cold milk are good
for you.  Live a balanced life.  Learn some and think some and draw and paint
and sing and dance and play and work some every day.
        Take a nap every afternoon.  When you go out into the world, watch for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.  Remember the
little seed in the plastic cup.   The roots go down and the plant goes up and
nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.  Goldfish and
hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all
die.  So do we.
        And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you
learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK.  Everything you need to know is in
there somewhere.  The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.  Ecology and
politics and sane living.
        Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world
-- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankets for a nap.  Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other
nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own
messes.  And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into
the world it is best to hold hands and stick together.
                -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned
                   in kindergarten"
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.
Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.
                -- Arthur Balfour
Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this:
to know so much and have control over nothing.
                -- Herodotus
        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.
                -- Richard Bach
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."
Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by
no means the only 'certain' standard.  If you mistake what is relative for
something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
                -- Chuang Tzu
The days are all empty and the nights are unreal.
The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.
                -- Maurice Chapelain, "Main courante"
The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably
not true.  It is the chief occupation of mankind.
                -- H.L. Mencken
The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal.
The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may
experience it as such.  Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and
thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid.  Whoever
could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very
swift.  Thinking of oneself gives little happiness.  If, however, one feels
much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of
oneself but of one's ideal.  This is far, and only the swift shall reach
it and are delighted.
                -- Nietzsche
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds,
and the pessimist knows it.
                -- J. Robert Oppenheimer, "Bulletin of Atomic Scientists"
Yet creeds mean very little, Coth answered the dark god, still speaking
almost gently.  The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
                -- James Cabell, "The Silver Stallion"
The Poems, all three hundred of them, may be summed up in one of their phrases:
"Let our thoughts be correct".
                -- Confucius
The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits,
but not when it misses.
                -- Francis Bacon
The state of innocence contains the germs of all future sin.
                -- Alexandre Arnoux, "Etudes et caprices"
The truth you speak has no past and no future.  It is, and that's all it
needs to be.
Two men were sitting over coffee, contemplating the nature of things,
with all due respect for their breakfast.  "I wonder why it is that
toast always falls on the buttered side," said one.
        "Tell me," replied his friend, "why you say such a thing.  Look
at this."  And he dropped his toast on the floor, where it landed on the
dry side.
        "So, what have you to say for your theory now?"
        "What am I to say?  You obviously buttered the wrong side."
We have nowhere else to go... this is all we have.
                -- Margaret Mead
We're all in this alone.
                -- Lily Tomlin
"We're not talking about the same thing," he said. "For you the world is
weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me
the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious,
unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must accept
responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous
desert, in this marvelous time.  I wanted to convince you that you must
learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a
short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it."
                -- Don Juan
        Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines
of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them...
        Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced
only by Masters of the Universal Way of Zen.  In it his mind floated freely,
able to rummage at will among the bits and pieces of data he had absorbed,
undistracted by any outside disturbances.  Logical structures no longer
inhibited him. Pre-conceptions, prejudices, ordinary human standards vanished.
All things, those previously trivial as well as those once thought important,
became absolutely equal by acquiring an absolute value, revealing relationships
not evident to ordinary vision.  Like beads strung on a string of their own
meaning, each thing pointed to its own common ground of existence, shared by
all.  Finally, each began to melt into each, staying itself while becoming
all others.  And Mind no longer contemplated Problem, but became Problem,
destroying Subject-Object by becoming them.
        Time passed, unheeded.
        Eventually, there was a tentative stirring, then a decisive one, and
Nakamura arose, a smile on his face and the light of laughter in his eyes.
                -- Wayfarer
When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later
something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend
your parents' limitations...  At the same time, you feel sure that in all
the wilderness of possibility; in all the forests of opinion, there is a
vital something that can be known -- known and grasped.  That we will
eventually know it, and convert the whole mystery into a coherent
narrative.  So that then one's true life -- the point of everything --
will emerge from the mist into a pure light, into total comprehension.
But it isn't like that at all.  But if it isn't, where did the idea come
from, to torture and unsettle us?
                -- Brian Aldiss, "Helliconia Summer"
You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads
lead down.
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "The Cyberiad"
You have all eternity to be cautious in when you're dead.
                -- Lois Platford
        "You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you
any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you
fit to hear his view of things?"
        "Quite the contrary.  You must defend your integrity, assuming
you have integrity to defend.  But you must defend it nobly, not by
imitating his own low behavior.  If you are gentle where he is rough,
if you are polite where he is uncouth, then he will recognize you as
potentially worthy.  If he does not, then he is not a master, after all,
and you may feel free to kick his ass."
                -- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"
The first rule of all intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts.
                -- Aldo Leopold, quoted in Donald Wurster's "Nature's Economy"
No people are all bad, just as none are all good.
Tecumseh, (Shawnee) to his nephew Spemica Lawba 1790
Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the
earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his
children?                                       Tecumseh, (Shawnee)
I don't know why, but first C programs tend to look a lot worse than
first programs in any other language (maybe except for fortran, but then
I suspect all fortran programs look like `firsts')
        -- Olaf Kirch
...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead
sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved
linux kernel version.
        -- Linus Torvalds
All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory...
        -- Larry Wall
..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar.  Believe me.  I
speak from experience.
        -- Matt Welsh
We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications.  Having the source code
means that we are not held hostage by anyone's support department.
        -- Russell Nelson, President of Crynwr Software
We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
        - Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam Linux Symposium
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple.  After that, it's all learned.
        -- Bruce Ediger, bediger@teal.csn.org, on X interfaces
> No manual is ever necessary.
May I politely interject here: BULLSHIT.  That's the biggest Apple lie of all!
        -- Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of interfaces
Now, it we had this sort of thing:
  yield -a     for yield to all traffic
  yield -t     for yield to trucks
  yield -f     for yield to people walking (yield foot)
  yield -d t*  for yield on days starting with t

...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you
wouldn't believe...
        -- Discussion on the intuitiveness of commands
It's now the GNU Emacs of all terminal emulators.
        -- Linus Torvalds, regarding the fact that Linux started off as a terminal emulator
Go not unto the Usenet for advice, for you will be told both yea and nay (and
quite a few things that just have nothing at all to do with the question).
        -- seen in a .sig somewhere
By the way, I can hardly feel sorry for you... All last night I had to listen
to her tears, so great they were redirected to a stream.  What?  Of _course_
you didn't know.  You and your little group no longer have any permissions
around here.  She changed her .lock files, too.
        -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd
Sorry for mailing this article, I've obviously made a typo (168!=186)
that's the price for being up all night and doing some "quick"
checks before you go to bed ....
        -- Herbert Rosmanith <herp@wildsau.idv.uni-linz.ac.at>
Just to remind everyone.  Today, Sept 17, is Linux's 5th birthday.  So
happy birthday to all on the list.  Thanks go out to Linus and all the
other hard-working maintainers for 5 wonderful fast paced years!
        -- William E. Roadcap <roadcapw@cfw.com>
Win 95 is simplified for the user:

User: What does this configuration thing do?
You: It allows you to modify you settings, for networking,
        hardware, protocols, ...
User: Whoa! Layman's terms, please!
You:  It changes stuff.
User: That's what I'm looking for!  What can it change?
You:  This part change IP forwarding.  It allows ...
User: Simplify, simplify!  What can it do for ME?
You:  Nothing, until you understand it.
User: Well it makes me uncomfortable.  It looks so technical;
      Get rid of it, I want a system *I* can understand.
You:  But...
User: Hey, who's system is this anyway?
You:  (... rm this, rm that, rm /etc/* ...) "All done."
        -- Kevin M. Bealer <kmb203@psu.edu>
I've no idea when Linus is going to release 2.0.24, but if he takes
too long Im going to release a 2.0.24unoff and he can sound off all
he likes.
        -- Alan Cox
All the existing 2.0.x kernels are to buggy for 2.1.x to be the
main goal.
        -- Alan Cox
1648 files (84%) out of the files that I mirror disappeared.  Since
my delete threshold was set at 90%, all those files are now missing
from my hard drive.  It's going to take a loooong time to fetch those
again via 14.4kbps!
        -- Brian C. White
i dont even know if it makes sense at all :) This is an experimental patch
for an experimental kernel :))
        -- Ingo Molnar on linux-kernel
>>> FreeOS is an english-centric name

Have you all been stuck in email, or have any of you tried
*pronouncing* that? free-oh-ess? free-ows? fritos? :-)
        -- Mark Eichin
#Debian makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. :)
        -- HippieGuy on #Debian
snafu = Situation Normal All F%$*ed up
<Joey> gorgo: *lol*
<gorgo> joey: what's so funny? :)
<Culus> shh, joey is losing all sanity from lack of sleep
<Culus> 'yes joey, very funny'
<Culus> Humor him :>
        -- Seen on #Debian
One tree to rule them all,
One tree to find them,
One tree to bring them all,
and to itself bind them.
        -- Gavin Koch <gavin@cygnus.com>
<igor> Hah! we have 2 Johnie Ingrams in the channel :)
<igor> Hey all btw :)
I just uploaded xtoolplaces-1.6. It fixes all bugs but one: It still
coredumps instead of doing something useful.  The upstream author's
e-mail address bounces, Redhat doesn't provide it and I never used it.
        -- Sven Rudolph <sr1@os.inf.tu-dresden.de>
<Culus> aIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
<Culus> MY LIGHT JUST DIED
<Culus> I AM SO SAD
<Culus> I'm blind! I'm blind!
<dark> Light?
<dark> Turn all your xterms to black-on-white :)  Plenty of light that way.
        -- Seen on #Debian
These download files are in Microsoft Word 6.0 format. After
unzipping, these files can be viewed in any text editor, including
all versions of Microsoft Word, WordPad, and Microsoft Word Viewer
        -- From Micro$oft
Just go ahead and write your own multitasking multiuser os!
Worked for me all the times.
        -- Linus Torvalds
Charles Briscoe-Smith <cpbs@debian.org>:
  After all, the gzip package is called `gzip', not `libz-bin'...

James Troup <troup@debian.org>:
  Uh, probably because the gzip binary doesn't come from the
  non-existent libz package or the existent zlib package.
        -- debian-bugs-dist
Ha. I say let them try -- even vi+perl couldn't match the power of an
editor which is, after all, its own OS.  ;-)
        -- Johnie Ingram on debian-devel, about linking vim with libperl.so
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity,
so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses
based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
        -- Richard Stallman
Jim>   http://www.novare.net/~eam/kaffe/
Joey>                           ^
Joey> And now we all learn how to write Ean's name and the URL is complete.
Jim> Hah!  I noticed that the instead I sent it, and I tried to hit ^g, but
     I was too slow.  :-)
        --- debian-devel
Day X+4 months: Microsoft ships NT 5.0 for Intel.with a big media
                event on TV. IBM begins to ship Debian 4.6 as the
                standard OS on all machines from mainframe to PC
                and announces the move on Slashdot.
        -- Christoph Lameter
A feed salesman is on his way to a farm.  As he's driving along at forty
m.p.h., he looks out his car window and sees a three-legged chicken running
alongside him, keeping pace with his car.  He is amazed that a chicken is
running at forty m.p.h.  So he speeds up to forty-five, fifty, then sixty
m.p.h.  The chicken keeps right up with him the whole way, then suddenly
takes off and disappears into the distance.
        The man pulls into the farmyard and says to the farmer, "You know,
the strangest thing just happened to me; I was driving along at at least
sixty miles an hour and a chicken passed me like I was standing still!"
        "Yeah," the farmer replies, "that chicken was ours.  You see, there's
me, and there's Ma, and there's our son Billy.  Whenever we had chicken for
dinner, we would all want a drumstick, so we'd have to kill two chickens.
So we decided to try and breed a three-legged chicken so each of us could
have a drumstick."
        "How do they taste?" said the farmer.
        "Don't know," replied the farmer.  "We haven't been able to catch
one yet."
A traveling salesman was driving past a farm when he saw a pig with three
wooden legs executing a magnificent series of backflips and cartwheels.
Intrigued, he drove up to the farmhouse, where he found an old farmer
sitting in the yard watching the pig.  
        "That's quite a pig you have there, sir" said the salesman.
        "Sure is, son," the farmer replied.  "Why, two years ago, my daughter
was swimming in the lake and bumped her head and damned near drowned, but that
pig swam out and dragged her back to shore."
        "Amazing!"  the salesman exlaimed.
        "And that's not the only thing.  Last fall I was cuttin' wood up on
the north forty when a tree fell on me.  Pinned me to the ground, it did.  
That pig run up and wiggled underneath that tree and lifted it off of me.
Saved my life."
        "Fantastic!  the salesman said.  But tell me, how come the pig has
three wooden legs?"
        The farmer stared at the newcomer in amazement.  "Mister, when you
got an amazin' pig like that, you don't eat him all at once."
According to a recent and unscientific national survey, smiling is something
everyone should do at least 6 times a day.  In an effort to increase the
national average  (the US ranks third among the world's superpowers in
smiling), Xerox has instructed all personnel to be happy, effervescent, and
most importantly, to smile.  Xerox employees agree, and even feel strongly
that they can not only meet but surpass the national average...  except for
Tubby Ackerman.  But because Tubby does such a fine job of racing around
parking lots with a large butterfly net retrieving floating IC chips, Xerox
decided to give him a break.  If you see Tubby in a parking lot he may have
a sheepish grin.  This is where the expression, "Service with a slightly
sheepish grin" comes from.
According to all the latest reports, there was no truth in any of the
earlier reports.
After all is said and done, a hell of a lot more is said than done.
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
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 this big deal about white collar crime -- what's WRONG with white collar
crime?  Who enjoys his job today?  You?  Me?  Anybody?  The only satisfying
part of any job is coffee break, lunch hour and quitting time.  Years ago
there was at least the hope of improvement -- eventual promotion -- more
important jobs to come.  Once you can be sold the myth that you may make
president of the company you'll hardly ever steal stamps.  But nobody
believes he's going to be president anymore.  The more people change jobs
the more they realize that there is a direct connection between working for
a living and total stupefying boredom.  So why NOT take revenge?  You're not
going to find ME knocking a guy because he pads an expense account and his
home stationery carries the company emblem.  Take away crime from the white
collar worker and you will rob him of his last vestige of job interest.
                -- J. Feiffer
All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for fun.
Money's just the way we keep score.
                -- Henry Tyroon
All warranty and guarantee clauses become null and void upon payment of invoice.
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.
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather
a new wearer of clothes.
                -- Henry David Thoreau
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?"
        By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in
the South, were of the present standard gauge.  The southern roads were
still five feet between rails.
        It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard,
in one day.  This remarkable piece of work was carried out on a Sunday in May
of 1886.  For weeks beforehand, shops had been busy pressing wheels in on the
axles to the new and narrower gauge, to have a supply of rolling stock which
could run on the new track as soon as it was ready.  Finally, on the day set,
great numbers of gangs of track layers went to work at dawn.  Everywhere one
rail was loosened, moved in three and one-half inches, and spiked down in its
new position.  By dark, trains from anywhere in the United States could operate
over the tracks in the South, and a free interchange of freight cars everywhere
was possible.
                -- Robert Henry, "Trains", 1957
Dealing with the problem of pure staff accumulation,
all our researches ... point to an average increase of 5.75% per year.
                -- C.N. Parkinson
Despite all appearances, your boss is a thinking, feeling, human being.
Everybody but Sam had signed up for a new company pension plan that
called for a small employee contribution.  The company was paying all
the rest.  Unfortunately, 100% employee participation was needed;
otherwise the plan was off.  Sam's boss and his fellow workers pleaded
and cajoled, but to no avail.  Sam said the plan would never pay off.
Finally the company president called Sam into his office.
        "Sam," he said, "here's a copy of the new pension plan and here's
a pen.  I want you to sign the papers.  I'm sorry, but if you don't sign,
you're fired.  As of right now."
        Sam signed the papers immediately.
        "Now," said the president, "would you mind telling me why you
couldn't have signed earlier?"
        "Well, sir," replied Sam, "nobody explained it to me quite so
clearly before."
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth ..."
        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"
I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all
these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these
kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and
I wasn't tempted to buy one but I was reminded of the fact that I had been
avoiding the beach.
                -- Lucinda Childs "Einstein On The Beach"
I've got all the money I'll ever need if I die by 4 o'clock.
                -- Henny Youngman
If all else fails, lower your standards.
If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would
all be millionaires.
                -- Abigail Van Buren
If you are good, you will be assigned all the work.  If you are real
good, you will get out of it.
In case of atomic attack, all work rules will be temporarily suspended.
In the middle of a wide field is a pot of gold.  100 feet to the north stands
a smart manager.  100 feet to the south stands a dumb manager.  100 feet to
the east is the Easter Bunny, and 100 feet to the west is Santa Claus.

Q:        Who gets to the pot of gold first?
A:        The dumb manager.  All the rest are myths.
It is imperative when flying coach that you restrain any tendency toward
the vividly imaginative.  For although it may momentarily appear to be the
case, it is not at all likely that the cabin is entirely inhabited by
crying babies smoking inexpensive domestic cigars.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
Let's organize this thing and take all the fun out of it.
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"
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots.
Money is the root of all wealth.
        NEW YORK-- Kraft Foods, Inc. announced today that its board of
directors unanimously rejected the $11 billion takeover bid by Philip
Morris and Co. A Kraft spokesman stated in a press conference that the
offer was rejected because the $90-per-share bid did not reflect the
true value of the company.
        Wall Street insiders, however, tell quite a different story.
Apparently, the Kraft board of directors had all but signed the takeover
agreement when they learned of Philip Morris' marketing plans for one of
their major Middle East subsidiaries.  To a person, the board voted to
reject the bid when they discovered that the tobacco giant intended to
reorganize Israeli Cheddar, Ltd., and name the new company Cheeses of Nazareth.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first
overcome.
                -- Dr. Johnson
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
        One fine day, the bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus,
and drove off along the route.  No problems for the first few stops -- a few
people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well.  At the next
stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on.  Six feet eight, built like a
wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground.  He glared at the driver and said,
"Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back.
        Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically
meek?  Well, he was.  Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't
happy about it.  Well, the next day the same thing happened -- Big John got on
again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down.  And the next day, and the
one after that, and so forth.  This grated on the bus driver, who started
losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him.  Finally he
could stand it no longer. He signed up for bodybuilding courses, karate, judo,
and all that good stuff.  By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong;
what's more, he felt really good about himself.
        So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus
and said "Big John doesn't pay!," the driver stood up, glared back at the
passenger, and screamed, "And why not?"
        With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a
bus pass."
        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"
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"
So you think that money is the root of all evil.  Have you ever asked what
is the root of money?
                -- Ayn Rand
Take time to reflect on all the things you have, not as a result of your
merit or hard work or because God or chance or the efforts of other people
have given them to you.
The annual meeting of the "You Have To Listen To Experience" Club is now in
session.  Our Achievement Awards this year are in the fields of publishing,
advertising and industry.  For best consistent contribution in the field of
publishing our award goes to editor, R.L.K., [...] for his unrivalled alle-
giance without variation to the statement: "Personally I'd love to do it,
we'd ALL love to do it.  But we're not going to do it.  It's not the kind of
book our house knows how to handle."  Our superior performance award in the
field of advertising goes to media executive, E.L.M., [...] for the continu-
ally creative use of the old favorite: "I think what you've got here could be
very exciting.  Why not give it one more try based on the approach I've out-
lined and see if you can come up with something fresh."  Our final award for
courageous holding action in the field of industry goes to supervisor, R.S.,
[...] for her unyielding grip on "I don't care if they fire me, I've been
arguing for a new approach for YEARS but are we SURE that this is the right
time--"  I would like to conclude this meeting with a verse written specially
for our prospectus by our founding president fifty years ago -- and now, as
then, fully expressive of the emotion most close to all our hearts --
        Treat freshness as a youthful quirk,
                And dare not stray to ideas new,
        For if t'were tried they might e'en work
                And for a living what woulds't we do?
The Bible on letters of reference:

        Are we beginning all over again to produce our credentials?  Do
we, like some people, need letters of introduction to you, or from you?
No, you are all the letter we need, a letter written on your heart; any
man can see it for what it is and read it for himself.
                -- 2 Corinthians 3:1-2, New English translation
The departing division general manager met a last time with his young
successor and gave him three envelopes.  "My predecessor did this for me,
and I'll pass the tradition along to you," he said.  "At the first sign
of trouble, open the first envelope.  Any further difficulties, open the
second envelope.  Then, if problems continue, open the third envelope.
Good luck."  The new manager returned to his office and tossed the envelopes
into a drawer.
        Six months later, costs soared and earnings plummeted. Shaken, the
young man opened the first envelope, which said, "Blame it all on me."
        The next day, he held a press conference and did just that.  The
crisis passed.
        Six months later, sales dropped precipitously.  The beleagured
manager opened the second envelope.  It said, "Reorganize."
        He held another press conference, announcing that the division
would be restructured.  The crisis passed.
        A year later, everything went wrong at once and the manager was
blamed for all of it.  The harried executive closed his office door, sank
into his chair, and opened the third envelope.
        "Prepare three envelopes..." it said.
The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
                -- Paul Erlich
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 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 King and his advisor are overlooking the battle field:

King:                "How goes the battle plan?"
Advisor:        "See those little black specks running to the right?"
K:        "Yes."
A:        "Those are their guys. And all those little red specks running
        to the left are our guys. Then when they collide we wait till
        the dust clears."
K:        "And?"
A:        "If there are more red specks left than black specks, we win."
K:        "But what about the ^#!!$% battle plan?"
A:        "So far, it seems to be going according to specks."
The only promotion rules I can think of are that a sense of shame is to
be avoided at all costs and there is never any reason for a hustler to
be less cunning than more virtuous men.  Oh yes ... whenever you think
you've got something really great, add ten per cent more.
                -- Bill Veeck
The term "fire" brings up visions of violence and mayhem and the ugly scene
of shooting employees who make mistakes.  We will now refer to this process
as "deleting" an employee (much as a file is deleted from a disk).  The
employee is simply there one instant, and gone the next.  All the terrible
temper tantrums, crying, and threats are eliminated.
                -- Kenny's Korner
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money.
                -- B. Franklin
The Worst Car Hire Service
        When David Schwartz left university in 1972, he set up Rent-a-wreck
as a joke.  Being a natural prankster, he acquired a fleet of beat-up
shabby, wreckages waiting for the scrap heap in California.
        He put on a cap and looked forward to watching people's faces as he
conducted them round the choice of bumperless, dented junkmobiles.
        To his lasting surprise there was an insatiable demand for them and
he now has 26 thriving branches all over America.  "People like driving
round in the worst cars available," he said.  Of course they do.
        "If a driver damages the side of a car and is honest enough to
admit it, I tell him, `Forget it'.  If they bring a car back late we
overlook it.  If they've had a crash and it doesn't involve another vehicle
we might overlook that too."
        "Where's the ashtray?" asked on Los Angeles wife, as she settled
into the ripped interior.  "Honey," said her husband, "the whole car's the
ash tray."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
Then there was the ScoutMaster who got a fantastic deal on this case of
Tates brand compasses for his troup; only $1.25 each!  Only problem was,
when they got them out in the woods, the compasses were all stuck pointing
to the "W" on the dial.

Moral:
        He who has a Tates is lost!
There are many of us in this old world of ours who hold that things break
about even for all of us.  I have observed, for example, that we all get
about the same amount of ice.  The rich get it in the summer and the poor
get it in the winter.
                -- Bat Masterson
        There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by
going from house to house offering to do odd jobs.  He explained this to
a man who answered one door.
        "How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man.
        "Forty dollars."
        "Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes.
        Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again.
"All done!", he says, and collects his money.  "By the way," the student says,
"That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
        They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man.  These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
        They are fools that think otherwise.  No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind.  No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone.  The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
        To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man!  To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
                -- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because
the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it
recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated"
the airline industry.  What this means for you, the consumer, is that the
airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever.  They can
show snuff movies.  They can charge for oxygen.  They can hire pilots right
out of Vending Machine Refill Person School.  They can conserve fuel by
ejecting husky passengers over water.  They can ram competing planes in
mid-air.  These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which
have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
amazingly low fares, such as $29.  Of course, certain restrictions do apply,
the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must
pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
                -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
This week only, all our fiber-fill jackets are marked down!
Those who do things in a noble spirit of self-sacrifice are to be avoided
at all costs.
                -- N. Alexander.
        WARNING TO ALL PERSONNEL:

Firings will continue until morale improves.
We all like praise, but a hike in our pay is the best kind of ways.
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty.
                -- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
We're living in a golden age.  All you need is gold.
                -- D.W. Robertson.
What they say:                                What they mean:

A major technological breakthrough...        Back to the drawing board.
Developed after years of research        Discovered by pure accident.
Project behind original schedule due        We're working on something else.
        to unforseen difficulties
Designs are within allowable limits        We made it, stretching a point or two.
Customer satisfaction is believed        So far behind schedule that they'll be
        assured                                        grateful for anything at all.
Close project coordination                We're gonna spread the blame, campers!
Test results were extremely gratifying        It works, and boy, were we surprised!
The design will be finalized...                We haven't started yet, but we've got
                                                to say something.
The entire concept has been rejected        The guy who designed it quit.
We're moving forward with a fresh        We hired three new guys, and they're
        approach                                kicking it around.
A number of different approaches...        We don't know where we're going, but
                                                we're moving.
Preliminary operational tests are        Blew up when we turned it on.
        inconclusive
Modifications are underway                We're starting over.
What they say:                        What they mean:

New                                Different colors from previous version.
All New                                Not compatible with previous version.
Exclusive                        Nobody else has documentation.
Unmatched                        Almost as good as the competition.
Design Simplicity                The company wouldn't give us any money.
Fool-proof Operation                All parameters are hard-coded.
Advanced Design                        Nobody really understands it.
Here At Last                        Didn't get it done on time.
Field Tested                        We don't have any simulators.
Years of Development                Finally got one to work.
Unprecedented Performance        Nothing ever ran this slow before.
Revolutionary                        Disk drives go 'round and 'round.
Futuristic                        Only runs on a next generation supercomputer.
No Maintenance                        Impossible to fix.
Performance Proven                Worked through Beta test.
Meets Tough Quality Standards        It compiles without errors.
Satisfaction Guaranteed                We'll send you another pack if it fails.
Stock Item                        We shipped it before and can do it again.
What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which nobody
really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday Morning Time,
whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-launch-style "hold" for
two to three hours, during which it just remains 7 a.m.  This way we could
all wake up via a civilized gradual process of stretching and belching and
scratching, and it would still be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually
emerge from bed.
                -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!"
When all else fails, read the instructions.
XI:
        If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would
        get twice as much done.  If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty
        times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all
        the managers would fly off.
XII:
        It costs a lot to build bad products.
XIII:
        There are many highly successful businesses in the United States.
        There are also many highly paid executives.  The policy is not to
        intermingle the two.
XIV:
        After the year 2015, there will be no airplane crashes.  There will
        be no takeoffs either, because electronics will occupy 100 percent
        of every airplane's weight.
XV:
        The last 10 percent of performance generates one-third of the cost
        and two-thirds of the problems.
                -- Norman Augustine
XLVII:
        Two-thirds of the Earth's surface is covered with water.  The other
        third is covered with auditors from headquarters.
XLVIII:
        The more time you spend talking about what you have been doing, the
        less time you have to spend doing what you have been talking about.
        Eventually, you spend more and more time talking about less and less
        until finally you spend all your time talking about nothing.
XLIX:
        Regulations grow at the same rate as weeds.
L:
        The average regulation has a life span one-fifth as long as a
        chimpanzee's and one-tenth as long as a human's -- but four times
        as long as the official's who created it.
LI:
        By the time of the United States Tricentennial, there will be more
        government workers than there are workers.
LII:
        People working in the private sector should try to save money.
        There remains the possibility that it may someday be valuable again.
                -- Norman Augustine
XXXI:
        The optimum committee has no members.
XXXII:
        Hiring consultants to conduct studies can be an excellent means of
        turning problems into gold -- your problems into their gold.
XXXIII:
        Fools rush in where incumbents fear to tread.
XXXIV:
        The process of competitively selecting contractors to perform work
        is based on a system of rewards and penalties, all distributed
        randomly.
XXXV:
        The weaker the data available upon which to base one's conclusion,
        the greater the precision which should be quoted in order to give
        the data authenticity.
                -- Norman Augustine
XXXVI:
        The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar
        contract is about one millimeter per million dollars.  If all the
        proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other
        at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea.
XXXVII:
        Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect.
        The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.
XXXVIII:
        The early bird gets the worm.
        The early worm ... gets eaten.
XXXIX:
        Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of
        the year -- in either direction.
XL:
        Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off.
                -- Norman Augustine
You can fool all the people all of the time if the advertising is right
and the budget is big enough.
                -- Joseph E. Levine
YOU TOO CAN MAKE BIG MONEY IN THE EXCITING FIELD OF PAPER SHUFFLING!

Mr. Smith of Muddle, Mass. says:  "Before I took this course I used to be
a lowly bit twiddler.  Now with what I learned at MIT Tech I feel really
important and can obfuscate and confuse with the best."

Mr. Watkins had this to say:  "Ten short days ago all I could look forward
to was a dead-end job as a engineer.  Now I have a promising future and
make really big Zorkmids."

MIT Tech can't promise these fantastic results to everyone, but when
you earn your MDL degree from MIT Tech your future will be brighter.

                SEND FOR OUR FREE BROCHURE TODAY!
All language designers are arrogant.  Goes with the territory... :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <1991Jul13.010945.19157@netlabs.com
:        And it goes against the grain of building small tools.
Innocent, Your Honor.  Perl users build small tools all day long.
             -- Larry Wall in <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com>
It's all magic.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <7282@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
It won't be covered in the book.  The source code has to be useful for
something, after all...  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <10160@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
"We all agree on the necessity of compromise.  We just can't agree on
when it's necessary to compromise."
             -- Larry Wall in  <1991Nov13.194420.28091@netlabs.com>
The computer should be doing the hard work.  That's what it's paid to do,
after all.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709012312.QAA08121@wall.org>
I'm serious about thinking through all the possibilities before we
settle on anything.  All things have the advantages of their
disadvantages, and vice versa.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org>
As with all the other proposals, it's basically just a list of words.
You can deal with that... :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org>
You tell it that it's indicative by appending $!.  That's why we made $!
such a short variable name, after all.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199709081801.LAA20629@wall.org>
It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road
less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a
pleasant day.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org>
Historically Tcl has always stored all intermediate results as strings.
(With 8.0 they're rethinking that.  Of course, Perl rethought that from
the start.)
             -- Larry Wall in <199710071721.KAA19014@wall.org>
For the sake of argument I'll ignore all your fighting words.
             -- Larry Wall in <199710221710.KAA24242@wall.org>
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most
ridiculous ones.
                -- La Rochefoucauld
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance
and without any visible reason.
                -- Lord Chesterfield
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
        "I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided.  "The pin I'm wearing
means I'm a member of the IA.  That's Inamorati Anonymous.  An inamorato is
somebody in love.  That's the worst addiction of all."
        "Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with
them, or something?"
        "Right.  The whole idea is to get where you don't need it.  I was
lucky.  I kicked it young.  But there are sixty-year-old men, believe it or
not, and women even older, who might wake up in the night screaming."
        "You hold meetings, then, like the AA?"
        "No, of course not.  You get a phone number, an answering service
you can call.  Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case
it gets so bad you can't handle it alone.  We're isolates, Arnold.  Meetings
would destroy the whole point of it."
                -- Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49"
Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to love.
                -- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
Love is dope, not chicken soup.  I mean, love is something to be passed
around freely, not spooned down someone's throat for their own good by a
Jewish mother who cooked it all by herself.
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
                -- Jerome K. Jerome
Love is staying up all night with a sick child, or a healthy adult.
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.
On a tous un peu peur de l'amour, mais on a surtout peur de souffrir
ou de faire souffrir.
        [One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is
         afraid of pain or causing pain.]
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants
and animals.  When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when
the lights go out, they turn into animals.  But then again, don't we all?
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but...
        -- I have to answer all of my "occupant" letters.
        -- None of my socks match.
        -- I'm having all my plants neutered.
        -- I changed the lock on my door and now I can't get out.
        -- My yucca plant is feeling yucky.
        -- I'm touring China with a wok band.
        -- My chocolate-appreciation class meets that night.
        -- I'm running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student
                named Basil Metabolism.
        -- There are important world issues that need worrying about.
        -- I'm going to count the bristles in my toothbrush.
        -- I prefer to remain an enigma.
        -- I think you want the OTHER Peggy/Cathy/Mike/whomever.
        -- I feel a song coming on.
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but...
        -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
        -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
        -- I've been scheduled for a karma transplant.
        -- I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture.
        -- It's my parakeet's bowling night.
        -- I'm building a plant from a kit.
        -- There's a disturbance in the Force.
        -- I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling.
        -- I'm teaching my ferret to yodel.
        -- My crayons all melted together.
"Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love
you knowing nothing?"
                -- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled
by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
All of a sudden, I want to THROW OVER my promising ACTING CAREER, grow
a LONG BLACK BEARD and wear a BASEBALL HAT!! ...  Although I don't know WHY!!
All of life is a blur of Republicans and meat!
All right, you degenerates!  I want this place evacuated in 20 seconds!
All this time I've been VIEWING a RUSSIAN MIDGET SODOMIZE a HOUSECAT!
America!!  I saw it all!!  Vomiting!  Waving!  JERRY FALWELLING into
your void tube of UHF oblivion!!  SAFEWAY of the mind ...
Boys, you have ALL been selected to LEAVE th' PLANET in 15 minutes!!
Catsup and Mustard all over the place!  It's the Human Hamburger!
First, I'm going to give you all the ANSWERS to today's test ...  So
just plug in your SONY WALKMANS and relax!!
Has everybody got HALVAH spread all over their ANKLES?? ...  Now, it's
time to "HAVE A NAGEELA"!!
Here I am in 53 B.C. and all I want is a dill pickle!!
Hmmm ... a PINHEAD, during an EARTHQUAKE, encounters an ALL-MIDGET
FIDDLE ORCHESTRA ... ha ... ha ...
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 guess it was all a DREAM ... or an episode of HAWAII FIVE-O ...
I have the power to HALT PRODUCTION on all TEENAGE SEX COMEDIES!!
I love ROCK 'N ROLL!  I memorized the all WORDS to "WIPE-OUT" in
1965!!
I own seven-eighths of all the artists in downtown Burbank!
I'm changing the CHANNEL ... But all I get is commercials for "RONCO
MIRACLE BAMBOO STEAMERS"!
I'm GLAD I remembered to XEROX all my UNDERSHIRTS!!
I'm pretending that we're all watching PHIL SILVERS instead of RICARDO
MONTALBAN!
It's the RINSE CYCLE!!  They've ALL IGNORED the RINSE CYCLE!!
Let's all show human CONCERN for REVERAND MOON's legal difficulties!!
MY income is ALL disposable!
ONE LIFE TO LIVE for ALL MY CHILDREN in ANOTHER WORLD all THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES.
The entire CHINESE WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL TEAM all share ONE personality --
and have since BIRTH!!
The Osmonds!  You are all Osmonds!!  Throwing up on a freeway at dawn!!!
        "These are DARK TIMES for all mankind's HIGHEST VALUES!"
        "These are DARK TIMES for FREEDOM and PROSPERITY!"
        "These are GREAT TIMES to put your money on BAD GUY to kick the CRAP
out of MEGATON MAN!"
You should all JUMP UP AND DOWN for TWO HOURS while I decide on a NEW CAREER!!
Yow!  It's a hole all the way to downtown Burbank!
Yow!  Now I get to think about all the BAD THINGS I did to a BOWLING
BALL when I was in JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL!
"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
It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because
one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots
who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally
suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses.  Oh, say
the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those
studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association?
To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation from a bunch of
wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their
mystical power being sort of drained out.  Right, say the wizards, that just
about does it, you and your leather posing pouches.  Oh yeah, say the the
heroes, why don't you ...
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
        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."
                -- Fritz Leiber, "The Swords of Lankhmar"
        "Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly.  "In the past year
strange and fearful wonders I have seen.  Fields sown with barley reap
crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts.
There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon.  Calendars are made with
a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance
salesmen.  The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in
square knots.  The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down
soggy potato chips."
        "But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
        "Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made good
copy."
                -- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
When I say the magic word to all these people, they will vanish forever.
I will then say the magic words to you, and you, too, will vanish -- never
to be seen again.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Between Time and Timbuktu"
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:

1. DO NOT EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO SHARE YOUR DISCOMFORT.
        Involvement with the patient's suffering might cause him to lose
        valuable scientific objectivity.

2. BE CHEERFUL AT ALL TIMES.
        Your doctor leads a busy and trying life and requires all the
        gentleness and reassurance he can get.

3. TRY TO SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING TREATED.
        Remember that your doctor has a professional reputation to uphold.
A woman went into a hospital one day to give birth.  Afterwards, the doctor
came to her and said, "I have some... odd news for you."
        "Is my baby all right?" the woman anxiously asked.
        "Yes, he is," the doctor replied, "but we don't know how.  Your son
(we assume) was born with no body.  He only has a head."
        Well, the doctor was correct.  The Head was alive and well, though no
one knew how.  The Head turned out to be fairly normal, ignoring his lack of
a body, and lived for some time as typical a life as could be expected under
the circumstances.
        One day, about twenty years after the fateful birth, the woman got a
phone call from another doctor.  The doctor said, "I have recently perfected
an operation.  Your son can live a normal life now: we can graft a body onto
his head!"
        The woman, practically weeping with joy, thanked the doctor and hung
up.  She ran up the stairs saying, "Johnny, Johnny, I have a *wonderful*
surprise for you!"
        "Oh no," cried The Head, "not another HAT!"
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"
God is dead and I don't feel all too well either....
                -- Ralph Moonen
Stress has been pinpointed as a major cause of illness.  To avoid overload
and burnout, keep stress out of your life.  Give it to others instead.  Learn
the "Gaslight" treatment, the "Are you talking to me?" technique, and the
"Do you feel okay?  You look pale." approach.  Start with negotiation and
implication.  Advance to manipulation and humiliation.  Above all, relax
and have a nice day.
"The molars, I'm sure, will be all right, the molars can take care of
themselves," the old man said, no longer to me.  "But what will become
of the bicuspids?"
                -- The Old Man and his Bridge
        "Welcome back for you 13th consecutive week, Evelyn.  Evelyn, will
you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the
psycho-prompter couch?"
        "Thank you, Red."
        "Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing
your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior
pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem."
        "Yes, Red."
        "But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy
repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times.  Now,
at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off
your $40,000 leaving you with a total of $37,900.  Now, any combination of
two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive
projections will put you out of the game.  Are you willing to go ahead?"
        "Yes, Red."
        "I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have
been checked for accuracy with her analyst.  Now, Evelyn, for $80,000
explain the failure of your three marriages."
        "Well, I--"
        "We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute.  First a word about our
product."
                -- Jules Feiffer
Your digestive system is your body's Fun House, whereby food goes on a long,
dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being
attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last
minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the
Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter.  We Americans live in a nation where the
medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe
25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in
seconds if we felt like it.
                -- Dave Barry, "Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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