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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Two men are in a hot-air balloon.  Soon, they find themselves lost in a
canyon somewhere.  One of the three men says, "I've got an idea.  We can
call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the
end of the canyon.  Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
        So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo!  Where
are we?"  (They hear the echo several times).
        Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
You're lost!"
        The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
        Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
        "For three reasons.  First, he took a long time to answer, second,
he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
  Goes (Went) over like a lead balloon.
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.  The
green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that
grew in the ears themselvse, stuck out on either side like turn signals
indicating two directions at once.  Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the
bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled
with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.  In the shadow under the green visor
of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down
upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department
store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.  Several
of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be
properly considered offenses against taste and decency.  Possession of
anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and
geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.
                -- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces"
        It seems these two guys, George and Harry, set out in a Hot Air
balloon to cross the United States.  After forty hours in the air, George
turned to Harry, and said, "Harry, I think we've drifted off course!  We
need to find out where we are."
        Harry cools the air in the balloon, and they descend to below the
cloud cover.  Slowly drifting over the countryside, George spots a man
standing below them and yells out, "Excuse me!  Can you please tell me
where we are?"
        The man on the ground yells back, "You're in a balloon, approximately
fifty feet in the air!"
        George turns to Harry and says, "Well, that man *must* be a lawyer".
        Replies Harry, "How can you tell?".
        "Because the information he gave us is 100% accurate, and totally
useless!"

That's the end of The Joke, but for you people who are still worried about
George and Harry: they end up in the drink, and make the front page of the
New York Times: "Balloonists Soaked by Lawyer".
The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on
a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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