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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Acting is not very hard.  The most important things are to be able to laugh
and cry.  If I have to cry, I think of my sex life.  And if I have to laugh,
well, I think of my sex life.
                -- Glenda Jackson
After a few boring years, socially meaningful rock 'n' roll died out. It was
replaced by disco, which offers no guidance to any form of life more
advanced than the lichen family.
                -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
Art is the tree of life.  Science is the tree of death.
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent
and original in your work.
                -- Flaubert
Fremen add life to spice!
Hoaars-Faisse Gallery presents:
An exhibit of works by the artist known only as Pretzel.

The exhibit includes several large conceptual works using non-traditional
media and found objects including old sofa-beds, used mace canisters,
discarded sanitary napkins and parts of freeways.  The artist explores
our dehumanization due to high technology and unresponsive governmental
structures in a post-industrial world.  She/he (the artist prefers to
remain without gender) strives to create dialogue between viewer and
creator, to aid us in our quest to experience contemporary life with its
inner-city tensions, homelessness, global warming and gender and
class-based stress.  The works are arranged to lead us to the essence of
the argument: that the alienation of the person/machine boundary has
sapped the strength of our voices and must be destroyed for society to
exist in a more fundamental sense.
I never made a mistake in my life.  I thought I did once, but I was wrong.
                -- Lucy Van Pelt
If life is a stage, I want some better lighting.
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient
evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
                -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
It's from Casablanca.  I've been waiting all my life to use that line.
                -- Woody Allen, "Play It Again, Sam"
It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
                -- Garfield
James McNeill Whistler's (painter of "Whistler's Mother")
failure in his West Point chemistry examination once provoked him to
remark in later life, "If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a
major general."
Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was
going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then
being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
Linus:        Hi!  I thought it was you.
        I've been watching you from way off...  You're looking great!
Snoopy:        That's nice to know.
        The secret of life is to look good at a distance.
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"
"My life is a soap opera, but who has the rights?"
        -- MadameX
The Great Movie Posters:

*A Giggle Gurgling Gulp of Glee*
With Pretty Girls, Peppy Scenes, and Gorgeous Revues -- plus a good story.
                -- Tea with a Kick (1924)

Whoopie!  Let's go!... Hand-picked Beauties doing cute tricks!
GET IN THE KNOW FOR THE HEY-HEY WHOOPIE!
                -- The Wild Party (1929)

YOU HEAR HIM MAKE LOVE!
DIX -- the dashing soldier!
        DIX -- the bold adventurer!
                DIX -- the throbbing lover!
                -- The Wheel of Life (1929)

SEE CHARLES BUTTERWORTH DRIVE A STREETCAR AND SING LOVE
SONGS TO HIS MARE "MITZIE"!
                -- The Night is Young (1934)
The Great Movie Posters:

KATHERINE HEPBURN as the lying, stealing, singing, preying witch girl
of the Ozarks... "Low down white trash"?  Maybe so -- but let her hear
you say it and she'll break your head to prove herself a lady!
                -- Spitfire (1934)

Do Native Women Live With Apes?
                -- Love Life of a Gorilla (1937)

JUNGLE KISS!!
        When she looked into his eyes, felt his arms around her -- she
was no longer Tura, mysterious white goddess of the jungle tribes --
she was no longer the frozen-hearted high priestess under whose hypnotic
spell the worshippers of the great crocodile god meekly bowed -- she
was a girl in love!
        SEE the ravening charge of the hundred scared CROCODILES!
                -- Her Jungle Love (1938)

LOVE! HATE! JOY! FEAR! TORMENT! PANIC! SHAME! RAGE!
                -- Intermezzo (1939)
There's a trick to the Graceful Exit.  It begins with the vision to
recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to let
go.  It means leaving what's over without denying its validity or its
past importance in our lives.  It involves a sense of future, a belief
that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out.
The trick of retiring well may be the trick of living well.  It's hard to
recognize that life isn't a holding action, but a process.  It's hard to
learn that we don't leave the best parts of ourselves behind, back in the
dugout or the office. We own what we learned back there.  The experiences
and the growth are grafted onto our lives.  And when we exit, we can take
ourselves along -- quite gracefully.
                -- Ellen Goodman
        "What do you do when your real life exceeds your wildest fantasies?"
        "You keep it to yourself."
                -- Broadcast News
Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
                -- Paul Simon
      _
  _  / \                           o
/ \ | |                       o           o                 o
| | | |   _                        o    o                       o       o
| \_| |  / \                      o                            o         o
  \__  |  | |                  o                              o
     | |  | |                 ______          ~~~~                    _____
     | |__/ |               / ___--\\ ~~~                 __/_____\__
     |        ___/              / \--\\  \\   \ ___        <__  x x  __\
     | |             / /\\  \\             ))         \           (  "         )
     | |     -------(---->>(@)--(@)-------\----------< >-----------
     | |   //            | | //__________  /           \        ____)        (___          \\
     | |  //          __|_|         ( --------- )            //// ______ /////\           \\
         //          |    (  \ ______  /           <<<< <>-----<<<<< /            \\
        //         (     )                      / /          \` \__     \\
       //-------------------------------------------------------------\\

Every now and then, when your life gets complicated and the weasels start
closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then
drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at
top volume and at least a pint of ether.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI)
+       /*
+        * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus
+        * this makes the year come out right.
+        */
+       year -= 42;
+#endif
(From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner)
Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
steroid-free fitness center.
                -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.  But there was
also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
French restaurant. [...]
        I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile.  There had been a fight.  I had punched her
boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls.  Everyone told him, "You ride the
bull, senor.  You do not fight it."  But he was lean and tough like a bad
rib-eye and he fought the bull.  And then he fought me.  And when we finished
there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
        "Stop the car," the girl said.
        There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes.  She knew about the
woman of the tollway.  I knew not how.  I started to speak, but she raised an
arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
        "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
        The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
onto my granola and faced a new day.
                -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
                   Competition
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone
to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt
of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race.  He
brought death into the world.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
        A programmer from a very large computer company went to a software
conference and then returned to report to his manager, saying: "What sort
of programmers work for other companies?  They behaved badly and were
unconcerned with appearances. Their hair was long and unkempt and their
clothes were wrinkled and old. They crashed out hospitality suites and they
made rude noises during my presentation."
        The manager said: "I should have never sent you to the conference.
Those programmers live beyond the physical world.  They consider life absurd,
an accidental coincidence.  They come and go without knowing limitations.
Without a care, they live only for their programs.  Why should they bother
with social conventions?"
        "They are alive within the Tao."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't
as easy to get programs right as we had thought.  Debugging had to be
discovered.  I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large
part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in
my own programs.
                -- Maurice Wilkes, designer of EDSAC, on programming, 1949
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
                -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and
after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government
of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only
commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even
the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the
reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
        If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were
a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the
execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some
justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I
venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will
ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if
made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to
declare the construction of such machinery impracticable...
        And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed
by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its
advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I
think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
                -- Charles Babbage, "The Life of a Philosopher"
... in three to eight years we will have a machine with the general
intelligence of an average human being ... The machine will begin
to educate itself with fantastic speed.  In a few months it will be
at genius level and a few months after that its powers will be
incalculable ...
                -- Marvin Minsky, LIFE Magazine, November 20, 1970
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
        -- Dave Olson
Many of the convicted thieves Parker has met began their
life of crime after taking college Computer Science courses.
                -- Roger Rapoport, "Programs for Plunder", Omni, March 1981
Our informal mission is to improve the love life of operators worldwide.
                -- Peter Behrendt, president of Exabyte
        The wise programmer is told about the Tao and follows it.  The average
programmer is told about the Tao and searches for it.  The foolish programmer
is told about the Tao and laughs at it.  If it were not for laughter, there
would be no Tao.
        The highest sounds are the hardest to hear.  Going forward is a way to
retreat.  Greater talent shows itself late in life.  Even a perfect program
still has bugs.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
There's got to be more to life than compile-and-go.
Thus spake the master programmer:
        "After three days without programming, life becomes meaningless."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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!)
Your mode of life will be changed to ASCII.
Your mode of life will be changed to EBCDIC.
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
All a man needs out of life is a place to sit 'n' spit in the fire.
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
                -- Titus Lucretius Carus
"Life is too important to take seriously."
                -- Corky Siegel
Life is too short to be taken seriously.
                -- Oscar Wilde
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a
proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.
                -- John Keats
The life which is unexamined is not worth living.
                -- Plato
While there's life, there's hope.
                -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
Words have a longer life than deeds.
                -- Pindar
You can get everything in life you want, if you will help enough other
people get what they want.
Zhizn' prozhit'--ne pole pereiti.
        [Life's a bitch.]
        [Well, okay.  lit., to live through life is not as simple as crossing
         a field.  Happy now?]
                -- Russian proverb
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity."
- Oscar Wilde
In the beginning, I was made.  I didn't ask to be made.  No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the
Galaxy Radio Scripts
The life of a repo man is always intense.
Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
"All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific."
-- Jane Wagner
Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced -- even a proverb is no proverb
to you till your life has illustrated it.  -- John Keats
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.  -- Henry Brook Adams
Each honest calling, each walk of life, has its own elite, its own aristocracy
based on excellence of performance.  -- James Bryant Conant
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...  

If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were a mere
triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the execution
of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some justification
might be found for the course which has been taken; but I venture to assert
that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will ever publicly express
an opinion that such a machine would be useless if made, and that no man
distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to declare the construction of
such machinery impracticable...

And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials
(out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence
to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve
but appeared "abruptly."
- Newsweek, June 29, 1987, pg. 23
Life.  Don't talk to me about life.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android
Life's the same, except for the shoes.
- The Cars
Life is a process, not a principle, a mystery to be lived, not a problem to
be solved.
- Gerard Straub, television producer and author (stolen from Frank Herbert??)
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.  Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.  And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
- Thomas Jefferson
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account.  The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
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
...It is sad to find him belaboring the science community for its united
opposition to ignorant creationists who want teachers and textbooks to
give equal time to crank arguments that have advanced not a step beyond
the flyblown rhetoric of Bishop Wilberforce and William Jennings Bryan.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
Everyone has a purpose in life.  Perhaps yours is watching television.
- David Letterman
A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal.
The smallness of it is what's attractive.  It's weird, 'cause it's so
intellectually lame.  It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of
my life.  But at the same time, it's what I do best.
- Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman"
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it
seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the
fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving
after rational knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
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
"Life is a garment we continuously alter, but which never seems to fit."
-- David McCord
"Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist in nature... Life is
either a daring adventure or nothing."
-- Helen Keller
The game of life is a game of boomerangs.  Our thoughts, deeds and words
return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.
"Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again.  
God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again."
-- Woody Allen's character in "Hannah and Her Sisters"
"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
We decided it was night again, so we camped for twenty minutes and drank
another six beers at a Young Life campsite.  O.C. got into the supervisory
adult's sleeping bag and ran around in it.  "This is the judgment day and I'm
a terrifying apparition," he screamed.  Then the heat made O.C. ralph in the
bag.
-- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs,
   National Lampoon, October 1982
"I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union, and told me the people
there are hungry for information about the West.  He was asked about many
things, but I will give you two examples that are very revealing about life in
the Soviet Union.  The first question he was asked was if we had exploding
television sets.  You see, they have a problem with the picture tubes on color
television sets, and many are exploding.  They assumed we must be having
problems with them too.  The other question he was asked often was why the
CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited the Soviet Union a
few years ago; their propaganda is very effective.
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 100
"If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways
to be hospitable to the unusual person.  You don't get innovation as a
democratic process.  You almost get it as an anti-democratic process.
Certainly you get it as an anthitetical process, so you have to have an
environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can
deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc.,  
   "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity",
   The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
"In corporate life, I think there are three important areas which contracts
can't deal with, the area of conflict, the area of change and area of reaching
potential.  To me a covenant is a relationship that is based on such things
as shared ideals and shared value systems and shared ideas and shared
agreement as to the processes we are going to use for working together.  In
many cases they develop into real love relationships."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc., "Herman Miller's
   Secrets of Corporate Creativity", The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 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
Life is a game.  Money is how we keep score.
-- Ted Turner
"Life sucks, but it's better than the alternative."
-- Peter da Silva
"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
watching television."
-- Cal Keegan
These screamingly hilarious gogs ensure owners of     X Ray Gogs to be the life
of any party.
-- X-Ray Gogs Instructions
"We cannot put off living until we are ready.  The most salient characteristic
of life is its coerciveness; it is always urgent, "here and now," without any
possible postponement.  Life is fired at us point blank."
-- Ortega y Gasset
Life is full of concepts that are poorly defined.  In fact, there are very few
concepts that aren't.  It's hard to think of any in non-technical fields.  
-- Daniel Kimberg
        [May one] doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated,
        or, if beetles and wasps, in cow-dung, or if butterflies, locusts,
        shellfish, snails, eels, and such life be procreated of putrefied
        matter, which is to receive the form of that creature to which it
        is by formative power disposed[?]  To question this is to question
        reason, sense, and experience.  If he doubts this, let him go to
        Egypt, and there he will find the fields swarming with mice begot
        of the mud of the Nylus, to the great calamity of the inhabitants.
                A seventeenth century opinion quoted by L. L. Woodruff,
                in *The Evolution of Earth and Man*, 1929
Remember:  Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
-- Dave Butler
"Lying lips are abomination to the Lord; but they that deal truly are his
delight.
A soft answer turneth away wrath; but grievous words stir up anger.
He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto
him.
Be not a witness against thy neighbor without cause; and deceive not with
thy lips.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue."
-- Proverbs, some selections from the Jewish Scripture
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
-- Matt Cartmill
"Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a
cockatoo."
-- George Bernard Shaw
"Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it."
-- Baskins
"Oh what wouldn't I give to be spat at in the face..."
-- a prisoner in "Life of Brian"
        "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)
"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."
-- Thomas J. Kopp
"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
-- Marvin the paranoid android
"Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother
to say it, oh God, I'm so depressed.  Here's another of those self-satisfied
doors.  Life!  Don't talk to me about life."
-- Marvin the Paranoid Android
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_
'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do
with equalizing.  Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and
consumption in accordance with the principle "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs."  This will be under communism.
Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits:
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."'
-- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_
"None of our men are "experts."  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible."
-- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):
A diplomat's life consists of three things: protocol, Geritol, and alcohol.
                -- Adlai Stevenson
Andrea: Unhappy the land that has no heroes.
Galileo: No, unhappy the land that _____needs heroes.
                -- Bertolt Brecht, "Life of Galileo"
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 went to my mother and told her I intended to commence a different life.  I
asked for and obtained her blessing and at once commenced the career of a
robber.
                -- Tiburcio Vasquez
In fiction the recourse of the powerless is murder; in life the recourse
of the powerless is petty theft.
It pays in England to be a revolutionary and a bible-smacker most of
one's life and then come round.
                -- Lord Alfred Douglas
Life is a concentration camp.  You're stuck here and there's no way
out and you can only rage impotently against your persecutors.
                -- Woody Allen
My own life has been spent chronicling the rise and fall of human systems,
and I am convinced that we are terribly vulnerable.  ...  We should be
reluctant to turn back upon the frontier of this epoch. Space is indifferent
to what we do; it has no feeling, no design, no interest in whether or not
we grapple with it. But we cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand,
slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point
from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now
would be to deny our history, our capabilities.
                -- James A. Michener
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
                -- Winston Churchill

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as
satisfying as an income tax refund.
                -- F.J. Raymond
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
The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.
                -- Hilaire Belloc
The Least Successful Executions
        History has furnished us with two executioners worthy of attention.
The first performed in Sydney in Australia.  In 1803 three attempts were
made to hang a Mr. Joseph Samuels.  On the first two of these the rope
snapped, while on the third Mr. Samuels just hung there peacefully until he
and everyone else got bored.  Since he had proved unsusceptible to capital
punishment, he was reprieved.
        The most important British executioner was Mr. James Berry who
tried three times in 1885 to hang Mr. John Lee at Exeter Jail, but on each
occasion failed to get the trap door open.
        In recognition of this achievement, the Home Secretary commuted
Lee's sentence to "life" imprisonment.  He was released in 1917, emigrated
to America and lived until 1933.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
        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)
Well, he didn't know what to do, so he decided to look at the government,
to see what they did, and scale it down and run his life that way.
                -- Laurie Anderson
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to
win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent?
In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded
that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the
simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life.  First, a
base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done.  Second,
a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human
activities must exist.  Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses
the national attention upon the direction to proceed.  Finally, an articulate
and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with
words and action the great thing to be accomplished.  The motivation of young
Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of
conditions. ...  The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John
Kennedys appear.  We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they,
and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward.
                -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
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
17th Rule of Friendship:
        A friend will refrain from telling you he picked up the same amount of
        life insurance coverage you did for half the price when yours is
        noncancellable.
                -- Esquire, May 1977
Age, n.:
        That period of life in which we compound for the vices that we
        still cherish by reviling those that we no longer have the enterprise
        to commit.
                -- Ambrose Bierce
Agnes' Law:
        Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of.
Confirmed bachelor:
        A man who goes through life without a hitch.
Emerson's Law of Contrariness:
        Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we
        can.  Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
Ginsberg's Theorem:
        (1) You can't win.
        (2) You can't break even.
        (3) You can't even quit the game.

Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
        Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
        meaningful is based on the negation of one part of Ginsberg's
        Theorem.  To wit:

        (1) Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
        (2) Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break even.
        (3) Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit the game.
half-done, n.:
        This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy,
        light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference between this
        and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the
        difference between life and death.

        You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there
        in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport,
        fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall,
        transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
        Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
        about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop.  Say to the
        man, "Let me have a nice half-done."  Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
Hubbard's Law:
        Don't take life too seriously; you won't get out of it alive.
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
        No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
        legislature is in session.
life, n.:
        A whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
life, n.:
        Learning about people the hard way -- by being one.
life, n.:
        That brief interlude between nothingness and eternity.
love, v.:
        I'll let you play with my life if you'll let me play with yours.
Nick the Greek's Law of Life:
        All things considered, life is 9 to 5 against.
Nouvelle cuisine, n.:
        French for "not enough food".

Continental breakfast, n.:
        English for "not enough food".

Tapas, n.:
        Spanish for "not enough food".

Dim Sum, n.:
        Chinese for more food than you've ever seen in your entire life.
Pardo's First Postulate:
        Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

Arnold's Addendum:
        Everything else causes cancer in rats.
phosflink:
        To flick a bulb on and off when it burns out (as if, somehow, that
        will bring it back to life).
                -- "Sniglets", Rich Hall & Friends
prototype, n.:
        First stage in the life cycle of a computer product, followed by
        pre-alpha, alpha, beta, release version, corrected release version,
        upgrade, corrected upgrade, etc.  Unlike its successors, the
        prototype is not expected to work.
QOTD:
        "I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance."
QOTD:
        "My life is a soap opera, but who gets the movie rights?"
QOTD:
        "Wouldn't it be wonderful if real life supported control-Z?"
QOTD:
        Ludwig Boltzmann, who spend much of his life studying statistical
        mechanics died in 1906 by his own hand.  Paul Ehrenfest, carrying
        on the work, died similarly in 1933.  Now it is our turn.
                -- Goodstein, States of Matter
T-shirt:
        Life is *not* a Cabaret, and stop calling me chum!
Taxes, n.:
        Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
        an extension.
TIPS FOR PERFORMERS:
        Playing cards have the top half upside-down to help cheaters.
        There are a finite number of jokes in the universe.
        Singing is a trick to get people to listen to music longer than
                they would ordinarily.
        There is no music in space.
        People will pay to watch people make sounds.
        Everything on stage should be larger than in real life.
Toni's Solution to a Guilt-Free Life:
        If you have to lie to someone, it's their fault.
vacation, n.:
        A two-week binge of rest and relaxation so intense that
        it takes another 50 weeks of your restrained workaday
        life-style to recuperate.
Van Roy's Law:
        Honesty is the best policy - there's less competition.

Van Roy's Truism:
        Life is a whole series of circumstances beyond your control.
Obscurism:
        The practice of peppering daily life with obscure
references as a subliminal means of showcasing both one's education
and one's wish to disassociate from the world of mass culture.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Overboarding:
        Overcompensating for fears about the future by plunging
headlong into a job or life-style seemingly unrelated to one's
previous life interests: i.e., Amway sales, aerobics, the Republican
party, a career in law, cults, McJobs....
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Safety Net-ism:
        The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional
safety net to buffer life's hurts.  Usually parents.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Personal Tabu:
        A small rule for living, bordering on a superstition, that
allows one to cope with everyday life in the absence of cultural or
religious dictums.
                -- 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"
Yuppie Wannabes:
        An X generation subgroup that believes the myth of a yuppie
life-style being both satisfying and viable.  Tend to be highly in
debt, involved in some form of substance abuse, and show a willingness
to talk about Armageddon after three drinks.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Conspicuous Minimalism:
        A life-style tactic similar to Status Substitution.  The
nonownership of material goods flaunted as a token of moral and
intellectual superiority.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Tele-Parabilizing:
        Morals used in everyday life that derive from TV sitcom plots:
"That's just like the episode where Jan loses her glasses!"
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Squires:
        The most common X generation subgroup and the only subgroup
given to breeding.  Squires exist almost exclusively in couples and
are recognizable by their frantic attempts to create a semblance of
Eisenhower-era plenitude in their daily lives in the face of
exorbitant housing prices and two-job life-styles.  Squires tend to be
continually exhausted from their voraciously acquisitive pursuit of
furniture and knickknacks.
                -- 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.
Before I knew the best part of my life had come, it had gone.
Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin
when you get what you want.
Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
        "Have you lived here all your life?"
        "Oh, twice that long."
He who spends a storm beneath a tree, takes life with a grain of TNT.
How kind of you to be willing to live someone's life for them.
I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
I'm not offering myself as an example; every life evolves by its own laws.
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
If life is merely a joke, the question still remains: for whose amusement?
If life isn't what you wanted, have you asked for anything else?
Life -- Love It or Leave It.
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
                -- Paul Gauguin
Life is both difficult and time-consuming.
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, but why do I always get the pits?
Life is like a simile.
Life is like an analogy.
Life is not for everyone.
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
                -- G.B. Shaw
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my
life there.
Nostalgia is living life in the past lane.
Once I finally figured out all of life's answers, they changed the questions.
Some people live life in the fast lane.  You're in oncoming traffic.
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
Best Beer: A panel of tasters assembled by the Consumer's Union in 1969
judged Coors and Miller's High Life to be among the very best. Those who
doubt that beer is a serious subject might ponder its effect on American
history. For example, New England's first colonists decided to drop anchor
at Plymouth Rock instead of continuing on to Virginia because, as one of
them put it, "We could not now take time for further consideration, our
victuals being spent and especially our beer."
        -- Felton & Fowler's Best, Worst & Most Unusual
Coach: Can I draw you a beer, Norm?
Norm:  No, I know what they look like.  Just pour me one.
                -- Cheers, No Help Wanted

Coach: How about a beer, Norm?
Norm:  Hey I'm high on life, Coach.  Of course, beer is my life.
                -- Cheers, No Help Wanted

Coach: How's a beer sound, Norm?
Norm:  I dunno.  I usually finish them before they get a word in.
                -- Cheers, Fortune and Men's Weights
I gave up Smoking, Drinking and Sex.  It was the most *__________horrifying* 20
minutes of my life!
Life, like beer, is merely borrowed.
                -- Don Reed
[Norm goes into the bar at Vic's Bowl-A-Rama.]

Off-screen crowd:  Norm!
Sam:   How the hell do they know him here?
Cliff: He's got a life, you know.
                -- Cheers, From Beer to Eternity

Woody: What can I do for you, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Elope with my wife.
                -- Cheers, The Triangle

Woody: How's life, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Oh, I'm waiting for the movie.
                -- Cheers, Take My Shirt... Please?
[Norm is angry.]

Woody: What can I get you, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Clifford Clavin's head.
                -- Cheers, The Triangle

Sam:  Hey, what's happening, Norm?
Norm: Well, it's a dog-eat-dog world, Sammy,
      and I'm wearing Milk-Bone underwear.
                -- Cheers, The Peterson Principle

Sam:  How's life in the fast lane, Normie?
Norm: Beats me, I can't find the on-ramp.
                -- Cheers, Diane Chambers Day
Norm:  Gentlemen, start your taps.
                -- Cheers, The Coach's Daughter

Coach: How's life treating you, Norm?
Norm:  Like it caught me in bed with his wife.
                -- Cheers, Any Friend of Diane's

Coach: How's life, Norm?
Norm:  Not for the squeamish, Coach.
                -- Cheers, Friends, Romans, and Accountants
Sam:   What do you know there, Norm?
Norm:  How to sit.  How to drink.  Want to quiz me?
                -- Cheers, Loverboyd

Sam:   Hey, how's life treating you there, Norm?
Norm:  Beats me. ...  Then it kicks me and leaves me for dead.
                -- Cheers, Loverboyd

Woody: How would a beer feel, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Pretty nervous if I was in the room.
                -- Cheers, Loverboyd
Sleep -- the most beautiful experience in life -- except drink.
                -- W.C. Fields
The mark of a good party is that you wake up the next morning wanting to
change your name and start a new life in different city.
                -- Vance Bourjaily, "Esquire"
These days the necessities of life cost you about three times what they
used to, and half the time they aren't even fit to drink.
Woody: What's going on, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:  Let's talk about what's going *in* Mr. Peterson.  A beer, Woody.
                -- Cheers, Paint Your Office

Sam:  How's life treating you?
Norm: It's not, Sammy, but that doesn't mean you can't.
                -- Cheers, A Kiss is Still a Kiss

Woody:  Can I pour you a draft, Mr. Peterson?
Norm:   A little early, isn't it Woody?
Woody:  For a beer?
Norm:   No, for stupid questions.
                -- Cheers, Let Sleeping Drakes Lie
A grammarian's life is always in tense.
A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen
floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for
its species, managed to trap them in a corner.  The children cowered,
terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother!
Save us!  Save us!  We're scared, Mother!"
        Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its
children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them,
and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman
proud.  The startled cat fled in fear for its life.
        As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother,
you saved us!" and "Yay!  You scared the cat away!" she turned to them
purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second
language?"
About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
Graduate life: It's not just a job.  It's an indenture.
                        It's grad exam time...
MEDICINE
        You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a
bottle of Scotch.  Remove your appendix.  Do not suture until your work has
been inspected.  (You have 15 minutes.)

HISTORY
        Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present
day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political,
economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and
Africa.  Be brief, concise, and specific.

BIOLOGY
        Create life.  Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture
if this form of life had been created 500 million years ago or earlier, with
special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system.
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for
these only gave life, those the art of living well.
                -- Aristotle
A prominent broadcaster, on a big-game safari in Africa, was taken to a
watering hole where the life of the jungle could be observed. As he
looked down from his tree platform and described the scene into his
tape recorder, he saw two gnus grazing peacefully. So preoccupied were
they that they failed to observe the approach of a pride of lions led
by two magnificent specimens, obviously the leaders. The lions charged,
killed the gnus, and dragged them into the bushes where their feasting
could not be seen.  A little while later the two kings of the jungle
emerged and the radioman recorded on his tape: "Well, that's the end of
the gnus and here, once again, are the head lions."
This life is a test.  It is only a test.  Had this been an actual life, you
would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
There *__is* intelligent life on Earth, but I leave for Texas on Monday.
When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
                -- Samuel Johnson
A sense of desolation and uncertainty, of futility, of the baselessness
of aspirations, of the vanity of endeavor, and a thirst for a life giving
water which seems suddenly to have failed, are the signs in conciousness
of this necessary reorganization of our lives.

It is difficult to believe that this state of mind can be produced by the
recognition of such facts as that unsupported stones always fall to the
ground.
                -- J.W.N. Sullivan
All life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities.
                -- Dawkins
And the French medical anatomist Etienne Serres really did argue that
black males are primitive because the distance between their navel and
penis remains small (relative to body height) throughout life, while
white children begin with a small separation but increase it during
growth -- the rising belly button as a mark of progress.
                -- S.J. Gould, "Racism and Recapitulation"
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty,
and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a
scientist.  This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
                -- Matt Cartmill
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".
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #14
What to do...
    if reality disappears?
        Hope this one doesn't happen to you.  There isn't much that you
        can do about it.  It will probably be quite unpleasant.

    if you meet an older version of yourself who has invented a time
    traveling machine, and has come from the future to meet you?
        Play this one by the book.  Ask about the stock market and cash in.
        Don't forget to invent a time traveling machine and visit your
        younger self before you die, or you will create a paradox.  If you
        expect this to be tricky, make sure to ask for the principles
        behind time travel, and possibly schematics.  Never, NEVER, ask
        when you'll die, or if you'll marry your current SO.
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #2
What to do...
    if you get a phone call from Mars:
        Speak slowly and be sure to enunciate your words properly.  Limit
        your vocabulary to simple words.  Try to determine if you are
        speaking to someone in a leadership capacity, or an ordinary citizen.

    if he, she or it doesn't speak English?
        Hang up.  There's no sense in trying to learn Martian over the phone.
        If your Martian really had something important to say to you, he, she
        or it would have taken the trouble to learn the language before
        calling.

    if you get a phone call from Jupiter?
        Explain to your caller, politely but firmly, that being from Jupiter,
        he, she or it is not "life as we know it".  Try to terminate the
        conversation as soon as possible.  It will not profit you, and the
        charges may have been reversed.
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.
I do not remember ever having seen a sustained argument by an author which,
starting from philosophical premises likely to meet with general acceptance,
reached the conclusion that a praiseworthy ordering of one's life is to
devote it to research in mathematics.
                -- Sir Edmund Whittaker, "Scientific American", Vol. 183
        "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"
Life is a biochemical reaction to the stimulus of the surrounding
environment in a stable ecosphere, while a bowl of cherries is a
round container filled with little red fruits on sticks.
Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while.
Life is difficult because it is non-linear.
One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and
decides to do something about it.  He calls up his best friend, who is a
mathematical genius.  "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some
way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track?  We could
make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life."  The mathematician thinks
this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself.
        A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any
success.  The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes,
actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but
there a number of details to be figured out.
        After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house,
looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have
some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right
track."
        At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by
pounding on his door at three in the morning.  He has dark circles under his
eyes.  His hair hasn't been combed for many days.  He appears to be wearing
the same clothes as the last time.  He has several pencils sticking out from
behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face.  "WE CAN DO
IT!  WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!!
And it's so EASY!  First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple
harmonic motion..."
Theory is gray, but the golden tree of life is green.
                -- Goethe
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved.
                -- Darwin
There is, in fact, no reason to believe that any given natural phenomenon,
however marvelous it may seem today, will remain forever inexplicable.
Soon or late the laws governing the production of life itself will be
discovered in the laboratory, and man may set up business as a creator
on his own account.  The thing, indeed, is not only conceivable; it is
even highly probable.
                -- H.L. Mencken, 1930
There was a writer in 'Life' magazine ... who claimed that rabbits have
no memory, which is one of their defensive mechanisms.  If they recalled
every close shave they had in the course of just an hour life would become
insupportable.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut
Without life, Biology itself would be impossible.
Dieters live life in the fasting lane.
Is there life before breakfast?
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 bowl of soup with hairs floating on it.  You have to
eat it nevertheless.
                -- Flaubert
"Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it."
Life is like a tin of sardines.  We're, all of us, looking for the key.
                -- Beyond the Fringe
Life is like an egg stain on your chin -- you can lick it, but it still
won't go away.
Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes
you weep.
                -- Carl Sandburg
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find
there is nothing in it.
                -- James Huneker
Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
                -- Storm Jameson
Life without caffeine is stimulating enough.
                -- Sanka Ad
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next
time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV
to plug her latest book.  And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for
eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself
the following questions:

        (1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a
            food?
        (2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich
            exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
        (3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as
            prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with
            double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai?  (Remember, living
            right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like
            longer.)

That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
The Kosher Dill was invented in 1723 by Joe Kosher and Sam Dill.  It is
the single most popular pickle variety today, enjoyed throughout the free
world by man, woman and child alike.  An astounding 350 billion kosher
dills are eaten each year, averaging out to almost 1/4 pickle per person
per day.  New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton says "The kosher dill
really changed my life.  I used to enjoy eating McDonald's hamburgers and
drinking Iron City Lite, and then I encountered the kosher dill pickle.
I realized that there was far more to haute cuisine then I'd ever imagined.
And now, just look at me."
The men sat sipping their tea in silence.  After a while the klutz said,
        "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
        "Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other.  "Why?"
        "How should I know?  What am I, a philosopher?"
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
Beneath this stone lies Murphy,
They buried him today,
He lived the life of Riley,
While Riley was away.
By the yard, life is hard.
By the inch, it's a cinch.
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
But it's very funny -- did you ever try buying them without money?
                -- Ogden Nash
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
If you would be my POSSLQ.

You live with me, and I with you,
And you will be my POSSLQ.
I'll be your friend and so much more;
That's what a POSSLQ is for.

And everything we will confess;
Yes, even to the IRS.
Some day on what we both may earn,
Perhaps we'll file a joint return.
You'll share my pad, my taxes, joint;
You'll share my life - up to a point!
And that you'll be so glad to do,
Because you'll be my POSSLQ.
Easy come and easy go,
        some call me easy money,
Sometimes life is full of laughs,
        and sometimes it ain't funny
You may think that I'm a fool
        and sometimes that is true,
But I'm goin' to heaven in a flash of fire,
        with or without you.
                -- Hoyt Axton
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
                -- Su Tung-p'o
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be,
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.
                -- Swinburne
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.

But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
I see a bad moon rising.
I see trouble on the way.
I see earthquakes and lightnin'
I see bad times today.
Don't go 'round tonight,
It's bound to take your life.
There's a bad moon on the rise.
                -- J. C. Fogerty, "Bad Moon Rising"
I'd never cry if I did find
        A blue whale in my soup...
Nor would I mind a porcupine
        Inside a chicken coop.
Yes life is fine when things combine,        
        Like ham in beef chow mein...
But lord, this time I think I mind,
        They've put acid in my rain.
                      --- Milo Bloom
I'm So Miserable Without You It's Almost Like Having You Here
                -- Song title by Stephen Bishop.

She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft
                -- Song title by Jerry Reed.

When My Love Comes Back from the Ladies' Room Will I Be Too Old to Care?
                -- Song title by Lewis Grizzard.

I Don't Know Whether to Kill Myself or Go Bowling
                -- Unattributed song title.

Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life
                -- Unattributed song title.
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt,
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.
It lies behind starts and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.
It's faster horses,
Younger women,
Older whiskey and
More money.
                -- Tom T. Hall, "The Secret of Life"
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Ether!  (ether who?)  Ether Bunny... Yea!
[chorus]
        Yeay!
        Stay on the Happy side, always on the happy side,
        Stay on the Happy side of life!
        Bum bum bum bum bum bum
        You will feel no pain, as we drive you insane,
        So Stay on the Happy Side of life!

Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Anna!  (anna who?)
        An another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Stilla!  (stilla who?)
        Still another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Yetta!  (yetta who?)
        Yet another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Cargo!  (cargo who?)
        Cargo beep beep and run over ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Boo!  (boo who?)
        Don't Cry!  Ether bunny be back next year! [chorus]
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
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
                -- John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy"
Little Fly,
Thy summer's play                If thought is life
My thoughtless hand                And strength & breath,
Has brush'd away.                And the want
                                Of thought is death,
Am not I
A fly like thee?                Then am I
Or art not thou                        A happy fly
A man like me?                        If I live
                                Or if I die.

For I dance
And drink & sing,
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
                -- William Blake, "The Fly"
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.
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, 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments such prosperi-ty?"
"Oh, didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

"You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!"
"Yes: That's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

"At home in the barton you said `thee' and `thou,'
And `thik oon' and `theas oon' and `t'other;' but now
Your talking quite fits 'ee for compa-ny!"
"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

"Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak
But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,
And your little gloves fit like as on any la-dy!"
"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.

"You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,
And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem
To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!"
"True.  One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.

"I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,
And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!"
"My dear--a raw country girl, such as you be,
Cannot quite expect that.  You ain't ruined," said she.
                --Thomas Hardy
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
                -- Dorothy Parker, "Comment"
Oh, yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of livin' is gone.
                -- John Cougar, "Jack and Diane"
On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turned back time,
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime.
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain.
Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came
In the Year of the Cat.

She doesn't give you time for questions, as she locks up your arm in hers,
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction completely disappears.
By the blue-tiled walls near the market stall there's a hidden door she
    leads you to.
These days, she say, I feel my life just like a river running through
The Year of the Cat.

Well, she looks at you so coolly,
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea.
She comes in incense and patchouli,
So you take her to find what's waiting inside
The Year of the Cat.

Well, morning comes and you're still with her, but the bus and the tourists
    are gone,
And you've thrown away your choice and lost your ticket, so you have to stay on.
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain in the rhythm of the new-born day.
You know some time you're bound to leave her, but for now you're going to stay
In the Year of the Cat.
                -- Al Stewart, "Year of the Cat"
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"
Say!  You've struck a heap of trouble--
Bust in business, lost your wife;
No one cares a cent about you,
You don't care a cent for life;
Hard luck has of hope bereft you,
Health is failing, wish you'd die--
Why, you've still the sunshine left you
And the big blue sky.
                -- R.W. Service
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
Spring is here, spring is here,
Life is skittles and life is beer.
Sun in the night, everyone is together,
Ascending into the heavens, life is forever.
                -- Brand X, "Moroccan Roll/Sun in the Night"
The good (I am convinced, for one)
Is but the bad one leaves undone.
Once your reputation's done
You can live a life of fun.
                -- Wilhelm Busch
The good life was so elusive
It really got me down
I had to regain some confidence
So I got into camouflage
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 Worst American Poet
        Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that
Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years.
        Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire
of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen.
        Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the
formula was the same:
                Have you heard of the dreadful fate
                Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife?
                Of their death I will relate,
                And also others lost their life
                (in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster,
                Where so many people died.
        Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems,
the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a
river or struck by lightning.  A critic of the day said she was "worse than
a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded.
        Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even
suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate".  Her reply was
forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went
beyond reason."  She added that "literary work is very difficult to do".
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
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's a lesson that I need to remember
When everything is falling apart
In life, just like in loving
There's such a thing as trying to hard

You've gotta sing
Like you don't need the money
Love like you'll never get hurt
You've gotta dance
Like nobody's watching
It's gotta come from the heart
If you want it to work.
                -- Kathy Mattea
They went rushing down that freeway,
Messed around and got lost.
They didn't care... they were just dying to get off,
And it was life in the fast lane.
                -- Eagles, "Life in the Fast Lane"
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!
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine                And then one day you find
Staying home to watch the rain                Ten years have got behind you
You are young and life is long                No one told you when to run
And there is time to kill today                You missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter                Hanging on in quiet desperation
                                                is the English way
Never seem to find the time                The time is gone, the song is over
Plans that either come to nought        Thought I'd something more to say...
Or half a page of scribbled lines
                -- Pink Floyd, "Time"
'Tis the dream of each programmer,
Before his life is done,
To write three lines of APL,
And make the damn things run.
Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.
                -- Dylan Thomas, "Was There A Time"
We're Knights of the Round Table
We dance whene'er we're able
We do routines and chorus scenes        We're knights of the Round Table
With footwork impeccable                Our shows are formidable
We dine well here in Camelot                But many times
We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot.        We're given rhymes
                                        That are quite unsingable
In war we're tough and able,                We're opera mad in Camelot
Quite indefatigable                        We sing from the diaphragm a lot.
Between our quests
We sequin vests
And impersonate Clark Gable
It's a busy life in Camelot.
I have to push the pram a lot.
                -- Monty Python
Well, my terminal's locked up, and I ain't got any Mail,
        And I can't recall the last time that my program didn't fail;
I've got stacks in my structs, I've got arrays in my queues,
        I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.

If you think that it's nice that you get what you C,
        Then go : illogical statement with your whole family,
'Cause the Supreme Court ain't the only place with : Bus error views.
        I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.

On a PDP-11, life should be a breeze,
        But with VAXen in the house even magnetic tapes would freeze.
Now you might think that unlike VAXen I'd know who I abuse,
        I've got the : Segmentation violation -- Core dumped blues.
                -- Core Dumped Blues
When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,        Sixty years in these folks' world
A dance that's walked                        The child I works for calls me girl
A song that's spoke,                        I say "Yes ma'am" for working's sake.
I laugh so hard I almost choke                Too proud to bend
When I think about myself.                Too poor to break,
                                        I laugh until my stomach ache,
                                        When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard I nearly died,
The tales they tell, sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit,
But eat the rind,
I laugh until I start to crying,
When I think about my folks.
                -- Maya Angelou
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.
While walking down a crowded
City street the other day,
I heard a little urchin
To a comrade turn and say,
"Say, Chimmey, lemme tell youse,
I'd be happy as a clam
If only I was de feller dat
Me mudder t'inks I am.

"She t'inks I am a wonder,                My friends, be yours a life of toil
An' she knows her little lad                Or undiluted joy,
Could never mix wit' nuttin'                You can learn a wholesome lesson
Dat was ugly, mean or bad.                From that small, untutored boy.
Oh, lot o' times I sit and t'ink        Don't aim to be an earthly saint
How nice, 'twould be, gee whiz!                With eyes fixed on a star:
If a feller was de feller                Just try to be the fellow that
Dat his mudder t'inks he is."                Your mother thinks you are.
                -- Will S. Adkin, "If I Only Was the Fellow"
Who does not love wine, women, and song,
Remains a fool his whole life long.
                -- Johann Heinrich Voss
"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 know my heart keeps tellin' me,
You're not a kid at thirty-three,
You play around you lose your wife,
You play too long, you lose your life.
Some gotta win, some gotta lose,
Goodtime Charlie's got the blues.
Yours is not to reason why,
Just to Sail Away.
And when you find you have to throw
Your Legacy away;
Remember life as was it is,
And is as it were;
Chasing sounds across the galaxy
'Till silence is but a blur.
                -- QYX.
Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.
Better hope the life-inspector doesn't come around while you have your
life in such a mess.
Don't worry.  Life's too long.
                -- Vincent Sardi, Jr.
If your life was a horse, you'd have to shoot it.
In the stairway of life, you'd best take the elevator.
Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
                -- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
Long life is in store for you.
This life is yours.  Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Today is the last day of your life so far.
Try to have as good a life as you can under the circumstances.
Tuesday is the Wednesday of the rest of your life.
You could live a better life, if you had a better mind and a better body.
You will have a long and boring life.
You will have long and healthy life.
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
You will soon meet a person who will play an important role in your life.
You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life."
You've been leading a dog's life.  Stay off the furniture.
Your domestic life may be harmonious.
Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
Your love life will be... interesting.
Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of good news soon.
Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of new developments.
Your object is to save the world, while still leading a pleasant life.
                Accidentally Shot

        Colonel Gray, of Petaluma, came near losing his life a few days ago,
in a singular manner.  A gentleman with whom he was hunting attempted to
bring down a dove, but instead of doing so put the load of shot through the
Colonel's hat.  One shot took effect in his forehead.
                -- Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1861
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been
reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the
day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable
interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on
pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin,
and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper.
Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous
material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the
management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion
the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping."
                -- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
Ever feel like life was a game and you had the wrong instruction book?
Ever feel like you're the head pin on life's bowling alley, and everyone's
rolling strikes?
Football combines the two worst features of American life.
It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
                -- George F. Will, "Men At Work:  The Craft of Baseball"
If people concentrated on the really important things in life,
there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
                -- Doug Larson
Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
                -- Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"
Life is a game of bridge -- and you've just been finessed.
Life is a game.  In order to have a game, something has to be more
important than something else.  If what already is, is more important
than what isn't, the game is over.  So, life is a game in which what
isn't, is more important than what is.  Let the good times roll.
                -- Werner Erhard
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
Our [softball] team usually puts the other woman at second base, where the
maximum possible number of males can get there on short notice to help out
in case of emergency.  As far as I can tell, our second basewoman is a pretty
good baseball player, better than I am, anyway, but there's no way to know
for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male comes barging
over from, say, right field, to deal with it.  She's been on the team for
three seasons now, but the males still don't trust her.  They know, deep in
their souls, that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving
an infant's life, she probably would elect to save the infant's life, without
ever considering whether there were men on base.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
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 whole of life is futile unless you consider it as a sporting proposition.
A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and
licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.
                -- Dr. Boyce, "The Menagerie" ("The Cage"), stardate unknown
A star captain's most solemn oath is that he will give his life, even
his entire crew, rather than violate the Prime Directive.
                -- Kirk, "The Omega Glory", stardate unknown
Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here!
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
"Can you imagine how life could be improved if we could do away with
jealousy, greed, hate ..."

"It can also be improved by eliminating love, tenderness, sentiment --
the other side of the coin"
                -- Dr. Roger Corby and Kirk, "What are Little Girls Made Of?",
                   stardate 2712.4
        "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.
I'm frequently appalled by the low regard you Earthmen have for life.
                -- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
It [being a Vulcan] means to adopt a philosophy, a way of life which is
logical and beneficial.  We cannot disregard that philosophy merely for
personal gain, no matter how important that gain might be.
                -- Spock, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4
It is more rational to sacrifice one life than six.
                -- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3
Klingon phaser attack from front!!!!!
100% Damage to life support!!!!
        "Life and death are seldom logical."
        "But attaining a desired goal always is."
                -- McCoy and Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2821.7
Space: the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life
and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.
                -- Captain James T. Kirk
The people of Gideon have always believed that life is sacred.  That
the love of life is the greatest gift ... We are incapable of
destroying or interfering with the creation of that which we love so
deeply -- life in every form from fetus to developed being.
                -- Hodin of Gideon, "The Mark of Gideon", stardate 5423.4
There is an old custom among my people.  When a woman saves a man's
life, he is grateful.
                -- Nona, the Kanuto witch woman, "A Private Little War",
                   stardate 4211.8.
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
War isn't a good life, but it's life.
                -- Kirk, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
We have found all life forms in the galaxy are capable of superior
development.
                -- Kirk, "The Gamesters of Triskelion", stardate 3211.7
"`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.
"There are of course many problems connected with life, of
which some of the most popular are `Why are people born?'
`Why do they die?' `Why do they spend so much of the
intervening time wearing digital watches?'"

- The Book.
BOOK        Meanwhile, the starship has landed on the surface
of Magrathea
        and Trillian is about to make one of the most
important
        statements of her life. Its importance is not
immediately
        recognised by her companions.
TRILL.        Hey, my white mice have escaped.
ZAPHOD        Nuts to your white mice.
BOOK        What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in
the ground
        underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no
hope of
        rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has
been good to
        you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good
to you so
        far, which given your current circumstances seems
more likely,
        consider how lucky you are that it won't be
troubling you much
        longer.

- Comforting advice for Ford and Arthur in this current
situation, Fit the Eighth.
"He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the
fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the
rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arms out wide. `I
will go mad!' he announced."

- Arthur discovering a way of coping with life on
Prehistoric Earth.
"`That young girl is one of the least benightedly
unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound
lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.'"

- Marvin's first ever compliment about anybody.
"The suit into which the man's body had been stuffed looked
as if it's only purpose in life was to demonstrate how
difficult it was to get this sort of body into a suit. "
        A MODERN FABLE

Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory
far too subtle for the youth of today.  Children need an updated message
with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit
today's minute attention span.

        The Troubled Aardvark

Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was
driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house
in his brand new 4x4.  He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and
unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his snivelling, spoiled
children.  One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and
his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its
pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any
personal effort he could make to change the status quo.  Overcome by a
wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only
course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he
drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods.

MORAL OF THE STORY:  Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers.
                -- Tom Annau
"Boy, life takes a long time to live."
                -- Steven Wright
Decorate your home.  It gives the illusion that your life is more
interesting than it really is.
                -- C. Schulz
Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
                -- Walt Kelly
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic.  I may not get
there, but I'm going first class.
                -- Art Buchwald
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers -- they're going
to make a game out of it.
                -- Woody Allen
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
                -- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"
Life is wasted on the living.
                -- The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe.
Like you,  I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things.  Here are just a few:

        Q -- Is there life after death?
        A -- Definitely.  I speak from personal experience here.  On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache.  Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead.  I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
                -- Dave Barry
Nietzsche says that we will live the same life, over and over again.
God -- I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again.
                -- Woody Allen, "Hannah and Her Sisters"
Showing up is 80% of life.
                -- Woody Allen
  The scene is dull. Tell him to put more life into his dying.
  -Samuel Goldwyn
"Windows for Dummies" is much more than a book title, it's a Microsoft
way of life!
Bill Gates did not realize was that his daughter would grow up to be a
rebel and would never use anything but Linux for her whole life.
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.]
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
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Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#18)

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 18: Witnessing the popularity of "Dilbert", Microsoft has plans
     to launch a syndicated comic strip featuring life at Microsoft. What
     characters would you like to see in such a comic strip?

A. Judge Jackson, the goofy court judge who is always making foolish (and
   funny) decisions

B. Bob, a wacky Microsoft programmer who likes to insert easter eggs in
   his work, and who is addicted to playing "Age of Empires"

C. Bill Gates, the intelligent nerd extraordinaire who always gets his way
   by simply giving people large sums of money

D. Ed Muth, the Microsoft spokesman who keeps putting his foot in his
   mouth. When not in public, he's a surprisingly sexy "chic magnet"

E. Poorard Stalinman, the leader of a movement of hackers to provide
   "free" software for the masses at the expense of Capitalistic values
Evolution Of A Linux User: The 11 Stages Towards Getting A Life

0. Microserf - Your life revolves around Windows and you worship Bill
   Gates and his innovative company.
1. Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt... About Microsoft - You encounter a growing
   number of problems with Microsoft solutions, shaking your world-view
2. FUD... About Linux - After hearing about this new Linux thing, you
   take the plunge, but are unimpressed by the nerdware OS.
3. Born-Again Microserf - You rededicate your life to Microsoft worship
4. Disgruntled User - Microsoft software keeps screwing you over,
   and you're not going to take it anymore!
5. A Religious Experience - You successfully install Linux, and are
   left breathless at its elegance. No more Windows for you!
6. Linux Convert - You continue to fall in love with the new system
7. Linux Zealot - You dedicate your life to Linux World Domination...
   and it shows! You go beyond mere advocacy to sheer zealotry.
8. Back To Reality - Forces out of your control compel you to
   return to using Windows and Office
9. Enlightened Linux User - You become 100% Microsoft free after finding
   ways to overcome the need for Microsoft bloatware
10.Get A Life - You become a millionaire after your Linux portal is
   acquired; you move to a small tropical island and get a life
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.
Brief History Of Linux (#7)
The Rise of Geeks

The late 19th Century saw the rise and fall of "geeks", wild carnival
performers who bit the heads off live chickens. This vocal minority,
outcast from mainstream society, clamored for respect, but failed. Their
de facto spokesman, Tom Splatz, tried to expose America to their plight in
his 312-page book, "Geeks".

In the book Splatz documented the life of two Idahoan geeks with no social
life as they made a meager living traveling the Pacific Northwest in
circuses. While Splatz's masterpiece was a commercial failure, the book
did set a world record for using the term "geek" a total of 6,143 times.
Brief History Of Linux (#24)
Linus Torvalds quotes from his interview in "LinuxNews" (October 1992):

"I doubt Linux will be here to stay, and maybe Hurd is the wave of the
future (and maybe not)..."

"I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies
out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make
weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed
as much when things stabilize." [If only he knew what he was getting into.]

"World domination? No, I'm not interested in that. Galactic domination, on
the other hand..."

"Several people have already wondered if Linux should adopt a logo or
mascot. Somebody even suggested a penguin for some strange reason, which I
don't particularly like: how is a flightless bird supposed to represent an
operating system? Well, it might work okay for Microsoft or even Minix..."

"I would give Andy Tanenbaum a big fat 'F'."
Won't Somebody Please Think Of The Microsoft Shareholder's Children?

The Evil Monopoly will soon be a duopoly of MICROS~1 and MICROS~2 now that
Judge Jackson has made his ruling. Geeks everywhere are shedding tears of
joy, while Microsoft investors are shedding real tears. But not everybody
is ecstatic about the ruling. "It dawned on me today that if Microsoft is
broken up, we won't have anyone to bash anymore. We can have that," said
Rob Graustein, the founder of the new "Save Microsoft Now! Campaign".

Rob continued, "I know what you're thinking! I have not been
assimilated... er, hired... by Microsoft. I'm not crazy. I haven't been
paid off. My life as a geek revolves around bashing Microsoft. I mean, I
own the world's largest collection of anti-Microsoft T-shirts and
underwear. It's time to take a stand against the elimination of Geek Enemy
#1."

Most observers agree that Mr. Graustein's brain has gone 404. "This guy is
nuts! Support Microsoft? I can't believe I'm hearing this. Even fake news
sites couldn't make up this kind of insanity."
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.
Clippit Charged With Attempted Murder

Microsoft's Dancing Paper Clip turned violent last week and nearly killed
a university student testing a new Windows-based human-computer interface.
The victim is expected to make a full recovery, although psychiatrists
warn that the incident may scar him emotionally for life. "You can bet
this kid won't be using Windows or Office ever again," said one shrink.

The victim had been alpha-testing CHUG (Computer-Human Unencumbered
Groupware), a new interface in which the user controls the computer with
force-feedback gloves and voice activation.

"I was trying to write a term paper in Word," he said from his hospital
bed. "But then that damned Dancing Paper Clip came up and started annoying
me. I gave it the middle finger. It reacted by deleting my document, at
which point I screamed at it and threatened to pull the power cord. I
didn't get a chance; the force-feedback gloves started choking me."

"We told Clippit it had the right to remain silent, and so on," said a
campus police officer. "The paperclip responded, 'Hi, I'm Clippit, the
Office Assistant. Would you like to create a letter?' I said, 'Look here,
Mr. Paperclip. You're being charged with attempted murder.' At that point
the computer bluescreened."
Unobfuscated Perl (#2)

A rogue group of Perl hackers has presented a plan to add a "use
really_goddamn_strict" pragma that would enforce readability and
UNobfuscation. With this pragma in force, the Perl compiler might say:

* Warning: Write-only code detected between lines 612 and 734. While this
  code is perfectly legal, you won't have any clue what it does in two
  weeks. I recommend you start over.

* Warning: Code at line 1,024 is indistinguishable from line noise or the
  output of /dev/random

* Warning: Have you ever properly indented a piece of code in your entire
  life? Evidently not.

* Warning: I think you can come up with a more descriptive variable name than
  "foo" at line 1,523.

* Warning: Programmer attempting to re-invent the wheel at line 2,231.
  There's a function that does the exact same thing on CPAN -- and it
  actually works.
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.
A 'full' life in my experience is usually full only of other people's demands.
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 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.
Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a
mountain in a fog.  But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside
than in bed.  What kind of man would live where there is no daring?
And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure?
Is there a better way to die?
                -- Charles Lindbergh
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

1. I salivate at the sight of mittens.
2. If I go into the street, I'm apt to be bitten by a horse.
3. Some people never look at me.
4. Spinach makes me feel alone.
5. My sex life is A-okay.
6. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
7. I like to kill mosquitoes.
8. Cousins are not to be trusted.
9. It makes me embarrassed to fall down.
10. I get nauseous from too much roller skating.
11. I think most people would cry to gain a point.
12. I cannot read or write.
13. I am bored by thoughts of death.
14. I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.
15. I would enjoy the work of a chicken flicker.
16. I am never startled by a fish.
17. My mother's uncle was a good man.
18. I don't like it when somebody is rotten.
19. People who break the law are wise guys.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
But it's very funny -- did you ever try buying them without money?
                -- Ogden Nash
Class, that's the only thing that counts in life.  Class.
Without class and style, a man's a bum; he might as well be dead.
                -- "Bugsy" Siegel
Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each
day as it comes.
                -- Donald Kaul
Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May.
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
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to
get themselves filed.
                -- Clifton Fadiman
His life was formal; his actions seemed ruled with a ruler.
Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is
to a cockatoo.
                -- George Bernard Shaw
I guess I've been wrong all my life, but so have billions of other people...
Certainty is just an emotion.
                -- Hal Clement
I treasure this strange combination found in very few persons: a fierce
desire for life as well as a lucid perception of the ultimate futility of
the quest.
                -- Madeleine Gobeil
If you look good and dress well, you don't need a purpose in life.
                -- Robert Pante, fashion consultant
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 may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a
warning to others.
It's bad enough that life is a rat-race, but why do the rats always have to win?
Life is a hospital in which every patient is possessed by the desire to
change his bed.
                -- Charles Baudelaire
Life is a series of rude awakenings.
                -- R.V. Winkle
Life is a serious burden, which no thinking, humane person would
wantonly inflict on someone else.
                -- Clarence Darrow
Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.
Life is like bein' on a mule team.  Unless you're the lead mule, all the
scenery looks about the same.
"Life would be much simpler and things would get done much faster if it
weren't for other people"
                -- Blore
Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
                -- Bergan Evans
Many people are secretly interested in life.
Most of the fear that spoils our life comes from attacking difficulties
before we get to them.
                -- Dr. Frank Crane
One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly possible.
Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought,
a rivalry of aim.
                -- Henry Brook Adams
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
                -- Eric Hoffer
Remember: Silly is a state of Mind, Stupid is a way of Life.
                -- Dave Butler
Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a
little kinder than is necessary?
                -- J.M. Barrie
Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have
only one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
The best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts
of kindness and love.
                -- Wordsworth
The great merit of society is to make one appreciate solitude.
                -- Charles Chincholles, "Reflections on the Art of Life"
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 heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet,
challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that
keeps the blood at heat.  Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents
itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb
of innocence.  To yield to its blandishments is so easy.  The wrong, it seems,
is venial...  Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of
adventurous youth.
                -- Benjamin Cardozo
The three questions of greatest concern are -- 1. Is it attractive?
2. Is it amusing?  3. Does it know its place?
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
There is no such thing as inner peace.  There is only nervousness or death.
Any attempt to prove otherwise constitutes unacceptable behaviour.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life."

Orac: "It is unlikely.  I would predict there are far greater mistakes
      waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
We thrive on euphemism.  We call multi-megaton bombs "Peace-keepers", closet
size apartments "efficient" and incomprehensible artworks "innovative".  In
fact, "euphemism" has become a euphemism for "bald-faced lie".  And now, here
are the euphemisms so colorfully employed in Personal Ads:

EUPHEMISM                        REALITY
-------------------                -------------------------
Excited about life's journey        No concept of reality
Spiritually evolved                Oversensitive
Moody                                Manic-depressive
Soulful                                Quiet manic-depressive
Poet                                Boring manic-depressive
Sultry/Sensual                        Easy
Uninhibited                        Lacking basic social skills
Unaffected and earthy                Slob and lacking basic social skills
Irreverent                        Nasty and lacking basic social skills
Very human                        Quasimodo's best friend
Swarthy                                Sweaty even when cold or standing still
Spontaneous/Eclectic                Scatterbrained
Flexible                        Desperate
Aging child                        Self-centered adult
Youthful                        Over 40 and trying to deny it
Good sense of humor                Watches a lot of television
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"
... whether it is better to spend a life not knowing what you want or to
spend a life knowing exactly what you want and that you will never have it.
                -- Richard Shelton
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first
and last month in advance.
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
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 -- not a time of life but a state of mind... a predominance of
courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.
                -- Robert F. Kennedy
        Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance
of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.
        Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow
old only by deserting their ideals.  Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair
-- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit
back to dust.
        Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and
thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite
for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
        You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your
despair.
        So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage,
grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long
you are young.
                -- Samuel Ullman
/* strangest things ever said, #6, to alan cox: "...and remember, alan
* - no monkeybusiness.  remember, i sleep nude and we dont want to
* give rachel the shock of her life..." */

        - comment in the Crack 5 source, file src/util/kickdict.c
I have a simple rule in life: If I don't understand something, it must be bad.

        - Linus Torvalds
The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.
In action, be aware of the time and the season.
No fight:  No blame.
Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

He who knows how to live can walk abroad
Without fear of rhinoceros or tiger.
He will not be wounded in battle.
For in him rhinoceroses can find no place to thrust their horn,
Tigers no place to use their claws,
And weapons no place to pierce.
Why is this so?
Because he has no place for death to enter.
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.
Rule a nation with justice.
Wage war with surprise moves.
Become master of the universe without striving.
How do I know that this is so?
Because of this!

The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men's weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.

Therefore the sage says:
  I take no action and people are reformed.
  I enjoy peace and people become honest.
  I do nothing and people become rich.
  I have no desires and people return to the good and  simple life.
In caring for others and serving heaven,
There is nothing like using restraint.
Restraint begins with giving up one's own ideas.
This depends on Virtue gathered in the past.
If there is a good store of Virtue, then nothing is impossible.
If nothing is impossible, then there are no limits.
If a man knows no limits, then he is fit to be a ruler.
The mother principle of ruling holds good for a long time.
This is called having deep roots and a firm foundation,
The Tao of long life and eternal vision.
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.
Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

Why are the people rebellious?
Because the rulers interfere too much.
Therefore they are rebellious.

Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.
A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

        Go away.  You bother me.
        Why?   Because life is unfair.
        That's a nice drawing.  What is it?
        Children should be seen and not heard.
        You'll be the death of me.
        You'll understand when you're older.
        Because.
        Wipe that smile off your face.
        I don't believe you.
        How many times have I told you to be careful?
        Just because.
It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
                -- Kingsley Amis
Life does not begin at the moment of conception or the moment of birth.
It begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies.
Life is a sexually transmitted disease with 100% mortality.
Life is like a diaper -- short and loaded.
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children.
Life is the other way around.
                -- David Lodge, "The British Museum is Falling Down"
My parents went to Niagara Falls and all I got was this crummy life.
Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when
you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
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"
"As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a
thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something."
        -- Hagar the Horrible
<Knghtbrd> it's 6am.  I have been up 24 hours
<Knghtbrd> Wake me up and risk life and limb.
* Knghtbrd &; sleep
<Tv> Okay everyone, we wait 10 minutes and then start flooding Knghtbrd
     with ^G's. Someone, hack root and cat /dev/urandom >/dev/dsp.
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?
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 doctor was stranded with a lawyer in a leaky life raft in shark-infested
waters. The doctor tried to swim ashore but was eaten by the sharks. The
lawyer, however, swam safely past the bloodthirsty sharks.  "Professional
courtesy," he explained.
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #18:

Q:  Are you married?
A:  No, I'm divorced.
Q:  And what did your husband do before you divorced him?
A:  A lot of things I didn't know about.
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 #25:

Q:  You say you had three men punching at you, kicking you, raping you,
    and you didn't scream?
A:  No ma'am.
Q:  Does that mean you consented?
A:  No, ma'am.  That means I was unconscious.
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 #32:

Q:  Do you know how far pregnant you are right now?
A:  I will be three months November 8th.
Q:  Apparently then, the date of conception was August 8th?
A:  Yes.
Q:  What were you and your husband doing at that time?
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:

Q:  Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
A:  No.
Q:  What was he doing with the dog's ears?
A:  Picking them up in the air.
Q:  Where was the dog at this time?
A:  Attached to the ears.
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.
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:

Q:  Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A:  By death.
Q:  And by whose death was it terminated?
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:

Q:  What is your name?
A:  Ernestine McDowell.
Q:  And what is your marital status?
A:  Fair.
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:

Q:  What happened then?
A:  He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify me."
Q:  Did he kill you?
A:  No.
If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the
separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience,
it might well prolong his life.
                -- Charles Darling, "Scintillae Juris, 1877
                        Pittsburgh driver's test

(9) Roads are salted in order to

        (a) kill grass.
        (b) melt snow.
        (c) help the economy.
        (d) prevent potholes.

The correct answer is (c). Road salting employs thousands of persons
directly, and millions more indirectly, for example, salt miners and
rustproofers.  Most important, salting reduces the life spans of cars,
thus stimulating the car and steel industries.
When alerted to an intrusion by tinkling glass or otherwise, 1) Calm
yourself 2) Identify the intruder 3) If hostile, kill him.

Step number 3 is of particular importance.  If you leave the guy alive
out of misguided softheartedness, he will repay your generosity of spirit
by suing you for causing his subsequent paraplegia and seek to force you
to support him for the rest of his rotten life.  In court he will plead
that he was depressed because society had failed him, and that he was
looking for Mother Teresa for comfort and to offer his services to the
poor.  In that lawsuit, you will lose.  If, on the other hand, you kill
him, the most that you can expect is that a relative will bring a wrongful
death action. You will have two advantages: first, there be only your
story; forget Mother Teresa.  Second, even if you lose, how much could
the bum's life be worth anyway?  A Lot less than 50 years worth of
paralysis.  Don't play George Bush and Saddam Hussein.  Finish the job.
        -- G. Gordon Liddy's "Forbes" column on personal security
At the end of your life there'll be a good rest, and no further activities
are scheduled.
        Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
        took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of
his followers.
        One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
        "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile?  What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
        Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU".  (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
        Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
        Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
                -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.
                -- Titus Lucretius Carus
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
                -- R. Geis
Do not despair of life.  You have no doubt force enough to overcome your
obstacles.  Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night
for something to satisfy his hunger.  Notwithstanding cold and hounds and
traps, his race survives.  I do not believe any of them ever committed suicide.
                -- Henry David Thoreau
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Do what you can to prolong your life, in the hope that someday you'll
learn what it's for.
Do your part to help preserve life on Earth -- by trying to preserve your own.
Don't take life seriously, you'll never get out alive.
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.
Each man is his own prisoner, in solitary confinement for life.
Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect
that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers
and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the
essential death in which its subject's roots are plunged.  The natural
inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued
forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.
                -- Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William
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
Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.
                -- Marcus Aurelius
For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in
despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the
implacable grandeur of this life.
                -- Albert Camus
Got a dictionary?  I want to know the meaning of life.
I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
I know not how I came into this, shall I call it a dying life or a
living death?
                -- St. Augustine
If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his
reverence for all of life.
                -- Albert Schweitzer
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time.  I
would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this
trip.  I know of very few things I would take seriously.  I would be crazier.
I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets.  I'd
travel and see.  I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly
and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh, I have had my moments and,
if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them.  In fact, I'd try to
have nothing else.  Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many
years ahead each day.  I have been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hotwater bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel
lighter than I have.  If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.  I would play hooky
more.  I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more.  I would
ride on more merry-go-rounds.  I'd pick more daisies.
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur
of this life.
                -- Albert Camus
If your aim in life is nothing, you can't miss.
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 Fortune, not Wisdom, that rules man's life.
It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do,
that makes life blessed.
                -- Goethe
Life can be so tragic -- you're here today and here tomorrow.
Life exists for no known purpose.
Life is a grand adventure -- or it is nothing.
                -- Helen Keller
Life is knowing how far to go without crossing the line.
Life is like a 10 speed bicycle.  Most of us have gears we never use.
                -- C. Schultz
Life is like a sewer.  What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
                -- Tom Lehrer
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
                -- Goethe
Life is the living you do, Death is the living you don't do.
                -- Joseph Pintauro
Life is the urge to ecstasy.
Life may have no meaning, or, even worse, it may have a meaning of which
you disapprove.
Life only demands from you the strength you possess.
Only one feat is possible -- not to have run away.
                -- Dag Hammarskjold
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"
No use getting too involved in life -- you're only here for a limited time.
Nothing in life is to be feared.  It is only to be understood.
        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
Rule of Life #1 -- Never get separated from your luggage.
Since everything in life is but an experience perfect in being what it is,
having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well
burst out in laughter.
                -- Long Chen Pa
Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
                -- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.
                -- Alfred Adler
There are no winners in life, only survivors.
There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life is the process of
discovering them over and over and over.
                -- David Nichols
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
                -- Mahatma Gandhi
We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who,
content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.
                -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
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"
When you die, you lose a very important part of your life.
                -- Brooke Shields
[Wisdom] is a tree of life to those laying
hold of her, making happy each one holding her fast.
                -- Proverbs 3:18, NSV
Your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.
+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI)
+       /*
+        * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus
+        * this makes the year come out right.
+        */
+       year -= 42;
+#endif
        -- From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner
.. I used to get in more fights with SCO than I did my girlfriend, but
now, thanks to Linux, she has more than happily accepted her place back at
number one antagonist in my life..
        -- Jason Stiefel, krypto@s30.nmex.com
So in the future, one 'client' at a time or you'll be spending CPU time with
lots of little 'child processes'.
        -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the private life of a Linux nerd
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
It's easy to get on the internet and forget you have a life
        -- Topic on #LinuxGER
Do people like check the Debian website every 5 minutes to check it hasn't morphed into another one?
Not that I'm one to talk, but some people seriously need to get a life
        -- james on #Debian
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
                -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"
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."
Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
great effort pushing boulders into a single word.

It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
both Parliament and Party.

It stands today, a monument to human spirit.  If life exists on other
planets, this may be the first message received from us.
                -- The Realist, November, 1964.
        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"
Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.
Life is cheap, but the accessories can kill you.
None of our men are "experts."  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
                -- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work"
Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes.  I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
                -- J. Wellington Wells
Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits.
                -- Robert Louis Stevenson
Suggest you just sit there and wait till life gets easier.
That's life.
        What's life?
A magazine.
        How much does it cost?
Two-fifty.
        I only have a dollar.
That's life.
The answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is...

        Four day work week,
        Two ply toilet paper!
The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything was
released with the kind permission of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers,
Sages, Luminaries, and Other Professional Thinking Persons.
The best things in life are for a fee.
The best things in life go on sale sooner or later.
There are worse things in life than death.  Have you ever spent an evening
with an insurance salesman?
                -- Woody Allen
There must be more to life than having everything.
                -- Maurice Sendak
Those who claim the dead never return to life haven't ever been around
here at quitting time.
To save a single life is better than to build a seven story pagoda.
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity.  They seem
more afraid of life than death.
                -- James F. Byrnes
Very few things actually get manufactured these days, because in an
infinitely large Universe, such as the one in which we live, most things one
could possibly imagine, and a lot of things one would rather not, grow
somewhere.  A forest was discovered recently in which most of the trees grew
ratchet screwdrivers as fruit.  The life cycle of the ratchet screwdriver is
quite interesting.  Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can
lie undisturbed for years.  Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its
outer skin that crumbles into dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable
little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a hole
for a screw.  This, when found, will get thrown away.  No one knows what the
screwdriver is supposed to gain from this.  Nature, in her infinite wisdom,
is presumably working on it.
"We maintain that the very foundation of our way of life is what we call
free enterprise," said Cash McCall, "but when one of our citizens
show enough free enterprise to pile up a little of that profit, we do
our best to make him feel that he ought to be ashamed of himself."
                -- Cameron Hawley
What good is a ticket to the good life, if you can't find the entrance?
What they said:
        What they meant:

"If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much
of him as I do."
        (Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.)
"Her input was always critical."
        (She never had a good word to say.)
"I have no doubt about his capability to do good work."
        (And it's nonexistent.)
"This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which
already has so many outstanding members."
        (Unless you already have a moron.)
"His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable:
one unbelievable result after another."
        (And we didn't believe them, either.)
"She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her."
        (In fact, to life in general...)
Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life.
                -- Schulz
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
You or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes.  I would rather it were you.
I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but
we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.
                -- J. Wellington Wells
That means I'll have to use $ans to suppress newlines now.
Life is ridiculous.
             -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
Life gets boring, someone invents another necessity, and once again we
turn the crank on the screwjack of progress hoping that nobody gets
screwed.
             -- Larry Wall in <199705101952.MAA00756@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>
        "No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods -- it was so
simple, really.  "I didn't, for a long time, but I do now.  You just can't
hold people, you can't own them.  I mean it's only natural, a natural process
really.  Meet.  Love.  Part.  Life goes on.  There was never any reason to
expect her to stay always the same -- I mean `in love,' you know."  There were
those doubt-quotes of Smoky's, heavily indicated.  "I don't hold a grudge.  I
can't."
        "You do," Grandfather Trout said.  "And you don't understand."
                -- Little, Big, "John Crowley"
Oh, love is real enough, you will find it some day, but it has one
arch-enemy -- and that is life.
                -- Jean Anouilh, "Ardele"
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these
days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate
with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children
who can't communicate with their parents, and so on.  And the characters in
these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours
bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate.  I feel that if a person can't
communicate, the very _____least he can do is to shut up!
                -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
That's life for you, said McDunn.  Someone always waiting for someone who
never comes home.  Always someone loving something more than that thing loves
them.  And after awhile you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it
can't hurt you no more.
                -- R. Bradbury, "The Fog Horn"
The little pieces of my life I give to you, with love, to make a quilt
to keep away the cold.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
parts dead.
                -- Bertrand Russell
When your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
                -- Leonard Cohen, "Sisters of Mercy"
Why I Can't Go Out With You:

I'd LOVE to, but ...
        -- I have to floss my cat.
        -- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
        -- I need to spend more time with my blender.
        -- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
        -- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
        -- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
        -- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
        -- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
        -- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
        -- I have some really hard words to look up.
        -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
        -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
Yeah, there are more important things in life than money, but they won't go
out with you if you don't have any.
All of life is a blur of Republicans and meat!
Bo Derek ruined my life!
I have accepted Provolone into my life!
I hope you millionaires are having fun!  I just invested half your life
savings in yeast!!
I just forgot my whole philosophy of life!!!
I wonder if I ought to tell them about my PREVIOUS LIFE as a COMPLETE
STRANGER?
Life is a POPULARITY CONTEST!  I'm REFRESHINGLY CANDID!!
My life is a patio of fun!
On the other hand, life can be an endless parade of TRANSSEXUAL
QUILTING BEES aboard a cruise ship to DISNEYWORLD if only we let it!!
ONE LIFE TO LIVE for ALL MY CHILDREN in ANOTHER WORLD all THE DAYS OF OUR LIVES.
TONY RANDALL!  Is YOUR life a PATIO of FUN??
Wait ... is this a FUN THING or the END of LIFE in Petticoat Junction??
An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for
broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
        It seems there's this magician working one of the luxury cruise ships
for a few years.  He doesn't have to change his routines much as the audiences
change over fairly often, and he's got a good life.   The only problem is the
ship's parrot, who perches in the hall and watches him night after night, year
after year.  Finally, the parrot figures out how almost every trick works and
starts giving it away for the audience.  For example, when the magician makes
a bouquet of flowers disappear, the parrot squawks "Behind his back!  Behind
his back!"  Well, the magician is really annoyed at this, but there's not much
he can do about it as the parrot is a ship's mascot and very popular with the
passengers.
        One night, the ship strikes some floating debris, and sinks without
a trace.  Almost everyone aboard was lost, except for the magician and the
parrot.  For three days and nights they just drift, with the magician clinging
to one end of a piece of driftwood and the parrot perched on the other end.
As the sun rises on the morning of the fourth day, the parrot walks over to
the magician's end of the log.  With obvious disgust in his voice, he snaps
"OK, you win, I give up.  Where did you hide the ship?"
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 distraught patient phoned her doctor's office.  "Was it true," the woman
inquired, "that the medication the doctor had prescribed was for the rest
of her life?"
        She was told that it was.  There was just a moment of silence before
the woman proceeded bravely on.  "Well, I'm wondering, then, how serious my
condition is.  This prescription is marked `NO REFILLS'".
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!"
After his legs had been broken in an accident, Mr. Miller sued for damages,
claming that he was crippled and would have to spend the rest of his life
in a wheelchair.  Although the insurance-company doctor testified that his
bones had healed properly and that he was fully capable  of walking, the
judge decided for the plaintiff and awarded him $500,000.
        When he was wheeled into the insurance office to collect his check,
Miller was confronted by several executives.  "You're not getting away with
this, Miller," one said.  "We're going to watch you day and night.  If you
take a single step, you'll not only repay the damages but stand trial for
perjury.  Here's the money.  What do you intend to do with it?"
        "My wife and I are going to travel," Miller replied.  "We'll go to
Stockholm, Berlin, Rome, Athens and, finally, to a place called Lourdes --
where, gentlemen, you'll see yourselves one hell of a miracle."
        As a general rule of thumb, never trust anybody who's been in therapy
for more than 15 percent of their life span.  The words "I am sorry" and "I
am wrong" will have totally disappeared from their vocabulary.  They will stab
you, shoot you, break things in your apartment, say horrible things to your
friends and family, and then justify this abhorrent behavior by saying:
"Sure, I put your dog in the microwave.  But I feel *better* for doing it."
                -- Bruce Feirstein, "Nice Guys Sleep Alone"
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life
to date.  He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now.  He has
the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly
realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet
and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object.
He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists
entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning
cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for
legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy
Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast").
                -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
Fortune's Exercising Truths:

1:  Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic.  You don't.
2.  Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart.  So do heart attacks.
3.  Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life.
4.  Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing.
5.  No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done
    quietly at your desk at work.  People will suspect manic tendencies as
    you twitter around in your chair.
6.  Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers.
7.  Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around
    for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard
    racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity.
8.  Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups,
    followed by one throw-up.
9.  Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.
New England Life, of course.  Why do you ask?
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.
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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