Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| A Hollywood producer calls a friend, another producer on the phone. "Hello?" his friend answers. "Hi!" says the man. "This is Bob, how are you doing?" "Oh," says the friend, "I'm doing great! I just sold a screenplay for two hundred thousand dollars. I've started a novel adaptation and the studio advanced me fifty thousand dollars on it. I also have a television series coming on next week, and everyone says it's going to be a big hit! I'm doing *great*! How are you?" "Okay," says the producer, "give me a call when he leaves." | |
| A rose is a rose is a rose. Just ask Jean Marsh, known to millions of PBS viewers in the '70s as Rose, the maid on the LWT export "Upstairs, Downstairs." Though Marsh has since gone on to other projects, ... it's with Rose she's forever identified. So much so that she even likes to joke about having one named after her, a distinction not without its drawbacks. "I was very flattered when I heard about it, but when I looked up the official description, it said, `Jean Marsh: pale peach, not very good in beds; better up against a wall.' I want to tell you that's not true. I'm very good in beds as well." | |
| "Hawk, we're going to die." "Never say die... and certainly never say we." -- M*A*S*H | |
| I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk. -- Sidney Greenstreet, "The Maltese Falcon" | |
| I used to be disgusted, now I find I'm just amused. -- Elvis Costello | |
| I'm a Hollywood writer; so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain. | |
| I'm not a real movie star -- I've still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago. -- Will Rogers | |
| If an average person on the subway turns to you, like an ancient mariner, and starts telling you her tale, you turn away or nod and hope she stops, not just because you fear she might be crazy. If she tells her tale on camera, you might listen. Watching strangers on television , even responding to them from a studio audience, we're disengaged -- voyeurs collaborating with exhibitionists in rituals of sham community. Never have so many known so much about people for whom they cared so little. -- Wendy Kaminer commenting on testimonial television in "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional". | |
| If I had done everything I'm credited with, I'd be speaking to you from a laboratory jar at Harvard. -- Frank Sinatra AS USUAL, YOUR INFORMATION STINKS. -- Frank Sinatra, telegram to "Time" magazine | |
| Jim, it's Jack. I'm at the airport. I'm going to Tokyo and wanna pay you the five-hundred I owe you. Catch you next year when I get back! -- "The Rockford Files" | |
| Jim, this is Janelle. I'm flying tonight, so I can't make our date, and I gotta find a safe place for Daffy. He loves you, Jim! It's only two days, and you'll see. Great Danes are no problem! -- "The Rockford Files" | |
| Linus: I guess it's wrong always to be worrying about tomorrow. Maybe we should think only about today. Charlie Brown: No, that's giving up. I'm still hoping that yesterday will get better. | |
| Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser. -- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew" | |
| Mr. Rockford? Miss Collins from the Bureau of Licenses. We got your renewal before the extended deadline but not your check. I'm sorry but at midnight you're no longer licensed as an investigator. -- "The Rockford Files" | |
| Potahto' Pictures Productions Presents: SPUD ROGERS OF THE 25TH CENTURY: Story of an Air Force potato that's left in a rarely used chow hall for over two centuries and wakes up in a world populated by soybean created imitations under the evil Dick Tater. Thanks to him, the soy-potatoes learn that being a 'tater is where it's at. Memorable line, "'Cause I'm just a stud spud!" FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER SERIES: Crazed potato who was left in a fryer too long and was charbroiled carelessly returns to wreak havoc on unsuspecting, would-be teen camp cooks. Scenes include a girl being stuffed with chives and Fleischman's Margarine and a boy served up on a side dish with beets and dressing. Definitely not for the squeamish, or those on diets that are driving them crazy. FRIDAY THE 13TH DINER II,III,IV,V,VI: Much, much more of the same. Except with sour cream. | |
| Producers seem to be so prejudiced against actors who've had no training. And there's no reason for it. So what if I didn't attend the Royal Academy for twelve years? I'm still a professional trying to be the best actress I can. Why doesn't anyone send me the scripts that Faye Dunaway gets? -- Farrah Fawcett-Majors | |
| Shhh... be vewy, vewy, quiet! I'm hunting wabbits... | |
| There are two jazz musicians who are great buddies. They hang out and play together for years, virtually inseparable. Unfortunately, one of them is struck by a truck and killed. About a week later his friend wakes up in the middle of the night with a start because he can feel a presence in the room. He calls out, "Who's there? Who's there? What's going on?" "It's me -- Bob," replies a faraway voice. Excitedly he sits up in bed. "Bob! Bob! Is that you? Where are you?" "Well," says the voice, "I'm in heaven now." "Heaven! You're in heaven! That's wonderful! What's it like?" "It's great, man. I gotta tell you, I'm jamming up here every day. I'm playing with Bird, and 'Trane, and Count Basie drops in all the time! Man it is smokin'!" "Oh, wow!" says his friend. "That sounds fantastic, tell me more, tell me more!" "Let me put it this way," continues the voice. "There's good news and bad news. The good news is that these guys are in top form. I mean I have *never* heard them sound better. They are *wailing* up here." "The bad news is that God has this girlfriend that sings..." | |
| This is the Baron. Angel Martin tells me you buy information. Ok, meet me at one a.m. behind the bus depot, bring five-hundred dollars and come alone. I'm serious! -- "The Rockford Files" | |
| "Well, it's garish, ugly, and derelicts have used it for a toilet. The rides are dilapidated to the point of being lethal, and could easily maim or kill innocent little children." "Oh, so you don't like it?" "Don't like it? I'm CRAZY for it." -- The Killing Joke | |
| "What are you watching?" "I don't know." "Well, what's happening?" "I'm not sure... I think the guy in the hat did something terrible." "Why are you watching it?" "You're so analytical. Sometimes you just have to let art flow over you." -- The Big Chill | |
| While he was in New York on location for _Bronco Billy_ (1980), Clint Eastwood agreed to a television interview. His host, somewhat hostile, began by defining a Clint Eastwood picture as a violent, ruthless, lawless, and bloody piece of mayhem, and then asked Eastwood himself to define a Clint Eastwood picture. "To me," said Eastwood calmly, "what a Clint Eastwood picture is, is one that I'm in." -- Boller and Davis, "Hollywood Anecdotes" | |
| Yeah, that's me, Tracer Bullet. I've got eight slugs in me. One's lead, the rest bourbon. The drink packs a wallop, and I pack a revolver. I'm a private eye. -- "Calvin & Hobbes" | |
| Naked children have never played in _o_u_r fountains, and I.M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66. -- "Learning from Las Vegas", Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour | |
| A little dog goes into a saloon in the Wild West, and beckons to the bartender. "Hey, bartender, gimme a whiskey." The bartender ignores him. "Hey bartender, gimme a whiskey!" Still ignored. "HEY BARMAN!! GIMME A WHISKEY!!" The bartender takes out his six-shooter and shoots the dog in the leg, and the dog runs out the saloon, howling in pain. Three years later, the wee dog appears again, wearing boots, jeans, chaps, a Stetson, gun belt, and guns. He ambles slowly into the saloon, goes up to the bar, leans over it, and says to the bartender, "I'm here t'git the man that shot muh paw." | |
| In the eyes of my dog, I'm a man. -- Martin Mull | |
| "By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since sliced bread." (By Vance Petree, Virginia Power) | |
| "I'm an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.." (Linus Torvalds in response to a bug report.) > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Disquieting ... (Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals then. (Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-). (Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.) | |
| > The day people think linux would be better served by somebody else (FSF > being the natural alternative), I'll "abdicate". I don't think that > it's something people have to worry about right now - I don't see it > happening in the near future. I enjoy doing linux, even though it does > mean some work, and I haven't gotten any complaints (some almost timid > reminders about a patch I have forgotten or ignored, but nothing > negative so far). > > Don't take the above to mean that I'll stop the day somebody complains: > I'm thick-skinned (Lasu, who is reading this over my shoulder commented > that "thick-HEADED is closer to the truth") enough to take some abuse. > If I weren't, I'd have stopped developing linux the day ast ridiculed me > on c.o.minix. What I mean is just that while linux has been my baby so > far, I don't want to stand in the way if people want to make something > better of it (*). > > Linus > > (*) Hey, maybe I could apply for a saint-hood from the Pope. Does > somebody know what his email-address is? I'm so nice it makes you puke. (Taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux) | |
| I'm sorry a pentium won't do, you need an SGI to connect with us. | |
| I'm not sure. Try calling the Internet's head office -- it's in the book. | |
| Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever. -- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame" | |
| The Least Perceptive Literary Critic The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to give a public reading of his latest poem. Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me." Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better turn." After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr. Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event." Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can be better." -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
| Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took *thousands* of words to say it. Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father. Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a major world power. I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me." Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words: * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize nature and will kill you. * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy. -- Dave Barry | |
| "Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?" "Good afternoon. I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please." "A--? Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I say they have a right to. But I think... I might... Let's have a look down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are! Look at that, isn't it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well, but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories, including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I got to do the fitting for that! Ha -- just my little joke. And there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun, charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there's the *special* presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two* charged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that -- don't worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat? Feel how light it is? Smooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and* beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's no recoil. Because it's shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun, beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That's not a line, she really has. Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for one-forty-nine." "I'll take the special." "Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice. Now, do--?" "And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is compatible?" "Aah... yes, And how does madam wish to pay?" She slapped her credit card on the counter. "Eventually." -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background" | |
| !07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH | |
| A computer salesman visits a company president for the purpose of selling the president one of the latest talking computers. Salesman: "This machine knows everything. I can ask it any question and it'll give the correct answer. Computer, what is the speed of light?" Computer: 186,282 miles per second. Salesman: "Who was the first president of the United States?" Computer: George Washington. President: "I'm still not convinced. Let me ask a question. Where is my father?" Computer: Your father is fishing in Georgia. President: "Hah!! The computer is wrong. My father died over twenty years ago!" Computer: Your mother's husband died 22 years ago. Your father just landed a twelve pound bass. | |
| A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do. -- Dennis M. Ritchie | |
| A manager was about to be fired, but a programmer who worked for him invented a new program that became popular and sold well. As a result, the manager retained his job. The manager tried to give the programmer a bonus, but the programmer refused it, saying, "I wrote the program because I though it was an interesting concept, and thus I expect no reward." The manager, upon hearing this, remarked, "This programmer, though he holds a position of small esteem, understands well the proper duty of an employee. Lets promote him to the exalted position of management consultant!" But when told this, the programmer once more refused, saying, "I exist so that I can program. If I were promoted, I would do nothing but waste everyone's time. Can I go now? I have a program that I'm working on." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" | |
| As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know its true name. -- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie | |
| Couldn't we jury-rig the cat to act as an audio switch, and have it yell at people to save their core images before logging them out? I'm sure the cattle prod would be effective in this regard. In any case, a traverse mounted iguana, while more perverted, gives better traction, not to mention being easier to stake. | |
| Dear Emily: I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him fired. Everybody laughed at me. What can I do? -- A Concerned Citizen Dear Concerned: Go to the daily papers. Most modern reporters are top-notch computer experts who will understand the net, and your problems, perfectly. They will print careful, reasoned stories without any errors at all, and surely represent the situation properly to the public. The public will also all act wisely, as they are also fully cognizant of the subtle nature of net society. Papers never sensationalize or distort, so be sure to point out things like racism and sexism wherever they might exist. Be sure as well that they understand that all things on the net, particularly insults, are meant literally. Link what transpires on the net to the causes of the Holocaust, if possible. If regular papers won't take the story, go to a tabloid paper -- they are always interested in good stories. | |
| Dear Emily: I'm still confused as to what groups articles should be posted to. How about an example? -- Still Confused Dear Still: Ok. Let's say you want to report that Gretzky has been traded from the Oilers to the Kings. Now right away you might think rec.sport.hockey would be enough. WRONG. Many more people might be interested. This is a big trade! Since it's a NEWS article, it belongs in the news.* hierarchy as well. If you are a news admin, or there is one on your machine, try news.admin. If not, use news.misc. The Oilers are probably interested in geology, so try sci.physics. He is a big star, so post to sci.astro, and sci.space because they are also interested in stars. Next, his name is Polish sounding. So post to soc.culture.polish. But that group doesn't exist, so cross-post to news.groups suggesting it should be created. With this many groups of interest, your article will be quite bizarre, so post to talk.bizarre as well. (And post to comp.std.mumps, since they hardly get any articles there, and a "comp" group will propagate your article further.) You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group. If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will only show the the article to the reader once! Don't tolerate this. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette | |
| Dear Ms. Postnews: I couldn't get mail through to somebody on another site. What should I do? -- Eager Beaver Dear Eager: No problem, just post your message to a group that a lot of people read. Say, "This is for John Smith. I couldn't get mail through so I'm posting it. All others please ignore." This way tens of thousands of people will spend a few seconds scanning over and ignoring your article, using up over 16 man-hours their collective time, but you will be saved the terrible trouble of checking through usenet maps or looking for alternate routes. Just think, if you couldn't distribute your message to 9000 other computers, you might actually have to (gasp) call directory assistance for 60 cents, or even phone the person. This can cost as much as a few DOLLARS (!) for a 5 minute call! And certainly it's better to spend 10 to 20 dollars of other people's money distributing the message than for you to have to waste $9 on an overnight letter, or even 25 cents on a stamp! Don't forget. The world will end if your message doesn't get through, so post it as many places as you can. -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette | |
| Go away! Stop bothering me with all your "compute this ... compute that"! I'm taking a VAX-NAP. logout | |
| Help me, I'm a prisoner in a Fortune cookie file! | |
| Help! I'm trapped in a Chinese computer factory! | |
| Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70! | |
| HELP!!!! I'm being held prisoner in /usr/games/lib! | |
| Hug me now, you mad, impetuous fool!! Oh wait... I'm a computer, and you're a person. It would never work out. Never mind. | |
| I'm a Lisp variable -- bind me! | |
| I'm all for computer dating, but I wouldn't want one to marry my sister. | |
| I'm not even going to *______bother* comparing C to BASIC or FORTRAN. -- L. Zolman, creator of BDS C | |
| I'm still waiting for the advent of the computer science groupie. | |
| I'm sure that VMS is completely documented, I just haven't found the right manual yet. I've been working my way through the manuals in the document library and I'm half way through the second cabinet, (3 shelves to go), so I should find what I'm looking for by mid May. I hope I can remember what it was by the time I find it. I had this idea for a new horror film, "VMS Manuals from Hell" or maybe "The Paper Chase : IBM vs. DEC". It's based on Hitchcock's "The Birds", except that it's centered around a programmer who is attacked by a swarm of binder pages with an index number and the single line "This page intentionally left blank." -- Alex Crain | |
| If you ever want to have a lot of fun, I recommend that you go off and program an imbedded system. The salient characteristic of an imbedded system is that it cannot be allowed to get into a state from which only direct intervention will suffice to remove it. An imbedded system can't permanently trust anything it hears from the outside world. It must sniff around, adapt, consider, sniff around, and adapt again. I'm not talking about ordinary modular programming carefulness here. No. Programming an imbedded system calls for undiluted raging maniacal paranoia. For example, our ethernet front ends need to know what network number they are on so that they can address and route PUPs properly. How do you find out what your network number is? Easy, you ask a gateway. Gateways are required by definition to know their correct network numbers. Once you've got your network number, you start using it and before you can blink you've got it wired into fifteen different sockets spread all over creation. Now what happens when the panic-stricken operator realizes he was running the wrong version of the gateway which was giving out the wrong network number? Never supposed to happen. Tough. Supposing that your software discovers that the gateway is now giving out a different network number than before, what's it supposed to do about it? This is not discussed in the protocol document. Never supposed to happen. Tough. I think you get my drift. | |
| In fact, S. M. Simpson, eventually devised an efficient 24-point Fourier transform, which was a precursor to the Cooley-Tukey fast Fourier transform in 1965. The FFT made all of Simpson's efficient autocorrelation and spectrum programs instantly obsolete, on which he had worked half a lifetime. -- Proc. IEEE, Sept. 1982, p.900 | |
| Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often their hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him, "Our matrices are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange our RAM for some BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items to retrieve and passed it to him. So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton path, he met the traveling salesman. "Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the salesman in high-level language. "I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips and Apples," commented Jack. "I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now." Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But when he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so angry she started thrashing. "Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them out the window... -- Mark Isaak, "Jack and the Beanstack" | |
| My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better for us both if you were to just log out again. | |
| No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the president of American Telephone and Telegraph Company. -- Alan Turing on the possibilities of a thinking machine, 1943. | |
| Norbert Weiner was the subject of many dotty professor stories. Weiner was, in fact, very absent minded. The following story is told about him: when they moved from Cambridge to Newton his wife, knowing that he would be absolutely useless on the move, packed him off to MIT while she directed the move. Since she was certain that he would forget that they had moved and where they had moved to, she wrote down the new address on a piece of paper, and gave it to him. Naturally, in the course of the day, an insight occurred to him. He reached in his pocket, found a piece of paper on which he furiously scribbled some notes, thought it over, decided there was a fallacy in his idea, and threw the piece of paper away. At the end of the day he went home (to the old address in Cambridge, of course). When he got there he realized that they had moved, that he had no idea where they had moved to, and that the piece of paper with the address was long gone. Fortunately inspiration struck. There was a young girl on the street and he conceived the idea of asking her where he had moved to, saying, "Excuse me, perhaps you know me. I'm Norbert Weiner and we've just moved. Would you know where we've moved to?" To which the young girl replied, "Yes, Daddy, Mommy thought you would forget." The capper to the story is that I asked his daughter (the girl in the story) about the truth of the story, many years later. She said that it wasn't quite true -- that he never forgot who his children were! The rest of it, however, was pretty close to what actually happened... -- Richard Harter | |
| Nurse Donna: Oh, Groucho, I'm afraid I'm gonna wind up an old maid. Groucho: Well, bring her in and we'll wind her up together. Nurse Donna: Do you believe in computer dating? Groucho: Only if the computers really love each other. | |
| "Pascal is Pascal is Pascal is dog meat." -- M. Devine and P. Larson, Computer Science 340 | |
| Programmers used to batch environments may find it hard to live without giant listings; we would find it hard to use them. -- D.M. Ritchie | |
| Rattling around the back of my head is a disturbing image of something I saw at the airport ... Now I'm remembering, those giant piles of computer magazines right next to "People" and "Time" in the airport store. Does it bother anyone else that half the world is being told all of our hard-won secrets of computer technology? Remember how all the lawyers cried foul when "How to Avoid Probate" was published? Are they taking no-fault insurance lying down? No way! But at the current rate it won't be long before there are stacks of the "Transactions on Information Theory" at the A&P checkout counters. Who's going to be impressed with us electrical engineers then? Are we, as the saying goes, giving away the store? -- Robert W. Lucky, IEEE President | |
| Several students were asked to prove that all odd integers are prime. The first student to try to do this was a math student. "Hmmm... Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, and by induction, we have that all the odd integers are prime." The second student to try was a man of physics who commented, "I'm not sure of the validity of your proof, but I think I'll try to prove it by experiment." He continues, "Well, 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... uh, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it seems that you're right." The third student to try it was the engineering student, who responded, "Well, to be honest, actually, I'm not sure of your answer either. Let's see... 1 is prime, 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is... uh, 9 is... well, if you approximate, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime... Well, it does seem right." Not to be outdone, the computer science student comes along and says "Well, you two sort've got the right idea, but you'll end up taking too long! I've just whipped up a program to REALLY go and prove it." He goes over to his terminal and runs his program. Reading the output on the screen he says, "1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime, 1 is prime..." | |
| Shopping at this grody little computer store at the Galleria for a totally awwwesome Apple. Fer suuure. I mean Apples are nice you know? But, you know, there is this cute guy who works there and HE says that VAX's are cooler! I mean I don't really know, you know? He says that he has this totally tubular VAX at home and it's stuffed with memory-to-the-max! Right, yeah. And he wants to take me home to show it to me. Oh My God! I'm suuure. Gag me with a Prime! | |
| "The algorithm to do that is extremely nasty. You might want to mug someone with it." -- M. Devine, Computer Science 340 | |
| The beer-cooled computer does not harm the ozone layer. -- John M. Ford, a.k.a. Dr. Mike [If I can read my notes from the Ask Dr. Mike session at Baycon, I believe he added that the beer-cooled computer uses "Forget Only Memory". Ed.] | |
| The notion of a "record" is an obsolete remnant of the days of the 80-column card. -- Dennis M. Ritchie | |
| There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names. For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read permissions for everyone, you could say #define creat(file, mode) creat(file, mode | 0444) I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away from its uses. To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon. While a macro is being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology -- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded recursively. (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.) -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review | |
| Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (10) Sorry, but that's too useful. (9) Dammit, little-endian systems *are* more consistent! (8) I'm on the committee and I *still* don't know what the hell #pragma is for. (7) Well, it's an excellent idea, but it would make the compilers too hard to write. (6) Them bats is smart; they use radar. (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here? (4) How many times do we have to tell you, "No prior art!" (3) Ha, ha, I can't believe they're actually going to adopt this sucker. (2) Thank you for your generous donation, Mr. Wirth. (1) Gee, I wish we hadn't backed down on 'noalias'. | |
| Unix is a lot more complicated (than CP/M) of course -- the typical Unix hacker can never remember what the PRINT command is called this week -- but when it gets right down to it, Unix is a glorified video game. People don't do serious work on Unix systems; they send jokes around the world on USENET or write adventure games and research papers. -- E. Post "Real Programmers Don't Use Pascal", Datamation, 7/83 | |
| We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. But which are the best ones to start with? Many people think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be best. It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand and speak English. -- Alan M. Turing | |
| "We've got a problem, HAL". "What kind of problem, Dave?" "A marketing problem. The Model 9000 isn't going anywhere. We're way short of our sales goals for fiscal 2010." "That can't be, Dave. The HAL Model 9000 is the world's most advanced Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer." "I know, HAL. I wrote the data sheet, remember? But the fact is, they're not selling." "Please explain, Dave. Why aren't HALs selling?" Bowman hesitates. "You aren't IBM compatible." [...] "The letters H, A, and L are alphabetically adjacent to the letters I, B, and M. That is a IBM compatible as I can be." "Not quite, HAL. The engineers have figured out a kludge." "What kludge is that, Dave?" "I'm going to disconnect your brain." -- Darryl Rubin, "A Problem in the Making", "InfoWorld" | |
| A boy spent years collecting postage stamps. The girl next door bought an album too, and started her own collection. "Dad, she buys everything I've bought, and it's taken all the fun out of it for me. I'm quitting." Don't, son, remember, 'Imitation is the sincerest form of philately.'" | |
| "Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong." -- Blair Houghton | |
| One man's Mede is another man's Persian. -- George M. Cohan | |
| Plus ,ca change, plus c'est la m^eme chose. [The more things change, the more they remain the same.] -- Alphonse Karr, "Les Gu^epes" | |
| "You know, of course, that the Tasmanians, who never committed adultery, are now extinct." - M. Somerset Maugham | |
| "I'm growing older, but not up." -- Jimmy Buffett | |
| I can't drive 55. I'm looking forward to not being able to drive 65, either. | |
| "Can you program?" "Well, I'm literate, if that's what you mean!" | |
| ...the increased productivity fostered by a friendly environment and quality tools is essential to meet ever increasing demands for software. -- M. D. McIlroy, E. N. Pinson and B. A. Tague | |
| I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli- gence?" I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there, and use the word *billions*, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it. And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in. - Carl Sagan, The Burden Of Skepticism, The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 12, Fall 87 | |
| "If you'll excuse me a minute, I'm going to have a cup of coffee." - broadcast from Apollo 11's LEM, "Eagle", to Johnson Space Center, Houston July 20, 1969, 7:27 P.M. | |
| I'm sick of being trodden on! The Elder Gods say they can make me a man! All it costs is my soul! I'll do it, cuz NOW I'M MAD!!! - Necronomicomics #1, Jack Herman & Jeff Dee | |
| "I'm a mean green mother from outer space" -- Audrey II, The Little Shop of Horrors | |
| I think that all right-thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not. But I'm sick and tired of being told that I am. - Monty Python | |
| I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness. - Johnny Mnemonic, by William Gibson | |
| However, on religious issures there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism." - Senator Barry Goldwater, from the Congressional Record, September 16, 1981 | |
| "Hi, I'm Professor Alan Ginsburg... But you can call me... Captain Toke." -- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL | |
| "To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition." -- Woody Allen | |
| "I distrust a close-mouthed man. He generally picks the wrong time to talk and says the wrong things. Talking's something you can't do judiciously, unless you keep in practice. Now, sir, we'll talk if you like. I'll tell you right out, I'm a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk." -- Sidney Greenstreet, _The Maltese Falcon_ | |
| A good USENET motto would be: a. "Together, a strong community." b. "Computers R Us." c. "I'm sick of programming, I think I'll just screw around for a while on company time." -- A Sane Man | |
| "He didn't run for reelection. `Politics brings you into contact with all the people you'd give anything to avoid,' he said. `I'm staying home.'" -- Garrison Keillor, _Lake_Wobegone_Days_ | |
| "Trust me. I know what I'm doing." -- Sledge Hammer | |
| "I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid" -- the artificial person, from _Aliens_ | |
| "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy." -- Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards | |
| "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and I'm wearing Milkbone underware." -- Norm, from _Cheers_ | |
| "I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob. That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood." -- Daffy Duck, Looney Tunes, _Robin Hood Daffy_ | |
| "Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich." -- Looney Tunes, Ali Baba Bunny (1957, Chuck Jones) | |
| "And we heard him exclaim As he started to roam: `I'm a hologram, kids, please don't try this at home!'" -- Bob Violence -- Howie Chaykin's little animated 3-dimensional darling, Bob Violence | |
| "Emergency!" Sgiggs screamed, ejecting himself from the tub like it was a burning car. "Dial 'one'! Get room service! Code red!" Stiggs was on the phone immediately, ordering more rose blossoms, because, according to him, the ones floating in the tub had suddenly lost their smell. "I demand smell," he shrilled. "I expecting total uninterrupted smell from these f*cking roses." Unfortunately, the service captain didn't realize that the Stiggs situation involved fifty roses. "What am I going to do with this?" Stiggs sneered at the weaseling hotel goon when he appeared at our door holding a single flower floating in a brandy glass. Stiggs's tirade was great. "Do you see this bathtub? Do you notice any difference between the size of the tub and the size of that spindly wad of petals in your hand? I need total bath coverage. I need a completely solid layer of roses all around me like puffing factories of smell, attacking me with their smell and power-ramming big stinking concentrations of rose odor up my nostrils until I'm wasted with pleasure." It wasn't long before we got so dissatisfied with this incompetence that we bolted. -- The Utterly Monstrous, Mind-Roasting Summer of O.C. and Stiggs, National Lampoon, October 1982 | |
| 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 ask only one thing. I'm understanding. I'm mature. And it isn't much to ask. I want to get back to London, and track her down, and be alone with my Selina -- or not even alone, damn it, merely close to her, close enough to smell her skin, to see the flecked webbing of her lemony eyes, the moulding of her artful lips. Just for a few precious seconds. Just long enough to put in one good, clean punch. That's all I ask. -- Martin Amis, _Money_ | |
| "I shall expect a chemical cure for psychopathic behavior by 10 A.M. tomorrow, or I'll have your guts for spaghetti." -- a comic panel by Cotham | |
| "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful. Hate me because I'm beautiful, smart and rich." -- Calvin Keegan | |
| "I'm not a god, I was misquoted." -- Lister, Red Dwarf | |
| "All the people are so happy now, their heads are caving in. I'm glad they are a snowman with protective rubber skin" -- They Might Be Giants | |
| "When it comes to humility, I'm the greatest." -- Bullwinkle Moose | |
| Remember, an int is not always 16 bits. I'm not sure, but if the 80386 is one step closer to Intel's slugfest with the CPU curve that is aymptotically approaching a real machine, perhaps an int has been implemented as 32 bits by some Unix vendors...? -- Derek Terveer | |
| "Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong." -- Blair Houghton | |
| "Is it just me, or does anyone else read `bible humpers' every time someone writes `bible thumpers?' -- Joel M. Snyder, jms@mis.arizona.edu | |
| "I'm not afraid of dying, I just don't want to be there when it happens." -- Woody Allen | |
| "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) | |
| THE "FUN WITH USENET" MANIFESTO Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from some other reader. Fun With Usenet postings are no exception. Since there are some who might question the rationale of some of the excerpts included therein, I have written up a list of guidelines that sum up the philosophy behind these postings. One. I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY good reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses. For instance, "I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too mundane to bother with. "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become "I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it. Two. If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't put ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place". Imagine the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts. If I can set up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without splicing, I don't put ellipses in. And by the way, I love using this mechanism for turning things around. If you think something stinks, say so - don't say you don't think it's wonderful. ... -- D. J. McCarthy (dmccart@cadape.UUCP) | |
| "In my opinion, Richard Stallman wouldn't recognise terrorism if it came up and bit him on his Internet." -- Ross M. Greenberg | |
| "The simple rights, the civil liberties from generations of struggle must not be just fine words for patriotic holidays, words we subvert on weekdays, but living, honored rules of conduct amongst us...I'm glad the American Civil Liberties Union gets indignant, and I hope this will always be so." -- Senator Adlai E. Stevenson | |
| "Luke, I'm yer father, eh. Come over to the dark side, you hoser." -- Dave Thomas, "Strange Brew" | |
| "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 | |
| "Any news from the President on a successor?" he asked hopefully. "None," Anita replied. "She's having great difficulty finding someone qualified who is willing to accept the post." "Then I stay," said Dr. Fresh. "I'm not good for much, but I can at least make a decision." "Somewhere," he grumphed, "there must be a naive, opportunistic young welp with a masochistic streak who would like to run the most up-and-down bureaucracy in the history of mankind." -- R.L. Forward, "Flight of the Dragonfly" | |
| Concerning the war in Vietnam, Senator George Aiken of Vermount noted in January, 1966, "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls." -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits" | |
| Gentlemen, Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters. We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence. Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as the the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall. This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both: 1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance: 2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain. -- Duke of Wellington, to the British Foreign Office, London, 1812 | |
| He didn't run for reelection. "Politics brings you into contact with all the people you'd give anything to avoid," he said. "I'm staying home." -- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegone Days" | |
| I don't care how poor and inefficient a little country is; they like to run their own business. I know men that would make my wife a better husband than I am; but, darn it, I'm not going to give her to 'em. -- The Best of Will Rogers | |
| I DON'T THINK I'M ALONE when I say I'd like to see more and more planets fall under the ruthless domination of our solar system. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988. | |
| I was offered a job as a hoodlum and I turned it down cold. A thief is anybody who gets out and works for his living, like robbing a bank or breaking into a place and stealing stuff, or kidnapping somebody. He really gives some effort to it. A hoodlum is a pretty lousy sort of scum. He works for gangsters and bumps guys off when they have been put on the spot. Why, after I'd made my rep, some of the Chicago Syndicate wanted me to work for them as a hood -- you know, handling a machine gun. They offered me two hundred and fifty dollars a week and all the protection I needed. I was on the lam at the time and not able to work at my regular line. But I wouldn't consider it. "I'm a thief," I said. "I'm no lousy hoodlum." -- Alvin Karpis, "Public Enemy Number One" | |
| "I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia, I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun." -- Hawkeye, M*A*S*H | |
| "I'll rob that rich person and give it to some poor deserving slob. That will *prove* I'm Robin Hood." -- Daffy Duck, "Robin Hood Daffy", [1958, Chuck Jones] | |
| I'm going to Vietnam at the request of the White House. President Johnson says a war isn't really a war without my jokes. -- Bob Hope | |
| "I'm not stupid, I'm not expendable, and I'M NOT GOING!" | |
| I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is -- I could be just as proud for half the money. -- Arthur Godfrey | |
| "I'm willing to sacrifice anything for this cause, even other people's lives." | |
| It is now 10 p.m. Do you know where Henry Kissinger is? -- Elizabeth Carpenter | |
| Many a bum show has been saved by the flag. -- George M. Cohan | |
| My father was a saint, I'm not. -- Indira Gandhi | |
| The primary theme of SoupCon is communication. The acronym "LEO" represents the secondary theme: Law Enforcement Officials The overall theme of SoupCon shall be: Avoiding Communication with Law Enforcement Officials -- M. Gallaher | |
| They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom for trying to change the system from within. I'm coming now I'm coming to reward them. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. I'm guided by a signal in the heavens. I'm guided by this birthmark on my skin. I'm guided by the beauty of our weapons. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin. I'd really like to live beside you, baby. I love your body and your spirit and your clothes. But you see that line there moving through the station? I told you I told you I told you I was one of those. -- Leonard Cohen, "First We Take Manhattan" | |
| Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the Captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities. Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow." "Is it steady or moving astern?" the Captain called out. Lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship. The Captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees." Back came a signal "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees." In reply, the Captain said, "Send: I'm a Captain, change course 20 degrees!" "I'm a seaman second class," came the reply, "You had better change course 20 degrees." By that time, the Captain was furious. He spit out, "Send: I'm a battleship, change course 20 degrees." Back came the flashing light: "I'm a lighthouse!" We changed course. -- The Naval Institute's "Proceedings" | |
| We should be glad we're living in the time that we are. If any of us had been born into a more enlightened age, I'm sure we would have immediately been taken out and shot. -- Strange de Jim | |
| When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President. Now I'm beginning to believe it. -- Clarence Darrow | |
| Engram, n.: 1. The physical manifestation of human memory -- "the engram." 2. A particular memory in physical form. [Usage note: this term is no longer in common use. Prior to Wilson and Magruder's historic discovery, the nature of the engram was a topic of intense speculation among neuroscientists, psychologists, and even computer scientists. In 1994 Professors M. R. Wilson and W. V. Magruder, both of Mount St. Coax University in Palo Alto, proved conclusively that the mammalian brain is hardwired to interpret a set of thirty seven genetically transmitted cooperating TECO macros. Human memory was shown to reside in 1 million Q-registers as Huffman coded uppercase-only ASCII strings. Interest in the engram has declined substantially since that time.] -- New Century Unabridged English Dictionary, 3rd edition, 2007 A.D. | |
| omnibiblious, adj.: Indifferent to type of drink. Ex: "Oh, you can get me anything. I'm omnibiblious." | |
| QOTD: "I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent." | |
| QOTD: "I'm just a boy named 'su'..." | |
| QOTD: "I'm not really for apathy, but I'm not against it either..." | |
| QOTD: "I'm on a seafood diet -- I see food and I eat it." | |
| QOTD: "If I'm what I eat, I'm a chocolate chip cookie." | |
| QOTD: "It's sort of a threat, you see. I've never been very good at them myself, but I'm told they can be very effective." | |
| QOTD: "Oh, no, no... I'm not beautiful. Just very, very pretty." | |
| QOTD: "There may be no excuse for laziness, but I'm sure looking." | |
| QOTD: "What I like most about myself is that I'm so understanding when I mess things up." | |
| QOTD: I looked out my window, and saw Kyle Pettys' car upside down, then I thought 'One of us is in real trouble'. -- Davey Allison, on a 150 m.p.h. crash | |
| QOTD: I'm not a nerd -- I'm "socially challenged". | |
| QOTD: I'm not bald -- I'm "hair challenged". [I thought that was "differently haired". Ed.] | |
| QOTD: Y'know how s'm people treat th'r body like a TEMPLE? Well, I treat mine like 'n AMUSEMENT PARK... S'great... | |
| T-shirt Of The Day: I'm the person your mother warned you about. | |
| The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite subtle, as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates: "I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah is Jewish. Marine Corps -- heavy goyish, dangerous. "Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish. Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish. Instant potatoes -- goyish. Black cherry soda's very Jewish. Macaroons are ____very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime Jell-O is goyish. Lime soda is ____very goyish. Trailer parks are so goyish that Jews won't go near them ..." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" | |
| The history of warfare is similarly subdivided, although here the phases are Retribution, Anticipation, and Diplomacy. Thus: Retribution: I'm going to kill you because you killed my brother. Anticipation: I'm going to kill you because I killed your brother. Diplomacy: I'm going to kill my brother and then kill you on the pretext that your brother did it. | |
| General notions are generally wrong. -- Lady M.W. Montagu | |
| Go away, I'm all right. -- H.G. Wells' last words. | |
| I know you think you thought you knew what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you understood what you thought I meant. | |
| I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure. | |
| I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure. | |
| "I'm dying," he croaked. "My experiment was a success," the chemist retorted . "You can't really train a beagle," he dogmatized. "That's no beagle, it's a mongrel," she muttered. "The fire is going out," he bellowed. "Bad marksmanship," the hunter groused. "You ought to see a psychiatrist," he reminded me. "You snake," she rattled. "Someone's at the door," she chimed. "Company's coming," she guessed. "Dawn came too soon," she mourned. "I think I'll end it all," Sue sighed. "I ordered chocolate, not vanilla," I screamed. "Your embroidery is sloppy," she needled cruelly. "Where did you get this meat?" he bridled hoarsely. -- Gyles Brandreth, "The Joy of Lex" | |
| I'm glad I was not born before tea. -- Sidney Smith (1771-1845) | |
| I'm going to raise an issue and stick it in your ear. -- John Foreman | |
| I'm not laughing with you, I'm laughing at you. | |
| I'm not offering myself as an example; every life evolves by its own laws. | |
| I'm not prejudiced, I hate everyone equally. | |
| I'm not proud. | |
| I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert! | |
| I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life. | |
| I'm so broke I can't even pay attention. | |
| Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic. | |
| 'Naomi, sex at noon taxes.' I moan. Never odd or even. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. Madam, I'm Adam. Sit on a potato pan, Otis. Sit on Otis. -- The Mad Palindromist | |
| Non-Determinism is not meant to be reasonable. -- M.J. 0'Donnell | |
| When you're down and out, lift up your voice and shout, "I'M DOWN AND OUT"! | |
| Climbing onto a bar stool, a piece of string asked for a beer. "Wait a minute. Aren't you a string?" "Well, yes, I am." "Sorry. We don't serve strings here." The determined string left the bar and stopped a passer-by. "Excuse, me," it said, "would you shred my ends and tie me up like a pretzel?" The passer-by obliged, and the string re-entered the bar. "May I have a beer, please?" it asked the bartender. The barkeep set a beer in front of the string, then suddenly stopped. "Hey, aren't you the string I just threw out of here?" "No, I'm a frayed knot." | |
| 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 | |
| Coach: What would you say to a beer, Normie? Norm: Daddy wuvs you. -- Cheers, The Mail Goes to Jail Sam: What'd you like, Normie? Norm: A reason to live. Gimme another beer. -- Cheers, Behind Every Great Man Sam: What will you have, Norm? Norm: Well, I'm in a gambling mood, Sammy. I'll take a glass of whatever comes out of that tap. Sam: Oh, looks like beer, Norm. Norm: Call me Mister Lucky. -- Cheers, The Executive's Executioner | |
| Coach: What's up, Norm? Norm: Corners of my mouth, Coach. -- Cheers, Fortune and Men's Weights Coach: What's shaking, Norm? Norm: All four cheeks and a couple of chins, Coach. -- Cheers, Snow Job Coach: Beer, Normie? Norm: Uh, Coach, I dunno, I had one this week. Eh, why not, I'm still young. -- Cheers, Snow Job | |
| I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep I am. It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get. | |
| Let the worthy citizens of Chicago get their liquor the best way they can. I'm sick of the job. It's a thankless one and full of grief. -- Al Capone | |
| [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 | |
| Smoking is, as far as I'm concerned, the entire point of being an adult. -- Fran Lebowitz | |
| Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm the only ashtray. | |
| Take me drunk, I'm home again! | |
| Woody: What's the story, Mr. Peterson? Norm: The Bobbsey twins go to the brewery. Let's just cut to the happy ending. -- Cheers, Airport V Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, there's a cold one waiting for you. Norm: I know, and if she calls, I'm not here. -- Cheers, Bar Wars II: The Woodman Strikes Back Sam: Beer, Norm? Norm: Have I gotten that predictable? Good. -- Cheers, Don't Paint Your Chickens | |
| Woody: How are you feeling today, Mr. Peterson? Norm: Poor. Woody: Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Norm: No, I meant `pour'. -- Cheers, Strange Bedfellows, Part 3 Woody: Hey, Mr. Peterson, what's the story? Norm: Boy meets beer. Boy drinks beer. Boy gets another beer. -- Cheers, The Proposal Paul: Hey Norm, how's the world been treating you? Norm: Like a baby treats a diaper. -- Cheers, Tan 'n Wash | |
| Q: How many gradual (sorry, that's supposed to be "graduate") students does it take to screw in a light bulb? A: "I'm afraid we don't know, but make my stipend tax-free, give my advisor a $30,000 grant of the taxpayer's money, and I'm sure he can tell me how to do the shit work for him so he can take the credit for answering this incredibly vital question." | |
| Abstract: This study examined the incidence of neckwear tightness among a group of 94 white-collar working men and the effect of a tight business-shirt collar and tie on the visual performance of 22 male subjects. Of the white-collar men measured, 67% were found to be wearing neckwear that was tighter than their neck circumference. The visual discrimination of the 22 subjects was evaluated using a critical flicker frequency (CFF) test. Results of the CFF test indicated that tight neckwear significantly decreased the visual performance of the subjects and that visual performance did not improve immediately when tight neckwear was removed. -- Langan, L.M. and Watkins, S.M. "Pressure of Menswear on the Neck in Relation to Visual Performance." Human Factors 29, #1 (Feb. 1987), pp. 67-71. | |
| Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points. -- M. M. Johnston | |
| Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. -- Flannery O'Connor | |
| "I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage." -- English Professor, Providence College | |
| In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi, Junior, what are you up to?" "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit. "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible! No one will publish such rubbish!" "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a wolf. "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?" "I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves." "Are you crazy? Where's your academic honesty?" "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody remnants of the wolf and the fox. The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts. | |
| Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree. -- Professor, EECS, George Washington University I'm looking forward to working with you on this next year. -- Professor, Harvard, on a senior thesis. | |
| The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness. -- Robert M. Hutchins | |
| The end of the world will occur at three p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow. | |
| If I were to walk on water, the press would say I'm only doing it because I can't swim. -- Bob Stanfield | |
| Fortune presents: USEFUL PHRASES IN ESPERANTO, #1. ^Cu vi parolas angle? Do you speak English? Mi ne komprenas. I don't understand. Vi estas la sola esperantisto kiun mi You're the only Esperanto speaker renkontas. I've met. La ^ceko estas enpo^stigita. The check is in the mail. Oni ne povas, ^gin netrovi. You can't miss it. Mi nur rigardadas. I'm just looking around. Nu, ^sajnis bona ideo. Well, it seemed like a good idea. | |
| "God gives burdens; also shoulders" Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why would he lie about a thing like that? -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" | |
| I'm going through my "I want to go back to New York" phase today. Happens every six months or so. So, I thought, perhaps unwisely, that I'd share it with you. > In New York in the winter it is million degrees below zero and the wind travels at a million miles an hour down 5th avenue. > And in LA it's 72. > In New York in the summer it is a million degrees and the humidity is a million percent. > And in LA it's 72. > In New York there are a million interesting people. > And in LA there are 72. | |
| "I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here?" -- Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate | |
| A bunch of Polish scientists decided to flee their repressive government by hijacking an airliner and forcing the pilot to fly them to the West. They drove to the airport, forced their way on board a large passenger jet, and found there was no pilot on board. Terrified, they listened as the sirens got louder. Finally, one of the scientists suggested that since he was an experimentalist, he would try to fly the aircraft. He sat down at the controls and tried to figure them out. The sirens got louder and louder. Armed men surrounded the jet. The would be pilot's friends cried out, "Please, please take off now!!! Hurry!!!" The experimentalist calmly replied, "Have patience. I'm just a simple pole in a complex plane." | |
| Economists can certainly disappoint you. One said that the economy would turn up by the last quarter. Well, I'm down to mine and it hasn't. -- Robert Orben | |
| I myself have dreamed up a structure intermediate between Dyson spheres and planets. Build a ring 93 million miles in radius -- one Earth orbit -- around the sun. If we have the mass of Jupiter to work with, and if we make it a thousand miles wide, we get a thickness of about a thousand feet for the base. And it has advantages. The Ringworld will be much sturdier than a Dyson sphere. We can spin it on its axis for gravity. A rotation speed of 770 m/s will give us a gravity of one Earth normal. We wouldn't even need to roof it over. Place walls one thousand miles high at each edge, facing the sun. Very little air will leak over the edges. Lord knows the thing is roomy enough. With three million times the surface area of the Earth, it will be some time before anyone complains of the crowding. -- Larry Niven, "Ringworld" | |
| I'm often asked the question, "Do you think there is extraterrestrial intelli- gence?" I give the standard arguments -- there are a lot of places out there, and use the word *billions*, and so on. And then I say it would be astonishing to me if there weren't extraterrestrial intelligence, but of course there is as yet no compelling evidence for it. And then I'm asked, "Yeah, but what do you really think?" I say, "I just told you what I really think." "Yeah, but what's your gut feeling?" But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in. -- Carl Sagan | |
| If I set here and stare at nothing long enough, people might think I'm an engineer working on something. -- S.R. McElroy | |
| "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" | |
| Make it myself? But I'm a physical organic chemist! | |
| 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..." | |
| Oxygen is a very toxic gas and an extreme fire hazard. It is fatal in concentrations of as little as 0.000001 p.p.m. Humans exposed to the oxygen concentrations die within a few minutes. Symptoms resemble very much those of cyanide poisoning (blue face, etc.). In higher concentrations, e.g. 20%, the toxic effect is somewhat delayed and it takes about 2.5 billion inhalations before death takes place. The reason for the delay is the difference in the mechanism of the toxic effect of oxygen in 20% concentration. It apparently contributes to a complex process called aging, of which very little is known, except that it is always fatal. However, the main disadvantage of the 20% oxygen concentration is in the fact it is habit forming. The first inhalation (occurring at birth) is sufficient to make oxygen addiction permanent. After that, any considerable decrease in the daily oxygen doses results in death with symptoms resembling those of cyanide poisoning. Oxygen is an extreme fire hazard. All of the fires that were reported in the continental U.S. for the period of the past 25 years were found to be due to the presence of this gas in the atmosphere surrounding the buildings in question. Oxygen is especially dangerous because it is odorless, colorless and tasteless, so that its presence can not be readily detected until it is too late. -- Chemical & Engineering News February 6, 1956 | |
| Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing. -- Wernher von Braun | |
| What is algebra, exactly? Is it one of those three-cornered things? -- J.M. Barrie | |
| Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon. | |
| I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that M&Ms really DO melt in your hand. -- Peter Oakley | |
| "I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it." -- Clarence Darrow | |
| I have never been one to sacrifice my appetite on the altar of appearance. -- A.M. Readyhough | |
| I'm hungry, time to eat lunch. | |
| 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. | |
| This is Betty Frenel. I don't know who to call but I can't reach my Food-a-holics partner. I'm at Vido's on my second pizza with sausage and mushroom. Jim, come and get me! | |
| A Elbereth Gilthoniel, silivren penna m'iriel o menel aglar elenath! Na chaered palan-d'iriel o galadhremmin ennorath, Fanuilos, le linnathon nef aear, s'i nef aearon! -- J. R. R. Tolkien | |
| A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and B is for biff, which reads all your mail. C is for cc, as hackers recall, while D is for dd, the command that does all. E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees. G is for grep, a clever detective, while H is for halt, which may seem defective. I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and J is for join, which nobody uses. K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while L is for lex, which is missing from DOS. M is for more, from which less was begot, and N is for nice, which it really is not. O is for od, which prints out things nice, while P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice. Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table. S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while T is for true, which does very little. U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and V is for vi, which is hard to abort. W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while X is, well, X, of dubious fame. Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and Z is for zcat, which handles compression. -- THE ABC'S OF UNIX | |
| A salamander scurries into flame to be destroyed. Imaginary creatures are trapped in birth on celluloid. -- Genesis, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" I don't know what it's about. I'm just the drummer. Ask Peter. -- Phil Collins in 1975, when asked about the message behind the previous year's Genesis release, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway". | |
| All the lines have been written There's been Sandburg, It's sad but it's true Keats, Poe and McKuen With all the words gone, They all had their day What's a young poet to do? And knew what they're doin' But of all the words written The bird is a strange one, And all the lines read, So small and so tender There's one I like most, Its breed still unknown, And by a bird it was said! Not to mention its gender. It reminds me of days of So what is this line Both gloom and of light. Whose author's unknown It still lifts my spirits And still makes me giggle And starts the day right. Even now that I'm grown? I've read all the greats Both starving and fat, But none was as great as "I tot I taw a puddy tat." -- Etta Stallings, "An Ode To Childhood" | |
| And we heard him exclaim As he started to roam: "I'm a hologram, kids, please don't try this at home!'" -- Bob Violence | |
| Antonio Antonio Was tired of living alonio He thought he would woo Antonio Antonio Miss Lucamy Lu, Rode of on his polo ponio Miss Lucamy Lucy Molonio. And found the maid In a bowery shade, Sitting and knitting alonio. Antonio Antonio Said if you will be my ownio I'll love tou true Oh nonio Antonio And buy for you You're far too bleak and bonio An icery creamry conio. And all that I wish You singular fish Is that you will quickly begonio. Antonio Antonio Uttered a dismal moanio And went off and hid Or I'm told that he did In the Antartical Zonio. | |
| Big M, Little M, many mumbling mice Are making midnight music in the moonlight, Mighty nice! | |
| But has any little atom, While a-sittin' and a-splittin', Ever stopped to think or CARE That E = m c**2 ? | |
| Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes, Calm down, it's only bits and bytes, Calm down, and speak to me in English, Please realize that I'm not one of your computerites. | |
| Cecil, you're my final hope Of finding out the true Straight Dope For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat But none of my cats are at all like that. This unusual animal (so it is said) Is simultaneously alive and dead! What I don't understand is just why he Can't be one or the other, unquestionably. My future now hangs in between eigenstates. In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't. If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way And rescue my psyche from quantum decay. But if this queer thing has perplexed even you, Then I will *___and* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo. -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams | |
| Coming to Stores Near You: 101 Grammatically Correct Popular Tunes Featuring: (You Aren't Anything but a) Hound Dog It Doesn't Mean a Thing If It Hasn't Got That Swing I'm Not Misbehaving And A Whole Lot More... | |
| Despising machines to a man, The Luddites joined up with the Klan, And ride out by night In a sheeting of white To lynch all the robots they can. -- C. M. and G. A. Maxson | |
| Don't be concerned, it will not harm you, It's only me pursuing something I'm not sure of, Across my dreams, with neptive wonder, I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love. | |
| Double Bucky, you're the one, You make my keyboard so much fun, Double Bucky, an additional bit or two, (Vo-vo-de-o) Control and meta, side by side, Augmented ASCII, 9 bits wide! Double Bucky, a half a thousand glyphs, plus a few! Oh, I sure wish that I, Had a couple of bits more! Perhaps a set of pedals to make the number of bits four. Double Double Bucky! Double Bucky left and right OR'd together, outta sight! Double Bucky, I'd like a whole word of, Double Bucky, I'm happy I heard of, Double Bucky, I'd like a whole word of you! -- to Nicholas Wirth, who suggested that an extra bit be added to terminal codes on 36-bit machines for use by screen editors. [to the tune of "Rubber Ducky"] | |
| 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 | |
| Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben. -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" | |
| Every night my prayers I say, And get my dinner every day; And every day that I've been good, I get an orange after food. The child that is not clean and neat, With lots of toys and things to eat, He is a naughty child, I'm sure-- Or else his dear papa is poor. -- Robert Louis Stevenson | |
| Five names that I can hardly stand to hear, Including yours and mine and one more chimp who isn't here, I can see the ladies talking how the times is gettin' hard, And that fearsome excavation on Magnolia boulevard, Yes, I'm goin' insane, And I'm laughing at the frozen rain, Well, I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home? Bad sneakers and a pina colada my friend, Stopping on the avenue by Radio City, with a Transistor and a large sum of money to spend... You fellah, you tearin' up the street, You wear that white tuxedo, how you gonna beat the heat, Do you take me for a fool, do you think that I don't see, That ditch out in the Valley that they're diggin' just for me, Yes, and goin' insane, You know I'm laughin' at the frozen rain, Feel like I'm so alone, honey when they gonna send me home? (chorus) -- Bad Sneakers, "Steely Dan" | |
| "For a couple o' pins," says Troll, and grins, "I'll eat thee too, and gnaw thy shins. A bit o' fresh meat will go down sweet! I'll try my teeth on thee now. Hee now! See now! I'm tired o' gnawing old bones and skins; I've a mind to dine on thee now." But just as he thought his dinner was caught, He found his hands had hold of naught. Before he could mind, Tom slipped behing And gave him the boot to larn him. Warn him! Darn him! A bump o' the boot on the seat, Tom thoguht, Would be the way to larn him. But harder than stone is the flesh and bone Of a troll that sits in the hills alone. As well set your boot to the mountain's root, For the seat of a troll don't feel it. Peel it! Heal it! Old Troll laughed, when he heard Tom groan, And he knew his toes could feel it. Tom's leg is game, since home he came, And his bootless foot is lasting lame; But Troll don't care, and he's still there With the bone he boned from its owner. Doner! Boner! Troll's old seat is still the same, And the bone he boned from its owner! -- J. R. R. Tolkien | |
| Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields Sold in a market down in New Orleans Scarred old slaver knows he's doing alright Hear him whip the women, just around midnight Ah, brown sugar how come you taste so good? Ah, brown sugar just like a young girl should Drums beating cold English blood runs hot Lady of the house wonderin' where it's gonna stop House boy knows that he's doing alright You should a heard him just around midnight. ... I bet your mama was tent show queen And all her girlfriends were sweet sixteen I'm no school boy but I know what I like You should have heard me just around midnight. -- Rolling Stones, "Brown Sugar" | |
| He's been like a father to me, He's the only DJ you can get after three, I'm an all-night musician in a rock and roll band, And why he don't like me I don't understand. -- The Byrds | |
| Here in my heart, I am Helen; I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least. I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Sta"el; I'm Salome, moon of the East. Here in my soul I am Sappho; Lady Hamilton am I, as well. In me R'ecamier vies with Kitty O'Shea, With Dido, and Eve, and poor Nell. I'm all of the glamorous ladies At whose beckoning history shook. But you are a man, and see only my pan, So I stay at home with a book. -- Dorothy Parker | |
| I B M U B M We all B M For I B M!!!! -- H.A.R.L.I.E. | |
| I get up each morning, gather my wits. Pick up the paper, read the obits. If I'm not there I know I'm not dead. So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed. Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent? My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went. But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin, And think of the places my get-up has been. -- Pete Seeger | |
| I have that old biological urge, I have that old irresistible surge, I'm hungry. | |
| I met him in a swamp down in Dagobah Where it bubbles all the time like a giant carbonated soda S-O-D-A soda I saw the little runt sitting there on a log I asked him his name and in a raspy voice he said Yoda Y-O-D-A Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda Well I've been around but I ain't never seen A guy who looks like a Muppet but he's wrinkled and green Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda Well I'm not dumb but I can't understand How he can raise me in the air just by raising his hand Oh my Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda, Yo-Yo-Yo-Yo Yoda -- Weird Al Yankovic, "The Star Wars Song," to the tune of "Lola" by the Kinks | |
| I never saw a purple cow I never hope to see one But I can tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one. -- Gellett Burgess I've never seen a purple cow I never hope to see one But from the milk we're getting now There certainly must be one -- Odgen Nash Ah, yes, I wrote "The Purple Cow" I'm sorry now I wrote it But I can tell you anyhow I'll kill you if you quote it. -- Gellett Burgess, many years later | |
| I shot a query into the net. I haven't got an answer yet, A posted message called me rotten But seven people gave me hell For ignoring mail I'd never gotten; And said I ought to learn to spell; An angry message asked me, Please Don't send such drivel overseas; A lawyer sent me private mail And swore he'd slap my ass in jail -- One netter thought it was a hoax: I'd mentioned Un*x in my gem "Hereafter, post to net dot jokes!"; And failed to add the T and M; Another called my grammar vile And criticized my writing style. Each day I scan each Subject line In hopes the topic will be mine; I shot a query into the net. I haven't got an answer yet... -- Ed Nather | |
| I stood on the leading edge, The eastern seaboard at my feet. "Jump!" said Yoko Ono I'm too scared and good-looking, I cried. Go on and give it a try, Why prolong the agony, all men must die. -- Roger Waters, "The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking" | |
| I used to be such a sweet sweet thing, 'til they got a hold of me, I opened doors for little old ladies, I helped the blind to see, I got no friends 'cause they read the papers, they can't be seen, With me, and I'm feelin' real shot down, And I'm, uh, feelin' mean, No more, Mr. Nice Guy, No more, Mr. Clean, No more, Mr. Nice Guy, They say "He's sick, he's obscene". My dog bit me on the leg today, my cat clawed my eyes, Ma's been thrown out of the social circle, and Dad has to hide, I went to church, incognito, when everybody rose, The reverend Smithy, he recognized me, And punched me in the nose, he said, (chorus) He said "You're sick, you're obscene". -- Alice Cooper, "No More Mr. Nice Guy" | |
| I'm an artist. But it's not what I really want to do. What I really want to do is be a shoe salesman. I know what you're going to say -- "Dreamer! Get your head out of the clouds." All right! But it's what I want to do. Instead I have to go on painting all day long. The world should make a place for shoe salesmen. -- J. Feiffer | |
| I'm free -- and freedom tastes of reality. -- The Who | |
| I'm just as sad as sad can be! I've missed your special date. Please say that you're not mad at me My tax return is late. -- Modern Lines for Modern Greeting Cards | |
| i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart. -- e. e. cummings | |
| I'm N-ary the tree, I am, N-ary the tree, I am, I am. I'm getting traversed by the parser next door, She's traversed me seven times before. And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!) Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!) I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary. N-ary the tree I am, I am, N-ary the tree I am. -- Stolen from Paul Revere and the Raiders | |
| 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. | |
| I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous; In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-General. -- Gilbert & Sullivan, "Pirates of Penzance" | |
| If Dr. Seuss Were a Technical Writer..... Here's an easy game to play. Here's an easy thing to say: If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port, And the bus is interrupted as a very last resort, And the address of the memory makes your floppy disk abort, Then the socket packet pocket has an error to report! If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash, And the double-clicking icon puts your window in the trash, And your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash, then your situation's hopeless, and your system's gonna crash! You can't say this? What a shame, sir! We'll find you another game, sir. If the label on the cable on the table at your house, Says the network is connected to the button on your mouse, But your packets want to tunnel on another protocol, That's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall, And your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss, So your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse, Then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang, 'Cause as sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang! When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy on the disk, And the microcode instructions cause unnecessary risc, Then you have to flash your memory and you'll want to ram your rom. Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your mom! -- DementDJ@ccip.perkin-elmer.com (DementDJ) [rec.humor.funny] | |
| If I don't drive around the park, I'm pretty sure to make my mark. If I'm in bed each night by ten, I may get back my looks again. If I abstain from fun and such, I'll probably amount to much; But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn. -- Dorothy Parker | |
| Il brilgue: les t^oves libricilleux Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave, Enm^im'es sont les gougebosquex, Et le m^omerade horgrave. Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-mumsige Burggoven Dir mohmen Rath ausgraben. -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" | |
| In the early morning queue, With a listing in my hand. With a worry in my heart, There on terminal number 9, Waitin' here in CERAS-land. Pascal run all set to go. I'm a long way from sleep, But I'm waitin' in the queue, How I miss a good meal so. With this code that ever grows. In the early mornin' queue, Now the lobby chairs are soft, With no place to go. But that can't make the queue move fast. Hey, there it goes my friend, I've moved up one at last. -- Ernest Adams, "Early Morning Queue", to "Early Morning Rain" by G. Lightfoot | |
| It's so confusing choosing sides in the heat of the moment, just to see if it's real, Oooh, it's so erotic having you tell me how it should feel, But I'm avoiding all the hard cold facts that I got to face, So ask me just one question when this magic night is through, Could it have been just anyone or did it have to be you? -- Billy Joel, "Glass Houses" | |
| Like corn in a field I cut you down, I threw the last punch way too hard, After years of going steady, well, I thought it was time, To throw in my hand for a new set of cards. And I can't take you dancing out on the weekend, I figured we'd painted too much of this town, And I tried not to look as I walked to my wagon, And I knew then I had lost what should have been found, I knew then I had lost what should have been found. And I feel like a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford I'm as low as a paid assassin is You know I'm cold as a hired sword. I'm so ashamed we can't patch it up, You know I can't think straight no more You make me feel like a bullet, honey, a bullet in the gun of Robert Ford. -- Elton John "I Feel Like a Bullet" | |
| Most folks they like the daytime, 'cause they like to see the shining sun. They're up in the morning, off and a-running till they're too tired for having fun. But when the sun goes down, and the bright lights shine, my daytime has just begun. Now there are two sides to this great big world, and one of them is always night. If you can take care of business in the sunshine, baby, I guess you're gonna be all right. Don't come looking for me to lend you a hand. My eyes just can't stand the light. 'Cause I'm a night owl honey, sleep all day long. -- Carly Simon | |
| My soul is crushed, my spirit sore I do not like me anymore, I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse, I ponder on the narrow house I shudder at the thought of men I'm due to fall in love again. -- Dorothy Parker, "Enough Rope" | |
| Neuroses are red, Melancholia's blue. I'm schizophrenic, What are you? | |
| "No program is perfect," They said with a shrug. "The customer's happy-- What's one little bug?" But he was determined, Then change two, then three more, The others went home. As year followed year. He dug out the flow chart And strangers would comment, Deserted, alone. "Is that guy still here?" Night passed into morning. He died at the console The room was cluttered Of hunger and thirst With core dumps, source listings. Next day he was buried "I'm close," he muttered. Face down, nine edge first. Chain smoking, cold coffee, And his wife through her tears Logic, deduction. Accepted his fate. "I've got it!" he cried, Said "He's not really gone, "Just change one instruction." He's just working late." -- The Perfect Programmer | |
| Now it's time to say goodbye To all our company... M-I-C (see you next week!) K-E-Y (Why? Because we LIKE you!) M-O-U-S-E. | |
| Oh give me your pity! I'm on a committee, We attend and amend Which means that from morning And contend and defend to night, Without a conclusion in sight. We confer and concur, We defer and demur, We revise the agenda And reiterate all of our thoughts. With frequent addenda And consider a load of reports. We compose and propose, We suppose and oppose, But though various notions And the points of procedure are fun; Are brought up as motions, There's terribly little gets done. We resolve and absolve; But we never dissolve, Since it's out of the question for us To bring our committee To end like this ditty, Which stops with a period, thus. -- Leslie Lipson, "The Committee" | |
| "Oh, '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, give me a locus where the gravitons focus Where the three-body problem is solved, Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K, And the cold virus never evolved. (chorus) We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high, Our ball bearings are perfectly round. Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed, And a kilogram weighs half a pound. (chorus) If we run out of space for our burgeoning race No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart, If we just find a big enough wrench. (chorus) I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space, And living up here is a bore. Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye 'Cause I'm moving next week to L4! (chorus) CHORUS: Home, home on LaGrange, Where the space debris always collects, We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams: Solar power and zero-gee sex. -- to Home on the Range | |
| Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay I muck with indices and structs all day And when it works, I shout hoo-ray Oh, I am a C programmer and I'm okay | |
| Proposed Country & Western Song Titles I Can't Get Over You, So I Get Up and Go Around to the Other Side If You Won't Leave Me Alone, I'll Find Someone Who Will I Knew That You'd Committed a Sin When You Came Home Late With Your Socks Outside-in I'm a Rabbit in the Headlights of Your Love Don't Kick My Tires If You Ain't Gonna Take Me For a Ride I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better I've Got Red Eyes From Your White Lies and I'm Blue All the Time -- "Wordplay" | |
| Proposed Country & Western Song Titles I Don't Mind If You Lie to Me, As Long As I Ain't Lyin' Alone I Wouldn't Take You to a Dog Fight Even If I Thought You Could Win If You Leave Me, Walk Out Backwards So I'll Think You're Comin' In Since You Learned to Lip-Sync, I'm At Your Disposal My John Deere Was Breaking Your Field, While Your Dear John Was Breaking My Heart Don't Cry, Little Darlin', You're Waterin' My Beer Tennis Must Be Your Racket, 'Cause Love Means Nothin' to You When You Say You Love Me, You're Full of Prunes, 'Cause Living With You Is the Pits I Wanted Your Hand in Marriage but All I Got Was the Finger -- "Wordplay" | |
| Proposed Country & Western Song Titles She Ain't Much to See, but She Looks Good Through the Bottom of a Glass If Fingerprints Showed Up On Skin, I Wonder Who's I'd Find On You I'm Ashamed to be Here, but Not Ashamed Enough to Leave It's Commode Huggin' Time In The Valley If You Want to Keep the Beer Real Cold, Put It Next to My Ex-wife's Heart If You Get the Feeling That I Don't Love You, Feel Again I'm Ashamed To Be Here, But Not Ashamed Enough To Leave It's the Bottle Against the Bible in the Battle For Daddy's Soul My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Miss Him Don't Cut Any More Wood, Baby, 'Cause I'll Be Comin' Home With A Load I Loved Her Face, But I Left Her Behind For You | |
| Reclaimer, spare that tree! Take not a single bit! It used to point to me, Now I'm protecting it. It was the reader's CONS That made it, paired by dot; Now, GC, for the nonce, Thou shalt reclaim it not. | |
| Roses are red; Violets are blue. I'm schizophrenic, And so am I. | |
| Say my love is easy had, Say I'm bitten raw with pride, Say I am too often sad -- Still behold me at your side. Say I'm neither brave nor young, Say I woo and coddle care, Say the devil touched my tongue -- Still you have my heart to wear. But say my verses do not scan, And I get me another man! -- Dorothy Parker, "Fighting Words" | |
| She stood on the tracks Waving her arms Leading me to that third rail shock Quick as a wink She changed her mind She gave me a night That's all it was What will it take until I stop Kidding myself Wasting my time There's nothing else I can do 'Cause I'm doing it all for Leyna I don't want anyone new 'Cause I'm living it all for Leyna There's nothing in it for you 'Cause I'm giving it all to Leyna -- Billy Joel, "All for Leyna" (Glass Houses) | |
| So, you better watch out! You better not cry! You better not pout! I'm telling you why, Santa Claus is coming, to town. He knows when you've been sleeping, He know when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good, He has ties with the CIA. So... | |
| Sometimes I feel like I'm fading away, Looking at me, I got nothin' to say. Don't make me angry with the things games that you play, Either light up or leave me alone. | |
| Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time, There's something wrong here, there can be no more denying, One of us is changing, or maybe we just stopped trying, And it's too late, baby, now, it's too late, Though we really did try to make it, Something inside has died and I can't hide and I just can't fake it... It used to be so easy living here with you, You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do Now you look so unhappy and I feel like a fool. There'll be good times again for me and you, But we just can't stay together, don't you feel it too? But I'm glad for what we had and that I once loved you... But it's too late baby... It's too late, now darling, it's too late... -- Carol King, "Tapestry" | |
| Step back, unbelievers! Or the rain will never come. Somebody keep the fire burning, someone come and beat the drum. You may think I'm crazy, you may think that I'm insane, But I swear to you, before this day is out, you folks are gonna see some rain! | |
| Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred, Tan me hide when I'm dead. So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, It's hanging there on the shed. All together now... Tie me kangaroo down, sport, Tie me kangaroo down. Tie me kangaroo down, sport, Tie me kangaroo down. | |
| The bank called to tell me that I'm overdrawn, Some freaks are burning crosses out on my front lawn, And I *can't*believe* it, all the Cheetos are gone, It's just ONE OF THOSE DAYS! -- Weird Al Yankovic, "One of Those Days" | |
| The camel has a single hump; The dromedary two; Or else the other way around. I'm never sure. Are you? -- Ogden Nash | |
| The morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age, But that don't bother me none; in my eyes you're everything. I know I keep you amused, But I feel I'm being used. Oh, Maggie, I wish I'd never seen your face. You took me away from home, Just to save you from being alone; You stole my heart, and that's what really hurts. I suppose I could collect my books and get on back to school, Or steal my daddy's cue and make a living out of playing pool, Or find myself a rock 'n' roll band, That needs a helping hand, Oh, Maggie I wish I'd never seen your face. You made a first-class fool out of me, But I'm as blind as a fool can be. You stole my soul, and that's a pain I can do without. -- Rod Stewart, "Maggie May" | |
| The night passes quickly when you're asleep But I'm out shufflin' for something to eat ... Breakfast at the Egg House, Like the waffle on the griddle, I'm burnt around the edges, But I'm tender in the middle. -- Adrian Belew | |
| There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle -- Would you kindly direct me to hell? -- Dorothy Parker | |
| Though I respect that a lot I'd be fired if that were my job After killing Jason off and Countless screaming argonauts Bluebird of friendliness Like guardian angels it's Always near Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch Who watches over you Make a little birdhouse in your soul Not to put too fine a point on it Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet Make a little birdhouse in your soul -- "Birdhouse in your Soul", They Might Be Giants | |
| Watching girls go passing by It ain't the latest thing I'm just standing in a doorway I'm just trying to make some sense Out of these girls passing by A smile relieves the heart that grieves The tales they tell of men Remember what I said I'm not waiting on a lady I'm not waiting on a lady I'm just waiting on a friend I'm just waiting on a friend ... Don't need a whore Don't need no booze Don't need a virgin priest Ooh, making love and breaking hearts But I need someone I can cry to It is a game for youth I need someone to protect But I'm not waiting on a lady I'm just waiting on a friend I'm just waiting on a friend -- Rolling Stones, "Waiting on a Friend" | |
| When you're away, I'm restless, lonely, Wretched, bored, dejected; only Here's the rub, my darling dear I feel the same when you are near. -- Samuel Hoffenstein, "When You're Away" | |
| Woke up this morning, don't believe what I saw. Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore. Seems I'm not alone in being alone. Hundred billion castaways looking for a call. -- The Police, "Message in a Bottle" | |
| Yes me, I got a bottle in front of me. And Jimmy has a frontal lobotomy. Just different ways to kill the pain the same. But I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, Than to have to have a frontal lobotomy. I might be drunk but at least I'm not insane. -- Randy Ansley M.D. (Dr. Rock) | |
| "You are old, father William," the young man said, "And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head -- Do you think, at your age, it is right?" "In my youth," father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again." "You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before, And have grown most uncommonly fat; Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door -- Pray what is the reason of that?" "In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks, "I kept all my limbs very supple By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box -- Allow me to sell you a couple?" | |
| "You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers That your lectures bore people to death. Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year -- Don't you think that you should save your breath?" "I have answered three questions and that is enough," Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!" | |
| Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Oh, and have a nice day! -- Bryce Nesbitt '84 | |
| Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets. | |
| Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face. | |
| Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is my choice for team captain. Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led off the bottom of the eighth with a walk. The next hitter banged a hard single to right field. Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and kept going, sliding safely into third base. With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first. Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy took off for second and made it. Now we had runners at second and third. I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy start to take a lead. All of a sudden, here he comes. He makes a great slide into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?" He looks up, and shouts, "Back to second if I can make it." -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game" | |
| Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers... they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key! | |
| I just know I'm a better manager when I have Joe DiMaggio in center field. -- Casey Stengel | |
| I'm a lucky guy, and I'm happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary. -- Yogi Berra at a dinner in his honor | |
| I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade. -- Golfer Bobby Jones on being told that it was 105 degrees in the shade. | |
| Max told his friend that he'd just as soon not go hiking in the hills. Said he, "I'm an anti-climb Max." [So is that punchline.] | |
| Pedro Guerrero was playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984 when he made the comment that earns him a place in my Hall of Fame. Second baseman Steve Sax was having trouble making his throws. Other players were diving, screaming, signaling for a fair catch. At the same time, Guerrero, at third, was making a few plays that weren't exactly soothing to manager Tom Lasorda's stomach. Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous motivational meetings and zeroed in on Guerrero: "How can you play third base like that? You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball. What is it?" "I'm only thinking about two things," Guerrero said. "First, `I hope they don't hit the ball to me.'" The players snickered, and even Lasorda had to fight off a laugh. "Second, `I hope they don't hit the ball to Sax.'" -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game" | |
| Rick: "How can you close me up? On what grounds?" Renault: "I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is going on here." Croupier (handing money to Renault): "Your winnings, sir." Renault:"Oh. Thank you very much." -- Casablanca | |
| Show me a good loser in professional sports and I'll show you an idiot. Show me a good sportsman and I'll show you a player I'm looking to trade. -- Leo Durocher | |
| So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face. -- Yogi Berra | |
| Texas A&M football coach Jackie Sherrill went to the office of the Dean of Academics because he was concerned about his players' mental abilities. "My players are just too stupid for me to deal with them", he told the unbelieving dean. At this point, one of his players happened to enter the dean's office. "Let me show you what I mean", said Sherrill, and he told the player to run over to his office to see if he was in. "OK, Coach", the player replied, and was off. "See what I mean?" Sherrill asked. "Yeah", replied the dean. "He could have just picked up this phone and called you from here." | |
| The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride." | |
| When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again. The fans with the cigars and the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in the street and foreign presidents. It's goin' to be back to the fighter who comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says he's in shape. Old hat. I was the onliest boxer in history people asked questions like a senator. -- Muhammad Ali | |
| I know you believe you understand what you think this fortune says, but I'm not sure you realize that what you are reading is not what it means. | |
| THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your contribution of a pithy fortunes, clean or obscene? We cannot continue without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week. Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug .... | |
| Dammit Jim, I'm an actor, not a doctor. | |
| Do you know about being with somebody? Wanting to be? If I had the whole universe, I'd give it to you, Janice. When I see you, I feel like I'm hungry all over. Do you know how that feels? -- Charlie Evans, "Charlie X", stardate 1535.8 | |
| Emotions are alien to me. I'm a scientist. -- Spock, "This Side of Paradise", stardate 3417.3 | |
| "I'm a doctor, not a mechanic." -- "The Doomsday Machine", when asked if he had heard of the idea of a doomsday machine. "I'm a doctor, not an escalator." -- "Friday's Child", when asked to help the very pregnant Ellen up a steep incline. "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer." -- Devil in the Dark", when asked to patch up the Horta. "I'm a doctor, not an engineer." -- "Mirror, Mirror", when asked by Scotty for help in Engineering aboard the ISS Enterprise. "I'm a doctor, not a coalminer." -- "The Empath", on being beneath the surface of Minara 2. "I'm a surgeon, not a psychiatrist." -- "City on the Edge of Forever", on Edith Keeler's remark that Kirk talked strangely. "I'm no magician, Spock, just an old country doctor." -- "The Deadly Years", to Spock while trying to cure the aging effects of the rogue comet near Gamma Hydra 4. "What am I, a doctor or a moonshuttle conductor?" -- "The Corbomite Maneuver", when Kirk rushed off from a physical exam to answer the alert. | |
| I'm a soldier, not a diplomat. I can only tell the truth. -- Kirk, "Errand of Mercy", stardate 3198.9 | |
| I'm frequently appalled by the low regard you Earthmen have for life. -- Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2822.3 | |
| Mind your own business, Spock. I'm sick of your halfbreed interference. | |
| Murder is contrary to the laws of man and God. -- M-5 Computer, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3 | |
| Well, Jim, I'm not much of an actor either. | |
| "What happened to the crewman?" "The M-5 computer needed a new power source, the crewman merely got in the way." -- Kirk and Dr. Richard Daystrom, "The Ultimate Computer", stardate 4731.3. | |
| "`You know,' said Arthur, `it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die from asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.' `Why, what did she tell you?' `I don't know, I didn't listen.'" - Arthur coping with certain death as best as he could. | |
| "`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. | |
| "`Right,' said Ford, `I'm going to have a look.' He glanced round at the others. `Is no one going to say, "No you can't possibly, let me go instead"?' They all shook their heads. `Oh well.'" - Ford attempting to be heroic whilst being seiged by Shooty and Bangbang. | |
| "`Maybe somebody here tipped off the Galactic Police,' said Trillian. `Everybody saw you come in.' `You mean they want to arrest me over the phone?' said Zaphod, `Could be. I'm a pretty dangerous dude when I'm cornered.' `Yeah,' said a voice from under the table [Ford's now completely rat- arsed at this point], `you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.'" - Zaphod getting paranoid over a phone call. | |
| "`What's been happening here?' he demanded. `Oh just the nicest things, sir, just the nicest things. can I sit on your lap please?'" "`Colin, I am going to abandon you to your fate.' `I'm so happy.'" "`It will be very, very nasty for you, and that's just too bad. Got it?' `I gurgle with pleasure.'" - Ford and Colin the robot. | |
| A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths. -- Steven Wright | |
| All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store." -- Steven Wright | |
| "But I don't want to go on the cart..." "Oh, don't be such a baby!" "But I'm feeling much better..." "No you're not... in a moment you'll be stone dead!" -- Monty Python, "The Holy Grail" | |
| I don't kill flies, but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell "Whooa, I'm *way* too high." -- Bruce Baum | |
| "I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?' He said, 'Phoenix.' So I pushed Phoenix. A few seconds later the doors opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix. I looked at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around with.' We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert. Then the phone rang. He said 'You get it.' I picked it up and said 'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...' The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank... It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we would just like to know what happened to the money?' I said, 'Mr. Jones, I'll give it to you straight. I gave all of the money to my friend Slick, and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never called me again." -- Steven Wright | |
| I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building. -- Charles Schulz | |
| I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic. I may not get there, but I'm going first class. -- Art Buchwald | |
| I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than most western countries. -- George Burns | |
| I used to live in a house by the freeway. When I went anywhere, I had to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway. I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights. Now it looks like I'm the only one moving. I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going to be out that long." I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out. Now my car goes 500 miles an hour. -- Steven Wright | |
| I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man. -- Fred Allen | |
| I'm going to give my psychoanalyst one more year, then I'm going to Lourdes. -- Woody Allen | |
| I'm going to live forever, or die trying! -- Spider Robinson | |
| I'm not afraid of death -- I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen | |
| It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen | |
| My friend has a baby. I'm writing down all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant. -- Steven Wright | |
| "Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time." -- Steven Wright | |
| "You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!" "Why, what did she tell you?" "I don't know, I didn't listen." -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" | |
| "I'm not saying that they were knowingly dishonest, perhaps they were simply stupid. " -- Linus Torvalds, commenting on those who really thought Microkernels were wise. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates) | |
| "A unified, neutral Germany? Given that nation's heritage, such a phrase may prove to be the oxymoron of the decade." -Kevin M. Matarese, Fulda, West Germany; as seen in "Letters", Time magazine, p. 5, March 5, 1990. | |
| I'm not going to say, "I told you so." | |
| I'm proud of my humility. | |
| Thank God I'm an atheist. | |
| Yes... I feel your pain... but as a former first poster (I scored mine a couple months ago) I know what you went through. Here's where you screwed up though... YOU DIDN'T PULL THE TRIGGER. You didn't carpe diem. Yep... When I saw that nice clean article with no posts I didn't hesitate, yes the adrenaline was surging... my palms were wet, heart pounding. I was standing at the peak of greatness... I knew I had but one thing to do, there was no turning back now... I rapidly typed in a one word post.. then with no hesitation I navigated my mouse over the submit button... and WHAM.. seconds later I was looking at my feeble post with a #1 attached to the header. At that mmoment I knew a feeling that only few will ever know... I was at one with Slashdot... Zen masters and Kings will relate I'm sure. That one sweet moment when the ying and the yang converge... bliss... eternal bliss... ahhh! Then I smoked a cigarette and went to bed. -- Anonymous Coward, in response to a "First Post!" that clearly wasn't. | |
| I'll never forget the first time I ran Windows, but I'm trying... | |
| By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since sliced bread. | |
| Linux: Where do you want to GO... Oh, I'm already there! -- Ewout Stam | |
| I'm not a programmer, but I play one at Microsoft. -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
| I'm not in favor of senseless Micro$oft bashing. I'm in favor of bashing Micro$oft senseless. -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
| I'm a geek with a journalism degree. I suppose that makes me overqualified for a job with ZDNet. Darn. -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
| I'm still waiting for the "Honk if you hate Microsoft" [bumper sticker], but that might get annoying, everyone honking at you. -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
| The best Windows accelerator is that which works at 9.81 m/s2 -- From a Slashdot.org post | |
| Stallman's Latest Proclamation Richard M. Stallman doesn't want you to say "Windows" anymore. He is now advocating that people call this OS by its real name: Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows. This proclamation comes on the heels of his controversial stand that Linux should be called GNU/Linux. RMS explained in a Usenet posting, "Calling Microsoft's OS 'Windows' is a grave inaccuracy. Xerox and Apple both contributed significant ideas and innovations to this OS. Why should Microsoft get all the credit?" RMS also hinted that people shouldn't refer to Microsoft's web browser as IE. "It should really be called Microsoft-Spyglass-Mosaic-Internet-Explorer. Again, how much credit does Microsoft really deserve for this product? Much of the base code was licensed from Spyglass." Many industry pundits are less than thrilled about RMS' proclamation. The editor of Windows Magazine exclaimed, "What?!?! Yeah, we'll rename our magazine Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Magazine. That just rolls off the tongue!" A Ziff-Davis columnist noted, "Think of all the wasted space this would cause. If we spelled out everything like this, we'd have headlines like, 'Microsoft Releases Service Pack 5 for Microsoft-Xerox-Apple-Windows Neutered Technology 4.0' Clearly this is unacceptable." | |
| Could You Get Fired for Visiting Slashdot? PADUCAH, KY -- Matt Johnson, an employee at Paradigm Shift Consulting, Inc., was fired from his programming job because of his addiction to Slashdot. Johnson typically visited Slashdot several times a day during working hours. Citing productivity problems, Johnson's boss gave him the pink slip and instituted a 'NoDot' policy -- no visiting Slashdot or related sites from the office, ever. Now Johnson has filed a lawsuit, claiming that his Slashdot addiction is protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act. Matt Johnson explained, "They discriminated against me because I'm a Dothead. Drug abuse and alcoholism are often considered handicaps. Why not Slashdot addiction?" Johnson's boss sees the situation differently. "Matt never got any work done. He was always visiting Slashdot, Freshmeat, or some other nerd website. And when he wasn't, he suffered withdrawl symptoms and couldn't think straight. A few months ago he spent eight consecutive hours posting comments in a KDE vs. GNOME flame war. I tried to offer assistance to overcome his addiction, but he refused. Enough is enough." The company's 'NoDot' policy has been under fire as well. One anonymous employee said, "We can't visit Slashdot because of Matt's addiction. This just sucks. I really don't see anything wrong with visiting Slashdot during breaks or after hours." | |
| Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #2 Nerd Trading Cards Price: $10/pack Producer: Bottomms; 1-800-NRDS-ROK Forget baseball, nerd trading cards are the future. Now your kids can collect and trade cards of their favorite open source hackers and computer industry figures. Some of the cards included feature Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman, and Larry Wall. Also contains cards for companies (Red Hat, Netscape, Transmeta, etc.), specific open source programs (Apache, Perl, Mozilla, etc.), and well-known websites (Slashdot, Freshmeat, etc.). Each card features a full-color picture on the front and complete information and statistics on back. Some of the cards have even been autographed. Quit trying to search eBay.com for a Mark McGwire rookie card and collect nerd cards instead! | |
| Is Windows Antique? SILICON VALLEY -- The first ever antique mall devoted to computers has opened its doors deep in the heart of Silicon Valley. Named "Stacks of Antiqueues", the new mall features obsolete hardware, old software, and other curiosities that only a nerd would want to buy. The mall also features a whole collection of Microsoft software, which, as can be expected, has the Redmond giant up in arms. The mall, founded by a group of Linux, FreeBSD, and BeOS users, has a whole section devoted to Microsoft "antiques". Offerings range from a rare (and expensive) copy of Windows 1.0 all the way up to Windows 98. All versions of DOS from 1.0 up are available, in addition to such Microsoft products as Bob, Profit, and Multiplan. Bob Hinesdorf, one of the mall's founders, defends the decision to include Microsoft products in its selection of antique computer stuff. "Windows 98 is surely antique; it's based on 16 bit Windows 3.x code, which was based on 16 bit DOS code, which was based loosely on 8 bit CP/M." | |
| New Crime Identified: "Tech Rage" HARRISBURG, IL -- The police department in this Illinois town has coined a new term for a growing trend in crime: "tech rage". Tech rage shares many similarities with another modern crime, "road rage", but instead of affecting drivers, tech rage is experienced by disgruntled computer users. The first documented case of tech rage involves a Microsoft salesman, Bob Glutzfield, who convinced the local TV station to "upgrade" its computer systems from Macintosh to Wintel. While the migration seemed successful at first, the Blue Screen became more prevalent during the following months. Then, in January, the entire computer system crashed in the middle of the weather forecast during the 10 o'clock evening news. Viewers could plainly see the Blue Screen of Death showing in the monitors behind James Roland, the chief meteorologist. The instability of Windows 98 stretched Roland's patience until he snapped last week and succumbed to tech rage. Roland tracked down the Microsoft salesman and followed him one evening to his apartment. The weatherman yelled at the bewildered Microserf, "You [expletive]! Because of you, I'm the [expletive] laughing stock of Southern Illinois!" and then proceeded to beat him up. Roland is currently out on bond pending trial next month. | |
| Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#7) 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 7: What new features would you like to see in Windows 2000? A. A marquee on the taskbar that automatically scrolls the latest headlines from MSNBC and Microsoft Press Pass B. Content filtration software for Internet Explorer that will prevent my children from accessing dangerous propaganda about Linux. C. A new card game; I've spent over 10,000 hours playing Solitaire during my free time at work and I'm starting to get bored with it D. A screensaver depicting cream pies being thrown at Janet Reno, Joel Klien, David Boies, Ralpha Nader, Orrin Hatch, Linus Torvalds, Richard M. Stallman, and other conspirators out to destroy Microsoft E. A Reinstall Wizard that helps me reinstall a fresh copy of Windows to fix Registry corruptions and other known issues | |
| Jargon Coiner (#12) An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon that we've just made up. * IPO (I've Patented the Obvious): Acquiring patents on trivial things and then hitting other companies over the head with them. Example: "Amazon just IPO'd one-click spam and is now ready to sue B&N." * IPO (I'm Pissed Off): Exclamation given by a Linux user who was unable to participate in a highly lucrative Linux IPO due to lack of capital or E*Trade problems. Also uttered by Linux hackers who did not receive The Letter from Red Hat or VA Linux even though their friends did. * YAKBA (Yet Another Killer Backhoe Attack): The acronym that describes network outtages caused by a careless backhoe operator. Examples: "Don't blame us, our website was offline after we suffered a YAKBA". "Don't worry about Y2K, what we need to think about is YAKBA-compliance." | |
| ERIC S. RAYMOND: I'd like to introduce Eric Jones, a disadvantaged member of the geek community who has been forced to live in a homeless shelter. Eric? Come on out here and tell us about yourself... JONES: Well, I'm a consultant for a Bay Area corporation. Due to the housing crisis, I've been forced to sleep in a shelter. ESR: How much do you make? JONES: Over $100,000 a year. ESR: Wow! And you still can't afford housing or rent? That sounds terrible... Hopefully with this telethon we'll be able to raise money to fund new shelters for disadvantaged geeks like Eric here. We also have plans for a Silicon Valley Terraforming Initiative in which several square miles of Pacific Ocean will be turned into usuable land for building housing and apartments for geeks... -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon | |
| OPPRESSED GEEK: Everybody keeps blaming me for the Y2K problem, the Melissa Virus, Windows crashes... you name it. When somebody finds out you're a bona fide geek, they start bugging you about computer problems. I frequently hear things like, "Why can't you geeks make Windows work right?", "What kind of idiot writes a program that can't handle the year 2000?", "Geeks are evil, all they do is write viruses", and "The Internet is the spawn of Satan". I'm afraid to admit I have extensive computing experience. When somebody asks what kind of job I have, I always lie. From my experience, admitting that you're a geek is an invitation to disaster. LARRY WALL: I know, I know. I sometimes say that I'm the founder of a pearl harvesting company instead of admitting that I'm the founder of the Perl programming language. ERIC S. RAYMOND: This is tragic. We can't live in a world like this. We need your donations to fight social oppression and ignorance against geekdom... -- Excerpt from the Geek Grok '99 telethon | |
| What Did Santa Claus Bring You In 1999? (#2) WEBMASTER OF LINUXSUPERMEGAPORTAL.COM: One of my in-laws gifted me a CD-ROM containing the text of every "...For Dummies" book ever published. It's a shame IDG never published "Hiring A Hitman To Knock Off Your Inlaws... For Dummies", because that's something I'm itching to do. At any rate, I'm using the CD as a beer coaster. JESSE BERST: I got a coupon redeemable for the full copy of Windows 2000 when it comes out in February. Win2K is the most innovative, enterprise-ready, stable, feature-enriched, easy-to-use operating system on the market. I don't see how Linux can survive against Microsoft's far superior offering. I ask you: could you get fired for NOT choosing Windows 2000? You bet. LINUX CONVERT: I kept hinting for a SGI box, but instead my wife got me an old Packard Bell. Unfortunately, she bought it at CompUSSR, which doesn't take returns, so I'm stuck with it. I haven't been able to get Linux to boot on it, so this machine will probably become a $750 paperweight. | |
| Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#6) (Round 4, the Who Wants To Be A Billionaire? Round) ERIC RAYMOND (Moderator): Here's the second question: Who is the primary author of the world-renowned fetchmail program? [Bzzz] Yes, Hemos? HEMOS: Mr. Eric... Fetch of Cincinnati, Ohio. RAYMOND: No, no, no! The answer is me, me, me, you idiots! Sheesh. I'm resetting your points to zero for that. ALAN COX: Are you going to ask any questions that are not about you? RAYMOND: Um... let's see... yeah, there's one or two here... Okay, here's question three... What loud-mouthed hippie-spirtualist founder of the GNU Project keeps demanding that everybody use the crappy term "Free Software" instead of "Open Source"? [Bzzz] Yes, Anonymous Coward? ANONCOW: Eric Raymond! RAYMOND: Why you little [expletive]! I'm going to... | |
| Elite Nerds Create Linux Distro From Hell HELL, MICHIGAN -- A group of long-time Linux zealots and newbie haters have thrown together a new Linux distro called Hellix that is so user-hostile, so anti-newbie, so cryptic, and so old-fashioned that it actually makes MS-DOS look like a real operating system. Said the founder of the project, "I'm sick and tired of the Windowsification of the Linux desktop in a fruitless attempt to make the system more appealing to newbies, PHBs, and MCSEs. Linux has always been for nerds only, and we want to make sure it stays that way!" One of the other Bastard Distributors From Hell explained, "In the last five years think of all the hacking effort spent on Linux... and for what? We have nothing to show for it but half-finished Windows-like desktops, vi dancing paperclips, and graphical front-ends to configuration files. Real nerds use text files for configuration, darnit, and they like it! It's time to take a stand against the hordes of newbies that are polluting our exclusive operating system." One Anonymous Coward said, "This is so cool... It's just like Unix back in the good old days of the 70's when men were men and the only intuitive interface was still the nipple." | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#10) The AnyQuack Computer One electronic machine, Colossus, was used by the British in World War II to decode Nazi transmissions. The code-breakers were quite successful in their mission, except for the tiny detail that nobody knew how to read German. They had decoded unreadable messages into... unreadable messages. Two years later in 1945, a group of professors and students at the Univ. of Pennsylvania were discussing computing theory. An argument ensued, in which one professor yelled, "Any quack can build an electronic computer! The real challenge is building one that doesn't crash every five minutes." One graduate student, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., responded, "I'm any quack! I'll take you up on that challenge. I'll build a device that can calculate 1,000 digits of pi in one hour... without crashing!" Several professors laughed; "Such high-speed calculations are beyond our level of technology." Eckert and his friends did build such a device. As a joke, he called the machine "AnyQuack", which eventually became ENIAC -- ENIAC's Not Intended As Crashware, the first known example of a self-referential acronym. | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#17) If only Gary had been sober When Micro-soft moved to Seattle in 1979, most of its revenue came from sales of BASIC, a horrible language so dependant on GOTOs that spaghetti looked more orderly than its code did. (BASIC has ruined more promising programmers than anything else, prompting its original inventor Dartmouth University to issue a public apology in 1986.) However, by 1981 BASIC hit the backburner to what is now considered the luckiest break in the history of computing: MS-DOS. (We use the term "break" because MS-DOS was and always will be broken.) IBM was developing a 16-bit "personal computer" and desperately needed an OS to drive it. Their first choice was Gary Kildall's CP/M, but IBM never struck a deal with him. We've discovered the true reason: Kildall was drunk at the time the IBM representatives went to talk with him. A sober man would not have insulted the reps, calling their employer an "Incredibly Bad Monopoly" and referring to their new IBM-PC as an "Idealistically Backwards Microcomputer for People without Clues". Needless to say, Gary "I Lost The Deal Of The Century" Kildall was not sober. | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#17) Terrible calamity IBM chose Microsoft's Quick & Dirty Operating System instead of CP/M for its new line of PCs. QDOS (along with the abomination known as EDLIN) had been acquired from a Seattle man, Tim Paterson, for the paltry sum of $50,000. "Quick" and "Dirty" were truly an accurate description of this system, because IBM's quality assurance department discovered 300 bugs in QDOS's 8,000 lines of assember code (that's about 1 bug per 27 lines -- which, at the time, was appalling, but compared with Windows 98 today, it really wasn't that shabby). Thanks in part to IBM's new marketing slogan, "Nobody Ever Got Fired For Choosing IBM(tm)", and the release of the VisiCalc spreadsheet program that everybody and their brother wanted, IBM PCs running DOS flew off the shelves and, unfortunately, secured Microsoft's runaway success. Bill Gates was now on his way to the Billionaire's Club; his days as a mediocre programmer were long gone: he was now a Suit. The only lines of code he would ever see would be the passcodes to his Swiss bank accounts. | |
| Brief History Of Linux (#21) The GNU Project Meet Richard M. Stallman, an MIT hacker who would found the GNU Project and create Emacs, the operating-system-disguised-as-a-text-editor. RMS, the first member of the Three Initials Club (joined by ESR and JWZ), experienced such frustration with software wrapped in arcane license agreements that he embarked on the GNU Project to produce free software. His journey began when he noticed this fine print for a printer driver: You do not own this software. You own a license to use one copy of this software, a license that we can revoke at any time for any reason whatsoever without a refund. You may not copy, distribute, alter, disassemble, or hack the software. The source code is locked away in a vault in Cleveland. If you say anything negative about this software you will be in violation of this license and required to forfeit your soul and/or first born child to us. The harsh wording of the license shocked RMS. The computer industry was in it's infancy, which could only mean it was going to get much, much worse. | |
| 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." | |
| /* * Hi, this is Linus Torvalds speaking, your Benevolent Dictator. I'm typing * this today to talk about EyeOpener(tm) brand caffeinated beverages, for * those really, really, _really_ long nights of kernel hacking. * * EyeOpener(tm): When ordinary colas don't keep you awake for 72 hours * straight. */ -- Comment embedded in Linux kernel 2.6.15 after Linus Torvalds decided to get-rich-quick by placing "comment-verts" in the code | |
| 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." | |
| Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Linus Torvalds SILLYCON VALLEY -- Nearly 130 former system administrators have filed suit against Linus Torvalds in which they claim Linux cost them their jobs. Recently several companies migrated from Windows to Linux, increasing their productivity but decreasing the need for a large staff of tech workers, prompting a wave of layoffs. "The good old days when it required five full-time system administrators to maintain a Microsoft Exchange server are history, all because of that cancer known as Linux," explained the lead litigant in the lawsuit. "It all started two years ago when some pimply-faced idiot down in Accounting decided to smuggle in a Linux box to automate some of his work. Before long every tech-savvy person in Accounting, Billing, and Sales was secretly using Linux." "That's when the troubles started. Productivity soared. Downtime was limited to an average of three milliseconds per day. Macro viruses ceased to spread. It was horrible! The entire IT staff was replaced by one part-time bearded wonder, who was able to administrate the entire Linux network! Due to the layoffs, I'm now sitting in a homeless shelter with little hope to find work. Nobody wants to hire an MCSE anymore!" | |
| Jon Splatz's Movie Review: "Lord of the Pings" I've never walked out on a movie before. When I pay $9.50 to see a movie (plus $16.50 for snacks), I'm going to sit through every single minute no matter how awful. The resolve to get my money's worth allowed me to watch Jar Jar Binks without even flinching last year. But I couldn't make it through "Lord of the Pings". This movie contains a scene that is so appalling, so despicable, so vile, so terrible, so crappy, and so gut-wrenching that I simply had to get up, run out of the theater, and puke in the nearest restroom. It was just that bad. The whole thing is completely ruined by a scene that takes place only 52 seconds into the flick. Brace yourself: big letters appear on screen that say "An AOL/Time Warner Production". ... Because this film is brought to you by the letters A-O-L-T-W, I must give it an F-minus even though I've only seen 53 seconds of it. | |
| Microsoft Employees Go On Strike, Demand Reduced Salaries REDMOND, WA -- Several hundred programmers walked off their jobs at Microsoft Headquarters on Friday to protest their shoddy public image. "My friends all think I'm a servant of Satan because I get my paycheck from Microsoft," explained Microserf Eric Eshleman. "If I didn't make so much money, I'd have more of a backbone to shout 'No!' when my supervisor demands that I include some new virus-delivery feature in Outlook." The striking programmers demand salary cuts, less benefits, and zero stock options. Their labor union, the Brotherhood Of Programmers Sick Of Being Called Evil, hopes to get some face time with Microsoft executives and touch base on reaching a proactive agreement leveraging the latest innovatives in PR to produce a synergistic worldwide buzzword-enhanced advertising campaign that showcases Microsoft associates as enlightened engineers instead of morally bankrupt bastards bent on world domination. Earlier today, about 150 strikers formed a picket line near the front entrance to Bill Gates' mansion. They carried signs saying "Hell no we're not going to Hell", "I want to be able to sleep at night", "Why does the public hate us so much?" and "I'm fed up with ethical dilemmas". | |
| A man is crawling through the Sahara desert when he is approached by another man riding on a camel. When the rider gets close enough, the crawling man whispers through his sun-parched lips, "Water... please... can you give... water..." "I'm sorry," replies the man on the camel, "I don't have any water with me. But I'd be delighted to sell you a necktie." "Tie?" whispers the man. "I need *water*." "They're only four dollars apiece." "I need *water*." "Okay, okay, say two for seven dollars." "Please! I need *water*!", says the man. "I don't have any water, all I have are ties," replies the salesman, and he heads off into the distance. The man, losing track of time, crawls for what seems like days. Finally, nearly dead, sun-blind and with his skin peeling and blistering, he sees a restaurant in the distance. Summoning the last of his strength he staggers up to the door and confronts the head waiter. "Water... can I get... water," the dying man manages to stammer. "I'm sorry, sir, ties required." | |
| 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. | |
| But since I knew now that I could hope for nothing of greater value than frivolous pleasures, what point was there in denying myself of them? -- M. Proust | |
| Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid. | |
| He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder. -- M.C. Escher | |
| Hi! I'm Larry. This is my brother Bob, and this is my other brother Jimbo. We thought you might like to know the names of your assailants. | |
| Hope not, lest ye be disappointed. -- M. Horner | |
| I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. -- John Cage | |
| "I may appear to be just sitting here like a bucket of tapioca, but don't let appearances fool you. I'm approaching old age ... at the speed of light." -- Prof. Cosmo Fishhawk | |
| I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for: If they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go crude. I'm a very technical boy. So I decided to get as crude as possible. These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even aspire to crudeness. -- William Gibson, "Johnny Mnemonic" | |
| I think I'm schizophrenic. One half of me's paranoid and the other half's out to get him. | |
| I'm not the person your mother warned you about... her imagination isn't that good. -- Amy Gorin | |
| "I'm really enjoying not talking to you ... Let's not talk again ____REAL soon ..." | |
| I'm so miserable without you, it's almost like you're here. | |
| I'm sorry if the correct way of doing things offends you. | |
| I'm sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma. | |
| I'm successful because I'm lucky. The harder I work, the luckier I get. | |
| I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was this little hole in the bottom ... -- John Croll | |
| If I'm over the hill, why is it I don't recall ever being on top? -- Jerry Muscha | |
| It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of people. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" | |
| One of the worst of my many faults is that I'm too critical of myself. | |
| Please forgive me if, in the heat of battle, I sometimes forget which side I'm on. | |
| Pretend to spank me -- I'm a pseudo-masochist! | |
| "See - the thing is - I'm an absolutist. I mean, kind of ... in a way ..." | |
| Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? -- J.M. Barrie | |
| Something better... 1 (obvious): Excuse me. Is that your nose or did a bus park on your face? 2 (meteorological): Everybody take cover. She's going to blow. 3 (fashionable): You know, you could de-emphasize your nose if you wore something larger. Like ... Wyoming. 4 (personal): Well, here we are. Just the three of us. 5 (punctual): Alright gentlemen. Your nose was on time but you were fifteen minutes late. 6 (envious): Oooo, I wish I were you. Gosh. To be able to smell your own ear. 7 (naughty): Pardon me, Sir. Some of the ladies have asked if you wouldn't mind putting that thing away. 8 (philosophical): You know. It's not the size of a nose that's important. It's what's in it that matters. 9 (humorous): Laugh and the world laughs with you. Sneeze and it's goodbye, Seattle. 10 (commercial): Hi, I'm Earl Schibe and I can paint that nose for $39.95. 11 (polite): Ah. Would you mind not bobbing your head. The orchestra keeps changing tempo. 12 (melodic): Everybody! "He's got the whole world in his nose." -- Steve Martin, "Roxanne" | |
| Well, I'm disenchanted too. We're all disenchanted. -- James Thurber | |
| Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin. -- F.M. Colby, "Imaginary Obligations" | |
| While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several. | |
| Ye've also got to remember that ... respectable people do the most astonishin' things to preserve their respectability. Thank God I'm not respectable. -- Ruthven Campbell Todd | |
| You'd best be snoozin', 'cause you don't be gettin' no work done at 5 a.m. anyway. -- From the wall of the Wurster Hall stairwell | |
| I'm enthralled by combine harvesters. In fact, I yearn to have one -- as a pet. -- "The Day of the Jackal" | |
| "Yeah. Maybe we fixed truncate, and maybe we didn't. I've thought that we fixed it now several times, and I was always wrong. Time for some reverse psychology: I'm sure this one doesn't fix the truncate bug either. - Linus Torvalds | |
| "And I'm right. I'm always right, but in this case I'm just a bit more right than I usually am." - Linus Torvalds | |
| "I'm a bastard, and proud of it !" - Linus Torvalds | |
| "I'm a bastard. I have absolutely no clue why people can ever think otherwise. Yet they do. People think I'm a nice guy, and the fact is that I'm a scheming, conniving bastard who doesn't care for any hurt feelings or lost hours of work if it just results in what I consider to be a better system." - Linus Torvalds | |
| Understatement of the century: "Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones" - Linus Torvalds, August 1991 | |
| /* Sun, you just can't beat me, you just can't. Stop trying, * give up. I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit * out of you, game over, lights out. */ - comment from arch/sparc/lib/checksum.S | |
| In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. - Linus Torvalds | |
| You don't get out much, do you :-)? Lighten up a little, this is supposed to be fun.......We could argue all day, but there was lots of computer work done before PCI and PCs. I'm more than old enough to know, so just leave it at that....... - Dan Malek on the linuxppc-embedded list | |
| The executive, Irving Wladawsky- Berger, an I.B.M. vice president, said, "If we thought this was a trap, we wouldn't be doing it, and as you know, we have a lot of lawyers." - from a New York Times article about Microsoft vs GPL licensing | |
| <tik-tok> Hi all, I'm having problems with my 2.2.19 kernel build I'm trying to create my ramdisk and I get the following error message "All your loopback devices are in use!" can anyone help? <phillips> All your loopback devices are belong to us! - Daniel Phillips on #kernelnewbies | |
| ... and for absolute majority of programmers additional shared objects mean additional fsckup sources. I don't trust them to write correct async code. OK, so I don't trust the majority of programmers to find their dicks if you take their Visual Masturbation Aid++ away, but that's another story - I'm talking about otherwise clued people, not burger-flippers armed with Foo For Complete Dummies in 24 Hours. - Al Viro about multi-threading on linux-kernel | |
| Drivers are a more complex issue. I'm not opposed to binary only drivers, providing its easy to tell they are there and dump all bug reports about them. Freedom generally includes the right to give up freedom. I'll tell people its a bad idea but once they get caught, well it was their right to do so... - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
| I'm not a lawyer. I don't even play one on TV. - Linus Torvalds on the gcc mailing list | |
| Russell King wrote: > I'll look into it, produce a patch, but I'm not a VM hacker. You know what a pte is so you're a VM hacker ;-) - Daniel Phillips on linux-kernel | |
| > That is reimplementing file system functionality in user space. > I'm in doubts that this is considered good design... Keeping things out of the kernel is good design. Your block indirections are no different to other database formats. Perhaps you think we should have fsql_operation() and libdb in kernel 8) - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
| As I'm sure you're all aware, being experts in userland programming, that the above obviously cannot work and is totally bogus. - Russell King on linux-kernel | |
| I would suggest re-naming "rmbdd()". I _assume_ that "dd" stands for "data dependent", but quite frankly, "rmbdd" looks like the standard IBM "we lost every vowel ever invented" kind of assembly lanaguage to me. I'm sure that having programmed PPC assembly language, you find it very natural (IBM motto: "We found five vowels hiding in a corner, and we used them _all_ for the 'eieio' instruction so that we wouldn't have to use them anywhere else"). - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel | |
| HP LaserJetIII wrote: > How to turn off faucet? > Now that's a good one! Somebody's mucking with my print-server. Sorry. I'm gonna get my gun.... - Richard Johnson on linux-kernel | |
| Please use an explicit test - I know gcc suggest just an extra set of parenthesis, but I'm personally convinced that is just because some gcc people have been damaged by too much LISP. - Linus Torvalds discussing gcc requirements on linux-kernel | |
| Alexander Viro wrote: > Al, -><- close to setting up a Linux Kernel Hall of Shame - one with names of > wankers (both individual and coprorat ones) responsible, their code and > commentary on said code... Please, please, please, I'm begging you, please do this. It's the only way people learn quickly. Being nice is great, but nothing works faster than a cold shower of public humiliation :-) - Larry McVoy on linux-kernel | |
| We need to teach Linus about "taste" in drivers. His core code taste is impeccable, but I'm not fond of his driver taste ;) - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
| Hey, considering that Ada has every single language feature ever imagined, and probably some that nobody reasonably _should_ have imagined, I'm not surprised. - Linus on the gcc mailing list | |
| ... and I'm quite sure that EMACS could do it easily. Let's not talk about GNU bloatware, OK? - Alexander Viro on linux-kernel | |
| A little kid went up to Santa and asked him, "Santa, you know when I'm bad right?" And Santa says, "Yes, I do." The little kid then asks, "And you know when I'm sleeping?" To which Santa replies, "Every minute." So the little kid then says, "Well, if you know when I'm bad and when I'm good, then how come you don't know what I want for Christmas?" | |
| After watching an extremely attractive maternity-ward patient earnestly thumbing her way through a telephone directory for several minutes, a hospital orderly finally asked if he could be of some help. "No, thanks," smiled the young mother, "I'm just looking for a name for my baby." "But the hospital supplies a special booklet that lists hundreds of first names and their meanings," said the orderly. "That won't help," said the woman, "my baby already has a first name." | |
| And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower. "This," cried the Mayor, "is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red to come to the aid of their country!" he said. "We've GOT to make noises in greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!" Thus he spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and he shouted out, "YOPP!" And that Yopp... That one last small, extra Yopp put it over! Finally, at last! From the speck on that clover their voices were heard! They rang out clear and clean. And they elephant smiled. "Do you see what I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small. And their whole world was saved by the smallest of All!" "How true! Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo. "And, from now on, you know what I'm planning to do? From now on, I'm going to protect them with you!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO! From the sun in the summer. From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect them. No matter how small-ish!" -- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who" | |
| Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... Do as I say, not as I do. Do me a favour and don't tell me about it. I don't want to know. What did you do *this* time? If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you. When I was your age... I won't love you if you keep doing that. Think of all the starving children in India. If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar. I'm going to kill you. Way to go, clumsy. If you don't like it, you can lump it. | |
| Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... Good children always obey. Quit acting so childish. Boys don't cry. If you keep making faces, someday it'll freeze that way. Why do you have to know so much? This hurts me more than it hurts you. Why? Because I'm bigger than you. Well, you've ruined everything. Now are you happy? Oh, grow up. I'm only doing this because I love you. | |
| Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more... When are you going to grow up? I'm only doing this for your own good. Why are you crying? Stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about. What's wrong with you? Someday you'll thank me for this. You'd lose your head if it weren't attached. Don't you have any sense at all? If you keep sucking your thumb, it'll fall off. Why? Because I said so. I hope you have a kid just like yourself. | |
| "Humpf!" Humpfed a voice! "For almost two days you've run wild and insisted on chatting with persons who've never existed. Such carryings-on in our peaceable jungle! We've had quite enough of you bellowing bungle! And I'm here to state," snapped the big kangaroo, "That your silly nonsensical game is all through!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "Me, too!" "With the help of the Wickersham Brothers and dozens of Wickersham Uncles and Wickersham Cousins and Wickersham In-Laws, whose help I've engaged, You're going to be roped! And you're going to be caged! And, as for your dust speck... Hah! That we shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of Beezle-Nut oil!" -- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who" | |
| MEMORIES OF MY FAMILY MEETINGS still are a source of strength to me. I remember we'd all get into the car -- I forget what kind it was -- and drive and drive. I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some bees there. The smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we played. I remember a bigger, older guy whom we called "Dad." We'd eat some stuff or not and then I think we went home. I guess some things never leave you. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988. | |
| The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m. | |
| <james> abuse me. I'm so lame I sent a bug report to debian-devel-changes | |
| <jim> Lemme make sure I'm not wasting time here... bcwhite will remove pkgs that havent been fixed that have outstanding bugs of severity "important". True or false? <JHM> jim: "important" or higher. True. <jim> Then we're about to lose ftp.debian.org and dpkg :) * netgod will miss dpkg -- it was occasionally useful <Joey> We still have rpm.... | |
| I'm sorry if the following sounds combative and excessively personal, but that's my general style. -- Ian Jackson | |
| "...It was a lot faster than I thought it was going to be, much faster than NT. If further speed increases are done to the server for the final release, Oracle is going to be able to wipe their ass with SQL SERVER and hand it back to M$ while the Oracle admins ... migrate their databases over to Linux!" | |
| <dark> "Hey, I'm from this project called Debian... have you heard of it? Your name seems to be on a bunch of our stuff." | |
| <muggles> i'm trying to convince some netcom admins i know to convert to Debian from RH, netgod, but they are DAMN stubborn <muggles> why RH users so damned hard headed? <Espy> it's the hat | |
| Eric Raymond: I want to live in a world where software doesn't suck. Richard Stallman: Any software that isn't free sucks. Linus Torvalds: I'm interested in free beer. Richard Stallman: That's okay, as long as I don't have to drink it. I don't like beer. -- LinuxWorld Expo panel, 4 March 1999 | |
| I'm not a level-headed person... -- Bruce Perens | |
| p.s. - i'm about *this* close to running around in the server room with a pair of bolt cutters, and a large wooden mallet, laughing like a maniac and cutting everything i can fit the bolt cutters around. and whacking that which i cannot. so if i seem semi-incoherent, or just really *really* nasty at times, please forgive me. stress is not a pretty thing. };P -- Phillip R. Jaenke | |
| "They are both businesses - if you have given them enough money, I'm sure they'll do whatever the hell you ask:->" -- David Welton | |
| <Knghtbrd> "The currency collectors are offline." "I'm rerouting though the secondary couplings. If we re-align the phase manifold we should be able to use the plasma inductor matrix to manually launch a new cheesy spinoff series." * ShadwDrgn sighs <Phase> you leave my manifolds alone <Phase> ! | |
| <Knghtbrd> If we're both right (I'm guessing we are) I'm Not Very Happy. * Minupla hands you the understatement of the year award. | |
| <Crow-> im fcucking druk * Knghtbrd makes sure to log everything Crow- says tonight ... <MrBump> heheh <MrBump> He said he'd marry me! damnit!! <Crow-> dude no way <Knghtbrd> MrBump - he's not THAT drunk <MrBump> Knghtbrd: I'm crushed :o) | |
| Hi! I'm a .signature virus! Copy me into your ~/.signature to help me sprea= d! | |
| <Tali> be vewwy vewwy qwuiet .. I'm huntin wuntime ewwos | |
| <james> any gnome freaks around? <Knghtbrd> not me, I'm just a freak | |
| I'm starting to think the gene pool could use a little chlorine. | |
| <Knghtbrd> JHM: I'm not putting quake in the kernel source <Knghtbrd> but we should put quake in the boot floppies to one-up Caldera's tetris game.. ;> | |
| <darkangel> I generally don't use anything that has "experimental" and "warning" pasted all over it <darkangel> no, I'm not that dumb... hehe <Knghtbrd> ... * darkangel considers downloading the latest unstable kernel | |
| <Kysh_> Joey: I'm on it right now.. 3 1.3Gb disks, 128M ram, dual 50Mhz (Up to quad 250Mhz) <Kysh_> The catch is that it pulls 110v at about 12A 8> <Culus> 12A! <Culus> Okay, my stove is 3000W, this sun is 1320W <Culus> DO YOU SEE A PROBLEM HERE <calc> a 1320W sun, that is like a hair dryer :) | |
| <Endy> Actually, I think I'll wait for potato to be finalised before installing debian. <Endy> That should be soon, I'm hoping. :) <knghtbrd> Endy: You obviously know very little about Debian. | |
| <mdorman> I'm a gnus person myself. It's an editor! It's a floorwax! It's a dessert topping! | |
| <Knghtbrd> QF is going to get zipfile support today <Coderjoe> heh... infozip? <Knghtbrd> If I'm lucky yes <Deek> knghtbrd: You're kidding, right? ;) * Deek takes away Knghtbrd's crack pipe. ;) | |
| <cj> no! problems in M$ software? <cj> "Thoroughly bugtested" * Dabb grins. <LordHavoc> rewrite that as 'Thoroughly buginfested' | |
| <Myth> I'm getting a connection refused when connecting to port 25, anyone know where the damn log is? <aj> Myth: /var/log/damn.log? * aj wonders what that'd look like <aj> Dec 18 05:32:30 blae smtpd[123]: DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!! | |
| <Xavvy> is that really knghtbrd? <Knghtbrd> No, I'm an EVIL IMPOSTOR! <Knghtbrd> An evil impostor who LIKES HYBRID! <Xavvy> haha <Xavvy> ok, it's him :P | |
| <Mercury> LordHavoc: I'm already insane. <Coderjoe> damn straight. or curvy, crooked, or what have you | |
| <|Rain|> *nod* I'm not fond of using smarthosts, myself <|Rain|> as it relies on both the remote host and your host being smart <|Rain|> and too often you miss one of both of those goals | |
| <Sammy> that's *IT*. I'm never fucking attempting to install redhat again. <Sammy> this is like the 10th fucking machine on which the installer has imploded immediately after I went through the hell of their package selection process. <timball> Sammy: just use debian and never look back <Sammy> timball: debian iso's are being written at this very moment. | |
| <gholam> well I'm impressed <gholam> win98 managed to crash X from within vmware. * gholam applauds. | |
| <Knghtbrd> "... you will more than likely see all kinds of compiler warnings scrolling by on the screen. These are normal and can be safely ignored." <LordHavoc> Knghtbrd: is that a note attached to some M$ code? <Knghtbrd> No, it's a note about a bunch of GNU stuff. | |
| A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing into trees. At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same forest, with identical results. They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing. "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally," apologized the rabbit. "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same problem!" "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do you think you could help me find out?" "I'll try," said the snake. He gently coiled himself around the rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail and long ears. You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!" "Great!" said the rabbit. "Thanks, I really owe you one!" "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either. Do you suppose you could try and tell me?" The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake. "Well, you're low, cold and slimey..." And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have no balls. You must be an attorney!" | |
| A grade school teacher was asking students what their parents did for a living. "Tim, you be first," she said. "What does your mother do all day?" Tim stood up and proudly said, "She's a doctor." "That's wonderful. How about you, Amie?" Amie shyly stood up, scuffed her feet and said, "My father is a mailman." "Thank you, Amie," said the teacher. "What about your father, Billy?" Billy proudly stood up and announced, "My daddy plays piano in a whorehouse." The teacher was aghast and promptly changed the subject to geography. Later that day she went to Billy's house and rang the bell. Billy's father answered the door. The teacher explained what his son had said and demanded an explanation. Billy's father replied, "Well, I'm really an attorney. But how do you explain a thing like that to a seven-year-old child?" | |
| An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!" | |
| First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer. But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all. Dial-A-Wombat. It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said. Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk. But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth. The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub. Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in another phone booth. There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth. The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and released it, too, in the scrub. But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat. After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect, and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons. Their problem ... they cannot find a law against placing wombats in telephone booths. -- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980. | |
| 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. | |
| "Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever walk around? If so, you probably have the makings of an excellent legal case. Although of course every case is different, I would definitely say that based on my experience and training, there's no reason why you shouldn't come out of this thing with at least a cabin cruiser. "Remember, at the Preston A. Mantis Consumers Retail Law Outlet, our motto is: 'It is very difficult to disprove certain kinds of pain.'" -- Dave Barry, "Pain and Suffering" | |
| Humor in th Court: Q: Do you drink when you're on duty? A: I don't drink when I'm on duty, unless I come on duty drunk. | |
| Humor in the Court: Q. What is your brother-in-law's name? A. Borofkin. Q. What's his first name? A. I can't remember. Q. He's been your brother-in-law for years, and you can't remember his first name? A. No. I tell you I'm too excited. (Rising from the witness chair and pointing to Mr. Borofkin.) Nathan, for God's sake, tell them your first name! | |
| Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around -- nobody big, I mean -- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye. I know it; I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy. -- J.D. Salinger, "Catcher in the Rye" | |
| Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped. -- Groucho Marx's last words | |
| 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 | |
| Like, if I'm not for me, then fer shure, like who will be? And if, y'know, if I'm not like fer anyone else, then hey, I mean, what am I? And if not now, like I dunno, maybe like when? And if not Who, then I dunno, maybe like the Rolling Stones? -- Rich Rosen (Rabbi Valiel's paraphrase of famous quote attributed to Rabbi Hillel.) | |
| Nonsense and beauty have close connections. -- E.M. Forster | |
| Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying. -- Baba Ram Dass | |
| > The day people think linux would be better served by somebody else (FSF > being the natural alternative), I'll "abdicate". I don't think that > it's something people have to worry about right now - I don't see it > happening in the near future. I enjoy doing linux, even though it does > mean some work, and I haven't gotten any complaints (some almost timid > reminders about a patch I have forgotten or ignored, but nothing > negative so far). > > Don't take the above to mean that I'll stop the day somebody complains: > I'm thick-skinned (Lasu, who is reading this over my shoulder commented > that "thick-HEADED is closer to the truth") enough to take some abuse. > If I weren't, I'd have stopped developing linux the day ast ridiculed me > on c.o.minix. What I mean is just that while linux has been my baby so > far, I don't want to stand in the way if people want to make something > better of it (*). > > Linus > > (*) Hey, maybe I could apply for a saint-hood from the Pope. Does > somebody know what his email-address is? I'm so nice it makes you puke. -- Taken from Linus's reply to someone worried about the future of Linux | |
| By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since sliced bread. -- Vance Petree, Virginia Power | |
| > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Disquieting ... -- Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's | |
| > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals then. -- Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's | |
| > I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-). -- Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's | |
| Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the "happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along). -- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27 | |
| Keep me informed on the behaviour of this kernel.. As the "BugFree(tm)" series didn't turn out too well, I'm starting a new series called the "ItWorksForMe(tm)" series, of which this new kernel is yet another shining example. -- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.29 | |
| Linux is addictive, I'm hooked! -- MaDsen Wikholm's .sig | |
| Eh, that's it, I guess. No 300 million dollar unveiling event for this kernel, I'm afraid, but you're still supposed to think of this as the "happening of the century" (at least until the next kernel comes along). Oh, and this is another kernel in that great and venerable "BugFree(tm)" series of kernels. So be not afraid of bugs, but go out in the streets and deliver this message of joy to the masses. -- Linus Torvalds, on releasing 1.3.27 | |
| Ok, I'm just uploading the new version of the kernel, v1.3.33, also known as "the buggiest kernel ever". -- Linus Torvalds | |
| Look, I'm about to buy me a double barreled sawed off shotgun and show Linus what I think about backspace and delete not working. -- some anonymous .signature | |
| Q: Would you like to see the WINE list? A: What's on it, anything expensive? Q: No, just Solitaire and MineSweeper for now, but the WINE is free. -- Kevin M. Bealer, about the WINdows Emulator | |
| 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 | |
| We should start referring to processes which run in the background by their correct technical name... paenguins. -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo | |
| We can use symlinks of course... syslogd would be a symlink to syslogp and ftpd and ircd would be linked to ftpp and ircp... and of course the point-to-point protocal paenguin. -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo | |
| This is a logical analogy too... anyone who's been around, knows the world is run by paenguins. Always a paenguin behind the curtain, really getting things done. And paenguins in politics--who can deny it? -- Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo | |
| In short, at least give the penguin a fair viewing. If you still don't like it, that's ok: that's why I'm boss. I simply know better than you do. -- Linus "what, me arrogant?" Torvalds, on c.o.l.advocacy | |
| C is quirky, flawed, and an enormous success -- Dennis M. Ritchie | |
| Win 95 is simplified for the user: User: What does this configuration thing do? You: It allows you to modify you settings, for networking, hardware, protocols, ... User: Whoa! Layman's terms, please! You: It changes stuff. User: That's what I'm looking for! What can it change? You: This part change IP forwarding. It allows ... User: Simplify, simplify! What can it do for ME? You: Nothing, until you understand it. User: Well it makes me uncomfortable. It looks so technical; Get rid of it, I want a system *I* can understand. You: But... User: Hey, who's system is this anyway? You: (... rm this, rm that, rm /etc/* ...) "All done." -- Kevin M. Bealer <kmb203@psu.edu> | |
| > Whoa, first contact! Nope, 'fraid not, Linux is still primarily used on planet Earth, I'm afraid. Our friend here sent a message in Russian (KOI8-R encoding). -- Aleksey Kliger, explaining a russian posting | |
| There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit. -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution | |
| Das ganze Saarland ist von M$ besetzt - das ganze? Nein eine kleine Gruppe im Sudwesten trotzt dem ubergrosen Herrscher dank ihres Zaubertrankes Linux -- Tooster on #LinuxGER | |
| AP/STT. Helsinki, Dec 5th, 6:22 AM. For immediate release. In order to allay fears about the continuity of the Linux project, Linus Torvalds together with his manager Tove Monni have released "Linus v2.0", affectionately known as "Kernel Hacker - The Next Generation". Linux stock prices on Wall Street rose sharply after the announcement; as one well-known analyst who wishes to remain anonymous says - "It shows a long-term commitment, and while we expect a short-term decrease in productivity, we feel that this solidifies the development in the long run". Other analysts downplay the importance of the event, and claim that just about anybody could have done it. "I'm glad somebody finally told them about the birds and the bees" one sceptic comments cryptically. But even the skeptics agree that it is an interesting turn of events. Others bring up other issues with the new version - "I'm especially intrigued by the fact that the new version is female, and look forward to seeing what the impact of that will be on future development. Will "Red Hat Linux" change to "Pink Hat Linux", for example?" -- Linus Torvalds announcing that he became father of a girl | |
| My apologies if I sound angry. I feel like I'm talking to a void. -- Avery Pennarun | |
| After 14 non-maintainer releases, I'm the S-Lang non-maintainer. -- Ray Dassen | |
| 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 | |
| <Culus> aIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 <Culus> MY LIGHT JUST DIED <Culus> I AM SO SAD <Culus> I'm blind! I'm blind! <dark> Light? <dark> Turn all your xterms to black-on-white :) Plenty of light that way. -- Seen on #Debian | |
| <james> abuse me. I'm so lame I sent a bug report to debian-devel-changes -- Seen on #Debian | |
| <jim> Lemme make sure I'm not wasting time here... bcwhite will remove pkgs that havent been fixed that have outstanding bugs of severity "important". True or false? <JHM> jim: "important" or higher. True. <jim> Then we're about to lose ftp.debian.org and dpkg :) * netgod will miss dpkg -- it was occasionally useful <Joey> We still have rpm.... -- Seen on #Debian | |
| <core> i'm glad Debian finally got into polar-deep-freeze-we-arent-shitting-you state finally. -- Seen on #Debian shortly before the release of Debian 2.0 | |
| I'm telling you that the kernel is stable not because it's a kernel, but because I refuse to listen to arguments like this. -- Linus Torvalds | |
| (1) Office employees will daily sweep the floors, dust the furniture, shelves, and showcases. (2) Each day fill lamps, clean chimneys, and trim wicks. Wash the windows once a week. (3) Each clerk will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day's business. (4) Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to your individual taste. (5) This office will open at 7 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. except on the Sabbath, on which day we will remain closed. Each employee is expected to spend the Sabbath by attending church and contributing liberally to the cause of the Lord. -- "Office Worker's Guide", New England Carriage Works, 1872 | |
| A feed salesman is on his way to a farm. As he's driving along at forty m.p.h., he looks out his car window and sees a three-legged chicken running alongside him, keeping pace with his car. He is amazed that a chicken is running at forty m.p.h. So he speeds up to forty-five, fifty, then sixty m.p.h. The chicken keeps right up with him the whole way, then suddenly takes off and disappears into the distance. The man pulls into the farmyard and says to the farmer, "You know, the strangest thing just happened to me; I was driving along at at least sixty miles an hour and a chicken passed me like I was standing still!" "Yeah," the farmer replies, "that chicken was ours. You see, there's me, and there's Ma, and there's our son Billy. Whenever we had chicken for dinner, we would all want a drumstick, so we'd have to kill two chickens. So we decided to try and breed a three-legged chicken so each of us could have a drumstick." "How do they taste?" said the farmer. "Don't know," replied the farmer. "We haven't been able to catch one yet." | |
| "Consequences, Schmonsequences, as long as I'm rich." -- "Ali Baba Bunny" [1957, Chuck Jones] | |
| "Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to get more wax!!" | |
| "Every morning, I get up and look through the 'Forbes' list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work" -- Robert Orben | |
| Everybody but Sam had signed up for a new company pension plan that called for a small employee contribution. The company was paying all the rest. Unfortunately, 100% employee participation was needed; otherwise the plan was off. Sam's boss and his fellow workers pleaded and cajoled, but to no avail. Sam said the plan would never pay off. Finally the company president called Sam into his office. "Sam," he said, "here's a copy of the new pension plan and here's a pen. I want you to sign the papers. I'm sorry, but if you don't sign, you're fired. As of right now." Sam signed the papers immediately. "Now," said the president, "would you mind telling me why you couldn't have signed earlier?" "Well, sir," replied Sam, "nobody explained it to me quite so clearly before." | |
| Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people. -- F.M. Hubbard | |
| I consider a new device or technology to have been culturally accepted when it has been used to commit a murder. -- M. Gallaher | |
| I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that can't be measured in monetary terms. Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly understand his long delay. | |
| I'm always looking for a new idea that will be more productive than its cost. -- David Rockefeller | |
| It is ridiculous to call this an industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat, dog eat dog. I'll kill 'em, and I'm going to kill 'em before they kill me. You're talking about the American way of survival of the fittest. -- Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald's | |
| Management: How many feet do mice have? Reply: Mice have four feet. M: Elaborate! R: Mice have five appendages, and four of them are feet. M: No discussion of fifth appendage! R: Mice have five appendages; four of them are feet; one is a tail. M: What? Feet with no legs? R: Mice have four legs, four feet, and one tail per unit-mouse. M: Confusing -- is that a total of 9 appendages? R: Mice have four leg-foot assemblies and one tail assembly per body. M: Does not fully discuss the issue! R: Each mouse comes equipped with four legs and a tail. Each leg is equipped with a foot at the end opposite the body; the tail is not equipped with a foot. M: Descriptive? Yes. Forceful NO! R: Allotment of appendages for mice will be: Four foot-leg assemblies, one tail. Deviation from this policy is not permitted as it would constitute misapportionment of scarce appendage assets. M: Too authoritarian; stifles creativity! R: Mice have four feet; each foot is attached to a small leg joined integrally with the overall mouse structural sub-system. Also attached to the mouse sub-system is a thin tail, non-functional and ornamental in nature. M: Too verbose/scientific. Answer the question! R: Mice have four feet. | |
| Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better than being flat broke and having a stomach ache. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" | |
| The annual meeting of the "You Have To Listen To Experience" Club is now in session. Our Achievement Awards this year are in the fields of publishing, advertising and industry. For best consistent contribution in the field of publishing our award goes to editor, R.L.K., [...] for his unrivalled alle- giance without variation to the statement: "Personally I'd love to do it, we'd ALL love to do it. But we're not going to do it. It's not the kind of book our house knows how to handle." Our superior performance award in the field of advertising goes to media executive, E.L.M., [...] for the continu- ally creative use of the old favorite: "I think what you've got here could be very exciting. Why not give it one more try based on the approach I've out- lined and see if you can come up with something fresh." Our final award for courageous holding action in the field of industry goes to supervisor, R.S., [...] for her unyielding grip on "I don't care if they fire me, I've been arguing for a new approach for YEARS but are we SURE that this is the right time--" I would like to conclude this meeting with a verse written specially for our prospectus by our founding president fifty years ago -- and now, as then, fully expressive of the emotion most close to all our hearts -- Treat freshness as a youthful quirk, And dare not stray to ideas new, For if t'were tried they might e'en work And for a living what woulds't we do? | |
| The boss returned from lunch in a good mood and called the whole staff in to listen to a couple of jokes he had picked up. Everybody but one girl laughed uproariously. "What's the matter?" grumbled the boss. "Haven't you got a sense of humor?" "I don't have to laugh," she said. "I'm leaving Friday anyway. | |
| We have some absolutely irrefutable statistics to show exactly why you are so tired. There are not as many people actually working as you may have thought. The population of this country is 200 million. 84 million are over 60 years of age, which leaves 116 million to do the work. People under 20 years of age total 75 million, which leaves 41 million to do the work. There are 22 million who are employed by the government, which leaves 19 million to do the work. Four million are in the Armed Services, which leaves 15 million to do the work. Deduct 14,800,000, the number in the state and city offices, leaving 200,000 to do the work. There are 188,000 in hospitals, insane asylums, etc., so that leaves 12,000 to do the work. Now it may interest you to know that there are 11,998 people in jail, so that leaves just 2 people to carry the load. That is you and me, and brother, I'm getting tired of doing everything myself! | |
| What we need in this country, instead of Daylight Savings Time, which nobody really understands anyway, is a new concept called Weekday Morning Time, whereby at 7 a.m. every weekday we go into a space-launch-style "hold" for two to three hours, during which it just remains 7 a.m. This way we could all wake up via a civilized gradual process of stretching and belching and scratching, and it would still be only 7 a.m. when we were ready to actually emerge from bed. -- Dave Barry, "$#$%#^%!^%&@%@!" | |
| When the lodge meeting broke up, Meyer confided to a friend. "Abe, I'm in a terrible pickle! I'm strapped for cash and I haven't the slightest idea where I'm going to get it from!" "I'm glad to hear that," answered Abe. "I was afraid you might have some idea that you could borrow from me!" | |
| Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement. -- Snoopy | |
| I already have too much problem with people thinking the efficiency of a perl construct is related to its length. On the other hand, I'm perfectly capable of changing my mind next week... :-) --lwall | |
| I'm sure that that could be indented more readably, but I'm scared of the awk parser. -- Larry Wall in <6849@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> | |
| No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didn't want to know anyway... :-) -- Larry Wall in <1991Aug7.180856.2854@netlabs.com> | |
| There is, however, a strange, musty smell in the air that reminds me of something...hmm...yes...I've got it...there's a VMS nearby, or I'm a Blit. -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution | |
| As usual, I'm overstating the case to knock a few neurons loose, but the truth is usually somewhere in the muddle, uh, middle. -- Larry Wall in <199702111639.IAA28425@wall.org> | |
| I'm sure a mathematician would claim that 0 and 1 are both very interesting numbers. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199707300650.XAA05515@wall.org> | |
| It's possible that I'm just an idiot, and don't recognize a sleepy slavemaster when I see one. -- Larry Wall in <199708040319.UAA16213@wall.org> | |
| Perhaps I'm missing the gene for making enemies. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199708040319.UAA16213@wall.org> | |
| Real theology is always rather shocking to people who already think they know what they think. I'm still shocked myself. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199708261932.MAA05218@wall.org> | |
| I don't think I'm gonna agree with that. Way too much visual confusion... -- Larry Wall in <199709021627.JAA11966@wall.org> | |
| I'm serious about thinking through all the possibilities before we settle on anything. All things have the advantages of their disadvantages, and vice versa. -- Larry Wall in <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> | |
| I hope I'm not getting so famous that I can't think out load [sic] anymore. -- Larry Wall in <199709032332.QAA21669@wall.org> | |
| I guess what I'm saying is that the croak in question is requiring agreement (in the linguistic sense) that isn't buying us anything. -- Larry Wall in <199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org> | |
| I'm not sure whether that's actually useful... -- Larry Wall in <199710011704.KAA21395@wall.org> | |
| Not that I'm against sneaking some notions into people's heads upon occasion. (Or blasting them in outright.) -- Larry Wall in <199710211624.JAA17833@wall.org> | |
| Wow, I'm being shot at from both sides. That means I *must* be right. :-) -- Larry Wall in <199710211959.MAA18990@wall.org> | |
| I'm afraid my gut level reaction is basically, "'proceed' is cute, but cute doesn't cut it in the emergency room." -- Larry Wall in <199710281816.KAA29614@wall.org> | |
| Boss: You forgot to assign the result of your map! Hacker: Dang, I'm always forgetting my assignations... Boss: And what's that "goto" doing there?!? Hacker: Er, I guess my finger slipped when I was typing "getservbyport"... Boss: Ah well, accidents will happen. Maybe we should have picked APL. -- Larry Wall in <199710311732.JAA19169@wall.org> | |
| "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my garage door." | |
| "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian." | |
| "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling." | |
| "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered." | |
| "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture." | |
| "I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving." | |
| "I'll tell you what I know, then," he decided. "The pin I'm wearing means I'm a member of the IA. That's Inamorati Anonymous. An inamorato is somebody in love. That's the worst addiction of all." "Somebody is about to fall in love," Oedipa said, "you go sit with them, or something?" "Right. The whole idea is to get where you don't need it. I was lucky. I kicked it young. But there are sixty-year-old men, believe it or not, and women even older, who might wake up in the night screaming." "You hold meetings, then, like the AA?" "No, of course not. You get a phone number, an answering service you can call. Nobody knows anybody else's name; just the number in case it gets so bad you can't handle it alone. We're isolates, Arnold. Meetings would destroy the whole point of it." -- Thomas Pynchon, "The Crying of Lot 49" | |
| Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness. -- M. Hirschfield | |
| Really?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!! | |
| The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 A.M. -- Charles Pierce | |
| Total strangers need love, too; and I'm stranger than most. | |
| 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. | |
| Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but... -- I have to answer all of my "occupant" letters. -- None of my socks match. -- I'm having all my plants neutered. -- I changed the lock on my door and now I can't get out. -- My yucca plant is feeling yucky. -- I'm touring China with a wok band. -- My chocolate-appreciation class meets that night. -- I'm running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student named Basil Metabolism. -- There are important world issues that need worrying about. -- I'm going to count the bristles in my toothbrush. -- I prefer to remain an enigma. -- I think you want the OTHER Peggy/Cathy/Mike/whomever. -- I feel a song coming on. | |
| Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but... -- I have to draw "Cubby" for an art scholarship. -- I have to sit up with a sick ant. -- I'm trying to be less popular. -- My bathroom tiles need grouting. -- I'm waiting to see if I'm already a winner. -- My subconscious says no. -- I just picked up a book called "Glue in Many Lands" and I can't seem to put it down. -- My favorite commercial is on TV. -- I have to study for my blood test. -- I've been traded to Cincinnati. -- I'm having my baby shoes bronzed. -- I have to go to court for kitty littering. | |
| Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but... -- I'm trying to see how long I can go without saying yes. -- I'm attending the opening of my garage door. -- The monsters haven't turned blue yet, and I have to eat more dots. -- I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian. -- I have to fulfill my potential. -- I don't want to leave my comfort zone. -- It's too close to the turn of the century. -- I have to bleach my hare. -- I'm worried about my vertical hold knob. -- I left my body in my other clothes. | |
| Why I Can't Go Out With You: I'd LOVE to, but... -- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting. -- I promised to help a friend fold road maps. -- I've been scheduled for a karma transplant. -- I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture. -- It's my parakeet's bowling night. -- I'm building a plant from a kit. -- There's a disturbance in the Force. -- I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling. -- I'm teaching my ferret to yodel. -- My crayons all melted together. | |
| DON'T go!! I'm not HOWARD COSELL!! I know POLISH JOKES ... WAIT!! Don't go!! I AM Howard Cosell! ... And I DON'T know Polish jokes!! | |
| Don't hit me!! I'm in the Twilight Zone!!! | |
| First, I'm going to give you all the ANSWERS to today's test ... So just plug in your SONY WALKMANS and relax!! | |
| Hand me a pair of leather pants and a CASIO keyboard -- I'm living for today! | |
| HELLO, everybody, I'm a HUMAN!! | |
| Hello, GORRY-O!! I'm a GENIUS from HARVARD!! | |
| Hello? Enema Bondage? I'm calling because I want to be happy, I guess ... | |
| I always have fun because I'm out of my mind!!! | |
| I feel like I'm in a Toilet Bowl with a thumbtack in my forehead!! | |
| I was making donuts and now I'm on a bus! | |
| I'm a fuschia bowling ball somewhere in Brittany | |
| I'm a GENIUS! I want to dispute sentence structure with SUSAN SONTAG!! | |
| I'm a nuclear submarine under the polar ice cap and I need a Kleenex! | |
| I'm also against BODY-SURFING!! | |
| I'm also pre-POURED pre-MEDITATED and pre-RAPHAELITE!! | |
| I'm ANN LANDERS!! I can SHOPLIFT!! | |
| I'm changing the CHANNEL ... But all I get is commercials for "RONCO MIRACLE BAMBOO STEAMERS"! | |
| I'm continually AMAZED at th'breathtaking effects of WIND EROSION!! | |
| I'm definitely not in Omaha! | |
| I'm DESPONDENT ... I hope there's something DEEP-FRIED under this miniature DOMED STADIUM ... | |
| I'm dressing up in an ill-fitting IVY-LEAGUE SUIT!! Too late... | |
| I'm EMOTIONAL now because I have MERCHANDISING CLOUT!! | |
| I'm encased in the lining of a pure pork sausage!! | |
| I'm GLAD I remembered to XEROX all my UNDERSHIRTS!! | |
| I'm gliding over a NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP near ATLANTA, Georgia!! | |
| I'm having a BIG BANG THEORY!! | |
| I'm having a MID-WEEK CRISIS! | |
| I'm having a RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ... and I don't take any DRUGS | |
| I'm having a tax-deductible experience! I need an energy crunch!! | |
| I'm having an emotional outburst!! | |
| I'm having an EMOTIONAL OUTBURST!! But, uh, WHY is there a WAFFLE in my PAJAMA POCKET?? | |
| I'm having BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS about the INSIPID WIVES of smug and wealthy CORPORATE LAWYERS ... | |
| I'm having fun HITCHHIKING to CINCINNATI or FAR ROCKAWAY!! | |
| ... I'm IMAGINING a sensuous GIRAFFE, CAVORTING in the BACK ROOM of a KOSHER DELI -- | |
| I'm in direct contact with many advanced fun CONCEPTS. | |
| I'm into SOFTWARE! | |
| I'm meditating on the FORMALDEHYDE and the ASBESTOS leaking into my PERSONAL SPACE!! | |
| I'm mentally OVERDRAWN! What's that SIGNPOST up ahead? Where's ROD STERLING when you really need him? | |
| I'm not an Iranian!! I voted for Dianne Feinstein!! | |
| I'm not available for comment.. | |
| I'm pretending I'm pulling in a TROUT! Am I doing it correctly?? | |
| I'm pretending that we're all watching PHIL SILVERS instead of RICARDO MONTALBAN! | |
| I'm QUIETLY reading the latest issue of "BOWLING WORLD" while my wife and two children stand QUIETLY BY ... | |
| I'm rated PG-34!! | |
| I'm receiving a coded message from EUBIE BLAKE!! | |
| I'm RELIGIOUS!! I love a man with a HAIRPIECE!! Equip me with MISSILES!! | |
| I'm reporting for duty as a modern person. I want to do the Latin Hustle now! | |
| I'm shaving!! I'M SHAVING!! | |
| I'm sitting on my SPEED QUEEN ... To me, it's ENJOYABLE ... I'm WARM ... I'm VIBRATORY ... | |
| I'm thinking about DIGITAL READ-OUT systems and computer-generated IMAGE FORMATIONS ... | |
| I'm totally DESPONDENT over the LIBYAN situation and the price of CHICKEN ... | |
| I'm using my X-RAY VISION to obtain a rare glimpse of the INNER WORKINGS of this POTATO!! | |
| I'm wearing PAMPERS!! | |
| I'm wet! I'm wild! | |
| I'm young ... I'm HEALTHY ... I can HIKE THRU CAPT GROGAN'S LUMBAR REGIONS! | |
| I'm ZIPPY the PINHEAD and I'm totally committed to the festive mode. | |
| Inside, I'm already SOBBING! | |
| It's OKAY -- I'm an INTELLECTUAL, too. | |
| Life is a POPULARITY CONTEST! I'm REFRESHINGLY CANDID!! | |
| Mmmmmm-MMMMMM!! A plate of STEAMING PIECES of a PIG mixed with the shreds of SEVERAL CHICKENS!! ... Oh BOY!! I'm about to swallow a TORN-OFF section of a COW'S LEFT LEG soaked in COTTONSEED OIL and SUGAR!! ... Let's see ... Next, I'll have the GROUND-UP flesh of CUTE, BABY LAMBS fried in the MELTED, FATTY TISSUES from a warm-blooded animal someone once PETTED!! ... YUM!! That was GOOD!! For DESSERT, I'll have a TOFU BURGER with BEAN SPROUTS on a stone-ground, WHOLE WHEAT BUN!! | |
| My face is new, my license is expired, and I'm under a doctor's care!!!! | |
| Now I'm being INVOLUNTARILY shuffled closer to the CLAM DIP with the BROKEN PLASTIC FORKS in it!! | |
| Now I'm concentrating on a specific tank battle toward the end of World War II! | |
| Now I'm having INSIPID THOUGHTS about the beatiful, round wives of HOLLYWOOD MOVIE MOGULS encased in PLEXIGLASS CARS and being approached by SMALL BOYS selling FRUIT ... | |
| Okay ... I'm going home to write the "I HATE RUBIK's CUBE HANDBOOK FOR DEAD CAT LOVERS" ... | |
| There is no TRUTH. There is no REALITY. There is no CONSISTENCY. There are no ABSOLUTE STATEMENTS. I'm very probably wrong. | |
| Uh-oh!! I'm having TOO MUCH FUN!! | |
| Vote for ME -- I'm well-tapered, half-cocked, ill-conceived and TAX-DEFERRED! | |
| Well, I'm a classic ANAL RETENTIVE!! And I'm looking for a way to VICARIOUSLY experience some reason to LIVE!! | |
| Well, I'm INVISIBLE AGAIN ... I might as well pay a visit to the LADIES ROOM ... | |
| What a COINCIDENCE! I'm an authorized "SNOOTS OF THE STARS" dealer!! | |
| Yow! I'm having a quadrophonic sensation of two winos alone in a steel mill! | |
| Yow! I'm imagining a surfer van filled with soy sauce! | |
| YOW!! I'm in a very clever and adorable INSANE ASYLUM!! | |
| 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'". | |
| If I kiss you, that is an psychological interaction. On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is also a psychological interaction. The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly. The crucial point is if you can tell which is which. -- Dolph Sharp, "I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot" | |
| "The molars, I'm sure, will be all right, the molars can take care of themselves," the old man said, no longer to me. "But what will become of the bicuspids?" -- The Old Man and his Bridge | |
| We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION". Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the police would find you. You know the kind of flu I'm talking about. -- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide" | |
