Dictionary De - En
De - Es
De - Pt| Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
| It is up to us to produce better-quality movies. -- Lloyd Kaufman, producer of "Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator" | |
| Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything. -- Bob Dylan | |
| Leslie West heads for the sticks, to Providence, Rhode Island and tries to hide behind a beard. No good. There are still too many people and too many stares, always taunting, always smirking. He moves to the outskirts of town. He finds a place to live -- huge mansion, dirt cheap, caretaker included. He plugs in his guitar and plays as loud as he wants, day and night, and there's no one to laugh or boo or even look bored. Nobody's cut the grass in months. What's happened to that caretaker? What neighborhood people there are start to talk, and what kids there are start to get curious. A 13 year-old blond with an angelic face misses supper. Before the summer's end, four more teenagers have disappeared. The senior class president, Barnard-bound come autumn, tells Mom she's going out to a movie one night and stays out. The town's up in arms, but just before the police take action, the kids turn up. They've found a purpose. They go home for their stuff and tell the folks not to worry but they'll be going now. They're in a band. -- Ira Kaplan | |
| > : Any porters out there should feel happier knowing that DEC is shipping > : me an AlphaPC that I intend to try getting linux running on: this will > : definitely help flush out some of the most flagrant unportable stuff. > : The Alpha is much more different from the i386 than the 68k stuff is, so > : it's likely to get most of the stuff fixed. > > It's posts like this that almost convince us non-believers that there > really is a god. (A follow-up by alovell@kerberos.demon.co.uk, Anthony Lovell, to Linus's remarks about porting) | |
| A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial package. The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set of generalized graphics routines, and artificial intelligence interface, but not the slightest mention of anything financial. When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant. "Don't be so impatient," he said, "I'll put the financial stuff in eventually." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming" | |
| Hacker's Guide To Cooking: 2 pkg. cream cheese (the mushy white stuff in silver wrappings that doesn't really come from Philadelphia after all; anyway, about 16 oz.) 1 tsp. vanilla extract (which is more alcohol than vanilla and pretty strong so this part you *GOTTA* measure) 1/4 cup sugar (but honey works fine too) 8 oz. Cool Whip (the fluffy stuff devoid of nutritional value that you can squirt all over your friends and lick off...) "Blend all together until creamy with no lumps." This is where you get to join(1) all the raw data in a big buffer and then filter it through merge(1m) with the -thick option, I mean, it starts out ultra lumpy and icky looking and you have to work hard to mix it. Try an electric beater if you have a cat(1) that can climb wall(1s) to lick it off the ceiling(3m). "Pour into a graham cracker crust..." Aha, the BUGS section at last. You just happened to have a GCC sitting around under /etc/food, right? If not, don't panic(8), merely crumble a rand(3m) handful of innocent GCs into a suitable tempfile and mix in some melted butter. "...and refrigerate for an hour." Leave the recipe's stdout in a fridge for 3.6E6 milliseconds while you work on cleaning up stderr, and by time out your cheesecake will be ready for stdin. | |
| 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'. | |
| A lot of the stuff I do is so minimal, and it's designed to be minimal. The smallness of it is what's attractive. It's weird, 'cause it's so intellectually lame. It's hard to see me doing that for the rest of my life. But at the same time, it's what I do best. - Chris Elliot, writer and performer on "Late Night with David Letterman" | |
| It's great to be smart 'cause then you know stuff. | |
| "The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth." I usually pick one small topic like this to give a lecture on. Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere." I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern -- of which I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?* It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent? -- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988) | |
| "If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff." -- Dave Enyeart | |
| 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" | |
| Connector Conspiracy, n: [probably came into prominence with the appearance of the KL-10, none of whose connectors match anything else] The tendency of manufacturers (or, by extension, programmers or purveyors of anything) to come up with new products which don't fit together with the old stuff, thereby making you buy either all new stuff or expensive interface devices. | |
| hacker, n.: Originally, any person with a knack for coercing stubborn inanimate things; hence, a person with a happy knack, later contracted by the mythical philosopher Frisbee Frobenius to the common usage, 'hack'. In olden times, upon completion of some particularly atrocious body of coding that happened to work well, culpable programmers would gather in a small circle around a first edition of Knuth's Best Volume I by candlelight, and proceed to get very drunk while sporadically rending the following ditty: Hacker's Fight Song He's a Hack! He's a Hack! He's a guy with the happy knack! Never bungles, never shirks, Always gets his stuff to work! All take a drink (important!) | |
| QOTD: "I've got one last thing to say before I go; give me back all of my stuff." | |
| A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. -- Tennessee Williams | |
| Glogg (a traditional Scandinavian holiday drink): fifth of dry red wine fifth of Aquavit 1 and 1/2 inch piece of cinnamon 10 cardamom seeds 1 cup raisins 4 dried figs 1 cup blanched or flaked almonds a few pieces of dried orange peel 5 cloves 1/2 lb. sugar cubes Heat up the wine and hard stuff (which may be substituted with wine for the faint of heart) in a big pot after adding all the other stuff EXCEPT the sugar cubes. Just when it reaches boiling, put the sugar in a wire strainer, moisten it in the hot brew, lift it out and ignite it with a match. Dip the sugar several times in the liquid until it is all dissolved. Serve hot in cups with a few raisins and almonds in each cup. N.B. Aquavit may be hard to find and expensive to boot. Use it only if you really have a deep-seated desire to be fussy, or if you are of Swedish extraction. | |
| I used to have a drinking problem. Now I love the stuff. | |
| A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems best. That's dangerous. Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the schools as 'standards'? Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent, elitist. ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real professionals. Those texts are called 'reading material.' They are the academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms, and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating resource centers along the roads. -- The Underground Grammarian | |
| How many hors d'oeuvres you are allowed to take off a tray being carried by a waiter at a nice party? Two, but there are ways around it, depending on the style of the hors d'oeuvre. If they're those little pastry things where you can't tell what's inside, you take one, bite off about two-thirds of it, then say: "This is cheese! I hate cheese!" Then you put the rest of it back on the tray and bite another one and go, "Darn it! Another cheese!" and so on. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" | |
| Just a few of the perfect excuses for having some strawberry shortcake. Pick one. (1) It's less calories than two pieces of strawberry shortcake. (2) It's cheaper than going to France. (3) It neutralizes the brownies I had yesterday. (4) Life is short. (5) It's somebody's birthday. I don't want them to celebrate alone. (6) It matches my eyes. (7) Whoever said, "Let them eat cake." must have been talking to me. (8) To punish myself for eating dessert yesterday. (9) Compensation for all the time I spend in the shower not eating. (10) Strawberry shortcake is evil. I must help rid the world of it. (11) I'm getting weak from eating all that healthy stuff. (12) It's the second anniversary of the night I ate plain broccoli. | |
| Life is too short to stuff a mushroom. -- Storm Jameson | |
| You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit. In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids. -- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette" | |
| Everything's great in this good old world; (This is the stuff they can always use.) God's in his heaven, the hill's dew-pearled; (This will provide for baby's shoes.) Hunger and War do not mean a thing; Everything's rosy where'er we roam; Hark, how the little birds gaily sing! (This is what fetches the bacon home.) -- Dorothy Parker, "The Far Sighted Muse" | |
| History is curious stuff You'd think by now we had enough Yet the fact remains I fear They make more of it every year. | |
| I think that I shall never hear A poem lovelier than beer. The stuff that Joe's Bar has on tap, With golden base and snowy cap. The stuff that I can drink all day Until my mem'ry melts away. Poems are made by fools, I fear But only Schlitz can make a beer. | |
| Terence, this is stupid stuff: You eat your victuals fast enough; There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear, To see the rate you drink your beer. But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, It gives a chap the belly-ache. The cow, the old cow, she is dead; It sleeps well the horned head: We poor lads, 'tis our turn now To hear such tunes as killed the cow. Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme Your friends to death before their time. Moping, melancholy mad: Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad. -- A.E. Housman | |
| The lights are on, but you're not home; Your will is not your own; Your heart sweats, Your teeth grind; Another kiss and you'll be mine... You like to think that you're immune to the stuff (Oh Yeah!) It's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough; You know you're gonna have to face it, You're addicted to love!" -- Robert Palmer | |
| Well, fancy giving money to the Government! Might as well have put it down the drain. Fancy giving money to the Government! Nobody will see the stuff again. Well, they've no idea what money's for -- Ten to one they'll start another war. I've heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor'! Fancy giving money to the Government! -- A.P. Herbert | |
| "You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers That your lectures bore people to death. Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year -- Don't you think that you should save your breath?" "I have answered three questions and that is enough," Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!" | |
| "You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak For anything tougher than suet; Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak -- Pray, how did you manage to do it?" "In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law, And argued each case with my wife; And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw, Has lasted the rest of my life." "You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose That your eye was as steady as ever; Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose -- What made you so awfully clever?" "I have answered three questions, and that is enough," Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs! Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff? Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!" | |
| George's friend Sam had a dog who could recite the Gettysburg Address. "Let me buy him from you," pleaded George after a demonstration. "Okay," agreed Sam. "All he knows is that Lincoln speech anyway." At his company's Fourth of July picnic, George brought his new pet and announced that the animal could recite the entire Gettysburg Address. No one believed him, and they proceeded to place bets against the dog. George quieted the crowd and said, "Now we'll begin!" Then he looked at the dog. The dog looked back. No sound. "Come on, boy, do your stuff." Nothing. A disappointed George took his dog and went home. "Why did you embarrass me like that in front of everybody?" George yelled at the dog. "Do you realize how much money you lost me?" "Don't be silly, George," replied the dog. "Think of the odds we're gonna get on Labor Day." | |
| "Arthur felt at a bit of a loss. There was a whole Galaxy of stuff out there for him, and he wondered if it was churlish of him to complain to himself that it lacked just two things: the world he was born on and the woman he loved. " | |
| "CmdrBurrito" Launches Slashdot.org Parody An anonymous hacker with the handle "CmdrBurrito" has launched a parody of the Slashdot "News for Nerds" site entitled Dotslash. Dotslash has the motto "Snooze for Slackers. Stuff that Scatters." It has fake news articles and ficticious reader comments. Some of the recent articles include "Bill Gates Wins Powerball Jackpot," "Linux 2.1.666 Released," and "Supercomputer Created from 8088 and Z80 Computers." Rumor has it that "CmdrBurrito" plans to create parodies of other sites, including Linux Weekly News ("Linsux Weakly Snooze"), Freshmeat ("Deadmeat"), and Linux.org ("Linsux.org"). When asked about Dotslash, Slashdot webmaster Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda said, "No problem. I simply posted an article about it on Slashdot, and watched it die from the 'Slashdot Effect.' Six hours later, and it's still offline. I suspect Dotslash is running Windows NT. The mystery 'CmdrBurrito' character is probably a bored Microsoft employee." | |
| Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #3 iTux Penguin Computer Price: $999.95 for base model Producer: Orange Computer, Co.; 1-800-GET-ITUX Based on the Slashdot comments, response to the Apple iMac from the Linux community was lukewarm at best. Orange Computer, Co., has picked up where Apple left behind and produced the iTux computer specifically for Linux users who want to "Think a lot different". The self-contained iTux computer system is built in the shape of Tux the Penguin. Its 15 inch monitor (17 inch available next year) is located at Tux's large belly. The penguin's two feet make up the split ergonomic keyboard (without those annoying Windows keys, of course). A 36X CD-ROM drive fits into Tux's mouth. Tux's left eye is actually the reboot button (can be reconfigured for other purposes since it is rarely used) and his right eye is the power button. The iTux case opens up from the back, allowing easy access for screwdriver-wielding nerds into Tux's guts. The US$995.95 model contains an Alpha CPU and all the usual stuff found in a Linux-class machine. More expensive models, to be debuted next year, will feature dual or quad Alpha CPUs and a larger size. | |
| 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." | |
| "Brown Orifice" Is Only The Beginning Last week security holes were found in Netscape's Java implementation that allowed it to act as a web server. Earlier today, a hacker announced that he had found vulnerabilities in Mozilla M17 that allow it to operate as a web browser. And that's just the beginning. Said "3l337h4x0r", the discoverer of the M17 exploit, "This is quite a hack! By manipulating some internal functions, I was able to use M17 to actually surf the web. Slashdot and Humorix rendered beautifully." Mozilla engineers were stunned. "This shouldn't be possible. M17 contains a newsreader, a mail client, an instant messenger client, and a whole bunch of XUL acronymn-enriched stuff, but it shouldn't be able to handle HTTP or HTML. We haven't been planning on adding web-surfing functionality to Mozilla until M30... maybe M25 at the earliest. I suspect this whole thing is a hoax." | |
| Are your glasses mended with a strip of masking tape right over your nose? Do you put pennies in the slots in your penny loafers? Does your bow-tie flash "hey you kid" in red neon at parties? Do you think pizza before noon is unhealthy? Do you use the "greasy kid's stuff" to stick down your cowlick? Do you wear a "nerd-pack" in your shirt pocket to keep the dozen or so pencils from marking the cloth? Do you think Mary Jane is somebody's name? Is illegal fishing something only a daring criminal would do? Is Batman your hero? Superman? Green Lantern? The Shadow? Do you think girls who kiss on the first date are loose? | |
| What's this stuff about people being "released on their own recognizance"? Aren't we all out on our own recognizance? | |
| "I think it's wrong any of us should claim ideas for stuff that has been done already by other people. It's time to put away the wheel reinvention kit and LEARN FROM OTHER SYSTEMS and even from *shudder* books ;)" - Rik van Riel | |
| "Quite frankly, I'd rather have a few people hate me deeply than apply stuff I don't like." - Linus Torvalds | |
| <movement> hmm, all you kernel hackers spending too much time adding fortunes instead of important stuff :) - John Levon trying to grasp kernel hacking reality | |
| Alan Olsen wrote: > things correctly they have enhanced Wake-on-LAN to allow you to do > things like reset the machine, update the BIOS and such by sending > magic packets which are interpreted by the network card. Or maybe I am Normally 'sending magic packets resets the machine' is considered a feature reported to bugtraq. The alert stuff I have seen is more akin to sending SNMP traps for things like people opening the lid, or fan failure - Alan Cox on linux-kernel | |
| Well, I have done sparc assembly in my time (remember Dave Sitsky and I did a port of the kernel to the ultrasparc running in 32-bit mode before you did the sparc64 port) but the stuff you're doing in there isn't just assembly, it's magic assembly. ;) - Paul Mackerras admiring Dave Miller's assembly on linux-kernel | |
| indent does _not_ solve the problem of: * buggers who introduce wrappers for standard kernel stuff - like, say it, typedef int Int32; and sprinkle their crap with per-architecture ifdefs. - Alexander Viro on coding style | |
| 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. | |
| Now I can finally explain to everyone why I do this. I just got $7 worth of free stuff for working on Debian ! | |
| <dark> "Hey, I'm from this project called Debian... have you heard of it? Your name seems to be on a bunch of our stuff." | |
| <Crow-> Manoj: well, i cant understand stuff like "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245 }" <Manoj> Crow: That is not quite legal ;-) <Knghtbrd> Manoj - how would one make "s/3#$%^% {]][ @ f245 }" legal anyway? (and what would it do? hehe) <Manoj> Knghtbrd: You need to finish the s/// expression. <Knghtbrd> oh, is that all? | |
| * Knghtktty whispers sweet nothings to Thyla (stuff about compilers and graphics and ram upgrades and big hard drives...) <Thyla> oooooooooOOOOOOOOOO <Infinitas> Knghtktty: that's positively pornographic... * Thyla goes off into fits of ecstasy... | |
| <Joy> Flinny: black crontab magic kinda stuff :) <knghtbrd> Joy: does that mean people get to dance naked around bonfires chanting strange things and waving their arms about in a silly manner? <rcw> knghtbrd: what do you *think* people do at novare? | |
| <Knghtbrd> I'd better put the incriminating stuff into code: ahfuiovka ikperoa edfr ade 9 enbuw ejasxleme ka iena df4mesa <Knghtbrd> If you can decrypt that, you're a better cryptographer than I am. =) | |
| <Knghtbrd> "... you will more than likely see all kinds of compiler warnings scrolling by on the screen. These are normal and can be safely ignored." <LordHavoc> Knghtbrd: is that a note attached to some M$ code? <Knghtbrd> No, it's a note about a bunch of GNU stuff. | |
| Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent I can find for "landskap"). These laws were written down sometime in the 13th century, but date back even down into Viking times. The oldest one is the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some Christian stuff. In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc. Here is an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of "lekare". "If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it. If an artist is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring it out on the hillside. Then they shall shave off all hair from the heifer's tail, and grease the tail. Then the artist shall be given newly greased shoes. Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail, and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip. If he can hold her, he shall have the animal. If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what he received, shame and wounds." | |
| > : Any porters out there should feel happier knowing that DEC is shipping > : me an AlphaPC that I intend to try getting linux running on: this will > : definitely help flush out some of the most flagrant unportable stuff. > : The Alpha is much more different from the i386 than the 68k stuff is, so > : it's likely to get most of the stuff fixed. > > It's posts like this that almost convince us non-believers that there > really is a god. -- Anthony Lovell, to Linus's remarks about porting | |
| Q: Why shouldn't I simply delete the stuff I never use, it's just taking up space? A: This question is in the category of Famous Last Words.. -- From the Frequently Unasked Questions | |
| Q: What's the big deal about rm, I have been deleting stuff for years? And never lost anything.. oops! A: ... -- From the Frequently Unasked Questions | |
| Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;) -- Linus Torvalds, about his failing hard drive on linux.cs.helsinki.fi | |
| > Also another major deciding factor is availability of source code. > It just gives everybody a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there is > source code available to the product you are using. It allows everybody > to improve on the product and fix bugs etc. sooner that the author(s) > would get the time/chance to. I think this is one the really BIG reasons for the snowball/onslaught of Linux and the wealth of stuff available that gets enhanced faster than the real vendors can keep up. -- Norman | |
| 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> | |
| One fine day, the bus driver went to the bus garage, started his bus, and drove off along the route. No problems for the first few stops -- a few people got on, a few got off, and things went generally well. At the next stop, however, a big hulk of a guy got on. Six feet eight, built like a wrestler, arms hanging down to the ground. He glared at the driver and said, "Big John doesn't pay!" and sat down at the back. Did I mention that the driver was five feet three, thin, and basically meek? Well, he was. Naturally, he didn't argue with Big John, but he wasn't happy about it. Well, the next day the same thing happened -- Big John got on again, made a show of refusing to pay, and sat down. And the next day, and the one after that, and so forth. This grated on the bus driver, who started losing sleep over the way Big John was taking advantage of him. Finally he could stand it no longer. He signed up for bodybuilding courses, karate, judo, and all that good stuff. By the end of the summer, he had become quite strong; what's more, he felt really good about himself. So on the next Monday, when Big John once again got on the bus and said "Big John doesn't pay!," the driver stood up, glared back at the passenger, and screamed, "And why not?" With a surprised look on his face, Big John replied, "Big John has a bus pass." | |
