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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

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."
As a goatherd learns his trade by goat, so a writer learns his trade by wrote.
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent
and original in your work.
                -- Flaubert
"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
                -- Time Bandits
Darth Vader!  Only you would be so bold!
                -- Princess Leia Organa
For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at
the results of this evening's experiments.  Astonished at the wonderful
power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous
and bad music may be put on record forever.
                -- Sir Arthur Sullivan, message to Edison, 1888
Grig (the navigator):
        ... so you see, it's just the two of us against the entire space
        armada.
Alex (the gunner):
        What?!?
Grig:        I've always wanted to fight a desperate battle against
        overwhelming odds.
Alex:        It'll be a slaughter!
Grig:        That's the spirit!
                -- The Last Starfighter
I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind
of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances
being in widespread use.  Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms
of talent, on who could make an album, so we made one, and it sounds like
a group of people who have been given powerful but unfamiliar instruments
as a therapy for a degenerative nerve disease.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Snake"
I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the
reader.  But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if
I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out.
                -- Stephen King
I'm a Hollywood writer; so I put on a sports jacket and take off my brain.
  I. Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of
     its situation.
        Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland.  He
        loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to
        look down.  At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per
        second per second takes over.
II. Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter
     intervenes suddenly.
        Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon
        characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone
        pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely.
        Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the
        stooge's surcease.
III. Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation
     conforming to its perimeter.
        Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the
        speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless
        cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through
        the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole.  The
        threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.
                -- Esquire, "O'Donnell's Laws of Cartoon Motion", June 1980
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 dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?
In the force if Yoda's so strong, construct a sentence with words in
the proper order then why can't he?
It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater.  The clown came
out to inform the public.  They thought it was just a jest and applauded.
He repeated his warning, they shouted even louder.  So I think the world
will come to an end amid general applause from all the wits, who believe
that it is a joke.
It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
which morally we can do.  To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
                -- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
It's not the valleys in life I dread so much as the dips.
                -- Garfield
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"
Mike:        "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?"
Bernie:        "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays.  People are SO inconsiderate."
                -- Gary Trudeau, "Doonesbury"
My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked.
                -- Peter Stack, movie review

His performance is so wooden you want to spray him with Liquid Pledge.
                -- John Stark, movie review
Oh, Aunty Em, it's so good to be home!
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
Recently deceased blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan "comes to" after
his death.  He sees Jimi Hendrix sitting next to him, tuning his guitar.
"Holy cow," he thinks to himself, "this guy is my idol."  Over at the
microphone, about to sing, are Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and the
bassist is the late Barry Oakley of the Allman Brothers.  So Stevie
Ray's thinking, "Oh, wow!  I've died and gone to rock and roll heaven."
Just then, Karen Carpenter walks in, sits down at the drums, and says:
"'Close to You'.  Hit it, boys!"
                -- Told by Penn Jillette, of magic/comedy duo Penn and Teller
Snoopy: No problem is so big that it can't be run away from.
So do the noble fall.  For they are ever caught in a trap of their own making.
A trap -- walled by duty, and locked by reality.  Against the greater force
they must fall -- for, against that force they fight because of duty, because
of obligations.  And when the noble fall, the base remain.  The base -- whose
only purpose is the corruption of what the noble did protect.  Whose only
purpose is to destroy.  The noble: who, even when fallen, retain a vestige of
strength.  For theirs is a strength born of things other than mere force.
Theirs is a strength supreme... theirs is the strength -- to restore.
                -- Gerry Conway, "Thor", #193
        So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
flop up onto the land and evolve.  Richard and I were inching toward
it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
        Many people would have panicked at this point.  But Richard and
I were not "many people."  We were experienced waders, and we kept our
heads.  We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
our feet never once went below the surface of the water.  We ran all
the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that it is scraping
the top of the barrel.
                -- Gore Vidal
        The big problem with pornography is defining it.  You can't just
say it's pictures of people naked.  For example, you have these
primitive African tribes that exist by chasing the wildebeest on foot,
and they have to go around largely naked, because, as the old tribal
saying goes: "N'wam k'honi soit qui mali," which means, "If you think
you can catch a wildebeest in this climate and wear clothes at the same
time, then I have some beach front property in the desert region of
Northern Mali that you may be interested in."
        So it's not considered pornographic when National Geographic
publishes color photographs of these people hunting the wildebeest
naked, or pounding one rock onto another rock for some primitive reason
naked, or whatever.  But if National Geographic were to publish an
article entitled "The Girls of the California Junior College System
Hunt the Wildebeest Naked," some people would call it pornography.  But
others would not.  And still others, such as the Spectacularly Rev.
Jerry Falwell, would get upset about seeing the wildebeest naked.
                -- Dave Barry, "Pornography"
The Great Movie Posters:

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

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

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

LOVE! HATE! JOY! FEAR! TORMENT! PANIC! SHAME! RAGE!
                -- Intermezzo (1939)
        "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
Why am I so soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?
                -- Paul Simon
You're all clear now, kid.  Now blow this thing so we can all go home.
                -- Han Solo
Hi!  You have reached 555-0129. None of us are here to answer the phone and
the cat doesn't have opposing thumbs, so his messages are illegible.  Please
leave your name and message after the beep...
If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a
new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation,
does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions.  You must
make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats.
The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if
you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer
will be courteous as well as responsive.  Since you are out of sympathy with
cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the
dedication ceremonies of a cat hospital.  But bear in mind that your opinion
of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker.  Try to keep things
straight.
                -- Strunk and White, "The Elements of Style"
And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports
on it, you know they are just evil lies."
(By Linus Torvalds, Linus.Torvalds@cs.helsinki.fi)
> : 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)
As usual, this being a 1.3.x release, I haven't even compiled this
kernel yet.  So if it works, you should be doubly impressed.
(Linus Torvalds, announcing kernel 1.3.3 on the linux-kernel mailing list.)
/*
* [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum
* possible RTT.  I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP
* to talk to the University of Mars.
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented
* ftp to mars will work nicely.
*/
(from /usr/src/linux/net/inet/tcp.c, concerning RTT [retransmission timeout])
There are no threads in a.b.p.erotica,  so there's no  gain in using a
threaded news reader.
(Unknown source)
Sigh.  I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on
the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice.
(Craig E. Groeschel)
> 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)
We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity - so UP yours!
(Adapted from Pat Paulsen by Joe Sloan)
The electrician didn't know what the yellow cable was so he yanked the ethernet out.
because Bill Gates is a Jehovah's witness and so nothing can work on St. Swithin's day.
Some one needed the powerstrip, so they pulled the switch plug.
Just pick up the phone and give modem connect sounds. "Well you said we should get more lines so we don't have voice lines."
Sysadmins unavailable because they are in a meeting talking about why they are unavailable so much.
At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously
-- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being
in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason.
                -- John Keats
I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
so I woke up from sheer boredom.
It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories,
his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the
worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one
day like any other day, only shorter.
                -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be
sorry.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of
absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness
within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and
doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone
of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
                -- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House"
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
                -- Mark Twain
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
ROMEO:                Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO:        No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide
                        as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie;
and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head
into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently
married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand
Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all
fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran
out at the heels of their boots.
                -- Samuel Foote
So so is good, very good, very excellent good:
and yet it is not; it is but so so.
                -- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time.  So long
as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks
into, there is room for lateral movement.  Once this begins, its rate is
a matter of discretion.
                -- Corwin, Prince of Amber
The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
Univ.  by Professor Scott Rice.  It is held in memory of Edward George
Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
time) novelist.  He is best known today for having written "The Last
Days of Pompeii."

Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
Bulwer-Lytton.  This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
written in 1830.  The full line reveals why it is so bad:

        It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
        at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
        wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
        lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
        flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to
lend money.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
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"
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
                -- Mark Twain
Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues
of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself
a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst
be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.  I wasted time and now doth
time waste me.
                -- William Shakespeare
Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
that like most books, it had too many words.  The plot was the same one that
all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
women.  There, that's it: 24 words.  But the guy who wrote the book took
*thousands* of words to say it.
        Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
Or maybe only one of them kills the father.  It's impossible to tell because
what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages.  If all Russians talk
as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
major world power.
        I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
the question of whether there is a God.  So why didn't he just come right
out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
        Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:

* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
  nature and will kill you.
* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
                -- Dave Barry
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to
go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
                -- Mark Twain
You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.  A fool
takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
brain-attic.  He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
order.  It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
can distend to any extent.  Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.  It is of
the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
the useful ones.
                -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
Zounds!  I was never so bethumped with words
since I first called my brother's father dad.
                -- William Shakespeare, "Kind John"
"What's this?  Trix?  Aunt!  Trix?  You?  You're after the prize!  What
is it?"  He picked up the box and studied the back.  "A glow-in-the-dark
squid!  Have you got it out of there yet?"  He tilted the box, angling the
little colored balls of cereal so as to see the bottom, and nearly spilling
them onto the table top.  "Here it is!"  He hauled out a little cream-colored,
glitter-sprinkled squid, three-inches long and made out of rubbery plastic.
                -- James P. Blaylock, "The Last Coin"
"Good afternoon, madam.  How may I help you?"

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

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

"I'll take the special."

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

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

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

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

          -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background"
        A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about
whose profession was the oldest.  In the course of their arguments, they
got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The
medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's
rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."
        The architect did not agree.  He said, "But if you look at the Garden
itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that the Garden
and the world were created.  So God must have been an architect."
        The computer scientist, who'd listened carefully to all of this, then
commented, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
        A manager 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"
        A manager went to his programmers and told them: "As regards to your
work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave
at five in the afternoon."  At this, all of them became angry and several
resigned on the spot.
        So the manager said: "All right, in that case you may set your own
working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule."  The
programmers, now satisfied, began to come in a noon and work to the wee
hours of the morning.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        *** A NEW KIND OF PROGRAMMING ***

Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands?  Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere?  If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.
They say a good programmer can write 20 lines of effective program per day.
With our unique training course, we'll show you how to write 20 lines of code
and lots more besides.  Our training course covers every programming language
in existence, and some that aren't.  You'll learn why the on/off switch for a
computer is so important, what the words *fatal error* mean, and who and what
you should blame when you make a mistake.

        Yes, I want the brochure describing this incredible offer.
        I enclose $1000 is small unmarked bills to cover the cost of
        postage and handling. (No live poultry, please.)

*** Our Slogan:  Top down programming for the masses. ***
        A novice asked the master: "I perceive that one computer company is
much larger than all others.  It towers above its competition like a giant
among dwarfs.  Any one of its divisions could comprise an entire business.
Why is this so?"
        The master replied, "Why do you ask such foolish questions?  That
company is large because it is so large.  If it only made hardware, nobody
would buy it.  If it only maintained systems, people would treat it like a
servant.  But because it combines all of these things, people think it one
of the gods!  By not seeking to strive, it conquers without effort."
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        A novice 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"
        A sheet of paper crossed my desk the other day and as I read it,
realization of a basic truth came over me.  So simple!  So obvious we couldn't
see it.  John Knivlen, Chairman of Polamar Repeater Club, an amateur radio
group, had discovered how IC circuits work.  He says that smoke is the thing
that makes ICs work because every time you let the smoke out of an IC circuit,
it stops working.  He claims to have verified this with thorough testing.
        I was flabbergasted!  Of course!  Smoke makes all things electrical
work.  Remember the last time smoke escaped from your Lucas voltage regulator
Didn't it quit working?  I sat and smiled like an idiot as more of the truth
dawned.  It's the wiring harness that carries the smoke from one device to
another in your Mini, MG or Jag.  And when the harness springs a leak, it lets
the smoke out of everything at once, and then nothing works.  The starter motor
requires large quantities of smoke to operate properly, and that's why the wire
going to it is so large.
        Feeling very smug, I continued to expand my hypothesis.  Why are Lucas
electronics more likely to leak than say Bosch?  Hmmm...  Aha!!!  Lucas is
British, and all things British leak!  British convertible tops leak water,
British engines leak oil, British displacer units leak hydrostatic fluid, and
I might add Brititsh tires leak air, and the British defense unit leaks
secrets... so naturally British electronics leak smoke.
                -- Jack Banton, PCC Automotive Electrical School

        [Ummm ... IC circuits?  Integrated circuit circuits?]
===  ALL USERS PLEASE NOTE  ========================

CAR and CDR now return extra values.

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

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

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

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

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

This is believed to speed up execution by as much as a factor of 1.01 or
3.50 depending on whether you believe our friendly marketing representatives.
This code was written by a new programmer here (we snatched him away from
Itty Bitti Machines where he was writing COUGHBOL code) so to give him
confidence we trusted his vows of "it works pretty well" and installed it.
AmigaDOS Beer: The company has gone out of business, but their recipe has
been picked up by some weird German company, so now this beer will be an
import.  This beer never really sold very well because the original
manufacturer didn't understand marketing. Like Unix Beer, AmigaDOS Beer
fans are an extremely loyal and loud group. It originally came in a
16-oz. can, but now comes in 32-oz.  cans too.  When this can was
originally introduced, it appeared flashy and colorful, but the design
hasn't changed much over the years, so it appears dated now.  Critics of
this beer claim that it is only meant for watching TV anyway.
As part of an ongoing effort to keep you, the Fortune reader, abreast of
the valuable information the daily crosses the USENET, Fortune presents:

News articles that answer *your* questions, #1:

        Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
        Subject: how do I run C code received from sources
        Keywords: C sources
        Distribution: na

        I do not know how to run the C programs that are posted in the
        sources newsgroup.  I save the files, edit them to remove the
        headers, and change the mode so that they are executable, but I
        cannot get them to run.  (I have never written a C program before.)

        Must they be compiled?  With what compiler?  How do I do this?  If
        I compile them, is an object code file generated or must I generate
        it explicitly with the > character?  Is there something else that
        must be done?
At about 2500 A.D., humankind discovers a computer problem that *must* be
solved.  The only difficulty is that the problem is NP complete and will
take thousands of years even with the latest optical biologic technology
available.  The best computer scientists sit down to think up some solution.
In great dismay, one of the C.S. people tells her husband about it.  There
is only one solution, he says.  Remember physics 103, Modern Physics, general
relativity and all.  She replies, "What does that have to do with solving
a computer problem?"
        "Remember the twin paradox?"
        After a few minutes, she says, "I could put the computer on a very
fast machine and the computer would have just a few minutes to calculate but
that is the exact opposite of what we want... Of course!  Leave the
computer here, and accelerate the earth!"
        The problem was so important that they did exactly that.  When
the earth came back, they were presented with the answer:

        IEH032 Error in JOB Control Card.
But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge?  What
is a kludge, after all, but not enough K's, not enough ROM's, not
enough RAM's, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?
Have I explained yet about the bytes?
... computer hardware progress is so fast.  No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
                -- Fred Brooks
Computer programs expand so as to fill the core available.
Dear Emily:
        How can I choose what groups to post in?
                -- Confused

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

Dear Doubtful:
        Post your response to the whole net.  That request applies only to
dumb people who don't have something interesting to say.  Your postings are
much more worthwhile than other people's, so it would be a waste to reply by
mail.
                -- Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette
Dear Emily:
        I'm having a serious disagreement with somebody on the net. I
tried complaints to his sysadmin, organizing mail campaigns, called for
his removal from the net and phoning his employer to get him fired.
Everybody laughed at me.  What can I do?
                -- A Concerned Citizen

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

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

Dear Forgetful:
        Rush to your terminal right away and post an article that says,
"Oops, I forgot to post my signature with that last article.  Here
it is."
        Since most people will have forgotten your earlier article,
(particularly since it dared to be so boring as to not have a nice, juicy
signature) this will remind them of it.  Besides, people care much more
about the signature anyway.
                -- 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
        *** DO YOU HAVE A RESTLESS URGE TO PROGRAM? ***
Do you want the instant respect that comes from being able to use technical
terms that nobody understands?  Do you want to strike fear and loathing into
the hearts of DP managers everywhere?  If so, then let the Famous Programmers'
School lead you on... into the world of professional computer programming.

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

        *** TAKE OUR FREE APTITUDE TEST ***
To help determine if you are qualified to be a programmer, take a moment to
try this simple test:
        (1) Write down the numbers from zero to nine and the first six letters
                of the alphabet (Hint: 0123456789ABCDEF).
        (2) Whose picture is on the back of a twenty-dollar bill?
        (3) What is the state capital of Idaho?
If you managed to read all three questions without wondering why we asked
them, you may have a future as a computer programmer.
Documentation is the castor oil of programming.
Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much.
Don't hit the keys so hard, it hurts.
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be
taught how ___not to.  So it is with the great programmers.
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.
        Hardware met Software on the road to Changtse.  Software said: "You
are the Yin and I am the Yang.  If we travel together we will become famous
and earn vast sums of money."  And so the pair set forth together, thinking
to conquer the world.
        Presently, they met Firmware, who was dressed in tattered rags, and
hobbled along propped on a thorny stick.  Firmware said to them: "The Tao
lies beyond Yin and Yang.  It is silent and still as a pool of water.  It does
not seek fame, therefore nobody knows its presence.  It does not seeks fortune,
for it is complete within itself.  It exists beyond space and time."
        Software and Hardware, ashamed, returned to their homes.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
How can you work when the system's so crowded?
I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
                -- Rob Pike, on X.

Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
gone in two years.  He was half right.
                -- Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
                -- Jim Gettys
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and
after expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government
of England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only
commenced, I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even
the offer of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the
reach of men who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...
        If the work upon which I have bestowed so much time and thought were
a mere triumph over mechanical difficulties, or simply curious, or if the
execution of such engines were of doubtful practicability or utility, some
justification might be found for the course which has been taken; but I
venture to assert that no mathematician who has a reputation to lose will
ever publicly express an opinion that such a machine would be useless if
made, and that no man distinguished as a civil engineer will venture to
declare the construction of such machinery impracticable...
        And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed
by that exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its
advancement, which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I
think the application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
                -- Charles Babbage, "The Life of a Philosopher"
        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 graphics hackers are so smart, why can't they get the bugs out of
fresh paint?
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 English, every word can be verbed.  Would that it were so in our
programming languages.
        In the days when Sussman was a novice Minsky once came to him as he
sat hacking at the PDP-6.
        "What are you doing?", asked Minsky.
        "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
        "Why is the net wired randomly?", inquired Minsky.
        "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play".
        At this Minsky shut his eyes, and Sussman asked his teacher "Why do
you close your eyes?"
        "So that the room will be empty."
        At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
        It appears that after his death, Albert Einstein found himself
working as the doorkeeper at the Pearly Gates.  One slow day, he
found that he had time to chat with the new entrants.  To the first one
he asked, "What's your IQ?"  The new arrival replied, "190".  They
discussed Einstein's theory of relativity for hours.  When the second
new arrival came, Einstein once again inquired as to the newcomer's
IQ.  The answer this time came "120".  To which Einstein replied, "Tell
me, how did the Cubs do this year?" and they proceeded to talk for half
an hour or so.  To the final arrival, Einstein once again posed the
question, "What's your IQ?".  Upon receiving the answer "70",
Einstein smiled and replied, "Got a minute to tell me about VMS 4.0?"
        It took 300 years to build and by the time it was 10% built,
everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But by then the investment
was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it has
cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing.
        There are at present no plans to replace it, since it was never
really needed in the first place.
        I expect every installation has its own pet software which is
analogous to the above.
                -- K.E. Iverson, on the Leaning Tower of Pisa
Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.
        -- Dave Olson
        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"
Many companies that have made themselves dependent on [the equipment of a
certain major manufacturer] (and in doing so have sold their soul to the
devil) will collapse under the sheer weight of the unmastered complexity of
their data processing systems.
                -- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
No wonder Clairol makes so much money selling shampoo.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat is an infinite loop!
My little brother got this fortune:
        nohup rm -fr /&
So he did...
Oh, so there you are!
        On the other hand, the TCP camp also has a phrase for OSI people.
There are lots of phrases.  My favorite is `nitwit' -- and the rationale
is the Internet philosophy has always been you have extremely bright,
non-partisan researchers look at a topic, do world-class research, do
several competing implementations, have a bake-off, determine what works
best, write it down and make that the standard.
        The OSI view is entirely opposite.  You take written contributions
from a much larger community, you put the contributions in a room of
committee people with, quite honestly, vast political differences and all
with their own political axes to grind, and four years later you get
something out, usually without it ever having been implemented once.
        So the Internet perspective is implement it, make it work well,
then write it down, whereas the OSI perspective is to agree on it, write
it down, circulate it a lot and now we'll see if anyone can implement it
after it's an international standard and every vendor in the world is
committed to it.  One of those processes is backwards, and I don't think
it takes a Lucasian professor of physics at Oxford to figure out which.
                -- Marshall Rose, "The Pied Piper of OSI"
        One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How enthusiastic
is our support for UNIX?
        Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many years ago.
Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines. Ten percent of our
VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple language, easy to understand,
easy to get started with. It's great for students, great for somewhat casual
users, and it's great for interchanging programs between different machines.
And so, because of its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have
good UNIX on VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
        It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will run
out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and will end
up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
        With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and quickly
check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With VMS, no matter
what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of documentation -- if
you look long enough it's there.  That's the difference -- the beauty of UNIX
is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS is that it's all there.
                -- Ken Olsen, president of DEC, DECWORLD Vol. 8 No. 5, 1984
[It's been argued that the beauty of UNIX is the same as the beauty of Ken
Olsen's brain.  Ed.]
Prof:    So the American government went to IBM to come up with a data
         encryption standard and they came up with ...
Student: EBCDIC!"
Real computer scientists despise the idea of actual hardware.  Hardware has
limitations, software doesn't.  It's a real shame that Turing machines are
so poor at I/O.
Real computer scientists don't comment their code.  The identifiers are
so long they can't afford the disk space.
Real computer scientists don't write code.  They occasionally tinker with
`programming systems', but those are so high level that they hardly count
(and rarely count accurately; precision is for applications).
So you see Antonio, why worry about one little core dump, eh?  In reality
all core dumps happen at the same instant, so the core dump you will have
tomorrow, why, it already happened.  You see, it's just a little universal
recursive joke which threads our lives through the infinite potential of
the instant.  So go to sleep, Antonio, your thread could break any moment
and cast you out of the safe security of the instant into the dark void of
eternity, the anti-time.  So go to sleep...
Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
"user-friendly".  ...  Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
                -- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
        [Pot. Kettle. Black.]
        Something mysterious is formed, born in the silent void.  Waiting
alone and unmoving, it is at once still and yet in constant motion.  It is
the source of all programs.  I do not know its name, so I will call it the
Tao of Programming.
        If the Tao is great, then the operating system is great.  If the
operating system is great, then the compiler is great.  If the compiler is
greater, then the applications is great.  The user is pleased and there is
harmony in the world.
        The Tao of Programming flows far away and returns on the wind of
morning.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am sure
that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging, cycle-grabbing,
all-encompassing monster.  Allocate an array and free the middle third?
Sure!  Why not?  Multiply a character string times a bit string and assign the
result to a float decimal?  Go ahead!  Free a controlled variable procedure
parameter and reallocate it before passing it back?  Overlay three different
types of variable on the same memory location?  Anything you say!  Write a
recursive macro?  Well, no, but Real Men use rescan.  How could a language
so obviously designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
***** Special AI Seminar (abstract)

It has been widely recognized that AI programs require expert knowledge
in order to perform well in complex domains.  But knowledge alone is not
sufficient for some applications; wisdom is needed as well.  Accordingly,
we have developed a new approach to artificial intelligence which we call
"wisdom engineering".  As a test of our ideas, we have written IMMANUEL, a
wisdom based system for the task domain of western philosophical thought.  
IMMANUEL was supplied initially with 200 wisdom units which contained wisdom
about such elementary concepts as mind, matter, being, nothingness, and so
forth.  IMMANUEL was then allowed to run freely, guided by the heuristic
rules contained in its heterarchically organized meta wisdom base.  IMMANUEL
succeeded in rediscovering most of the important philosophical ideas developed
in western culture over the course of the last 25 centuries, including those
underlying Plato's theory of government, Kant's metaphysics, Nietzsche's theory
of value, and Husserl's phenomenology.  In this seminar, we will describe
IMMANUEL's achievements and internal architecture.  We will also briefly
discuss our recent efforts to apply wisdom engineering to oil exploration.
Standards are crucial.  And the best thing about standards is: there are
so ____many to choose from!
Still a few bugs in the system... Someday I have to tell you about Uncle
Nahum from Maine, who spent years trying to cross a jellyfish with a shad
so he could breed boneless shad.  His experiment backfired too, and he
wound up with bony jellyfish... which was hardly worth the trouble.  There's
very little call for those up there.
                -- Allucquere R. "Sandy" Stone
        *** STUDENT SUCCESSES ***

Many of our students have gone on to achieve great success in all fields of
programming.  One former student developed the concept of the personalized
form letter.  Does the phrase, "Dear Mr.(insert name), You may already be a
winner!," sound familiar?  Another student writes "After only five lessons I
sold a "My Most Unforgettable Program" article to Corrosive Computing magazine.
Another of our graduates writes, "I recently completed a database-management
program for my department manager.  My program touched him so deeply that he
was speechless.  He told me later that he had never seen such a program in
his entire career.  Thank you, Famous Programmers' school; only you could
have made this possible."  Send for our introductory brochure which explains
in vague detail the operation of the Famous Programmers' School, and you'll
be eligible to win a possible chance to enter a drawing, the winner of which
can vie for a set of free steak knives.  If you don't do it now, you'll hate
yourself in the morning.
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
                -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
The day-to-day travails of the IBM programmer are so amusing to most of
us who are fortunate enough never to have been one -- like watching
Charlie Chaplin trying to cook a shoe.
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip
objects into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air
due to levitation.
        Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur
if the character does not have fire resistance.
                -- README file from the NetHack game
                The Guy on the Right Doesn't Stand a Chance
The guy on the right has the Osborne 1, a fully functional computer system
in a portable package the size of a briefcase.  The guy on the left has an
Uzi submachine gun concealed in his attache case.  Also in the case are four
fully loaded, 32-round clips of 125-grain 9mm ammunition.  The owner of the
Uzi is going to get more tactical firepower delivered -- and delivered on
target -- in less time, and with less effort.  All for $795. It's inevitable.
If you're going up against some guy with an Osborne 1 -- or any personal
computer -- he's the one who's in trouble.  One round from an Uzi can zip
through ten inches of solid pine wood, so you can imagine what it will do
to structural foam acrylic and sheet aluminum.  In fact, detachable magazines
for the Uzi are available in 25-, 32-, and 40-round capacities, so you can
take out an entire office full of Apple II or IBM Personal Computers tied
into Ethernet or other local-area networks.  What about the new 16-bit
computers, like the Lisa and Fortune?  Even with the Winchester backup,
they're no match for the Uzi.  One quick burst and they'll find out what
Unix means.  Make your commanding officer proud.  Get an Uzi -- and come home
a winner in the fight for office automatic weapons.
                -- "InfoWorld", June, 1984
The misnaming of fields of study is so common as to lead to what might be
general systems laws.  For example, Frank Harary once suggested the law that
any field that had the word "science" in its name was guaranteed thereby
not to be a science.  He would cite as examples Military Science, Library
Science, Political Science, Homemaking Science, Social Science, and Computer
Science.  Discuss the generality of this law, and possible reasons for its
predictive power.
                -- Gerald Weinberg, "An Introduction to General Systems
                   Thinking"
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
                -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
        The programmers of old were mysterious and profound.  We cannot fathom
their thoughts, so all we do is describe their appearance.
        Aware, like a fox crossing the water.  Alert, like a general on the
battlefield.  Kind, like a hostess greeting her guests. Simple, like uncarved
blocks of wood.  Opaque, like black pools in darkened caves.
        Who can tell the secrets of their hearts and minds?
        The answer exists only in the Tao.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much.
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers
while seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference --
one can see only a very few things at once.
                -- Fred Brooks
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
                -- C.A.R. Hoare
There has also been some work to allow the interesting use of macro names.
For example, if you wanted all of your "creat()" calls to include read
permissions for everyone, you could say

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

        I would recommend against this kind of thing in general, since it
hides the changed semantics of "creat()" in a macro, potentially far away
from its uses.
        To allow this use of macros, the preprocessor uses a process that
is worth describing, if for no other reason than that we get to use one of
the more amusing terms introduced into the C lexicon.  While a macro is
being expanded, it is temporarily undefined, and any recurrence of the macro
name is "painted blue" -- I kid you not, this is the official terminology
-- so that in future scans of the text the macro will not be expanded
recursively.  (I do not know why the color blue was chosen; I'm sure it
was the result of a long debate, spread over several meetings.)
                -- From Ken Arnold's "C Advisor" column in Unix Review
        There once was a man who went to a computer trade show.  Each day as
he entered, the man told the guard at the door:
        "I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting.  Be
forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered."
        This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions
of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully.
But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself.
        When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes,
but nothing was to be found.
        On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the
guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even
better."  So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail.
        On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his
curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live
in peace.  Please enlighten me.  What is it that you are stealing?"
        The man smiled.  "I am stealing ideas," he said.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
        There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the
warlord of Wu.  The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design:
an accounting package or an operating system?"
        "An operating system," replied the programmer.
        The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief.  "Surely an
accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating
system," he said.
        "Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package,
the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas:
how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to
the tax laws.  By contrast, an operating system is not limited my outside
appearances.  When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the
simplest harmony between machine and ideas.  This is why an operating system
is easier to design."
        The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled.  "That is all good and well, but
which is easier to debug?"
        The programmer made no reply.
                -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
They are called computers simply because computation is the only significant
job that has so far been given to them.
"This is lemma 1.1.  We start a new chapter so the numbers all go back to one."
                -- Prof. Seager, C&O 351
To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so.
Unix Beer: Comes in several different brands, in cans ranging from 8 oz.
to 64 oz.  Drinkers of Unix Beer display fierce brand loyalty, even
though they claim that all the different brands taste almost identical.
Sometimes the pop-tops break off when you try to open them, so you have
to have your own can opener around for those occasions, in which case you
either need a complete set of instructions, or a friend who has been
drinking Unix Beer for several years.
        BSD stout: Deep, hearty, and an acquired taste.  The official
brewer has released the recipe, and a lot of home-brewers now use it.
        Hurd beer: Long advertised by the popular and politically active
GNU brewery, so far it has more head than body.  The GNU brewery is
mostly known for printing complete brewing instructions on every can,
which contains hops, malt, barley, and yeast ... not yet fermented.
        Linux brand: A recipe originally created by a drunken Finn in his
basement, it has since become the home-brew of choice for impecunious
brewers and Unix beer-lovers worldwide, many of whom change the recipe.
        POSIX ales: Sweeter than lager, with the kick of a stout; the
newer batches of a lot of beers seem to blend ale and stout or lager.
        Solaris brand: A lager, intended to replace Sun brand stout.
Unlike most lagers, this one has to be drunk more slowly than stout.
        Sun brand: Long the most popular stout on the Unix market, it was
discontinued in favor of a lager.
        SysV lager: Clear and thirst-quenching, but lacking the body of
stout or the sweetness of ale.
We don't really understand it, so we'll give it to the programmers.
"We invented a new protocol and called it Kermit, after Kermit the Frog,
star of "The Muppet Show." [3]

[3]  Why?  Mostly because there was a Muppets calendar on the wall when we
were trying to think of a name, and Kermit is a pleasant, unassuming sort of
character.  But since we weren't sure whether it was OK to name our protocol
after this popular television and movie star, we pretended that KERMIT was an
acronym; unfortunately, we could never find a good set of words to go with the
letters, as readers of some of our early source code can attest.  Later, while
looking through a name book for his forthcoming baby, Bill Catchings noticed
that "Kermit" was a Celtic word for "free", which is what all Kermit programs
should be, and words to this effect replaced the strained acronyms in our
source code (Bill's baby turned out to be a girl, so he had to name her Becky
instead).  When BYTE Magazine was preparing our 1984 Kermit article for
publication, they suggested we contact Henson Associates Inc. for permission
to say that we did indeed name the protocol after Kermit the Frog.  Permission
was kindly granted, and now the real story can be told.  I resisted the
temptation, however, to call the present work "Kermit the Book."
                -- Frank da Cruz, "Kermit - A File Transfer Protocol"
Why do we want intelligent terminals  when there are so many stupid users?
X windows:
        Accept any substitute.
        If it's broke, don't fix it.
        If it ain't broke, fix it.
        Form follows malfunction.
        The Cutting Edge of Obsolescence.
        The trailing edge of software technology.
        Armageddon never looked so good.
        Japan's secret weapon.
        You'll envy the dead.
        Making the world safe for competing window systems.
        Let it get in YOUR way.
        The problem for your problem.
        If it starts working, we'll fix it.  Pronto.
        It could be worse, but it'll take time.
        Simplicity made complex.
        The greatest productivity aid since typhoid.
        Flakey and built to stay that way.

One thousand monkeys.  One thousand MicroVAXes.  One thousand years.
        X windows.
X windows:
        We will dump no core before its time.
        One good crash deserves another.
        A bad idea whose time has come.  And gone.
        We make excuses.
        It didn't even look good on paper.
        You laugh now, but you'll be laughing harder later!
        A new concept in abuser interfaces.
        How can something get so bad, so quickly?
        It could happen to you.
        The art of incompetence.
        You have nothing to lose but your lunch.
        When uselessness just isn't enough.
        More than a mere hindrance.  It's a whole new barrier!
        When you can't afford to be right.
        And you thought we couldn't make it worse.

If it works, it isn't X windows.
You had mail.  Paul read it, so ask him what it said.
You know you've been sitting in front of your Lisp machine too long
when you go out to the junk food machine and start wondering how to
make it give you the CADR of Item H so you can get that yummie
chocolate cupcake that's stuck behind the disgusting vanilla one.
        A girl spent a couple hours on the phone talking to her two best
friends, Maureen Jones, and Maureen Brown.  When asked by her father why she
had been on the phone so long, she responded "I heard a funny story today
and I've been telling it to the Maureens."
And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.
                -- Isaiah 56:12, New Standard Version
God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as
we speak.
                -- Arab proverb
Sic transit gloria mundi.
        [So passes away the glory of this world.]
                -- Thomas `a Kempis
"There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them"
- Heisenberg
In the beginning, I was made.  I didn't ask to be made.  No one consulted
with me or considered my feelings in this matter.  But if it brought some
passing fancy to some lowly humans as they haphazardly pranced their way
through life's mournful jungle, then so be it.
- Marvin the Paranoid Android, From Douglas Adams' Hitchiker's Guide to the
Galaxy Radio Scripts
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
- General James Gavin
There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
- Charles Anthony Richard Hoare
The so-called "desktop metaphor" of today's workstations is instead an
"airplane-seat" metaphor.  Anyone who has shuffled a lap full of papers while
seated between two portly passengers will recognize the difference -- one can
see only a very few things at once.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
...computer hardware progress is so fast.  No other technology since
civilization began has seen six orders of magnitude in performance-price
gain in 30 years.
- Fred Brooks, Jr.
One of the saddest lessons of history is this:  If we've been bamboozled
long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.  We're no
longer interested in finding out the truth.  The bamboozle has captured
us.  it is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that
we've been so credulous.  (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the
new bamboozles rise.)
-- Carl Sagan, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection," Parade, February 1, 1987
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson
I have sacrificed time, health, and fortune, in the desire to complete these
Calculating Engines.  I have also declined several offers of great personal
advantage to myself.  But, notwithstanding the sacrifice of these advantages
for the purpose of maturing an engine of almost intellectual power, and after
expending from my own private fortune a larger sum than the government of
England has spent on that machine, the execution of which it only commenced,
I have received neither an acknowledgement of my labors, not even the offer
of those honors or rewards which are allowed to fall within the reach of men
who devote themselves to purely scientific investigations...  

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

And at a period when the progress of physical science is obstructed by that
exhausting intellectual and manual labor, indispensable for its advancement,
which it is the object of the Analytical Engine to relieve, I think the
application of machinery in aid of the most complicated and abtruse
calculations can no longer be deemed unworthy of the attention of the country.
In fact, there is no reason why mental as well as bodily labor should not
be economized by the aid of machinery.
- Charles Babbage, Passage from the Life of a Philosopher
How many hardware guys does it take to change a light bulb?

"Well the diagnostics say it's fine buddy, so it's a software problem."
How many QA engineers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

3: 1 to screw it in and 2 to say "I told you so" when it doesn't work.
"So why don't you make like a tree, and get outta here."
  -- Biff in "Back to the Future"
I came home the other night and tried to open the door with my car keys...and
the building started up.  So I took it out for a drive.  A cop pulled me over
for speeding.  He asked me where I live... "Right here".
-- Steven Wright
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
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing materail aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality.  Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
   Fiery energy lanced out, but the beams struck an intangible wall between
the Gubru and the rapidly turning Earth ship.

   "Water!" it shrieked as it read the spectral report.  "A barrier of water
vapor!  A civilized race could not have found such a trick in the Library!
A civilized race could not have stooped so low!  A civilized race would not
have..."

   It screamed as the Gubru ship hit a cloud of drifting snowflakes.

- Startide Rising, by David Brin
Behind all the political rhetoric being hurled at us from abroad, we are
bringing home one unassailable fact -- [terrorism is] a crime by any civilized
standard, committed against innocent people, away from the scene of political
conflict, and must be dealt with as a crime. . . .
   [I]n our recognition of the nature of terrorism as a crime lies our best hope
of dealing with it. . . .
   [L]et us use the tools that we have.  Let us invoke the cooperation we have
the right to expect around the world, and with that cooperation let us shrink
the dark and dank areas of sanctuary until these cowardly marauders are held
to answer as criminals in an open and public trial for the crimes they have
committed, and receive the punishment they so richly deserve.
- William H. Webster, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 15 Oct 1985
"There is nothing so deadly as not to hold up to people the opportunity to
do great and wonderful things, if we wish to stimulate them in an active way."
- Dr. Harold Urey, Nobel Laureate in chemistry
"Largely because it is so tangible and exciting a program and as such will
serve to keep alive the interest and enthusiasm of the whole spectrum of
society...It is justified because...the program can give a sense of shared
adventure and achievement to the society at large."
- Dr. Colin S. Pittendrigh, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
The vigor of civilized societies is preserved by the widespread sense that high
aims are worth-while.  Vigorous societies harbor a certain extravagance of
objectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of personal
gratifications.  All strong interests easily become impersonal, the love of
a good job well done.  There is a sense of harmony about such an accomplishment,
the Peace brought by something worth-while.
- Alfred North Whitehead, 1963, in "The History of Manned Space Flight"
So we follow our wandering paths, and the very darkness acts as our guide and
our doubts serve to reassure us.
- Jean-Pierre de Caussade, eighteenth-century Jesuit priest
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind.  Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.  And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
- Thomas Jefferson
The notion that science does not concern itself with first causes -- that it
leaves the field to theology or metaphysics, and confines itself to mere
effects -- this notion has no support in the plain facts.  If it could,
science would explain the origin of life on earth at once--and there is
every reason to believe that it will do so on some not too remote tomorrow.
To argue that gaps in knowledge which will confront the seeker must be filled,
not by patient inquiry, but by intuition or revelation, is simply to give
ignorance a gratuitous and preposterous dignity....
- H. L. Mencken, 1930
"You know why there are so few sophisticated computer terrorists in the United
States?  Because your hackers have so much mobility into the establishment.
Here, there is no such mobility.  If you have the slightest bit of intellectual
integrity you cannot support the government.... That's why the best computer
minds belong to the opposition."
- an anonymous member of the outlawed Polish trade union, Solidarity
The fountain code has been tightened slightly so you can no longer dip objects
into a fountain or drink from one while you are floating in mid-air due to
levitation.

Teleporting to hell via a teleportation trap will no longer occur if the
character does not have fire resistance.

- README file from the NetHack game
One may be able to quibble about the quality of a single experiment, or
about the veracity of a given experimenter, but, taking all the supportive
experiments together, the weight of evidence is so strong as readily to
merit a wise man's reflection.
- Professor William Tiller, parapsychologist, Standford University,
  commenting on psi research
...we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", The Skeptical Inquirer,
  Vol XII No. 2
This was the ultimate form of ostentation among technology freaks -- to have
a system so complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no machines,
no wires, no controls.
- Michael Swanwick, "Vacuum Flowers"
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural function
are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the other.  There is
no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the brain now and then and
make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.  Actually, of course, this
is a working assumption only....It is quite conceivable that someday the
assumption will have to be rejected.  But it is important also to see that we
have not reached that day yet: the working assumption is a necessary one and
there is no real evidence opposed to it.  Our failure to solve a problem so
far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot logically be a determinist in
physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
- D. O. Hebb, Organization of Behavior:  A Neuropsychological Theory, 1949
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person
can doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all
present life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic
time, is as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ
only with respect to theories about how the process operates.
- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life",
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 128-131
... The book is worth attention for only two reasons:  (1) it attacks
attempts to expose sham paranormal studies; and (2) it is very well and
plausibly written and so rather harder to dismiss or refute by simple
jeering.
- Harry Eagar, reviewing "Beyond the Quantum" by Michael Talbot,
   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2, ppg. 200-201
This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered
french toast in the renaissance.
- Steven Wright, comedian
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"
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
The Messiah will come.  There will be a resurrection of the dead -- all
the things that Jews believed in before they got so damn sophisticated.
- Rabbi Meir Kahane
If one inquires why the American tradition is so strong against any
connection of State and Church, why it dreads even the rudiments of
religious teaching in state-maintained schools, the immediate and
superficial answer is not far to seek....
The cause lay largely in the diversity and vitality of the various
denominations, each fairly sure that, with a fair field and no favor,
it could make its own way; and each animated by a jealous fear that,
if any connection of State and Church were permitted, some rival
denomination would get an unfair advantage.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
...I would go so far as to suggest that, were it not for our ego and
concern to be different, the African apes would be included in our
family, the Hominidae.
- Richard Leakey
"You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape."
- Ellyn Mustard
You need tender loving care once a week - so that I can slap you into shape.
- Ellyn Mustard
I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and by men who
are equally certain that they represent the divine will.  I am sure that
either the one or the other is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some
respects, both.

I hope it will not be irreverent of me to say that if it is probable that
God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty,
it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me.
- Abraham Lincoln
"Creation science" has not entered the curriculum for a reason so simple
and so basic that we often forget to mention it: because it is false, and
because good teachers understand exactly why it is false.  What could be
more destructive of that most fragile yet most precious commodity in our
entire intellectualy heritage -- good teaching -- than a bill forcing
honorable teachers to sully their sacred trust by granting equal treatment
to a doctrine not only known to be false, but calculated to undermine any
general understanding of science as an enterprise?
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Skeptical Inquirer", Vol. 12, page 186
In arguing that current theories of brain function cast suspicion on ESP,
psychokinesis, reincarnation, and so on, I am frequently challenged with
the most popular of all neuro-mythologies -- the notion that we ordinarily
use only 10 percent of our brains...

This "cerebral spare tire" concept continues to nourish the clientele of
"pop psychologists" and their many recycling self-improvement schemes.  As
a metaphor for the fact that few of us fully exploit our talents, who could
deny it?  As a refuge for occultists seeking a neural basis of the miraculous,
it leaves much to be desired.
-- Barry L. Beyerstein, "The Brain and Consciousness:  Implications for
   Psi Phenomena", The Skeptical Enquirer, Vol. XII, No. 2, pg. 171
"If you want to eat hippopatomus, you've got to pay the freight."
-- attributed to an IBM guy, about why IBM software uses so much memory
I did cancel one performance in Holland where they thought my music was so easy
that they didn't rehearse at all.  And so the first time when I found that out,
I rehearsed the orchestra myself in front of the audience of 3,000 people and
the next day I rehearsed through the second movement -- this was the piece
_Cheap Imitation_ -- and they then were ashamed.  The Dutch people were ashamed
and they invited me to come to the Holland festival and they promised to
rehearse.  And when I got to Amsterdam they had changed the orchestra, and
again, they hadn't rehearsed.  So they were no more prepared the second time
than they had been the first.  I gave them a lecture and told them to cancel
the performance; they then said over the radio that i had insisted on their
cancelling the performance because they were "insufficiently Zen."  
Can you believe it?
-- composer John Cage, "Electronic Musician" magazine, March 88, pg. 89
"I mean, like, I just read your article in the Yale law recipe, on search and
seizure.  Man, that was really Out There."
   "I was so WRECKED when I wrote that..."
-- John Lovitz, as ex-Supreme Court nominee Alan Ginsburg, on SNL
"Someone's been mean to you! Tell me who it is, so I can punch him tastefully."
-- Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
"It's curtains for you, Mighty Mouse!  This gun is so futuristic that even
*I* don't know how it works!"
-- from Ralph Bakshi's Mighty Mouse
Pohl's law:
         Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.  
I believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
"No problem is so formidable that you can't walk away from it."
-- C. Schulz
"An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax."
-- David Letterman
Absolute:  Independent, irresponsible.  An absolute monarchy is one in which
the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins.  Not
many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by
limited monarchies, where the soverign's power for evil (and for good) is
greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Alliance:  In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their
hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately
plunder a third.
-- Ambrose Bierce
Inadmissible:  Not competent to be considered.  Said of certain kinds of
testimony which juries are supposed to be unfit to be entrusted with,
and which judges, therefore, rule out, even of proceedings before themselves
alone.  Hearsay evidence is inadmissible because the person quoted was
unsworn and is not before the court for examination; yet most momentous
actions, military, political, commercial and of every other kind, are
daily undertaken on hearsay evidence.  There is no religion in the world
that has any other basis than hearsay evidence.  Revelation is hearsay
evidence; that the Scriptures are the word of God we have only the
testimony of men long dead whose identy is not clearly established and
who are not known to have been sworn in any sense.  Under the rules of
evidence as they now exist in this country, no single assertion in the
Bible has in its support any evidence admissible in a court of law...

But as records of courts of justice are admissible, it can easily be proved
that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge to
mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.
If there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike
destitute of value.  --Ambrose Bierce
Ill-chosen abstraction is particularly evident in the design of the ADA
runtime system. The interface to the ADA runtime system is so opaque that
it is impossible to model or predict its performance, making it effectively
useless for real-time systems. -- Marc D. Donner and David H. Jameson.
  "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 could accept this openness, glasnost, perestroika, or whatever you want
to call it if they did these things: abolish the one party system; open the
Soviet frontier and allow Soviet people to travel freely; allow the Soviet
people to have real free enterprise; allow Western businessmen to do business
there, and permit freedom of speech and of the press.  But so far, the whole
country is like a concentration camp.  The barbed wire on the fence around
the Soviet Union is to keep people inside, in the dark.  This openness that
you are seeing, all these changes, are cosmetic and they have been designed
to impress shortsighted, naive, sometimes stupid Western leaders.  These
leaders gush over Gorbachev, hoping to do business with the Soviet Union or
appease it.  He will say: "Yes, we can do business!"  This while his
military machine in Afghanistan has killed over a million people out of a
population of 17 million.  Can you imagine that?
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976
   "Defense Electronics", Vol 20, No. 6, pg. 110
"I knew then (in 1970) that a 4-kbyte minicomputer would cost as much as
a house.  So I reasoned that after college, I'd have to live cheaply in
an apartment and put all my money into owning a computer."
-- Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, EE Times, June 6, 1988, pg 45
"If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways
to be hospitable to the unusual person.  You don't get innovation as a
democratic process.  You almost get it as an anti-democratic process.
Certainly you get it as an anthitetical process, so you have to have an
environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can
deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation."
-- Max DePree, chairman and CEO of Herman Miller Inc.,  
   "Herman Miller's Secrets of Corporate Creativity",
   The Wall Street Journal, May 3, 1988
"What if" is a trademark of Hewlett Packard, so stop using it in your
sentences without permission, or risk being sued.
Now, if the leaders of the world -- people who are leaders by virtue of
political, military or financial power, and not necessarily wisdom or
consideration for mankind -- if these leaders manage not to pull us
over the brink into planetary suicide, despite their occasional pompous
suggestions that they may feel obliged to do so, we may survive beyond
1988.  
-- George Rostky, EE Times, June 20, 1988 p. 45
"I dislike companies that have a we-are-the-high-priests-of-hardware-so-you'll-
like-what-we-give-you attitude.  I like commodity markets in which iron-and-
silicon hawkers know that they exist to provide fast toys for software types
like me to play with..."
-- Eric S. Raymond
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks.  Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest.  This is a fal-
lacy.  Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery.  Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done.  If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance.  It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850
In respect to lock-making, there can scarcely be such a thing as dishonesty
of intention: the inventor produces a lock which he honestly thinks will
possess such and such qualities; and he declares his belief to the world.
If others differ from him in opinion concerning those qualities, it is open
to them to say so; and the discussion, truthfully conducted, must lead to
public advantage: the discussion stimulates curiosity, and curiosity stimu-
lates invention.  Nothing but a partial and limited view of the question
could lead to the opinion that harm can result: if there be harm, it will be
much more than counterbalanced by good."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
   published around 1850.
First as to speech.  That privilege rests upon the premise that
there is no proposition so uniformly acknowledged that it may not be
lawfully challenged, questioned, and debated.  It need not rest upon
the further premise that there are no propositions that are not
open to doubt; it is enough, even if there are, that in the end it is
worse to suppress dissent than to run the risk of heresy.  Hence it
has been again and again unconditionally proclaimed that there are
no limits to the privilege so far as words seek to affect only the hearers'
beliefs and not their conduct.  The trouble is that conduct is almost
always based upon some belief, and that to change the hearer's belief
will generally to some extent change his conduct, and may even evoke
conduct that the law forbids.

[cf. Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, University of Chicago Press, 1952;
The Art and Craft of Judging: The Decisions of Judge Learned Hand,
edited and annotated by Hershel Shanks, The MacMillian Company, 1968.]
The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it
should have done.  Calculate that one rebellion in 13 states in the course
of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century and a half.  No country
should be so long without one.
-- Thomas Jefferson in letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787
Excitement and danger await your induction to tracer duty!  As a tracer,
you must rid the computer networks of slimy, criminal data thieves.
They are tricky and the action gets tough, so watch out!  Utilizing all
your skills, you'll either get your man or you'll get burned!
-- advertising for the computer game "Tracers"
"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble.  It's the
things we know that ain't so."
-- Artemus Ward aka Charles Farrar Brown
"It's no sweat, Henry.  Russ made it back to Bugtown before he died.  So he'll
regenerate in a couple of days.  It's just awful sloppy of him to get killed in
the first place.  Humph!"
-- Ron Post, Post Brothers Comics
If this is a service economy, why is the service so bad?
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so
certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
-- Bertrand Russell
The spectacle of astrology in the White House -- the governing center of
the world's greatest scientific and military power -- is so appalling that
it defies understanding and provides grounds for great fright.  The easiest
response is to laugh it off, and to indulge in wisecracks about Civil
Service ratings for horoscope makers and palm readers and whether Reagan
asked Mikhail Gorbachev for his sign.  A contagious good cheer is the
hallmark of this presidency, even when the most dismal matters are concerned.
But this time, it isn't funny.  It's plain scary.
-- Daniel S. Greenberg, Editor, _Science and Government Report_, writing in
   "Newsday", May 5, 1988
Even if we put all these nagging thoughts [four embarrassing questions about
astrology] aside for a moment, one overriding question remains to be asked.
Why would the positions of celestial objects at the moment of birth have an
effect on our characters, lives, or destinies?  What force or influence,
what sort of energy would travel from the planets and stars to all human
beings and affect our development or fate?  No amount of scientific-sounding
jargon or computerized calculations by astrologers can disguise this central
problem with astrology -- we can find no evidence of a mechanism by which
celestial objects can influence us in so specific and personal a way. . . .
Some astrologers argue that there may be a still unknown force that represents
the astrological influence. . . .If so, astrological predictions -- like those
of any scientific field -- should be easily tested. . . . Astrologers always
claim to be just a little too busy to carry out such careful tests of their
efficacy, so in the last two decades scientists and statisticians have
generously done such testing for them.  There have been dozens of well-designed
tests all around the world, and astrology has failed every one of them. . . .
I propose that we let those beckoning lights in the sky awaken our interest
in the real (and fascinating) universe beyond our planet, and not let them
keep us tied to an ancient fantasy left over from a time when we huddled by
the firelight, afraid of the night.
-- Andrew Fraknoi, Executive Officer, Astronomical Society of the Pacific,
    "Why Astrology Believers Should Feel Embarrassed," San Jose Mercury
    News, May 8, 1988
"So-called Christian rock. . . . is a diabolical force undermining Christianity
from within."
-- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocrite and TV preacher, self-described pornography addict,
"Two points of view: 'Christian' rock and roll.", The Evangelist, 17(8): 49-50.
"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
"To undertake a project, as the word's derivation indicates, means to cast an
idea out ahead of oneself so that it gains autonomy and is fulfilled not only
by the efforts of its originator but, indeed, independently of him as well.
-- Czeslaw Milosz
"I figured there was this holocaust, right, and the only ones left alive were
Donna Reed, Ozzie and Harriet, and the Cleavers."
-- Wil Wheaton explains why everyone in "Star Trek: The Next Generation"
    is so nice
"Despite its suffix, skepticism is not an "ism" in the sense of a belief
or dogma.  It is simply an approach to the problem of telling what is
counterfeit and what is genuine.  And a recognition of how costly it may
be to fail to do so.  To be a skeptic is to cultivate "street smarts" in
the battle for control of one's own mind, one's own money, one's own
allegiances.  To be a skeptic, in short, is to refuse to be a victim.
-- Robert S. DeBear, "An Agenda for Reason, Realism, and Responsibility,"
New York Skeptic (newsletter of the New York Area Skeptics, Inc.), Spring 1988
        Well, punk is kind of anti-ethical, anyway.  Its ethics, so to speak,
include a disdain for ethics in general.  If you have to think about some-
thing so hard, then it's bullshit anyway; that's the idea.  Punks are anti-
ismists, to coin a term.  But nonetheless, they have a pretty clearly defined
stance and image, and THAT is what we hang the term `punk' on.
-- Jeff G. Bone
        So we get to my point.  Surely people around here read things that
aren't on the *Officially Sanctioned Cyberpunk Reading List*.  Surely we
don't (any of us) really believe that there is some big, deep political and
philosophical message in all this, do we?  So if this `cyberpunk' thing is
just a term of convenience, how can somebody sell out?  If cyberpunk is just a
word we use to describe a particular style and imagery in sf, how can it be
dead?  Where are the profound statements that the `Movement' is or was trying
to make?
        I think most of us are interested in examining and discussing literary
(and musical) works that possess a certain stylistic excellence and perhaps a
rather extreme perspective; this is what CP is all about, no?  Maybe there
should be a newsgroup like, say, alt.postmodern or somthing.  Something less
restrictive in scope than alt.cyberpunk.
-- Jeff G. Bone
"It says he made us all to be just like him.  So if we're dumb, then god is
dumb, and maybe even a little ugly on the side."
-- Frank Zappa
"You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?"
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-semitic Christians
Q: Somebody just posted that Roman Polanski directed Star Wars.  What
should I do?

A: Post the correct answer at once!  We can't have people go on believing
that!  Very good of you to spot this.  You'll probably be the only one to
make the correction, so post as soon as you can.  No time to lose, so
certainly don't wait a day, or check to see if somebody else has made the
correction.

And it's not good enough to send the message by mail.  Since you're the
only one who really knows that it was Francis Coppola, you have to inform
the whole net right away!

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
Q: How can I choose what groups to post in?  ...
Q: How about an example?

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

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

You may also find it is more fun to post the article once in each group.
If you list all the newsgroups in the same article, some newsreaders will
only show the the article to the reader once!  Don't tolerate this.
-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and
I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist.
This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
-- Matt Cartmill
"Time is an illusion.  Lunchtime doubly so."
-- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
                     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)
"Stan and I thought that this experiment was so stupid, we decided to finance
it ourselves."
-- Martin Fleischmann, co-discoverer of room-temperature fusion (?)
I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments of
others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion,
such as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I
conceive", "I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it
appears to me at present".

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

I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the conversations I
engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I proposed my
opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.  I had
less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
-- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
"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
"Well I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many
men happy."
-- Ellyn Mustard, about marriage
"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
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand
hat was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was reknowned for
being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the time, which
obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be puzzled
rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
-- Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
"I don't know where we come from,
Don't know where we're going to,
And if all this should have a reason,
We would be the last to know.

So let's just hope there is a promised land,
And until then,
...as best as you can."
-- Steppenwolf, "Rock Me Baby"
"None of our men are "experts."  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible."
-- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work," p. 86 (1922):
We'll be more than happy to do so once Jim shows the slightest sign
of interest in fixing his proposal to deal with the technical
arguments that have *already* been made.  Most engineers have
learned there is little to be gained in fine-tuning the valve timing
on a gasoline-powered internal combustion engine when the pistons
and crankshaft are missing...
                -- Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu on NANOG
Anybody that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years
organising and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office.
                -- David Broder
Census Taker to Housewife:
Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many?
Every one says that politicians lie all the time, and that just isn't so!
But you do have to understand body language to know when they're lying and
when they aren't.

        When a politician rubs his nose, he isn't lying.
        When a politician tugs on his ear, he isn't lying.
        When a politician scratches his collar bone, he isn't lying.
        When his mouth starts moving, that's when he's lying!
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
        Graduating seniors, parents and friends...
        Let me begin by reassuring you that my remarks today will stand up
to the most stringent requirements of the new appropriateness.
        The intra-college sensitivity advisory committee has vetted the
text of even trace amounts of subconscious racism, sexism and classism.
        Moreover, a faculty panel of deconstructionists have reconfigured
the rhetorical components within a post-structuralist framework, so as to
expunge any offensive elements of western rationalism and linear logic.
        Finally, all references flowing from a white, male, eurocentric
perspective have been eliminated, as have any other ruminations deemed
denigrating to the political consensus of the moment.

        Thank you and good luck.
                -- Doonesbury, the University Chancellor's graduation speech.
I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote
peace than our governments.  Indeed, I think that people want peace so much
that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them
have it.
                -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
I owe the government $3400 in taxes.  So I sent them two hammers and a
toilet seat.
                -- Michael McShane
I realize that the MX missile is none of our concern.  I realize that the
whole point of living in a democracy is that we pay professional
congresspersons to concern themselves with things like the MX missile so we
can be free to concern ourselves with getting hold of the plumber.

But from time to time, I feel I must address major public issues such as
this, because in a free and open society, where the very future of the world
hinges on decisions made by our elected leaders, you never win large cash
journalism awards if you stick to the topics I usually write about, such as
nose-picking.
                -- Dave Barry, "At Last, the Ultimate Deterrent Against
                   Political Fallout"
I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes.  I hope
they do get 'em lowered down enough so people can afford to pay 'em.
                -- The Best of Will Rogers
I try to keep an open mind, but not so open that my brains fall out.
                -- Judge Harold T. Stone
I used to be a rebel in my youth.

This cause... that cause... (chuckle) I backed 'em ALL!  But I learned.
Rebellion is simply a device used by the immature to hide from his own
problems.  So I lost interest in politics.  Now when I feel aroused by
a civil rights case or a passport hearing... I realize it's just a device.
I go to my analyst and we work it out.  You have no idea how much better
I feel these days.
                -- J. Feiffer
If they were so inclined, they could impeach him because they don't like
his necktie.
                -- Attorney General William Saxbe
If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up some
memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into memorizin'
it, even if they don't know what it means.
                -- Walt Kelly, "The Pogo Party"
In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence
is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
        Inheritance taxes are getting so out of line, that the deceased family
often doesn't have a legacy to stand on.
It is not the critic who counts, or how the strong man stumbled, or whether
the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who
knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, and who spends himself in a
worthy cause, and if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that
he'll never be with those cold and timid souls who never know either victory
or defeat.
                -- Teddy Roosevelt
It's no surprise that things are so screwed up: everyone that knows how
to run a government is either driving taxicabs or cutting hair.
                -- George Burns
Just as most issues are seldom black or white, so are most good solutions
seldom black or white.  Beware of the solution that requires one side to be
totally the loser and the other side to be totally the winner.  The reason
there are two sides to begin with usually is because neither side has all
the facts.  Therefore, when the wise mediator effects a compromise, he is
not acting from political motivation.  Rather, he is acting from a deep
sense of respect for the whole truth.
                -- Stephen R. Schwambach
Listen, there is no courage or any extra courage that I know of to find out
the right thing to do.  Now, it is not only necessary to do the right thing,
but to do it in the right way and the only problem you have is what is the
right thing to do and what is the right way to do it.  That is the problem.
But this economy of ours is not so simple that it obeys to the opinion of
bias or the pronouncements of any particular individual, even to the President.
This is an economy that is made up of 173 million people, and it reflects
their desires, they're ready to buy, they're ready to spend, it is a thing
that is too complex and too big to be affected adversely or advantageously
just by a few words or any particular -- say, a little this and that, or even
a panacea so alleged.
                -- D.D. Eisenhower, in response to: "Has the government
                been lacking in courage and boldness in facing up to
                the recession?"
Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.
                -- Winston Churchill

Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as
satisfying as an income tax refund.
                -- F.J. Raymond
Nothing, nothing, nothing, no error, no crime is so absolutely repugnant
to God as everything which is official; and why? because the official is
so impersonal and therefore the deepest insult which can be offered to a
personality.
                -- Soren Kierkegaard
        Once there was a marine biologist who loved dolphins. He spent his
time trying to feed and protect his beloved creatures of the sea.  One day,
in a fit of inventive genius, he came up with a serum that would make
dolphins live forever!
        Of course he was ecstatic. But he soon realized that in order to mass
produce this serum he would need large amounts of a certain compound that was
only found in nature in the metabolism of a rare South American bird.  Carried
away by his love for dolphins, he resolved that he would go to the zoo and
steal one of these birds.
        Unbeknownst to him, as he was arriving at the zoo an elderly lion was
escaping from its cage.  The zookeepers were alarmed and immediately began
combing the zoo for the escaped animal, unaware that it had simply lain down
on the sidewalk and had gone to sleep.
        Meanwhile, the marine biologist arrived at the zoo and procured his
bird.  He was so excited by the prospect of helping his dolphins that he
stepped absentmindedly stepped over the sleeping lion on his way back to his
car.  Immediately, 1500 policemen converged on him and arrested him for
transporting a myna across a staid lion for immortal porpoises.
Our sires' age was worse that our grandsires'.
We their sons are more worthless than they:
so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.
                -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.
                -- Otto Von Bismarck
Poverty must have its satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor
people.
                -- Don Herold
Shah, shah!  Ayatollah you so!
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not, when
a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent
songs.  I was myself within the circle, so that I neither saw nor heard as
those without might see and hear.  They told a tale which was then altogether
beyond my feeble comprehension: they were tones, loud, long and deep,
breathing the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest
anguish.  Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God
for deliverance from chains.
                -- Frederick Douglass
So from the depths of its enchantment, Terra was able to calculate a course
of action.  Here at last was an opportunity to consort with Dirbanu on a
friendly basis -- great Durbanu which, since it had force fields which Earth
could not duplicate, must of necessity have many other things Earth could
use; mighty Durbanu before whom we would kneel in supplication (with purely-
for-defense bombs hidden in our pockets) with lowered heads (making invisible
the knife in our teeth) and ask for crumbs from their table (in order to
extrapolate the location of their kitchens).
                -- Theodore Sturgeon, "The World Well Lost"
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
                -- Voltarine de Cleyre
So many men, so many opinions; every one his own way.
                -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
        Somewhat alarmed at the continued growth of the number of employees
on the Department of Agriculture payroll in 1962, Michigan Republican Robert
Griffin proposed an amendment to the farm bill so that "the total number of
employees in the Department of Agriculture at no time exceeds the number of
farmers in America."
                -- Bill Adler, "The Washington Wits"
        Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas.  Five years later?
Six?  It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era -- the kind of peak that
never comes again.  San Fransisco in the middle sixties was a very special time
and place to be a part of.  Maybe it meant something.  Maybe not, in the long
run...  There was madness in any direction, at any hour.  If not across the
Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda...  You could
strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we
were doing was right, that we were winning...
        And that, I think, was the handle -- that sense of inevitable victory
over the forces of Old and Evil.  Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't
need that. Our energy would simply prevail.  There was no point in fighting
-- on our side or theirs.  We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest
of a high and beautiful wave.  So now, less than five years later, you can go
up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes
you can almost ___see the high-water mark -- that place where the wave finally
broke and rolled back.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson
Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
out of the market.
The fashionable drawing rooms of London have always been happy to accept
outsiders -- if only on their own, albeit undemanding terms.  That is to
say, artists, so long as they are not too talented, men of humble birth,
so long as they have since amassed several million pounds, and socialists
so long as they are Tories.
                -- Christopher Booker
        The General disliked trying to explain the highly technical inner
workings of the U.S. Air Force.
        "$7,662 for a ten cup coffee maker, General?" the Senator asked.
        In his head he ran through his standard explanations.  "It's not so,"
he thought.  "It's a deterrent."  Soon he came up with, "It's computerized,
Senator.  Tiny computer chips make coffee that's smooth and full-bodied.  Try
a cup."
        The Senator did.  "Pfffttt!  Tastes like jet fuel!"
        "It's not so," the General thought.  "It's a deterrent."
        Then he remembered something.  "We bought a lot of untested computer
chips," the General answered.  "They got into everything.  Just a little
mix-up.  Nothing serious."
        Then he remembered something else.  It was at the site of the
mysterious B-1 crash.  A strange smell in the fuel lines.  It smelled like
coffee.  Smooth and full bodied...
                -- Another Episode of General's Hospital
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free
information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax
tip is that you should print neatly.  If you ask them a real tax question,
such as how you can cheat, they're useless.

So, for guidance, you want to look to big business.  Big business never pays
a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer
organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
                -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as much as
we could with both of them."
                -- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don't go to a war,
and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy."
                -- Celine
The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president?  What is it
about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that
you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste?
                -- Dave Barry, "On Presidential Politics"
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations
of the victors.  History is written by the survivors.
                -- Max Lerner
The time was the 19th of May, 1780.  The place was Hartford, Connecticut.
The day has gone down in New England history as a terrible foretaste of
Judgement Day.  For at noon the skies turned from blue to grey and by
mid-afternoon had blackened over so densely that, in that religious age,
men fell on their knees and begged a final blessing before the end came.
The Connecticut House of Representatives was in session.  And, as some of
the men fell down and others clamored for an immediate adjournment, the
Speaker of the House, one Col. Davenport, came to his feet.  He silenced
them and said these words: "The day of judgment is either approaching or
it is not.  If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment.  If it is, I
choose to be found doing my duty.  I wish therefore that candles may be
brought."
                -- Alistair Cooke
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 the unwilling, led by the ungrateful, are doing the impossible.
We've done so much, for so long, with so little,
that we are now qualified to do something with nothing.
Well, he didn't know what to do, so he decided to look at the government,
to see what they did, and scale it down and run his life that way.
                -- Laurie Anderson
"What George Washington did for us was to throw out the British, so that we
wouldn't have a fat, insensitive government running our country. Nice try
anyway, George."
                -- D.J. on KSFO/KYA
When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced
to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
                -- Brendan Behan
When we jumped into Sicily, the units became separated, and I couldn't find
anyone.  Eventually I stumbled across two colonels, a major, three captains,
two lieutenants, and one rifleman, and we secured the bridge.  Never in the
history of war have so few been led by so many.
                -- General James Gavin
You first have to decide whether to use the short or the long form. The
short form is what the Internal Revenue Service calls "simplified", which
means it is designed for people who need the help of a Sears tax-preparation
expert to distinguish between their first and last names.  Here's the
complete text:

"(1) How much did you make?  (AMOUNT)
(2) How much did we here at the government take out?  (AMOUNT)
(3) Hey!  Sounds like we took too much!  So we're going to
     send an official government check for (ONE-FIFTEENTH OF
     THE AMOUNT WE TOOK) directly to the (YOUR LAST NAME)
     household at (YOUR ADDRESS), for you to spend in any way
     you please! Which just goes to show you, (YOUR FIRST
     NAME), that it pays to file the short form!"

The IRS wants you to use this form because it gets to keep most of your
money.  So unless you have pond silt for brains, you want the long form.
                -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes"
And they mainly want to teach them not to question, not to imagine,
but to be obedient and behave well so that they can hold them forever as
children to their bosom as the second millennium lurches toward its
panicky close.
                -- Jerome Stern
Alliance, n.:
        In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
        their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
        separately plunder a third.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Begathon, n.:
        A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
        you won't have to watch commercials.
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
        Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
        vividly manifests their lack of progress.
comment:
        A superfluous element of a source program included so the
        programmer can remember what the hell it was he was doing
        six months later.  Only the weak-minded need them, according
        to those who think they aren't.
Conference, n.:
        A special meeting in which the boss gathers subordinates to hear
        what they have to say, so long as it doesn't conflict with what
        he's already decided to do.
Cruickshank's Law of Committees:
        If a committee is allowed to discuss a bad idea long enough, it
        will inevitably decide to implement the idea simply because so
        much work has already been done on it.
Five rules for eternal misery:
        (1) Always try to exhort others to look upon you favorably.
        (2) Make lots of assumptions about situations and be sure to
            treat these assumptions as though they are reality.
        (3) Then treat each new situation as though it's a crisis.
        (4) Live in the past and future only (become obsessed with
            how much better things might have been or how much worse
            things might become).
        (5) Occasionally stomp on yourself for being so stupid as to
            follow the first four rules.
Fortune's Rules for Memo Wars: #2

Given the incredible advances in sociocybernetics and telepsychology over
the last few years, we are now able to completely understand everything that
the author of an memo is trying to say.  Thanks to modern developments
in electrocommunications like notes, vnews, and electricity, we have an
incredible level of interunderstanding the likes of which civilization has
never known.  Thus, the possibility of your misinterpreting someone else's
memo is practically nil.  Knowing this, anyone who accuses you of having
done so is a liar, and should be treated accordingly.  If you *do* understand
the memo in question, but have absolutely nothing of substance to say, then
you have an excellent opportunity for a vicious ad hominem attack.  In fact,
the only *inappropriate* times for an ad hominem attack are as follows:

        1: When you agree completely with the author of an memo.
        2: When the author of the original memo is much bigger than you are.
        3: When replying to one of your own memos.
Galbraith's Law of Human Nature:
        Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that
        there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.
Gerrold's Laws of Infernal Dynamics:
        (1) An object in motion will always be headed in the wrong direction.
        (2) An object at rest will always be in the wrong place.
        (3) The energy required to change either one of these states
           will always be more than you wish to expend, but never so
           much as to make the task totally impossible.
gyroscope, n.:
        A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an axis and also
        free to rotate about one or both of two axes perpindicular to
        each other and the axis of spin so that a rotation of one of the
        two mutually perpendicular axes results from application of
        torque to the other when the wheel is spinning and so that the
        entire apparatus offers considerable opposition depending on
        the angular momentum to any torque that would change the direction
        of the axis of spin.
                -- Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary
half-done, n.:
        This is the best way to eat a kosher dill -- when it's still crunchy,
        light green, yet full of garlic flavor.  The difference between this
        and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the
        difference between life and death.

        You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill there
        in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport,
        fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall,
        transfer to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on
        Essex (along the park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk
        about fifteen steps, turn ninety degrees left, and stop.  Say to the
        man, "Let me have a nice half-done."  Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
Information Processing:
        What you call data processing when people are so disgusted with
        it they won't let it be discussed in their presence.
"It's in process":
        So wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless.
Jim Nasium's Law:
        In a large locker room with hundreds of lockers, the few people
        using the facility at any one time will all have lockers next to
        each other so that everybody is cramped.
Johnson's First Law:
        When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
        most inconvenient possible time.
Lactomangulation, n.:
        Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly
        that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side.
                -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
Law of Selective Gravity:
        An object will fall so as to do the most damage.

Jenning's Corollary:
        The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side
        down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

Law of the Perversity of Nature:
        You cannot determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter.
Lee's Law:
        Mother said there would be days like this,
        but she never said that there'd be so many!
Lemma:  All horses are the same color.
Proof (by induction):
        Case n = 1: In a set with only one horse, it is obvious that all
        horses in that set are the same color.
        Case n = k: Suppose you have a set of k+1 horses.  Pull one of these
        horses out of the set, so that you have k horses.  Suppose that all
        of these horses are the same color.  Now put back the horse that you
        took out, and pull out a different one.  Suppose that all of the k
        horses now in the set are the same color.  Then the set of k+1 horses
        are all the same color.  We have k true => k+1 true; therefore all
        horses are the same color.
Theorem: All horses have an infinite number of legs.
Proof (by intimidation):
        Everyone would agree that all horses have an even number of legs.  It
        is also well-known that horses have forelegs in front and two legs in
        back.  4 + 2 = 6 legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a
        horse to have!  Now the only number that is both even and odd is
        infinity; therefore all horses have an infinite number of legs.
        However, suppose that there is a horse somewhere that does not have an
        infinite number of legs.  Well, that would be a horse of a different
        color; and by the Lemma, it doesn't exist.
MAFIA, n:
        [Acronym for Mechanized Applications in Forced Insurance
Accounting.] An extensive network with many on-line and offshore
subsystems running under OS, DOS, and IOS.  MAFIA documentation is
rather scanty, and the MAFIA sales office exhibits that testy
reluctance to bona fide inquiries which is the hallmark of so many DP
operations.  From the little that has seeped out, it would appear that
MAFIA operates under a non-standard protocol, OMERTA, a tight-lipped
variant of SNA, in which extended handshakes also perform complex
security functions.  The known timesharing aspects of MAFIA point to a
more than usually autocratic operating system.  Screen prompts carry an
imperative, nonrefusable weighting (most menus offer simple YES/YES
options, defaulting to YES) that precludes indifference or delay.
Uniquely, all editing under MAFIA is performed centrally, using a
powerful rubout feature capable of erasing files, filors, filees, and
entire nodal aggravations.
                -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
Meader's Law:
        Whatever happens to you, it will previously
        have happened to everyone you know, only more so.
Mustgo, n.:
        Any item of food that has been sitting in the refrigerator so
        long it has become a science project.
                -- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
party, n.:
        A gathering where you meet people who drink
        so much you can't even remember their names.
patent:
        A method of publicizing inventions so others can copy them.
Pohl's law:
        Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
Priority:
        A statement of the importance of a user or a program.  Often
        expressed as a relative priority, indicating that the user doesn't
        care when the work is completed so long as he is treated less
        badly than someone else.
QOTD:
        "It was so cold last winter that I saw a lawyer with his
        hands in his own pockets."
QOTD:
        "The baby was so ugly they had to hang a pork chop around its
        neck to get the dog to play with it."
QOTD:
        "What I like most about myself is that I'm so understanding
        when I mess things up."
QOTD:
        "You're so dumb you don't even have wisdom teeth."
Rhode's Law:
        When any principle, law, tenet, probability, happening, circumstance,
        or result can in no way be directly, indirectly, empirically, or
        circuitously proven, derived, implied, inferred, induced, deducted,
        estimated, or scientifically guessed, it will always for the purpose
        of convenience, expediency, political advantage, material gain, or
        personal comfort, or any combination of the above, or none of the
        above, be unilaterally and unequivocally assumed, proclaimed, and
        adhered to as absolute truth to be undeniably, universally, immutably,
        and infinitely so, until such time as it becomes advantageous to
        assume otherwise, maybe.
Shannon's Observation:
        Nothing is so frustrating as a bad situation that is beginning to
        improve.
Technicality, n.:
        In an English court a man named Home was tried for slander in having
        accused a neighbor of murder.  His exact words were: "Sir Thomas Holt
        hath taken a cleaver and stricken his cook upon the head, so that one
        side of his head fell on one shoulder and the other side upon the
        other shoulder."  The defendant was acquitted by instruction of the
        court, the learned judges holding that the words did not charge murder,
        for they did not affirm the death of the cook, that being only an
        inference.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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"
Theorem: All positive integers are equal.
Proof: Sufficient to show that for any two positive integers, A and B, A = B.
        Further, it is sufficient to show that for all N > 0, if A and B
        (positive integers) satisfy (MAX(A, B) = N) then A = B.

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

Assume that the theorem is true for some value k.  Take A and B with
        MAX(A, B) = k+1.  Then  MAX((A-1), (B-1)) = k.  And hence
        (A-1) = (B-1).  Consequently, A = B.
vacation, n.:
        A two-week binge of rest and relaxation so intense that
        it takes another 50 weeks of your restrained workaday
        life-style to recuperate.
Historical Slumming:
        The act of visiting locations such as diners, smokestack
industrial sites, rural villages -- locations where time appears to
have been frozen many years back -- so as to experience relief when
one returns back to "the present."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Emotional Ketchup Burst:
        The bottling up of opinions and emotions inside oneself so
that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking and confusing
employers and friends -- most of whom thought things were fine.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Clique Maintenance:
        The need of one generation to see the generation following it
as deficient so as to bolster its own collective ego: "Kids today do
nothing.  They're so apathetic.  We used to go out and protest.  All
they do is shop and complain."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Ultra Short Term Nostalgia:
        Homesickness for the extremely recent past: "God, things seemed
so much better in the world last week."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Underdogging:
        The tendency to almost invariably side with the underdog in a
given situation.  The consumer expression of this trait is the
purchasing of less successful, "sad," or failing products: "I know
these Vienna franks are heart failure on a stick, but they were so sad
looking up against all the other yuppie food items that I just had to
buy them."
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
                   Culture"
Down-Nesting:
        The tendency of parents to move to smaller, guest-room-free
houses after the children have moved away so as to avoid children aged
20 to 30 who have boomeranged home.
                -- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
Agree with them now, it will save so much time.
Am I ranting?  I hope so.  My ranting gets raves.
AMAZING BUT TRUE ...
        There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it
        would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
floor -- especially in the dark.
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 wouldn't be so paranoid if you weren't all out to get me!!
I'm so broke I can't even pay attention.
If it wasn't so warm out today, it would be cooler.
If rabbits' feet are so lucky, what happened to the rabbit?
Lost interest?  It's so bad I've lost apathy.
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
                -- Michel de Montaigne
Nothing is so often irretrievably missed as a daily opportunity.
                -- Ebner-Eschenbach
Our problems are so serious that the best way to talk about them is
lightheartedly.
Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now
I can remember things that *have* happened before ...
Some changes are so slow, you don't notice them.  Others are so fast,
they don't notice you.
The sixth sheik's sixth sheep's sick.
        [so say said sentence sextuply...]
The sky is blue so we know where to stop mowing.
                -- Judge Harold T. Stone
The world really isn't any worse.  It's just that the news coverage
is so much better.
What's so funny?
Why are you so hard to ignore?
Why is it called a funny bone when it hurts so much?
Why is it taking so long for her to bring out all the good in you?
A guy walks into a bar, orders a beer, carries it to the bathroom and dumps it
into a urinal.  Over the course of the next few hours, he goes back to the bar
and repeats this sequence -- several times.  Finally the bartender got so
curious that he leaned over the bar and asked him what he was doing.

Replied the customer, "Avoiding the middleman."
Harry's bar has a new cocktail.  It's called MRS punch.  They make it with
milk, rum and sugar and it's wonderful.  The milk is for vitality and the
sugar is for pep.  They put in the rum so that people will know what to do
with all that pep and vitality.
I will not drink!
But if I do...
I will not get drunk!
But if I do...
I will not in public!
But if I do...
I will not fall down!
But if I do...
I will fall face down so that they cannot see my company badge.
If I knew what brand [of whiskey] he drinks, I would send a barrel or
so to my other generals.
                -- Abraham Lincoln, on General Grant
Look at it this way: Your daughter just named the fresh turkey you brought
home "Cuddles", so you're going out to buy a canned ham.  And you're still
drinking ordinary scotch?
Riffle West Virginia is so small that the Boy Scout had to double as the
town drunk.
So, is the glass half empty, half full, or just twice as
large as it needs to be?
Symptom:                Feet cold and wet, glass empty.
Fault:                        Glass being held at incorrect angle.
Action Required:        Turn glass other way up so that open end points
                        toward ceiling.

Symptom:                Feet warm and wet.
Fault:                        Improper bladder control.
Action Required:        Go stand next to nearest dog.  After a while complain
                        to the owner about its lack of house training and
                        demand a beer as compensation.
                -- Bar Troubleshooting
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."
Q:        Why do WASPs play golf ?
A:        So they can dress like pimps.
         A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
                          by Mark Twain

        For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped
to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer
be part of the alphabet.  The only kase in which "c" would be retained
would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later.  Year 2
might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the
same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with
"i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
        Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear
with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12
or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.
Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi
ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz
ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
        Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud
hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
        A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor
recorded the following on the patient's chart:  "Patient failed to fulfill
his wellness potential."
        Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal
of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors."
        A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti-
personnel devices."  You probably call them bombs.
        At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian
mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status."  That is, they were fired.
        After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls
of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it)
only to receive the following notice:  "We must report that during the handling
of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an
unusual laboratory experience."  The use of the passive is a particularly nice
touch, don't you think?  Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad
experience.  Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his
pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously
sent him.
                -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics,
because the stakes are so low.
                -- Wallace Sayre
As Gen. de Gaulle occassionally acknowledges America to be the daughter
of Europe, so I am pleased to come to Yale, the daughter of Harvard.
                -- J.F. Kennedy
... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.  Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell.  If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
                -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people
so resolutely pursuing it.
Maybe ain't ain't so correct, but I notice that lots of folks who ain't
using ain't ain't eatin' well.
                -- Will Rogers
Never have so many understood so little about so much.
                -- James Burke
No wonder you're tired!  You understood so much today.
OK, so you're a Ph.D.  Just don't touch anything.
Periphrasis is the putting of things in a round-about way.  "The cost may be
upwards of a figure rather below 10m#." is a periphrasis for The cost may be
nearly 10m#.  "In Paris there reigns a complete absence of really reliable
news" is a periphrasis for There is no reliable news in Paris.  "Rarely does
the 'Little Summer' linger until November, but at times its stay has been
prolonged until quite late in the year's penultimate month" contains a
periphrasis for November, and another for lingers.  "The answer is in the
negative" is a periphrasis for No.  "Was made the recipient of" is a
periphrasis for Was presented with.  The periphrasis style is hardly possible
on any considerable scale without much use of abstract nouns such as "basis,
case, character, connexion, dearth, description, duration, framework, lack,
nature, reference, regard, respect".  The existence of abstract nouns is a
proof that abstract thought has occurred; abstract thought is a mark of
civilized man; and so it has come about that periphrasis and civilization are
by many held to be inseparable.  These good people feel that there is an almost
indecent nakedness, a reversion to barbarism, in saying No news is good news
instead of "The absence of intelligence is an indication of satisfactory
developments."
                -- Fowler's English Usage
Rules for Good Grammar #4.
         (1) Don't use no double negatives.
         (2) Make each pronoun agree with their antecedents.
         (3) Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
         (4) About them sentence fragments.
         (5) When dangling, watch your participles.
         (6) Verbs has got to agree with their subjects.
         (7) Just between you and i, case is important.
         (8) Don't write run-on sentences when they are hard to read.
         (9) Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
        (10) Try to not ever split infinitives.
        (11) It is important to use your apostrophe's correctly.
        (12) Proofread your writing to see if you any words out.
        (13) Correct speling is essential.
        (14) A preposition is something you never end a sentence with.
        (15) While a transcendant vocabulary is laudable, one must be eternally
             careful so that the calculated objective of communication does not
             become ensconsed in obscurity.  In other words, eschew obfuscation.
Smartness runs in my family.  When I went to school I was so smart my
teacher was in my class for five years.
                -- George Burns
The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious
seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the
unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more
bounteous harvest of gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.
                -- Sir Peter Medawar
Universities are places of knowledge.  The freshman each bring a little
in with them, and the seniors take none away, so knowledge accumulates.
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
                -- C. P. Snow
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
                -- Karl Kraus
A prominent broadcaster, on a big-game safari in Africa, was taken to a
watering hole where the life of the jungle could be observed. As he
looked down from his tree platform and described the scene into his
tape recorder, he saw two gnus grazing peacefully. So preoccupied were
they that they failed to observe the approach of a pride of lions led
by two magnificent specimens, obviously the leaders. The lions charged,
killed the gnus, and dragged them into the bushes where their feasting
could not be seen.  A little while later the two kings of the jungle
emerged and the radioman recorded on his tape: "Well, that's the end of
the gnus and here, once again, are the head lions."
After two or three weeks of this madness, you begin to feel As One with
the man who said, "No news is good news." In twenty-eight papers, only
the rarest kind of luck will turn up more than two or three articles of
any interest...  but even then the interest items are usually buried deep
around paragraph 16 on the jump (or "Cont.  on ...") page...

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

Now that's good journalism.  Totally objective; very active and straight
to the point.
                -- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"
The world really isn't any worse.  It's just that the news coverage
is so much better.
Aberdeen was so small that when the family with the car went
on vacation, the gas station and drive-in theatre had to close.
Eli and Bessie went to sleep.
In the middle of the night, Bessie nudged Eli.
        "Please be so kindly and close the window.  It's cold outside!"
Half asleep, Eli murmured,
        "Nu ... so if I'll close the window, will it be warm outside?"
Fortune presents:
        USEFUL PHRASES IN ESPERANTO, #5.

Mi ^cevalovipus vin se mi havus                I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.
        ^cevalon.
Vere vi ^sercas.                        You must be kidding.
Nu, parDOOOOOnu min!                        Well exCUUUUUSE me!
Kiu invitis vin?                        Who invited you?
Kion vi diris pri mia patrino?                What did you say about my mother?
Bu^so^stopu min per kulero.                Gag me with a spoon.
Gay shlafen:  Yiddish for "go to sleep".

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

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

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our
lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
                -- Robert Orben
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.
In Minnesota they ask why all football fields in Iowa have artificial turf.
It's so the cheerleaders won't graze during the game.
It's hard to argue that God hated Oklahoma.  If He didn't, why is it so
close to Texas?
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made
sense from things she found in gift shops.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Moishe Margolies, who weighed all of 105 pounds and stood an even five feet
in his socks, was taking his first airplane trip. He took a seat next to a
hulking bruiser of a man who happened to be the heavyweight champion of
the world.  Little Moishe was uneasy enough before he even entered the plane,
but now the roar of the engines and the great height absolutely terrified him.
So frightened did he become that his stomach turned over and he threw up all
over the muscular giant siting beside him.  Fortunately, at least for Moishe,
the man was sound asleep.  But now the little man had another problem.  How in
the world would he ever explain the situation to the burly brute when he
awakened?  The sudden voice of the stewardess on the plane's intercom, finally
woke the bruiser, and Moishe, his heart in his mouth, rose to the occasion.
        "Feeling better now?" he asked solicitously.
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next to
exciting Camden, New Jersey.
Seattle is so wet that people protect their property with watch-ducks.
        Some 1500 miles west of the Big Apple we find the Minneapple, a
haven of tranquility in troubled times.  It's a good town, a civilized town.
A town where they still know how to get your shirts back by Thursday.  Let
the Big Apple have the feats of "Broadway Joe" Namath.  We have known the
stolid but steady Killebrew.  Listening to Cole Porter over a dry martini
may well suit those unlucky enough never to have heard the Whoopee John Polka
Band and never to have shared a pitcher of 3.2 Grain Belt Beer.  The loss is
theirs.  And the Big Apple has yet to bake the bagel that can match peanut
butter on lefse.  Here is a town where the major urban problem is dutch elm
disease and the number one crime is overtime parking.  We boast more theater
per capita than the Big Apple.  We go to see, not to be seen.  We go even
when we must shovel ten inches of snow from the driveway to get there.  Indeed
the winters are fierce.  But then comes the marvel of the Minneapple summer.
People flock to the city's lakes to frolic and rejoice at the sight of so
much happy humanity free from the bonds of the traditional down-filled parka.
Here's to the Minneapple.  And to its people.  Our flair for style is balanced
by a healthy respect for wind chill factors.
        And we always, always eat our vegetables.
        This is the Minneapple.
        The world's most avid baseball fan (an Aggie) had arrived at the
stadium for the first game of the World Series only to realize he had left
his ticket at home.  Not wanting to miss any of the first inning, he went
to the ticket booth and got in a long line for another seat.  After an hour's
wait he was just a few feet from the booth when a voice called out, "Hey,
Dave!"  The Aggie looked up, stepped out of line and tried to find the owner
of the voice -- with no success.   Then he realized he had lost his place in
line and had to wait all over again.  When the fan finally bought his ticket,
he was thirsty, so he went to buy a drink.  The line at the concession stand
was long, too, but since the game hadn't started he decided to wait.  Just as
he got to the window, a voice called out, "Hey, Dave!"  Again the Aggie tried
to find the voice -- but no luck.  He was very upset as he got back in line
for his drink.  Finally the fan went to his seat, eager for the game to begin.
As he waited for the pitch, he heard the voice calling, "Hey Dave!" once more.
Furious, he stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs,  "My name isn't Dave!"
There are people who find it odd to eat four or five Chinese meals
in a row; in China, I often remind them, there are a billion or so
people who find nothing odd about it.
                -- Calvin Trillin
To be happy one must be a) well fed, unhounded by sordid cares, at ease in
Zion, b) full of a comfortable feeling of superiority to the masses of one's
fellow men, and c) delicately and unceasingly amused according to one's taste.
It is my contention that, if this definition be accepted, there is no country
in the world wherein a man constituted as I am -- a man of my peculiar
weaknesses, vanities, appetites, and aversions -- can be so happy as he can
be in the United States.  Going further, I lay down the doctrine that it is
a sheer physical impossibility for such a man to live in the United States
and not be happy.
                -- H.L. Mencken, "On Being An American"
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist.  He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win.  When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
        
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
          blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
          electrical shock to the horse.
G:          That's very good!  But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist:  I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
          into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
          cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G:          Excellent, excellent!  But I want to hear from the physicist before
          I decide what to do.  Physicist?  
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
"A horrible little boy came up to me and said, `You know in your book
The Martian Chronicles?'  I said, `Yes?'  He said, `You know where you
talk about Deimos rising in the East?'  I said, `Yes?'  He said `No.'
-- So I hit him."
                -- attributed to Ray Bradbury
All the evidence concerning the universe has not yet been collected,
so there's still hope.
Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers,
etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these
things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in.
Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a
kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock.  This
proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also
damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in
incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office.
                -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel prize
winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen.  He was amazed to find that
over Bohr's desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall, with the
open end up in the approved manner (so it would catch the good luck and not
let it spill out).  The American said with a nervous laugh,
        "Surely you don't believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck,
do you, Professor Bohr?  After all, as a scientist --"
Bohr chuckled.
        "I believe no such thing, my good friend.  Not at all.  I am
scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense.  However, I am told
that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not."
An anthropologist at Tulane has just come back from a field trip to New
Guinea with reports of a tribe so primitive that they have Tide but not
new Tide with lemon-fresh Borax.
                -- David Letterman
        An architect's first work is apt to be spare and clean.  He knows
he doesn't know what he's doing, so he does it carefully and with great
restraint.
        As he designs the first work, frill after frill and embellishment
after embellishment occur to him.  These get stored away to be used "next
time." Sooner or later the first system is finished, and the architect,
with firm confidence and a demonstrated mastery of that class of systems,
is ready to build a second system.
        This second is the most dangerous system a man ever designs.
When he does his third and later ones, his prior experiences will
confirm each other as to the general characteristics of such systems,
and their differences will identify those parts of his experience that
are particular and not generalizable.
        The general tendency is to over-design the second system, using
all the ideas and frills that were cautiously sidetracked on the first
one.  The result, as Ovid says, is a "big pile."
                -- Frederick Brooks, "The Mythical Man Month"
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty,
and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a
scientist.  This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls."
                -- Matt Cartmill
Bistromathics is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the
behavior of numbers.  Just as Einstein observed that space was not an
absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in space, and that
time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer's movement in
time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend
on the observer's movement in restaurants.
                -- Douglas Adams
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and
if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.  That's logic!"
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
Did you hear that two rabbits escaped from the zoo and so far they have
only recaptured 116 of them?
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called
electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been
drinking.  Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American
homes is 110 volts per hour.  This is very fast.  In the time it has taken
you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the
way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although God alone knows
why it would want to.

The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current,
lightning, static, and European.  Most American homes have alternating
current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while,
then goes in the other direction.  This prevents harmful electron buildup in
the wires.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist.  But while this simplistic
formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific
mind.  The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned
with what ____does exist.  Indeed, the banality of existence has been
so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further
here.  The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically,
discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical,
and the purely hypothetical.  They were all, one might say, nonexistent,
but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ...
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
Evolution is as much a fact as the earth turning on its axis and going around
the sun.  At one time this was called the Copernican theory; but, when
evidence for a theory becomes so overwhelming that no informed person can
doubt it, it is customary for scientists to call it a fact.  That all present
life descended from earlier forms, over vast stretches of geologic time, is
as firmly established as Copernican cosmology.  Biologists differ only with
respect to theories about how the process operates.
                -- Martin Gardner, "Irving Kristol and the Facts of Life".
Florence Flask was ... dressing for the opera when she turned to her
husband and screamed, "Erlenmeyer!  My joules!  Someone has stolen my
joules!"

"Now, now, my dear," replied her husband, "keep your balance and reflux
a moment.  Perhaps they're mislead."

"No, I know they're stolen," cried Florence.  "I remember putting them
in my burette ... We must call a copper."

Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms,
said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name
of Lawrence Ium.

"We must be careful -- he's a free radical, ultraviolet, and
dangerous.  His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium.  Maybe I can
catch him there."  With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an
activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway ...
                -- Daniel B. Murphy, "Precipitations"
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #14
What to do...
    if reality disappears?
        Hope this one doesn't happen to you.  There isn't much that you
        can do about it.  It will probably be quite unpleasant.

    if you meet an older version of yourself who has invented a time
    traveling machine, and has come from the future to meet you?
        Play this one by the book.  Ask about the stock market and cash in.
        Don't forget to invent a time traveling machine and visit your
        younger self before you die, or you will create a paradox.  If you
        expect this to be tricky, make sure to ask for the principles
        behind time travel, and possibly schematics.  Never, NEVER, ask
        when you'll die, or if you'll marry your current SO.
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #6
What to do...
    if a starship, equipped with an FTL hyperdrive lands in your backyard?
        First of all, do not run after your camera.  You will not have any
        film, and, given the state of computer animation, noone will believe
        you anyway.  Be polite.  Remember, if they have an FTL hyperdrive,
        they can probably vaporize you, should they find you to be rude.
        Direct them to the White House lawn, which is where they probably
        wanted to land, anyway.  A good road map should help.

    if you wake up in the middle of the night, and discover that your
    closet contains an alternate dimension?
        Don't walk in.  You almost certainly will not be able to get back,
        and alternate dimensions are almost never any fun.  Remain calm
        and go back to bed.  Close the door first, so that the cat does not
        wander off.  Check your closet in the morning.  If it still contains
        an alternate dimension, nail it shut.
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical
lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your
hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings.  Did you
notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain?  This
teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never
use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
        It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works.  When you scuffed
your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects
that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt.
The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger,
where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels
down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
        Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without
touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger
would explode!  But this is nothing to worry about unless you have
carpeting.
                -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
"I don't think so," said Ren'e Descartes.  Just then, he vanished.
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 have not seen so far it is because I stood in giant's footsteps.
If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it,
we would be so simple we couldn't.
        In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist.  And they grew to
large numbers and prospered.
        One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
as the eye could see.  So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
was to reach up as far as "up" went.  Further and further up they went ...
until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
        The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens.  One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
out from under the rubble.  It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not
understand each other.  They all spoke different languages.  They all fought
amongst themselves and each went about their own way.  To this day the
Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
                -- The Story of Babel
In the course of reading Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the
Mathematical Field", I have come across evidence supporting a fact
which we coffee achievers have long appreciated:  no really creative,
intelligent thought is possible without a good cup of coffee.  On page
14, Hadamard is discussing Poincare's theory of fuchsian groups and
fuchsian functions, which he describes as "... one of his greatest
discoveries, the first which consecrated his glory ..."  Hadamard refers
to Poincare having had a "... sleepless night which initiated all that
memorable work ..." and gives the following, very revealing quote:

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

Too bad drinking black coffee was contrary to his custom.  Maybe he
could really have amounted to something as a coffee achiever.
Modern psychology takes completely for granted that behavior and neural
function are perfectly correlated, that one is completely caused by the
other.  There is no separate soul or lifeforce to stick a finger into the
brain now and then and make neural cells do what they would not otherwise.
Actually, of course, this is a working assumption only. ... It is quite
conceivable that someday the assumption will have to be rejected.  But it
is important also to see that we have not reached that day yet: the working
assumption is a necessary one and there is no real evidence opposed to it.
Our failure to solve a problem so far does not make it insoluble.  One cannot
logically be a determinist in physics and biology, and a mystic in psychology.
                -- D.O. Hebb, "Organization of Behavior: A Neuropsychological
                   Theory", 1949
Once upon a time, when I was training to be a mathematician, a group of
us bright young students taking number theory discovered the names of the
smaller prime numbers.

2:  The Odd Prime --
        It's the only even prime, therefore is odd.  QED.
3:  The True Prime --
        Lewis Carroll: "If I tell you 3 times, it's true."
31: The Arbitrary Prime --
        Determined by unanimous unvote.  We needed an arbitrary prime in
        case the prof asked for one, and so had an election.  91 received
        the most votes (well, it *looks* prime) and 3+4i the next most.
        However, 31 was the only candidate to receive none at all.
41: The Female Prime --
        The polynomial X**2 - X + 41 is
        prime for integer values from 1 to 40.
43: The Male Prime - they form a prime pair.

Since the composite numbers are formed from primes, their qualities
are derived from those primes.  So, for instance, the number 6 is "odd
but true", while the powers of 2 are all extremely odd numbers.
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
Proof techniques #1: Proof by Induction.

This technique is used on equations with "_n" in them.  Induction
techniques are very popular, even the military used them.

SAMPLE: Proof of induction without proof of induction.

        We know it's true for _n equal to 1.  Now assume that it's true
for every natural number less than _n.  _N is arbitrary, so we can take _n
as large as we want.  If _n is sufficiently large, the case of _n+1 is
trivially equivalent, so the only important _n are _n less than _n.  We
can take _n = _n (from above), so it's true for _n+1 because it's just
about _n.
        QED.        (QED translates from the Latin as "So what?")
Research is the best place to be: you work your buns off, and if it works
you're a hero; if it doesn't, well -- nobody else has done it yet either,
so you're still a valiant nerd.
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate your
current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and hurl it
into a dumpster.  Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast array of
8-millimeter video equipment.

... OK!  Got everything?  Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you were
gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format that makes
your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as toenail dirt.
This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be made available until
it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a format called "Elroy", so
*order yours now*.
                -- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics Revolution"
The astronomer Francesco Sizi, a contemporary of Galileo, argues that
Jupiter can have no satellites:

        There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two
eyes, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent.
From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven
metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number
of planets is necessarily seven. [...]
        Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and
therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless
and therefore do not exist.
The Commandments of the EE:

(5)        Take care that thou useth the proper method when thou takest the
        measures of high-voltage circuits too, that thou dost not incinerate
        both thee and thy test meter, for verily, though thou has no company
        property number and can be easily surveyed, the test meter has
        one and, as a consequence, bringeth much woe unto a purchasing agent.
(6)        Take care that thou tamperest not with interlocks and safety devices,
        for this incurreth the wrath of the chief electrician and bring
        the fury of the engineers on his head.
(7)        Work thou not on energized equipment for if thou doest so, thy
        friends will surely be buying beers for thy widow and consoling
        her in certain ways not generally acceptable to thee.
(8)        Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service equipment alone,
        for electrical cooking is a slow process and thou might sizzle in
        thy own fat upon a hot circuit for hours on end before thy maker
        sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into his fold.
The difference between reality and unreality is that reality has so
little to recommend it.
                -- Allan Sherman
The feeling persists that no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer
and understand how a refrigerator works, just as no gentleman wears a brown
suit in the city.  Colleges may be to blame.  English majors are encouraged,
I know, to hate chemistry and physics, and to be proud because they are not
dull and creepy and humorless and war-oriented like the engineers across the
quad.  And our most impressive critics have commonly been such English majors,
and they are squeamish about technology to this very day.  So it is natural
for them to despise science fiction.
                -- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Science Fiction"
The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with.
Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using
other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern
countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so
far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill
and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons.  None of the animals turned into
oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer.
                -- Dave Barry, "Postpetroleum Guzzler"
The startling truth finally became apparent, and it was this: Numbers
written on restaurant checks within the confines of restaurants do not
follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces
of paper in any other parts of the Universe.  This single statement took
the scientific world by storm.  So many mathematical conferences got held
in such good restaurants that many of the finest minds of a generation
died of obesity and heart failure, and the science of mathematics was put
back by years.
                -- Douglas Adams
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed from available
data.  Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon
shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold,
as the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much
radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition seven times seven (49) times
as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or fifty times in all.  The light we
receive from the Moon is one ten-thousandth of the light we receive from the
Sun, so we can ignore that.  With these data we can compute the temperature
of Heaven.  The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where
the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation,
i.e., Heaven loses fifty times as much heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using
the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E)^4 = 50, where E is the absolute
temperature of the earth (~300K), gives H as 798K (525C).  The exact
temperature of Hell cannot be computed, but it must be less than 444.6C, the
temperature at which brimstone or sulphur changes from a liquid to a gas.
Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving ... shall have their
part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten
brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point,
or 444.6C  (Above this point it would be a vapor, not a lake.)  We have,
then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.
                -- "Applied Optics", vol. 11, A14, 1972
The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be
done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
                -- E. Hubbard
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being, evolved.
                -- Darwin
There is no opinion so absurd that some philosopher will not express it.
                -- Marcus Tullius Cicero, "Ad familiares"
There was an old Indian belief that by making love on the hide of
their favorite animal, one could guarantee the health and prosperity
of the offspring conceived thereupon.  And so it goes that one Indian
couple made love on a buffalo  hide.  Nine months later, they were
blessed with a healthy baby son.  Yet another couple huddled together
on the hide of a deer and they too were blessed with a very healthy
baby son.  But a third couple, whose favorite animal was a hippopotamus,
were blessed with not one, but TWO very healthy baby sons at the conclusion
of the nine month interval.  All of which proves the old theorem that:
The sons of the squaw of the hippopotamus are equal to the sons of
the squaws of the other two hides.
They don't know how the world is shaped.  And so they give it a shape, and
try to make everything fit it.  They separate the right from the left, the
man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They
only want to count to two.
                -- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
This was a Golden Age, a time of high adventure, rich living, and hard
dying... but nobody thought so.  This was a future of fortune and theft,
pillage and rapine, culture and vice... but nobody admitted it.
                -- Alfred Bester, "The Stars My Destination"
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Two men are in a hot-air balloon.  Soon, they find themselves lost in a
canyon somewhere.  One of the three men says, "I've got an idea.  We can
call for help in this canyon and the echo will carry our voices to the
end of the canyon.  Someone's bound to hear us by then!"
        So he leans over the basket and screams out, "Helllloooooo!  Where
are we?"  (They hear the echo several times).
        Fifteen minutes later, they hear this echoing voice: "Helllloooooo!
You're lost!"
        The shouter comments, "That must have been a mathematician."
        Puzzled, his friend asks, "Why do you say that?"
        "For three reasons.  First, he took a long time to answer, second,
he was absolutely correct, and, third, his answer was absolutely useless."
... we must counterpose the overwhelming judgment provided by consistent
observations and inferences by the thousands.  The earth is billions of
years old and its living creatures are linked by ties of evolutionary
descent.  Scientists stand accused of promoting dogma by so stating, but
do we brand people illiberal when they proclaim that the earth is neither
flat nor at the center of the universe?  Science *has* taught us some
things with confidence!  Evolution on an ancient earth is as well
established as our planet's shape and position.  Our continuing struggle
to understand how evolution happens (the "theory of evolution") does not
cast our documentation of its occurrence -- the "fact of evolution" --
into doubt.
                -- Stephen Jay Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism",
                   The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. XII No. 2.
Weinberg, as a young grocery clerk, advised the grocery manager to get
rid of rutabagas which nobody ever bought.  He did so. "Well, kid, that
was a great idea," said the manager. Then he paused and asked the killer
question, "NOW what's the least popular vegetable?"

Law: Once you eliminate your #1 problem, #2 gets a promotion.
        -- Gerald Weinberg, "The Secrets of Consulting"
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the
stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them
from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were
set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as
bodies of a lower grade ...
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of investigation
of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand, so that you can
proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or swayed, directly to the goal.
                -- Amrom Katz
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
        Oh, dear, where can the matter be
        When it's converted to energy?
        There is a slight loss of parity.
        Johnny's so long at the fair.
        While the engineer developed his thesis, the director leaned over to
his assistant and whispered, "Did you ever hear of why the sea is salt?"
        "Why the sea is salt?" whispered back the assistant.  "What do you
mean?"
        The director continued: "When I was a little kid, I heard the story of
`Why the sea is salt' many times, but I never thought it important until just
a moment ago.  It's something like this: Formerly the sea was fresh water and
salt was rare and expensive.  A miller received from a wizard a wonderful
machine that just ground salt out of itself all day long.  At first the miller
thought himself the most fortunate man in the world, but soon all the villages
had salt to last them for centuries and still the machine kept on grinding
more salt.  The miller had to move out of his house, he had to move off his
acres.  At last he determined that he would sink the machine in the sea and
be rid of it.  But the mill ground so fast that boat and miller and machine
were sunk together, and down below, the mill still went on grinding and that's
why the sea is salt."
        "I don't get you," said the assistant.
                -- Guy Endore, "Men of Iron"
1925 With a drink so good, 'tis folly to be thirsty
1929 The high sign of refreshment
1929 The pause that refreshes
1930 It had to be good to get where it is
1932 The drink that makes a pause refreshing
1935 The pause that brings friends together
1937 STOP for a pause... GO refreshed
1938 The best friend thirst ever had
1939 Thirst stops here
1942 It's the real thing
1947 Have a Coke
1961 Zing! what a REFRESHING NEW FEELING
1963 Things go better with Coke
1969 Face Uncle Sam with a Coke in your hand
1979 Have a Coke and a smile
1982 Coke is it!
                -- Coca-Cola slogans
Actor:        So what do you do for a living?
Doris:        I work for a company that makes deceptively shallow serving
        dishes for Chinese restaurants.
                -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
Do you feel personally responsible for the world food shortage?
Every time you go to the beach, does the tide come in?
Have you ever eaten an entire moose?
Can you see your neck?
Do joggers take laps around you for exercise?
If so, welcome to National Fat Week.
This week we'll eat without guilt, and kick off our membership campaign,
        ...by force-feeding a box of cornstarch to a skinny person.
                -- Garfield
Fortune's diet truths:
1:  Forget what the cookbooks say, plain yogurt tastes nothing like sour cream.
2:  Any recipe calling for soybeans tastes like mud.
3:  Carob is not an acceptable substitute for chocolate.  In fact, carob is not
    an acceptable substitute for anything, except, perhaps, brown shoe polish.
4:  There is no such thing as a "fun salad."  So let's stop pretending and see
    salads for what they are:  God's punishment for being fat.
5:  Fruit salad without maraschino cherries and marshmallows is about as
    appealing as tepid beer.
6:  A world lacking gravy is a tragic place!
7:  You should immediately pass up any recipes entitled "luscious and
    low-cal."  Also skip dishes featuring "lively liver."  They aren't and
    it isn't.
8:  Wearing a blindfold often makes many diet foods more palatable.
9:  Fresh fruit is not dessert.  CAKE is dessert!
10: Okra tastes slightly worse than its name implies.
11: A plain baked potato isn't worth the effort involved in chewing and
    swallowing.
God must have loved calories, she made so many of them.
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"
I am so optimistic about beef prices that I've just leased a pot roast
with an option to buy.
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
It's raisins that make Post Raisin Bran so raisiny ...
It's so beautifully arranged on the plate -- you know someone's fingers
have been all over it.
                -- Julia Child on nouvelle cuisine.
So much food; so little time!
        To lose weight, eat less; to gain weight, eat more; if you merely
wish to maintain, do whatever you were doing.
        The Bronx diet is a legitimate system of food therapy showing that
food SHOULD be used a crutch and which food could be the most effective in
promoting spiritual and emotional satisfaction.  For the first time, an
eater could instantly grasp the connection between relieving depression and
Mallomars, and understand why a lover's quarrel isn't so bad if there's a
pint of ice cream nearby.
                -- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
To see the butcher slap the steak, before he laid it on the block,
and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly.  It was
agreeable, too -- it really was -- to see him cut it off, so smooth and juicy.
There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was large and keen;
it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of touch, clearness of
tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading.  It was the triumph of
mind over matter; quite.
                -- Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"
Why do so many foods come packaged in plastic?  It's quite uncanny.
Why do they call a fast a fast, when it goes so slow?
You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting needles.
                -- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?"  The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay not so,"
Replied the angel.  Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished.  The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And lo!  Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
                -- James Henry Leigh Hunt, "Abou Ben Adhem"
After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats
With your head up and your eyes open,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
And you learn to build all your roads
On today because tomorrow's ground
Is too uncertain.  And futures have
A way of falling down in midflight,
After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong,
And you really do have worth
And you learn and learn
With every goodbye you learn.
                -- Veronic Shoffstall, "Comes the Dawn"
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 all that the Lorax left here in this mess
was a small pile of rocks with the one word, "unless."
Whatever THAT meant, well, I just couldn't guess.
That was long, long ago, and each day since that day,
I've worried and worried and worried away.
Through the years as my buildings have fallen apart,
I've worried about it with all of my heart.

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

"You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds.
And truffula trees are what everyone needs.
Plant a new truffula -- treat it with care.
Give it clean water and feed it fresh air.
Grow a forest -- protect it from axes that hack.
Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back!"
And here I wait so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going thru all of these things twice
                -- Dylan, "Memphis Blues Again"
And so it was, later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face, at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.
                -- Procol Harum
But I was there and I saw what you did,
I saw it with my own two eyes.
So you can wipe off that grin;
I know where you've been--
It's all been a pack of lies!
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
                -- Hilaire Belloc
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
Come live with me and be my love,
And we will some new pleasures prove
Of golden sands and crystal brooks
With silken lines, and silver hooks.
There's nothing that I wouldn't do
If you would be my POSSLQ.

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

And everything we will confess;
Yes, even to the IRS.
Some day on what we both may earn,
Perhaps we'll file a joint return.
You'll share my pad, my taxes, joint;
You'll share my life - up to a point!
And that you'll be so glad to do,
Because you'll be my POSSLQ.
Come on, Virginia, don't make me wait!
Catholic girls start much too late,
Ah, but sooner or later, it comes down to fate,
I might as well be the one.
Well, they showed you a statue, told you to pray,
Built you a temple and locked you away,
Ah, but they never told you the price that you paid,
The things that you might have done.
So come on, Virginia, show me a sign,
Send up a signal, I'll throw you a line,
That stained glass curtain that you're hiding behind,
Never lets in the sun.
Darling, only the good die young!
                -- Billy Joel, "Only The Good Die Young"
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"]
Eleanor Rigby
        Sits at the keyboard
        And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
        Finding some code
        That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?

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

All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ah, look at all the lonely users.
Ever since I was a young boy,
I've hacked the ARPA net,
From Berkeley down to Rutgers,                He's on my favorite terminal,
Any access I could get,                        He cats C right into foo,
But ain't seen nothing like him,        His disciples lead him in,
On any campus yet,                        And he just breaks the root,
That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,                Always has full SYS-PRIV's,
Sure sends a mean packet.                Never uses lint,
                                        That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
                                        Sure sends a mean packet.
He's a UNIX wizard,
There has to be a twist.
The UNIX wizard's got                        Ain't got no distractions,
Unlimited space on disk.                Can't hear no whistles or bells,
How do you think he does it?                Can't see no message flashing,
I don't know.                                Types by sense of smell,
What makes him so good?                        Those crazy little programs,
                                        The proper bit flags set,
                                        That deaf, dumb, and blind kid,
                                        Sure sends a mean packet.
                -- UNIX Wizard
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.  Everybody rolls with their
fingers crossed.  Everybody knows the war is over.  Everybody knows the
good guys lost.  Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay
poor, the rich get rich.  That's how it goes.  Everybody knows.

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking.  Everybody knows the captain
lied.  Everybody got this broken feeling like their father or their dog
just died.

Everybody talking to their pockets.  Everybody wants a box of chocolates
and long stem rose.  Everybody knows.

Everybody knows that you love me, baby.  Everybody knows that you really
do.  Everybody knows that you've been faithful, give or take a night or
two.  Everybody knows you've been discreet, but there were so many people
you just had to meet without your clothes.  And everybody knows.

And everybody knows it's now or never.  Everybody knows that it's me or you.
And everybody knows that you live forever when you've done a line or two.
Everybody knows the deal is rotten: Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
for you ribbons and bows.  And everybody knows.
        -- Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"
Felix Catus is your taxonomic nomenclature,
An endothermic quadroped, carnivorous by nature.
Your visual, olfactory, and auditory senses
Contribute to your hunting skills and natural defenses.
I find myself intrigued by your sub-vocal oscillations,
A singular development of cat communications
That obviates your basic hedonistic predelection
For a rhythmic stroking of your fur to demonstrate affection.
A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents:
You would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance;
And when not being utilitized to aid in locomotion,
It often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.
Oh Spot, the complex levels of behavior you display
Connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.
        -- Lt. Cmdr. Data, "An Ode to Spot"
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"
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
                -- Dorothy Parker, "Inventory" [or "Not so Deep as a Well"?]
Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under;
so let it lay with Caesar.  The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, --
for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down.
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"
"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,                But ranged as infantry,
We should have sat us down to wet        And staring face to face,
Right many a nipperkin!                        I shot at him as he at me,
                                        And killed him in his place.
I shot him dead because --
Because he was my foe,                        He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,
Just so: my foe of course he was;        Off-hand-like -- just as I --
That's clear enough; although                Was out of work -- had sold his traps
                                        No other reason why.
Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You'd treat, if met where any bar is
Or help to half-a-crown."
                -- Thomas Hardy
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.

But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
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 get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.

Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
                -- Pete Seeger
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;
For he sometimes shoots up taller, like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.
                -- R.L. Stevenson
I sent a letter to the fish,                I said it very loud and clear,
I told them, "This is what I wish."        I went and shouted in his ear.
The little fishes of the sea,                But he was very stiff and proud,
They sent an answer back to me.                He said "You needn't shout so loud."
The little fishes' answer was                And he was very proud and stiff,
"We cannot do it, sir, because..."        He said "I'll go and wake them if..."
I sent a letter back to say                I took a kettle from the shelf,
It would be better to obey.                I went to wake them up myself.
But someone came to me and said                But when I found the door was locked
"The little fishes are in bed."                I pulled and pushed and kicked and
                                                knocked,
I said to him, and I said it plain        And when I found the door was shut,
"Then you must wake them up again."        I tried to turn the handle, But...

        "Is that all?" asked Alice.
        "That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
I sent a message to another time,
But as the days unwind -- this I just can't believe,
I sent a message to another plane,
Maybe it's all a game -- but this I just can't conceive.
...
I met someone who looks at lot like you,
She does the things you do, but she is an IBM.
She's only programmed to be very nice,
But she's as cold as ice, whenever I get too near,
She tells me that she likes me very much,
But when I try to touch, she makes it all too clear.
...
I realize that it must seem so strange,
That time has rearranged, but time has the final word,
She knows I think of you, she reads my mind,
She tries to be unkind, she knows nothing of our world.
                -- ELO, "Yours Truly, 2095"
"I thought that you said you were 20 years old!"
"As a programmer, yes," she replied,
"And you claimed to be very near two meters tall!"
"You said you were blonde, but you lied!"
Oh, she was a hacker and he was one, too,
They had so much in common, you'd say.
They exchanged jokes and poems, and clever new hacks,
And prompts that were cute or risque'.
He sent her a picture of his brother Sam,
She sent one from some past high school day,
And it might have gone on for the rest of their lives,
If they hadn't met in L.A.
"Your beard is an armpit," she said in disgust.
He answered, "Your armpit's a beard!"
And they chorused: "I think I could stand all the rest
If you were not so totally weird!"
If she had not said what he wanted to hear,
And he had not done just the same,
They'd have been far more honest, and never have met,
And would not have had fun with the game.
                -- Judith Schrier, "Face to Face After Six Months of
                Electronic Mail"
I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.

Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(thi)!
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be
living apart.
                -- e. e. cummings
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've been on this lonely road so long,
Does anybody know where it goes,
I remember last time the signs pointed home,
A month ago.
                -- Carpenters, "Road Ode"
If a system is administered wisely,
its users will be content.
They enjoy hacking their code
and don't waste time implementing
labor-saving shell scripts.
Since they dearly love their accounts,
they aren't interested in other machines.
There may be telnet, rlogin, and ftp,
but these don't access any hosts.
There may be an arsenal of cracks and malware,
but nobody ever uses them.
People enjoy reading their mail,
take pleasure in being with their newsgroups,
spend weekends working at their terminals,
delight in the doings at the site.
And even though the next system is so close
that users can hear its key clicks and biff beeps,
they are content to die of old age
without ever having gone to see it.
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]
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
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forest ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
                -- S.T. Coleridge, "Kubla Kahn"
It happened long ago
In the new magic land
The Indians and the buffalo    
Existed hand in hand
The Indians needed food
They need skins for a roof
They only took what they needed
And the buffalo ran loose
But then came the white man
With his thick and empty head
He couldn't see past his billfold
He wanted all the buffalo dead
It was sad, oh so sad.
                -- Ted Nugent, "The Great White Buffalo"
It's just apartment house rules,
So all you 'partment house fools
Remember:  one man's ceiling is another man's floor.
One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
                -- Paul Simon, "One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor"
It's so confusing choosing sides in the heat of the moment,
        just to see if it's real,
Oooh, it's so erotic having you tell me how it should feel,
But I'm avoiding all the hard cold facts that I got to face,
So ask me just one question when this magic night is through,
Could it have been just anyone or did it have to be you?
                -- Billy Joel, "Glass Houses"
Just a song before I go,                Going through security
To whom it may concern,                        I held her for so long.
Traveling twice the speed of sound        She finally looked at me in love,
It's easy to get burned.                And she was gone.
When the shows were over                Just a song before I go,
We had to get back home,                A lesson to be learned.
And when we opened up the door                Traveling twice the speed of sound
I had to be alone.                        It's easy to get burned.
She helped me with my suitcase,
She stands before my eyes,
Driving me to the airport
And to the friendly skies.
                -- Crosby, Stills, Nash, "Just a Song Before I Go"
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Ether!  (ether who?)  Ether Bunny... Yea!
[chorus]
        Yeay!
        Stay on the Happy side, always on the happy side,
        Stay on the Happy side of life!
        Bum bum bum bum bum bum
        You will feel no pain, as we drive you insane,
        So Stay on the Happy Side of life!

Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Anna!  (anna who?)
        An another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Stilla!  (stilla who?)
        Still another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Yetta!  (yetta who?)
        Yet another ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Cargo!  (cargo who?)
        Cargo beep beep and run over ether bunny... [chorus]
Knock Knock...  (who's there?)  Boo!  (boo who?)
        Don't Cry!  Ether bunny be back next year! [chorus]
Ladybug, ladybug,
Look to your stern!
Your house is on fire,
Your children will burn!
So jump ye and sing, for
The very first time
The four lines above
Have been put into rhyme.
                -- Walt Kelly
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"
"Lines that are parallel meet at Infinity!"
Euclid repeatedly, heatedly, urged.

Until he died, and so reached that vicinity:
in it he found that the damned things diverged.
                -- Piet Hein
Love, which is quickly kindled in a gentle heart,
        seized this one for the fair form
        that was taken from me-and the way of it afficts me still.
Love, which absolves no loved one from loving,
        seized me so strongly with delight in him,
        that, as you see, it does not leave me even now.
Love brought us to one death.
                -- La Divina Commedia: Inferno V, vv. 100-06
My darling wife was always glum.
I drowned her in a cask of rum,
And so made sure that she would stay
In better spirits night and day.
"My name is Sue!  How do you do?!  Now you gonna die!"
Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes,
And he went down, but to my surprise,
Come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
So I busted a chair right across his teeth,
And we crashed through the walls and into the streets,
Kickin' and a-gougin' in the mud and the blood and beer.
Now I tell you, I've fought tougher men,
But I really can't remember when:
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
But I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
And he went for his gun, but I pulled mine first,
And he sat there lookin' at me, and I saw him smile.
He said: "Son, this world is rough,
And if a man's gonna make it he's gotta be tough,
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help you along.
So I give you that name and I said goodbye,
And I knew you'd have to get tough or die,
And it's that name that's helped to make you strong!
                -- Johnny Cash, "A Boy Named Sue"
Near the Studio Jean Cocteau
On the Rue des Ecoles
lived an old man
with a blind dog
Every evening I would see him
guiding the dog along
the sidewalk, keeping
a firm grip on the leash
so that the dog wouldn't
run into a passerby
Sometimes the dog would stop
and look up at the sky
Once the old man
noticed me watching the dog
and he said, "Oh, yes,
this one knows
when the moon is out,
he can feel it on his face"
                -- Barry Gifford
No one likes us.
I don't know why.
We may not be perfect,                        We give them money,
But heaven knows we try.                But are they grateful?
But all around,                                No, they're spiteful,
Even our old friends put us down.        And they're hateful.
Let's drop the big one,                        They don't respect us,
And see what happens.                        So let's surprise them
                                        We'll drop the big one,
                                        And pulverize 'em.
Asia's crowded,
Europe's too old,
Africa is far too hot,                        We'll save Australia.
And Canada's too cold.                        Don't wanna hurt no kangaroos.
And South America stole our name        We'll build an All-American amusement
Let's drop the big one,                                park there--
There'll be no one left to blame us.        They got surfin', too!

Boom! goes London,
And Boom! Paree.
More room for you,                        Oh, how peaceful it'll be!
And more room for me,                        We'll set everybody free!
And every city,                                You'll wear a Japanese kimono, babe;
The whole world round,                        There'll be Italian shoes for me!
Will just be another American town.        They all hate us anyhow,
                                        So, let's drop the big one now.
                                        Let's drop the big one now!
                -- Randy Newman, "Drop the Big One"
No pig should go sky diving during monsoon
For this isn't really the norm.
But should a fat swine try to soar like a loon,
So what?  Any pork in a storm.

No pig should go sky diving during monsoon,
It's risky enough when the weather is fine.
But to have a pig soar when the monsoon doth roar
Cast even more perils before swine.
No plain fanfold paper could hold that fractal Puff --
He grew so fast no plotting pack could shrink him far enough.
Compiles and simulations grew so quickly tame
And swapped out all their data space when Puff pushed his stack frame.
        (refrain)
Puff, he grew so quickly, while others moved like snails
And mini-Puffs would perch themselves on his gigantic tail.
All the student hackers loved that fractal Puff
But DCS did not like Puff, and finally said, "Enough!"
        (refrain)
Puff used more resources than DCS could spare.
The operator killed Puff's job -- he didn't seem to care.
A gloom fell on the hackers; it seemed to be the end,
But Puff trapped the exception, and grew from naught again!
        (refrain)
Refrain:
        Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
        And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
        Puff the fractal dragon was written in C,
        And frolicked while processes switched in mainframe memory.
No rock so hard but that a little wave
May beat admission in a thousand years.
                -- Tennyson
Of all the words of witch's doom
There's none so bad as which and whom.
The man who kills both which and whom
Will be enshrined in our Who's Whom.
                -- Fletcher Knebel
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a 4BSD?
My friends all got sources, so why can't I see?
Come all you moby hackers, come sing it out with me:
To hell with the lawyers from AT&T!
Oh, 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
Old Mother Hubbard lived in a shoe,
She had so many children,
She didn't know what to do.
So she moved to Atlanta.
Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
To fetch her poor daughter a dress.
When she got there, the cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter, I guess...
On a morning from a Bogart movie, in a country where they turned back time,
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime.
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain.
Don't bother asking for explanations, she'll just tell you that she came
In the Year of the Cat.

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

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

Well, morning comes and you're still with her, but the bus and the tourists
    are gone,
And you've thrown away your choice and lost your ticket, so you have to stay on.
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain in the rhythm of the new-born day.
You know some time you're bound to leave her, but for now you're going to stay
In the Year of the Cat.
                -- Al Stewart, "Year of the Cat"
One bright Sunday morning, in the shadows of the steeple,
By the Relief Office, I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there whistling,
This land was made for you and me.

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

As I went walking, I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said: "No Trespassing."
But on the other side, it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
                -- Woody Guthrie, "This Land Is Your Land" (verses 4, 6, 7)
        [If you ever wondered why Arlo was so anti-establishment when his dad
         wrote such wonderful patriotic songs, the answer is that you haven't
         heard all of Woody's songs]
One good thing about music,
Well, it helps you feel no pain.
So hit me with music;
Hit me with music now.
                -- Bob Marley, "Trenchtown Rock"
Our sires' age was worse that our grandsires'.
We their sons are more worthless than they:
so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.
                -- Quintus Horatius Flaccus (Horace)
Piping down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
"Pipe a song about a Lamb!"
So I piped with merry cheer.
"Piper, pipe that song again;"
So I piped: he wept to hear.
                -- William Blake, "Songs of Innocence"
Please stand for the National Anthem:

        Oh, say can you see by dawn's early light
        What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
        Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight
        O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
        And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
        Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
        Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
        O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Thank you.  You may resume your seat.
        Proposed Country & Western Song Titles
I Can't Get Over You, So I Get Up and Go Around to the Other Side
If You Won't Leave Me Alone, I'll Find Someone Who Will
I Knew That You'd Committed a Sin When You Came Home Late With
        Your Socks Outside-in
I'm a Rabbit in the Headlights of Your Love
Don't Kick My Tires If You Ain't Gonna Take Me For a Ride
I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well
I Still Miss You, Baby, But My Aim's Gettin' Better
I've Got Red Eyes From Your White Lies and I'm Blue All the Time
                -- "Wordplay"
        Proposed Country & Western Song Titles
I Don't Mind If You Lie to Me, As Long As I Ain't Lyin' Alone
I Wouldn't Take You to a Dog Fight Even If I Thought You Could Win
If You Leave Me, Walk Out Backwards So I'll Think You're Comin' In
Since You Learned to Lip-Sync, I'm At Your Disposal
My John Deere Was Breaking Your Field, While Your Dear John Was
        Breaking My Heart
Don't Cry, Little Darlin', You're Waterin' My Beer
Tennis Must Be Your Racket, 'Cause Love Means Nothin' to You
When You Say You Love Me, You're Full of Prunes, 'Cause Living
        With You Is the Pits
I Wanted Your Hand in Marriage but All I Got Was the Finger
                -- "Wordplay"
Roland was a warrior, from the land of the midnight sun,
With a Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done.
The deal was made in Denmark, on a dark and stormy day,
So he set out for Biafra, to join the bloody fray.
Through sixty-six and seven, they fought the Congo war,
With their fingers on their triggers, knee deep in gore.
Days and nights they battled, the Bantu to their knees,
They killed to earn their living, and to help out the Congolese.
        Roland the Thompson gunner...
His comrades fought beside him, Van Owen and the rest,
But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best.
So the C.I.A decided, they wanted Roland dead,
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen, blew off Roland's head.
        Roland the headless Thompson gunner...
Roland searched the continent, for the man who'd done him in.
He found him in Mombasa, in a bar room drinking gin,
Roland aimed his Thompson gun, he didn't say a word,
But he blew Van Owen's body from there to Johannesburg.
The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night,
Now it's ten years later, but he stills keeps up the fight.
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine, in Berkeley,
Patty Hearst... heard the burst... of Roland's Thompson gun, and bought it.
                -- Warren Zevon, "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner"
Roses are red;
        Violets are blue.
I'm schizophrenic,
        And so am I.
Scratch the disks, dump the core,        Shut it down, pull the plug
Roll the tapes across the floor,        Give the core an extra tug
And the system is going to crash.        And the system is going to crash.
Teletypes smashed to bits.                Mem'ry cards, one and all,
Give the scopes some nasty hits                Toss out halfway down the hall
And the system is going to crash.        And the system is going to crash.
And we've also found                        Just flip one switch
When you turn the power down,                And the lights will cease to twitch
You turn the disk readers into trash.        And the tape drives will crumble
                                                in a flash.
Oh, it's so much fun,                        When the CPU
Now the CPU won't run                        Can print nothing out but "foo,"
And the system is going to crash.        The system is going to crash.
                -- To the tune of "As the Caissons go Rolling Along"
Sing hey! for the bath at close of day
That washes the weary mud away!
A loon is he that will not sing:
O! Water Hot is a noble thing!

        O! Sweet is the sound of falling rain,
        and the brook that leaps from hill to plain;
        but better than rain or rippling streams
        is Water Hot that smokes and steams.

O! Water cold we may pour at need
down a thirsty throat and be glad indeed;
but better is Beer, if drink we lack,
and Water Hot poured down the back.

        O! Water is fair that leaps on high
        in a fountain white beneath the sky;
        but never did fountain sound so sweet
        as splashing Hot Water with my feet!
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
So much
depends
upon
a red

wheel
barrow
glazed with

rain
water
beside
the white
chickens.
                -- William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheel Barrow"
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...
So... so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell?
Blue skies from pain?                        Did they get you to trade
Can you tell a green field                Your heroes for ghosts?
From a cold steel rail?                        Hot ashes for trees?
A smile from a veil?                        Hot air for a cool breeze?
Do you think you can tell?                Cold comfort for change?
                                        Did you exchange
                                        A walk on part in a war
                                        For the lead role in a cage?
                -- Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time,
There's something wrong here, there can be no more denying,
One of us is changing, or maybe we just stopped trying,

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

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

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

But it's too late baby...
It's too late, now darling, it's too late...
                -- Carol King, "Tapestry"
System/3!  System/3!
See how it runs!  See how it runs!
        Its monitor loses so totally!
        It runs all its programs in RPG!
        It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred,
Tan me hide when I'm dead.
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde,
It's hanging there on the shed.

All together now...
        Tie me kangaroo down, sport,
        Tie me kangaroo down.
        Tie me kangaroo down, sport,
        Tie me kangaroo down.
Tell me why the stars do shine,
Tell me why the ivy twines,
Tell me why the sky's so blue,
And I will tell you just why I love you.

        Nuclear fusion makes stars to shine,
        Phototropism makes ivy twine,
        Rayleigh scattering makes sky so blue,
        Sexual hormones are why I love you.
The boy stood on the burning deck,
Eating peanuts by the peck.
His father called him, but he could not go,
For he loved those peanuts so.
The glances over cocktails
That seemed to be so sweet
Don't seem quite so amorous
Over Shredded Wheat
The good life was so elusive
It really got me down
I had to regain some confidence
So I got into camouflage
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
                -- Dorothy Parker
The net of law is spread so wide,
No sinner from its sweep may hide.
Its meshes are so fine and strong,
They take in every child of wrong.
O wondrous web of mystery!
Big fish alone escape from thee!
                -- James Jeffrey Roche
The Poet Whose Badness Saved His Life
        The most important poet in the seventeenth century was George
Wither.  Alexander Pope called him "wretched Wither" and Dryden said of his
verse that "if they rhymed and rattled all was well".
        In our own time, "The Dictionary of National Biography" notes that his
work "is mainly remarkable for its mass, fluidity and flatness.  It usually
lacks any genuine literary quality and often sinks into imbecile doggerel".
        High praise, indeed, and it may tempt you to savour a typically
rewarding stanza: It is taken from "I loved a lass" and is concerned with
the higher emotions.
                She would me "Honey" call,
                She'd -- O she'd kiss me too.
                But now alas!  She's left me
                Falero, lero, loo.
        Among other details of his mistress which he chose to immortalize
was her prudent choice of footwear.
                The fives did fit her shoe.
        In 1639 the great poet's life was endangered after his capture by
the Royalists during the English Civil War.  When Sir John Denham, the
Royalist poet, heard of Wither's imminent execution, he went to the King and
begged that his life be spared.  When asked his reason, Sir John replied,
"Because that so long as Wither lived, Denham would not be accounted the
worst poet in England."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The soldier came knocking upon the queen's door.
He said, "I am not fighting for you any more."
The queen knew she had seen his face someplace before,
And slowly she let him inside.

He said, "I see you now, and you're so very young,
But I've seen more battles lost than I have battles won,
And I have this intuition that it's all for your fun.
And now will you tell me why?"
                -- Suzanne Vega, "The Queen and The Soldier"
The street preacher looked so baffled
When I asked him why he dressed
With forty pounds of headlines
Stapled to his chest.
But he cursed me when I proved to him
I said, "Not even you can hide.
You see, you're just like me.
I hope you're satisfied."
                -- Bob Dylan
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
                -- Ogden Nash
The wind doth taste so bitter sweet,
        Like Jaspar wine and sugar,
It must have blown through someone's feet,
        Like those of Caspar Weinberger.
                -- P. Opus
The Worst American Poet
        Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that
Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years.
        Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire
of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen.
        Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the
formula was the same:
                Have you heard of the dreadful fate
                Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife?
                Of their death I will relate,
                And also others lost their life
                (in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster,
                Where so many people died.
        Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems,
the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a
river or struck by lightning.  A critic of the day said she was "worse than
a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded.
        Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even
suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate".  Her reply was
forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went
beyond reason."  She added that "literary work is very difficult to do".
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
                The Worst Lines of Verse
For a start, we can rule out James Grainger's promising line:
        "Come, muse, let us sing of rats."
Grainger (1721-67) did not have the courage of his convictions and deleted
these words on discovering that his listeners dissolved into spontaneous
laughter the instant they were read out.
        No such reluctance afflicted Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-70) who was
inspired by the subject of war.
        "Flash! flash! bang! bang! and we blazed away,
        And the grey roof reddened and rang;
        Flash! flash! and I felt his bullet flay
        The tip of my ear.  Flash! bang!"
By contrast, Cheshire cheese provoked John Armstrong (1709-79):
        "... that which Cestria sends, tenacious paste of solid milk..."
While John Bidlake was guided by a compassion for vegetables:
        "The sluggard carrot sleeps his day in bed,
        The crippled pea alone that cannot stand."
George Crabbe (1754-1832) wrote:
        "And I was ask'd and authorized to go
        To seek the firm of Clutterbuck and Co."
William Balmford explored the possibilities of religious verse:
        "So 'tis with Christians, Nature being weak
        While in this world, are liable to leak."
And William Wordsworth showed that he could do it if he really tried when
describing a pond:
        "I've measured it from side to side;
        Tis three feet long and two feet wide."
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The, uh, snowy mountains are like really cold, eh?
And the, um, plains stretch out like my moms girdle, eh?
There's lotsa beers and doughnuts for everyone, eh?
So the last one to be peaceful and everything is a big idiot,
Eh?
So shut yer face up and dry yer mucklucks by the fire, eh?
And dream about girls with their high beams on, eh?
They may be cold, but that's okay!  Beer's better that way!
Eh?
                -- A, like, Tribute to the Great White North, eh?
Beauty!
There is in certain living souls
A quality of loneliness unspeakable,
So great it must be shared
As company is shared by lesser beings.
Such a loneliness is mine; so know by this
That in immensity
There is one lonelier than you.
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
They wouldn't listen to the fact that I was a genius,
The man said "We got all that we can use",
So I've got those steadily-depressin', low-down, mind-messin',
Working-at-the-car-wash blues.
                -- Jim Croce
This is the story of the bee
Whose sex is very hard to see

You cannot tell the he from the she
But she can tell, and so can he

The little bee is never still
She has no time to take the pill

And that is why, in times like these
There are so many sons of bees.
Those who sweat in flames of hell,        Leaden eared, some thought their bowels
Here's the reason that they fell:        Lispeth forth the sweetest vowels.
While on earth they prayed in SAS,        These they offered up in praise
PL/1, or other crass,                        Thinking all this fetid haze
Vulgar tongue.                                A rapsody sung.

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

Because in life they prayed so ill
And offered god such swinish swill
Now they sweat in flames of hell
Sweat from lack of APL
Sweat dung!
Troll sat alone on his seat of stone,
And munched and mumbled a bare old bone;
For many a year he had gnawed it near,
For meat was hard to come by.
        Done by!  Gum by!
In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone,
And meat was hard to come by.

Up came Tom with his big boots on.
Said he to Troll: "Pray, what is youn?
For it looks like the shin o' my nuncle Tim,
As should be a-lyin in graveyard.
        Caveyard!  Paveyard!
This many a year has Tim been gone,
And I thought he were lyin' in graveyard."

"My lad," said Troll, "this bone I stole.
But what be bones that lie in a hole?
Thy nuncle was dead as a lump o' lead,
Afore I found his shinbone.
        Tinbone!  Thinbone!
He can spare a share for a poor old troll
For he don't need his shinbone."

Said Tom: "I don't see why the likes o' thee
Without axin' leave should go makin' free
With the shank or the shin o' my father's kin;
So hand the old bone over!
        Rover!  Trover!
Though dead he be, it belongs to he;
So hand the old bnone over!"
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.        "Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
All mimsy were the borogroves                The jaws that bite, the claws
And the mome raths outgrabe.                        that catch!
                                        Beware the Jubjub bird,
He took his vorpal sword in hand        And shun the frumious Bandersnatch!"
Long time the manxome foe he sought.
So rested he by the tumtum tree                And as in uffish thought he stood
And stood awhile in thought.                The Jabberwock, with eyes aflame
                                        Came whuffling through the tulgey wood
One! Two! One! Two!  And through and        And burbled as it came!
        through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack.        "Hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
He left it dead, and took its head,        Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
And went galumphing back.                Oh frabjous day!  Calooh!  Callay!"
                                        He chortled in his joy.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
                -- Lewis Carroll, "Jabberwocky"
'Twas bullig, and the slithy brokers
Did buy and gamble in the craze                "Beware the Jabberstock, my son!
All rosy were the Dow Jones stokers        The cost that bites, the worth
By market's wrath unphased.                        that falls!
                                        Beware the Econ'mist's word, and shun
He took his forecast sword in hand:        The spurious Street o' Walls!"
Long time the Boesk'some foe he sought -
Sake's liquidity, so d'vested he,        And as in bearish thought he stood
And stood awhile in thought.                The Jabberstock, with clothes of tweed,
                                        Came waffling with the truth too good,
Chip Black! Chip Blue! And through        And yuppied great with greed!
        and through
The forecast blade went snicker-snack!        "And hast thou slain the Jabberstock?
It bit the dirt, and with its shirt,        Come to my firm,  V.P.ish  boy!
He went rebounding back.                O big bucks day! Moolah! Good Play!"
                                        He bought him a Mercedes Toy.
'Twas panic, and the slithy brokers
Did gyre and tumble in the Crash
All flimsy were the Dow Jones stokers
And mammon's wrath them bash!
                -- Peter Stucki, "Jabberstocky"
'Twas midnight on the ocean,                Her children all were orphans,
Not a streetcar was in sight,                Except one a tiny tot,
So I stepped into a cigar store                Who had a home across the way
To ask them for a light.                Above a vacant lot.

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

She said "Good morning, stranger",        This story has a morale
Her eyes were dry with tears,                As you can plainly see,
As she put her head between her feet        Don't mix your gin with whiskey
And stood that way for years.                On the deep and dark blue sea.
                -- Midnight On The Ocean
U:        There's a U -- a Unicorn!
        Run right up and rub its horn.
        Look at all those points you're losing!
        UMBER HULKS are so confusing.
                -- The Roguelet's ABC
Up against the net, redneck mother,
Mother who has raised your son so well;
He's seventeen and hackin' on a Macintosh,
Flaming spelling errors and raisin' hell...
Wake up all you citizens, hear your country's call,
Not to arms and violence, But peace for one and all.
Crush out hate and prejudice, fear and greed and sin,
Help bring back her dignity, restore her faith again.

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

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

Well the next thing ya know, old Jed's a millionaire.
The kinfolk said, 'Jed, move away from there!'
They said, 'Californy is the place ya oughta be',
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly -- Hills, that is;
        swimmin' pools; movie stars.
Was there a time when dancers with their fiddles
In children's circuses could stay their troubles?
There was a time they could cry over books,
But time has set its maggot on their track.
Under the arc of the sky they are unsafe.
What's never known is safest in this life.
Under the skysigns they who have no arms
Have cleanest hands, and, as the heartless ghost
Alone's unhurt, so the blind man sees best.
                -- Dylan Thomas, "Was There A Time"
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside!
There behind the glass there's a real blade of grass,
Be careful as you pass, move along, move along.
Come inside, the show's about to start,
Guaranteed to blow your head apart.
Rest assured, you'll get your money's worth,
Greatest show, in heaven, hell or earth!
You gotta see the show!  It's a dynamo!
You gotta see the show!  It's rock 'n' roll!
                -- ELP, "Karn Evil 9" (1st Impression, Part 2)
Well I looked at my watch and it said a quarter to five,
The headline screamed that I was still alive,
I couldn't understand it, I thought I died last night.
I dreamed I'd been in a border town,
In a little cantina that the boys had found,
I was desperate to dance, just to dig the local sounds.
When along came a senorita,
She looked so good that I had to meet her,
I was ready to approach her with my English charm,
When her brass knuckled boyfriend grabbed me by the arm,
And he said, grow some funk of your own, amigo,
Grow some funk of your own.
We no like to with the gringo fight,
But there might be a death in Mexico tonite.
...
Take my advice, take the next flight,
And grow some funk, grow your funk at home.
                -- Elton John, "Grow Some Funk of Your Own"
Well, we're big rock singers, we've got golden fingers,
And we're loved everywhere we go.
We sing about beauty, and we sing about truth,
At ten thousand dollars a show.
We take all kind of pills to give us all kind of thrills,
But the thrill we've never known,
Is the thrill that'll get'cha, when you get your picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.

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

We got a lot of little, teen-aged, blue-eyed groupies,
Who'll do anything we say.
We got a genuine Indian guru, that's teachin' us a better way.
We got all the friends that money can buy,
So we never have to be alone.
And we keep gettin' richer, but we can't get our picture,
On the cover of the Rolling Stone.
                -- Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
                [As a note, they eventually DID make the cover of RS. Ed.]
What, still alive at twenty-two,
A clean upstanding chap like you?
Sure, if your throat 'tis hard to slit,
Slit your girl's, and swing for it.
Like enough, you won't be glad,
When they come to hang you, lad:
But bacon's not the only thing
That's cured by hanging from a string.
So, when the spilt ink of the night
Spreads o'er the blotting pad of light,
Lads whose job is still to do
Shall whet their knives, and think of you.
                -- Hugh Kingsmill
When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,        Sixty years in these folks' world
A dance that's walked                        The child I works for calls me girl
A song that's spoke,                        I say "Yes ma'am" for working's sake.
I laugh so hard I almost choke                Too proud to bend
When I think about myself.                Too poor to break,
                                        I laugh until my stomach ache,
                                        When I think about myself.
My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard I nearly died,
The tales they tell, sound just like lying,
They grow the fruit,
But eat the rind,
I laugh until I start to crying,
When I think about my folks.
                -- Maya Angelou
When someone makes a move                We'll send them all we've got,
Of which we don't approve,                John Wayne and Randolph Scott,
Who is it that always intervenes?        Remember those exciting fighting scenes?
U.N. and O.A.S.,                        To the shores of Tripoli,
They have their place, I guess,                But not to Mississippoli,
But first, send the Marines!                What do we do?  We send the Marines!

For might makes right,                        Members of the corps
And till they've seen the light,        All hate the thought of war:
They've got to be protected,                They'd rather kill them off by
                                                peaceful means.
All their rights respected,                Stop calling it aggression--
Till somebody we like can be elected.        We hate that expression!
                                        We only want the world to know
                                        That we support the status quo;
                                        They love us everywhere we go,
                                        So when in doubt, send the Marines!
                -- Tom Lehrer, "Send The Marines"
When you and I are far apart
Can sorrow break your tender heart?
I love you darling, yes I do;
Sleep is so sweet when I dream of you;
All you are is a blossoming rose.
Night is here so I must close.
With care read the first word of each line.
You will find a question of mine.
                -- Yours hopefully, The VAX.
Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
        We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
        Clean-favored, and imperially slim.
And he was always quietly arrayed,
        And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
        "Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.
And he was rich -- yes, richer than a king --
        And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
        To make us wish that we were in his place.
So on we worked, and waited for the light,
        And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
        Went home and put a bullet through his head.
                -- E.A. Robinson, "Richard Cory"
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
        Oh, dear, where can the matter be
        When it's converted to energy?
        There is a slight loss of parity.
        Johnny's so long at the fair.
Why are you watching
The washing machine?
I love entertainment
So long as it's clean.

Professor Doberman:
        While the preceding poem is unarguably a change from the guarded
pessimism of "The Hound of Heaven," it cannot be regarded as an unqualified
improvement.  Obscurity is of value only when it tends to clarify the poetic
experience.  As much as one is compelled to admire the poem's technique, one
must question whether its byplay of complex literary allusions does not in
fact distract from the unity of the whole.  In the final analysis, one
receives the distinct impression that the poem's length could safely have
been reduced by a factor of eight or ten without sacrificing any of its
meaning.  It is to be hoped that further publication of this poem can be
suspended pending a thorough investigation of its potential subversive
implications.
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
        For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
        Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

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

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

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
        Said his father.  "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
        Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
        And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
        Do you really think this is quite fair?"

"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
        "But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
        And to stop me it's now far too late."
You go down to the pickup station,
        craving warmth and beauty;
You settle for less than fascination --
        a few drinks later you're not so choosy.
And the closing lights strip off the shadows
        on this strange new flesh you've found --
Clutching the night to you like a fig leaf
        you hurry to the blackness
        and the blankets to lay down an impression
        and your loneliness.
                -- Joni Mitchell
Be free and open and breezy!  Enjoy!  Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
Don't worry so loud, your roommate can't think.
Fine day for friends.
So-so day for you.
It is so very hard to be an
on-your-own-take-care-of-yourself-because-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you
grown-up.
It was all so different before everything changed.
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong direction.
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
So this is it.  We're going to die.
So you're back... about time...
Today is the last day of your life so far.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
You would if you could but you can't so you won't.
        A ranger was walking through the forest and encountered a hunter
carrying a shotgun and a dead loon.  "What in the world do you think you're
doing?  Don't you know that the loon is on the endagered species list?"
        Instead of answering, the hunter showed the ranger his game bag,
which contained twelve more loons.
        "Why would you shoot loons?", the ranger asked.
        "Well, my family eats them and I sell the plumage."
        "What's so special about a loon?  What does it taste like?"
        "Oh, somewhere between an American Bald Eagle and a Trumpeter Swan."
                Accidentally Shot

        Colonel Gray, of Petaluma, came near losing his life a few days ago,
in a singular manner.  A gentleman with whom he was hunting attempted to
bring down a dove, but instead of doing so put the load of shot through the
Colonel's hat.  One shot took effect in his forehead.
                -- Sacramento Daily Union, April 20, 1861
        COONDOG MEMORY
        (heard in Rutledge, Missouri, about eighteen years ago)

Now, this dog is for sale, and she can not only follow a trail twice as
old as the average dog can, but she's got a pretty good memory to boot.
For instance, last week this old boy who lives down the road from me, and
is forever stinkmouthing my hounds, brought some city fellow around to
try out ol' Sis here.  So I turned her out south of the house and she made
two or three big swings back and forth across the edge of the woods, set
back her head, bayed a couple of times, cut straight through the woods,
come to a little clearing, jumped about three foot straight up in the air,
run to the other side, and commenced to letting out a racket like she had
something treed.  We went over there with our flashlights and shone them
up in the tree but couldn't catch no shine offa coon's eyes, and my
neighbor sorta indicated that ol' Sis might be a little crazy, `cause she
stood right to the tree and kept singing up into it.  So I pulled off my
coat and climbed up into the branches, and sure enough, there was a coon
skeleton wedged in between a couple of branches about twenty foot up.
Now as I was saying, she can follow a pretty old trail, but this fellow
was still calling her crazy or touched `cause she had hopped up in the
air while she was crossing the clearing, until I reminded him that the
Hawkins' had a fence across there about five years back.  Now, this dog
is for sale.
                -- News that stayed News: Ten Years of Coevolution Quarterly
HARVARD:
Quarterback:
        Sophomore Dave Strewzinski... likes to pass.  And pass he does, with
a record 86 attempts (three completions) in 87 plays....  Though Strewzinksi
has so far failed to score any points for the Crimson, his jackrabbit speed
has made him the least sacked quarterback in the Ivy league.
Wide Receiver:
        The other directional signal in Harvard's offensive machine is senior
Phil Yip, who is very fast.  Yip is so fast that he has set a record for being
fast.  Expect to see Yip elude all pursuers and make it into the endzone five
or six times, his average for a game.  Yip, nicknamed "fumblefingers" and "you
asshole" by his teammates, hopes to carry the ball with him at least one of
those times.
YALE:
Defense:
        On the defensive side, Yale boasts the stingiest line in the Ivies.
Primarily responsible are seniors Izzy "Shylock" Bloomberg and Myron
Finklestein, the tightest ends in recent Eli history.  Also contributing to
the powerful defense is junior tackle Angus MacWhirter, a Scotsman who rounds
out the offensive ethnic joke.  Look for these three to shut down the opening
coin toss.
                -- Harvard Lampoon 1988 Program Parody, distributed at The Game
I guess I've been so wrapped up in playing the game that I never took
time enough to figure out where the goal line was -- what it meant to
win -- or even how you won.
                -- Cash McCall
I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that
it took seven others to beat him!
If a team is in a positive frame of mind, it will have a good attitude.
If it has a good attitude, it will make a commitment to playing the
game right.  If it plays the game right, it will win -- unless, of
course, it doesn't have enough talent to win, and no manager can make
goose-liver pate out of goose feathers, so why worry?
                -- Sparky Anderson
If swimming is so good for your figure, how come whales look the
way they do?
Life is a game.  In order to have a game, something has to be more
important than something else.  If what already is, is more important
than what isn't, the game is over.  So, life is a game in which what
isn't, is more important than what is.  Let the good times roll.
                -- Werner Erhard
        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.]
"Oh, he [a big dog] hunts with papa," she said. "He says Don Carlos [the
dog] is good for almost every kind of game.  He went duck hunting one time
and did real well at it.  Then Papa bought some ducks, not wild ducks but,
you know, farm ducks.  And it got Don Carlos all mixed up.  Since the
ducks were always around the yard with nobody shooting at them he knew he
wasn't supposed to kill them, but he had to do something.  So one morning
last spring, when the ground was still soft, he took all the ducks and
buried them."  "What do you mean, buried them?"  "Oh, he didn't hurt them.
He dug little holes all over the yard and picked up the ducks in his mouth
and put them in the holes.  Then he covered them up with mud except for
their heads.  He did thirteen ducks that way and was digging a hole for
another one when Tony found him.  We talked about it for a long time.  Papa
said Don Carlos was afraid the ducks might run away, and since he didn't
know how to build a cage he put them in holes.  He's a smart dog."
                -- R. Bradford, "Red Sky At Morning"
Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem.  You see, during
a portion of Beethovan's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin
parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around.  So,
to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the
end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the
page of the score before the bass cue.  As the basses grew more and more
inebriated, two of them fell asleep.  The conductor grew quite nervous (he
was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth;
the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out.
So I'm ugly.  So what?  I never saw anyone hit with his face.
                -- Yogi Berra
The Fastest Defeat In Chess
        The big name for us in the world of chess is Gibaud, a French chess
master.  
        In Paris during 1924 he was beaten after only four moves by a
Monsieur Lazard.  Happily for posterity, the moves are recorded and so
chess enthusiasts may reconstruct this magnificent collapse in the comfort
of their own homes.
        Lazard was black and Gibaud white:
        1: P-Q4, Kt-KB3
        2: Kt-Q2, P-K4
        3: PxP, Kt-Kt5
        4: P-K6, Kt-K6
        White then resigns on realizing that a fifth move would involve
either a Q-KR5 check or the loss of his queen.
                -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable
that I assume it must be evil.
                -- Heywood Broun
We was playin' the Homestead Grays in the city of Pitchburgh.  Josh [Gibson]
comes up in the last of the ninth with a man on and us a run behind.  Well,
he hit one.  The Grays waited around and waited around, but finally the
empire rules it ain't comin' down.  So we win.  The next day, we was disputin'
the Grays in Philadelphia when here come a ball outta the sky right in the
glove of the Grays' center fielder.  The empire made the only possible call.
"You're out, boy!" he says to Josh.  "Yesterday, in Pitchburgh."
                -- Satchel Paige
Hi there!  This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the person
reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous quotes, jokes,
nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
After a time, you may find that "having" is not so pleasing a thing,
after all, as "wanting."  It is not logical, but it is often true.
                -- Spock, "Amok Time", stardate 3372.7
Another war ... must it always be so?  How many comrades have we lost
in this way? ...  Obedience.  Duty.  Death, and more death ...
                -- Romulan Commander, "Balance of Terror", stardate 1709.2
        "It's hard to believe that something which is neither seen nor felt can
do so much harm."
        "That's true.  But an idea can't be seen or felt.  And that's what kept
the Troglytes in the mines all these centuries.  A mistaken idea."
                -- Vanna and Kirk, "The Cloud Minders", stardate 5819.0
The people of Gideon have always believed that life is sacred.  That
the love of life is the greatest gift ... We are incapable of
destroying or interfering with the creation of that which we love so
deeply -- life in every form from fetus to developed being.
                -- Hodin of Gideon, "The Mark of Gideon", stardate 5423.4
There comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face
.... One day our minds became so powerful we dared think of ourselves as gods.
                -- Sargon, "Return to Tomorrow", stardate 4768.3
"`...You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call
attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling
anyone or anything.'
`But the plans were on display...'
`On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to
find them.'
`That's the display department.'
`With a torch.'
`Ah, well the lights had probably gone.'
`So had the stairs.'
`But look you found the notice didn't you?'
`Yes,' said Arthur, `yes I did. It was on display in the
bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused
lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The
Leopard".'"

- Arthur singing the praises of the local council planning
department.
"`Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.'
`Very deep,' said Arthur, `you should send that in to the
"Reader's Digest". They've got a page for people like you.'"

- Ford convincing Arthur to drink three pints in ten
minutes at lunchtime.
"`You'd better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace.
It's unpleasently like being drunk.'
`What's so unpleasent about being drunk?'
`You ask a glass of water.'"

- Arthur getting ready for his first jump into hyperspace.
"And wow! Hey! What's this thing coming towards me very
fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a
big wide sounding word like... ow... ound... round...
ground! That's it! That's a good name - ground!
I wonder if it will be friends with me?"

- For the sperm whale, it wasn't.
"There are of course many problems connected with life, of
which some of the most popular are `Why are people born?'
`Why do they die?' `Why do they spend so much of the
intervening time wearing digital watches?'"

- The Book.
"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a
lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad
move." - The Book just racapping what happened in the last
book.
"`I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in
me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over
my pelvis.'"

- Zaphod being cool.
"`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.
"`Hand me the rap-rod, Plate Captain.'
The little waiter's eyebrows wandered about his forehead in
confusion.
`I beg your pardon, sir?' he said.
`The phone, waiter,' said Zaphod, grabbing it off him.
`Shee, you guys are so unhip it's a wonder your bums don't
fall off.'"

- Zaphod discovers that waiters are the least hip people
in the Universe.
BOOK        ...Man had always assumed that he was more
intelligent than
        dolphins because he had achieved so much... the
wheel, New York,
        wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever
done was muck
        about in the water having a good time. But
conversely the
        dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent
than man for
        precisely the same reasons.
ARTHUR        What is an Algolian Zylatburger anyway?
FORD        They're a kind of meatburger made from the most
unpleasant parts
        of a creature well known for its total lack of any
pleasant
        parts.
ARTHUR        So you mean that the Universe does actually end not
with a bang
        but with a Wimpy?

- Cut dialogue from Fit the Fifth.
BOOK        What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in
the ground
        underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no
hope of
        rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has
been good to
        you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good
to you so
        far, which given your current circumstances seems
more likely,
        consider how lucky you are that it won't be
troubling you much
        longer.

- Comforting advice for Ford and Arthur in this current
situation, Fit the Eighth.
"`...we might as well start with where your hand is now.'
Arthur said, `So which way do I go?'
`Down,' said Fenchurch, `on this occaision.'
He moved his hand.
`Down,' she said, `is in fact the other way.'
`Oh yes.'"

- Arthur trying to discover which part of Fenchurch is
wrong.
"`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.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that
anything so mindboggingly useful could have evolved purely
by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the
final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: `I refuse to prove
that I exist,' says God, `for proof denies faith, and
without faith I am nothing.'
"`But,' says Man, `The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't
it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you
exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't.
QED.'
"Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz smiled very slowly. This was done
not so much for effect as because he was trying to remember
the sequence of muscle movements. "
"OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million
for good thinking, yeah? "
"For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or
so, nothing continued to happen. "
"And finally, " said Max, quieting the audience down and
putting on his solemn face, "finally I believe we have with
us here tonight, a party of believers, very devout
believers, from the Church of the Second Coming of the
Great Prophet Zarquon. " ... "There they are, " said Max,
"sitting there, patiently. He said he'd come again, and
he's kept you waiting a long time, so let's hope he's
hurrying fellas, because he's only got eight minutes left! "
"As he came into the light they could see his black and
gold uniform on which the buttons were so highly polished
that they shone with an intensity that would have made an
approaching motorist flash his lights in annoyance. "
Arthur said, "So which way do I go? "
"Down, " said Fenchurch, "on this occasion. "
He moved his hand.
"Down, " she said, "is in fact the other way. "
"Oh yes. "
A large spider in an old house built a beautiful web in which to catch flies.
Every time a fly landed on the web and was entangled in it the spider devoured
him, so that when another fly came along he would think the web was a safe and
quiet place in which to rest.  One day a fairly intelligent fly buzzed around
above the web so long without lighting that the spider appeared and said,
"Come on down."  But the fly was too clever for him and said, "I never light
where I don't see other flies and I don't see any other flies in your house."
So he flew away until he came to a place where there were a great many other
flies.  He was about to settle down among them when a bee buzzed up and said,
"Hold it, stupid, that's flypaper.  All those flies are trapped."  "Don't be
silly," said the fly, "they're dancing."  So he settled down and became stuck
to the flypaper with all the other flies.

Moral:  There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
                -- James Thurber, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
"A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!"
                -- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
                -- Woody Allen
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast.  People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there.  They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
                -- Walt Kelly
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the
Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an
utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life
forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches
are a pretty neat idea ...
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
I finally went to the eye doctor.  I got contacts.  I only need them to
read, so I got flip-ups.
                -- Steven Wright
"I got into an elevator at work and this man followed in after me... I
pushed '1' and he just stood there... I said 'Hi, where you going?'  He
said, 'Phoenix.'  So I pushed Phoenix.  A few seconds later the doors
opened, two tumbleweeds blew in... we were in downtown Phoenix.  I looked
at him and said 'You know, you're the kind of guy I want to hang around
with.'  We got into his car and drove out to his shack in the desert.
Then the phone rang.  He said 'You get it.'  I picked it up and said
'Hello?'... the other side said 'Is this Steven Wright?'... I said 'Yes...'
The guy said 'Hi, I'm Mr. Jones, the student loan director from your bank...
It seems you have missed your last 17 payments, and the university you
attended said that they received none of the $17,000 we loaned you... we
would just like to know what happened to the money?'  I said, 'Mr. Jones,
I'll give it to you straight.  I gave all of the money to my friend Slick,
and with it he built a nuclear weapon... and I would appreciate it if you never
called me again."
                -- Steven Wright
I got tired of listening to the recording on the phone at the movie
theater.  So I bought the album.  I got kicked out of a theater the
other day for bringing my own food in.  I argued that the concession
stand prices were outrageous.  Besides, I hadn't had a barbecue in a
long time.  I went to the theater and the sign said adults $5 children
$2.50.  I told them I wanted 2 boys and a girl.  I once took a cab to
a drive-in movie.  The movie cost me $95.
                -- Steven Wright
I had no shoes and I pitied myself.  Then I met a man who had no feet,
so I took his shoes.
                -- Dave Barry
I have a box of telephone rings under my bed.  Whenever I get lonely, I
open it up a little bit, and I get a phone call.  One day I dropped the
box all over the floor.  The phone wouldn't stop ringing.  I had to get
it disconnected.  So I got a new phone.  I didn't have much money, so I
had to get an irregular.  It doesn't have a five.  I ran into a friend
of mine on the street the other day.  He said why don't you give me a
call.  I told him I can't call everybody I want to anymore, my phone
doesn't have a five.  He asked how long had it been that way.  I said I
didn't know -- my calendar doesn't have any sevens.
                -- Steven Wright
I have a dog; I named him Stay.  So when I'd go to call him, I'd say, "Here,
Stay, here..." but he got wise to that.  Now when I call him he ignores me
and just keeps on typing.
                -- Steven Wright
I suggest you locate your hot tub outside your house, so it won't do too
much damage if it catches fire or explodes.  First you decide which
direction your hot tub should face for maximum solar energy.  After much
trial and error, I have found that the best direction for a hot tub to face
is up.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
I turned my air conditioner the other way around, and it got cold out.
The weatherman said "I don't understand it.  I was supposed to be 80
degrees today," and I said "Oops."

In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... so
I never have to go upstairs.

I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in
front of it in only eight minutes.
                -- Steven Wright
I was at this restaurant.  The sign said "Breakfast Anytime."  So I
ordered French Toast in the Rennaissance.
                -- Steven Wright
"I was drunk last night, crawled home across the lawn.  By accident I
put the car key in the door lock.  The house started up.  So I figured
what the hell, and drove it around the block a few times.  I thought I
should go park it in the middle of the freeway and yell at everyone to
get off my driveway."
                -- Steven Wright
I was in a bar and I walked up to a beautiful woman and said, "Do you live
around here often?"  She said, "You're wearing two different-color socks."
I said, "Yes, but to me they're the same because I go by thickness."
She said, "How do you feel?" And I said, "You know when you're sitting on a
chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs and you lean too far so
you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself?  I feel like
that all the time..."
                -- Steven Wright, "Gentlemen's Quarterly"
If you throw a New Year's Party, the worst thing that you can do would be
to throw the kind of party where your guests wake up today, and call you to
say they had a nice time.  Now you'll be be expected to throw another party
next year.
        What you should do is throw the kind of party where your guest wake
up several days from now and call their lawyers to find out if they've been
indicted for anything.  You want your guests to be so anxious to avoid a
recurrence of your party that they immediately start planning parties of their
own, a year in advance, just to prevent you from having another one ...
        If your party is successful, the police will knock on your door,
unless your party is very successful in which case they will lob tear gas
through your living room window.  As host, your job is to make sure that
they don't arrest anybody.  Or if they're dead set on arresting someone,
your job is to make sure it isn't you ...
                -- Dave Barry
In America today ... we have Woody Allen, whose humor has become so
sophisticated that nobody gets it any more except Mia Farrow.  All those who
think Mia Farrow should go back to making movies where the devil gets her
pregnant and Woody Allen should go back to dressing up as a human sperm,
please raise your hands.  Thank you.
                -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what
they seem.  For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed
that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so
much -- the wheel, New York, wars and so on -- whilst all the dolphins
had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.  But
conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more
intelligent than man -- for precisely the same reasons.

Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending
destruction of the of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to
alert mankind to the danger; but most of their communications were
misinterpreted ...
                -- Douglas Admas "The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy"
Last night the power went out.  Good thing my camera had a flash....
The neighbors thought it was lightning in my house, so they called the cops.
                -- Steven Wright
Like you,  I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things.  Here are just a few:

        Q -- Is there life after death?
        A -- Definitely.  I speak from personal experience here.  On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache.  Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead.  I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
                -- Dave Barry
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday Afternoon,
there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday mornings because he
was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had been on Monday and how
completely Mournful he would be on Wednesday....
                -- Walt Kelly
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
        My friends, I am here to tell you of the wonderous continent known as
Africa.  Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31.
We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in
Africa.  Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule:  Up at
6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00.  Pretty soon we were back in bed by
6:30.  Now Africa is full of big game.  The first day I shot two bucks.  That
was the biggest game we had.  Africa is primerally inhabited by Elks, Moose
and Knights of Pithiests.
        The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their
annual conventions.  And you should see them gathered around the water hole,
which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water.  They
weren't looking for a water hole.  They were looking for an alck hole.
        One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my
pajamas, I don't know.  Then we tried to remove the tusks.  That's a tough
word to say, tusks.  As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were
imbedded so firmly we couldn't get them out.  But in Alabama the Tuscaloosa,
but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying.
        We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed.
So we're going back in a few years...
                -- Julius H. Marx [Groucho]
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to celebrate
it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around stringing
cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on "The Waltons".
Well, you can forget it.  If everybody pulled that kind of subversive stunt,
the economy would collapse overnight.  The government would have to
intervene: it would form a cabinet-level Department of Holiday Gift-Giving,
which would spend billions and billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls
and electronic games, which it would drop on the populace from Air Force
jets, killing and maiming thousands.  So, for the good of the nation, you
should go along with the Holiday Program.  This means you should get a large
sum of money and go to a mall.
                -- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
SOMETIMES THE BEAUTY OF THE WORLD is so overwhelming, I just want to throw
back my head and gargle.  Just gargle and gargle and I don't care who hears
me because I am beautiful.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is
becoming an endangered synthetic.
                -- Lily Tomlin
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
                -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
                -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
"So I decided that if the architecture is fundamentally sane enough, say it follows some basic rules like it supported paging , then I would be able to say, yes, Linux fundamentally supports that model."

  -- Linus Torvalds on Portability (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"So right now the only vendor that does such a stupid thing is Microsoft."

  -- Linus Torvalds on bad file system interface design. (Open Sources , 1999 O'Reilly and Associates.)
"If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program intelligently."

  -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"Computers and autmation have become so ingrained and essentaial to day-to-day business that a sensible business should not rely on a single vendor to provide essential services........Thus is is always in a customers' interests to demand that the software they deploy be based on non-proprietary platforms."

  -- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"So here's a picture of reality: (picture of circle with lots of sqiggles in it) As we all know, reality is a mess."

  -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
"Of course, in Perl culture, almost nothis is prohibited. My feeling is that the rest of the world already has plenty of perfectly good prohibitions, so why invent more?"

  -- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
  I'm not going to say, "I told you so."
  Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
  -Josh Billings
Are you scared of speed?  If so, then try Windows 95.
If Windows is so user-friendly, then why do you need a 678-page manual?
Buy a Pentium III so you can reboot faster.
Blackmail Error:
Send $200 to Bill Gates or your computer will get so messed up it will never
work again.
All of you people should be ashamed of yourselves! MicroSoft is the reason
there are so many people in my IS department, and the reason half of us have
jobs. If Sun had won, we could probably get by with two people sleeping like
the Maytag man. But because of MS, there are eight people gainfully employed as
highly paid contracters, looking busy, feeding their kids. And the way it
looks, I stand to be employed and wealthy for a long, long time.

   -- From Slashdot.org
We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity -- so UP yours, Microsoft!
Everyone seems so impatient and angry these days.  I think it's because
so many people use Windows at work -- do you think you'd be Politeness
Man after working on Windows 8 hrs. or more?

   -- Chip Atkinson
NT 5.0 so vaporous it's in danger of being added to the
periodic table as a noble gas.

   -- From Slashdot.org
People use dummies for crash-tests. Windows is so difficult they had to
educate the dummies first -- by giving them "Windows for Dummies" books!

   -- Ewout Stam
So what is the best way to protect yourself against the ILOVEYOU virus? Install
Linux. If that's not an option, try uninstalling Windows.

   -- Geoff Johnson
Hear me out. Linux is Microsoft's main competition right now. Because of
this we are forcing them to "innovate", something they would usually avoid.
Now if MS Bob has taught us anything, Microsoft is not a company that
should be innovating. When they do, they don't come up with things like
"better security" or "stability", they come back with "talking
paperclips", and "throw in every usless feature we can think of, memory
footprint be dammed".

Unfortunatly, they also come up with the bright idea of executing email.
Now MIME attachments aren't enough, they want you to be able to run/open
attachments right when you get them. This sounds like a good idea to
people who believe renaming directories to folders made computing possible
for the common man, but security wise it's like vigorously shaking a
package from the Unibomber.

So my friends, we are to blame. We pushed them into frantically trying to
invent "necessary" features to stay on top, and look where it got us. Many
of us are watching our beloved mail servers go down under the strain and
rebuilding our company's PC because of our pointless competition with MS.
I implore you to please drop Linux before Microsoft innovates again.

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

"Our business model works even if *ALL* software is free.
How does Microsoft's business model look? -- not so good."
   -- the response from the Linux community
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running
Linux... And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a
client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million
Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred
years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola.

   -- Polly Sprenger, LAN Times
Missouri Town Changes Name to 'Linux'

LINUX, MO -- The small Missouri town of Linn, county seat of Osage County,
announced yesterday that it will be henceforth called 'Linux'. Mayor Bob Farrow
said, "Linn needed something to put it on the map. A few weeks ago my daughter
mentioned that she installed Linux on her computer and how great she thought it
was. I thought to myself, 'Self, changing the town's name to 'Linux' could be
an opportunity to attract attention -- and money -- to our town. We could even
hold a Linux Convention at the community center.' So I approached the city
council about the idea, and they loved it. The rest is history."

Farrow's daughter is organizing the Linux Linux User Group. She hopes to be
able to hold a Linux Convention this fall. "The Linn, er, Linux community
center probably won't be big enough, we'll probably have to hold it in nearby
Jefferson City," she said.

The mayor does have one reservation. "How the hell do you pronounce Linux?" One
of the mayor's contenders in the next election, Mr. Noah Morals, says he will
start an ad campaign calling Bob Farrow "the Incumbent Liar of LIE-nucks".
Needless to say, the mayor usually pronounces Linux as "LIH-nucks".
Mad Programmer Commits Suicide

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

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

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

SILICON VALLEY, CA -- Attendees at the Microsoft ActiveDemo Conference held
this week in San Jose were greeted by a pleasant surprise yesterday: Linux.
Somehow a group of Linux enthusiasts were able to replace a Windows NT box with
a Linux box right before the "ActiveDemo" of Windows NT 5 beta. "I have no clue
how they were able to pull off this prank," a Microserf spokesman said. "Rest
assured, Microsoft will do everything to investigate and prosecute the Linux
nuts who did this. Our bottom line must be protected."

Bill Gates said, "I was showing off the new features in Windows NT 5 when I
noticed something odd about the demo computer. It didn't crash. Plus, the font
used on the screen wasn't MS San Serif -- trust me, I know. My suspicions were
confirmed when, instead of the "Flying Windows" screensaver, a "Don't Fear the
Penguins" screensaver appeared. The audience laughed and applauded for five
straight minutes. It was so embarrasing -- even more so than the pie incident.

One attendee said, "Wow! This Linux is cool -- it didn't crash once during the
entire demo! I'd like to see NT do that." Another asked, "You guys got any
Linux CDs? I want one. Forget about vaporware NT." Yet another remarked, "I
didn't know it was possible to hack Linux to make it look like NT. I can
install Linux on my company's computers without my boss knowing!"
ARE YOU ADDICTED TO SLASHDOT?
Take this short test to find out if you are a Dothead.

1. Do you submit articles to Slashdot and then reload the main page every 3.2
    seconds to see if your article has been published yet?
2. Have you made more than one "first comment!" post within the past week?
3. Have you ever participated in a Gnome vs. KDE or a Linux vs. FreeBSD
    flamewar on Slashdot?
4. Do you write jokes about Slashdot?
5. Do you wake up at night, go to the bathroom, and fire up your web browser
    to get your Slashdot fix on the way back?
6. Do you dump your date at the curb so you can hurry home to visit Slashdot?
7. Do you think of Slashdot when you order a taco at a restaurant?
8. Are you a charter member of the Rob Malda Fan Club?
9. Did you lease a T3 line so you could download Slashdot faster?
10. Is Slashdot your only brower's bookmark?
11. Do you get a buzz when your browser finally connects to Slashdot?
12. Do you panic when your browser says "Unable to connect to slashdot.org"?
13. Have you even made a New Year's Resolution to cut back on Slashdot
    access... only to visit it at 12:01?
Tux Penguin Boxing Match

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

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

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

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- High officials in the US military are planning on putting
the  'Slashdot Effect' to use against Iraq. Pentagon computer experts think
that the Slashdot Effect could topple key Net-connected Iraqi computer
systems.  Such a Denial of Service attack could prove instrumental when the
US invades.

One Pentagon official said, "If I had a million dollars for every server that
crashed as a result of being linked on Slashdot, I'd be richer than Bill
Gates.  The Slashdot Effect is a very powerful weapon that the US military
wants to tap into."

Rob Malda has been contacted by top military brass.  According to anonymous
sources, Malda will play a key part in the so-called "Operation Desert
Slash".  Supposedly Malda will post several Slashdot articles with links to
critical Iraqi websites right when the US invasion is set to begin.
Meanwhile, Pentagon operatives will begin a series of Denial of Service
attacks on other key Iraqi computer systems. One source notes, "Since many
Iraqi systems rely on Microsoft software, this task should be relatively
simple."
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #6

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

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

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

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

SHERIDAN, WY -- In an unprecedented blow to Linux advocacy, Aaron McAdams, an
employee at the Sheridan Try-N-Save Discount Store, was fired last week.
According to the store's general manager, McAdams was fired because "he
constantly rearranged items on shelves so that Linux-related books and
software boxes would be displayed more prominently than Windows merchandise."
McAdams' boss added, "If he would have spent as much time actually working as
he did hiding Windows books at the back of shelves, he wouldn't have received
the pink slip."

The general manager supplied Humorix with videotapes from the store's
security cameras showing McAdams in action.  In one scene, he takes a whole
stack of "...For Dummies" books and buries them in the Cheap Romance section,
an area of the store rarely visited by computer users.  In another, McAdams
can be plainly seen setting copies of Red Hat Linux in front of a large,
eye-catching display of various Microsoft products at the front of the
store.  Finally, at one point McAdams can be seen slapping huge tags reading
"DEMO DISPLAY BOX -- NOT AVAILABLE UNTIL 1999" on boxes of Windows 98.

McAdams disputes his bosses accusations.  "If he would spend more time
actually working instead of peering over security camera footage for hours on
end, this store might actually turn a profit for a change."
The War Against Linux

A significant obstacle on the path to Linux World Domination has emerged.  A
reactionary grass-roots movement has formed to fight, as they call it, "The
War Against Linux".  This movement, code-named "LinSux", is composed of
people (mostly Microsoft stockholders and commercial software developers)
who want to maintain the status quo.  They are fighting back against the
rise of Linux and free software which they see as a threat to their financial
independence.

The most damaging attack the LinSux folks have launched is "Three Mile
Island", a Windows macro virus designed to inflict damage on computers that
contain a partition devoted to a non-Microsoft OS.  When the victim computer
is booted into Windows, the virus activates and deletes any non-Microsoft
partitions. Ironically, the many security flaws in Windows allow the virus
to damage alternative operating systems but leave Windows unscathed.

"The War Against Linux" has also been fought in more subtle ways.
Time-tested methods of Linux advocacy have been turned into subtle forms of
anti-Linux advocacy by the LinSux crowd.  MSCEs are smuggling NT boxes into
companies that predominantly use Linux or Unix.  LinSux "freedom fighters"
are rearranging books and software boxes on store shelves so that Microsoft
offerings are displayed more prominently.
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

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

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

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

No one knows when the technological luxuries we once enjoyed as little as
6 months ago will return. Things such as e-mail, the Internet, and all
computers were lost when the crisis showed itself for what it really was:
a disaster waiting to happen. Scholars predict the mainframe computer will
be invented again during the 24th century...
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#4)

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 4: What is your favorite Microsoft Office feature?

A. Dancing Paper Clip

B. Takes up enough hard drive space to prevent my children from installing
   violent video games or downloading pornography

C. Everyone else has it, so I can easily exchange documents with others

D. I have so many favorites, I can't choose just one!
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#5)

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 5: Where do you want to go today?(tm)

A. To Washington, D.C. to meet Janet Reno and cuss her out for persecuting
   Microsoft

B. To Redmond, WA to take a tour of the Microsoft campus

C. To the software store to purchase a new piece of Microsoft software

D. To my local school district to convince the administration to upgrade
   the Macintoshes in the computer labs to Wintel systems

E. I don't know about myself, but I'd like to see so-called "consumer
   advocates" like Ralph Nader go to Hell.
Microsoft Mandatory Survey (#8)

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

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

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

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

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

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

E. "Give the government hell, Bill!"
Jargon Coiner (#6)

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

* TLDography (pronounced till-daw-graffy): The study of top leval domains.

  Example: "I asked my friend, a TLDographer, what country .ca stood for,
  and he responded, 'California, of course'."

* TLDofy (pronounced till-duh-fy): Identifying a country by its top level
  domain.

  Example: "Oh, so you're from .de? Sprechen Sie Deutsch?"

* HTML lapse: A period of time when the brain slips into thinking in HTML.
Programming for money sucks... you have to deal with PHBs, 16 hour days,
and spending the night in your cubicle half of the time to avoid the
Commute From Hell...

I minored in Journalism, so I tried to switch into a job as an IT pundit.
You'd think they'd welcome a geek like me with open arms, but they
didn't.  Ziff-Davis wouldn't even give me an interview. I was "too
qualified" they said. Apparently my technical acumen was too much for
their organization, which employs Jesse Berst and the ilk.

It gets worse. I tried to get an entry-level reporting job for a
local-yokel paper. After the interview they gave me a "skills test": I had
to compose an article using Microsoft Word 97. Since I've never touched a
Windows box, I had no clue how to use it. When I botched the test, the
personnel manager spouted, "Your resume said you were a computer
programmer. Obviously you're a liar. Get out of my office now!"

  -- Excerpt from a horror story about geek discrimination during
     the Geek Grok '99 telethon
Bill Gates Passes Turing Test

LONDON, ENGLAND -- Microsoft proclaimed that they have passed the Turing
Test by creating a Bill Gates multimedia simulacrum that crack BBC
interviewer Jeremy Paxman couldn't distinguish from the real thing. "I
never would have expected this," Paxman said about the Gates AI program.
"After all, this Microsoft program actually worked for an extended period
of time, something you don't see very often."

Microsoft has plans to mass-produce the Bill Gates holographic simulation
by 2010 or so. "The hardware just isn't there yet for home use," a
Microserf explained. "By then, though, Intel's Itanium 6 Super Pro Plus
III CPU running at 600 Ghz or whatever should be sufficient." Windows 2010
is expected to include the Bill Gates simulation, making the World's
Richest Man(tm) accessible to the entire world.

A newly printed brochure for the faux-Gates advertises, "Need help running
Windows 2010? Bill Gates will sit beside you and guide you through the
system. Have a question for the world's sexiest and smartest nerd? He'll
answer it. Wondering if free and open source software is a plot by
Communists freaks to overthrow the free market system? He'll be there to
explain. Want to ask for a personal loan? Sorry, won't happen."          
This is excellent news! I haven't thought about remedies yet... well, you
know, I can think of one thing the court should do: require that Microsoft
remove the Dancing Paper Clip and associated crap from Office... Oh, and
while they're at it, get rid of those multi-megabyte easter eggs. Why does
Excel need a flight simulator? So I can see the Blue Screen of Death in
3D? Oh, and another thing, the court needs to put a hex on ActiveX...

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

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

  -- Anonymous Coward's response to Judge Jackson's harsh Findings
     Of Fact against Microsoft
What Did Santa Claus Bring You In 1999? (#1)

LINUS TORVALDS: Santa didn't bring me anything, but Tim O'Reilly just gave
me a large sum of money to publish my new book, "Linus Torvalds' Official
Guide To Receiving Fame, Fortune, and Hot Babes By Producing Your Own
Unix-Like Operating System In Only 10 Years".

ORDINARY LINUX HACKER: I kept hinting to my friends and family that I
wanted to build my own Beowulf Cluster. My grandmother got mixed up and
gave me a copy of "Beowulf's Chocolate Cluster Cookbook". I like
chocolate, but I would've preferred silicon.

LINUX LONGHAIR: My friends sent me a two-year subscription to several
Ziff-Davis publications, much to my dislike. I don't want to read Jesse
Berst's rants against Linux, or John Dvorak's spiels about how great
Windows 2000 is. Still, I suppose this isn't so bad. Ziff-Davis glossy
paper makes an excellent lining for fireplaces.
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.
Is Linux A Finnish Conspiracy?

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

"It's time we take the Finnish threat seriously," Fatcatte said at a press
conference. "Not only is Finn software a threat to domestic tranquility,
but it could radically alter the computer industry, costing us thousands
of jobs... and, more importantly, billions in tax revenue. We must prevent
the Finns from subverting our economy with so-called 'open-source
software'." He then asked, "Is anybody thinking of the children of
programmers who will become unemployed when Finnish software overruns the
country?"
Excerpts From The First Annual Nerd Bowl (#1)

JOHN SPLADDEN: Hi, and welcome to the first annual Nerd Bowl in sunny
Silicon Valley.

BRYANT DUMBELL: We're coming to you live from the Transmeta Dome to watch
the battle between the North Carolina Mad Hatters and the Michigan
Portalbacks as they compete for the coveted Linus Torvalds Trophy.

SPLADDEN: This is shaping up to be one hell of a match. The Mad Hatters --
sponsored by Linux distributor Red Hat -- have been on fire the past
month. But the Andover.Net sponsored Michigan Portalbacks are on a tear as
well, thanks in part to the stellar performance of Rob "Taco Boy" Malda.

DUMBELL: Taco Boy is quite a star, John. Last week at the Kernelbowl he
blew away the Transmeta Secret Agents when he scored 51 points
singlehandedly in the Flying CompactDiscus round.

SPLADDEN: But then Mad Hatter's Alan Cox was voted this season's Most
Valuable Hacker in the Eastern Division. So, this game is going to be
quite a show.
The new "I Love You" virus is not the work of some snot-nosed acne-laced
teenager working from a basement in the Phillipines. It's actually part of
a conspiracy concocted by the unholy alliance of Microsoft and several
well-known and well-despised spammers.

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

   -- Bob Smith (not his real code-name), in a speech given at the
      First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy Convention (ConConCon),
      "the largest ever gathering of conspiracy theorists east of the
      Mississippi."
Right now hundreds of Anonymous Cowards are cheering the fact that only
Windows boobs are victims of ILOVEYOU and other email viruses. I realize
Outlook is so insecure that using it is like posting a sign outside your
door saying, "DOOR UNLOCKED -- ROB ME!". However, Linux isn't immune. If I
had a dollar for every pine buffer overflow uncovered, I could buy a
truckload of fresh herring.

I expect the next mass email virus to spread will be cross-platform. If
the recipient is a Windows/Outlook luser, they'll get hit. If the
recipient is a Linux/pine user, they'll find themselves staring at a
self-executing bash script that's has just allocated 1 petabyte of memory
and crashed the system (or worse).

Either that or the next mass email virus will only damage Linux systems. I
can just see Bill Gates assigning some junior programmer that very task.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

   -- A speech given at the First Annual Connecticut Conspiracy]
      Convention (ConConCon) by an anonymous creature said to
      be "wearing what appeared to be a tuxedo".
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 (#9)
Edison's most important invention

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

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

Ironically, filmmakers that found themselves facing Edison patent
litigation (or worse) fled to Texas, California, and Mexico. Those same
filmmakers outlasted Edison's monopoly and eventually banded together to
form the MPAA! History has a tendency to repeat itself; so it seems likely
that today's DVD lawsuit victims may well come to power in the future --
and soon become the evil establishment, thus completing another cycle.
Brief History Of Linux (#12)
A note from Bill Gates' second grade teacher:

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

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

I developed a headache that day that even the maximum dosage of Aspirin
wasn't able to handle. And then on Tuesday, he conned several students out
of their milk money by convincing them to play three-card Monty...
Brief History Of Linux (#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 (#18)
The rise and rise of the Microsoft Empire

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

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

In 1986 Microsoft's continued success prompted the company to undergo a
wildly successful IPO. Afterwards, Microsoft and Chairman Bill had
accumulated enough money to acquire small countries without missing a
step, but all that money couldn't buy quality software. Gates could,
however, buy enough marketing and hype to keep MS-DOS (Maybe Some Day an
Operating System) and Windows (Will Install Needless Data On While System)
as the dominant platforms, so quality didn't matter. This fact was
demonstrated in Microsoft's short-lived slogan from 1988, "At Microsoft,
quality is job 1.1".
Brief History Of Linux (#19)
Boy meets operating system

The young Linus Torvalds might have been just another CompSci student if
it wasn't for his experiences in the Univ. of Helsinki's Fall 1990 Unix &
C course. During one class, the professor experienced difficulty getting
Minix to work properly on a Sun box. "Who the heck designed this thing?"
the angry prof asked, and somebody responded, "Andrew Tanenbaum".

The name of the Unix & C professor has already escaped from Linus, but the
words he spoke next remain forever etched in his grey matter:
"Tanenbaum... ah, yes, that Amsterdam weenie who thinks microkernels are
the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, they're not. I would just
love to see somebody create their own superior Unix-like 32-bit operating
system using a monolithic kernel just to show Tanenbaum up!"

His professor's outburst inspired Linus to order a new IBM PC so he could
hack Minix. You can probably guess what happened next. Inspired by his
professor's words, Linus Torvalds hacks together his own superior
Unix-like 32-but operating system using a monolithic kernel just to show
Mr. Christmas Tree up.
Brief History Of Linux (#23)

Linus Torvalds certainly wasn't the only person to create their own
operating system from scratch. Other people working from their leaky
basements did create their own systems and now they are sick that they
didn't become an Alpha Geek like Torvalds or a Beta Geek like Alan Cox.

Linus had one advantage not many else did: Internet access. The world was
full of half-implemented-Unix-kernels at the time, but they were sitting
isolated on some hacker's hard drive, destined to be destroyed by a hard
drive crash. Thankfully that never happened to Linux, mostly because
everyone with Net access could download a copy instead of paying shipping
charges to receive the code on a huge stack of unreliable floppy disks.

Indeed, buried deep within a landfill in Lansing, Michigan sits a stack of
still-readable 5-1/4 floppies containing the only known copy of "Windows
Killer", a fully functional Unix kernel so elegant, so efficient, so
easy-to-use that Ken Thompson himself would be jealous of its design.
Unfortunately the author's mother threw out the stack of floppies in a
bout of spring cleaning. The 14 year old author's talents were lost
forever as his parents sent him to Law School.
Brief History Of Linux (#29)

"The Cathedral and the Bazaar" is credited by many (especially ESR
himself) as the reason Netscape announced January 22, 1998 the release of
the Mozilla source code. In addition, Rob Malda of Slashdot has also
received praise because he had recently published an editorial ("Give us
the damn source code so we can fix Netscape's problems ourselves!")

Of course, historians now know the true reason behind the landmark
decision: Netscape engineers were scared to death that a large
multi-national corporation would acquire them and crush Mozilla. Which
indeed did happen much later, although everybody thought the conqueror
would be Microsoft, not AOL (America's Online Lusers).

The Netscape announcement prompted a strategy session among Linux bigwigs
on February 3rd. They decided a new term to replace 'free software' was
needed; some rejected suggestions included "Free Source", "Ajar Source",
"World Domination Source", "bong-ware" (Bong's Obviously Not GNU), and
"Nude Source". We can thank Chris Peterson for coining "Open Source",
which became the adopted term and later sparked the ugly "Free Software
vs. Open Source", "Raymond vs. Stallman" flame-a-thons.
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The Next Big Thing: "Clairvoyant Consultants"

Nobody likes to deal with tech support or customer service reps. A growing
number of people are getting sick of being put on hold for three hours and
then paying ridiculous "per incident" fees so some Microserf can tell them
to "reinstall the operating system!"

Desperate users are turning to an unlikely source to diagnose and fix
software problems: psychics. Palm[Pilot] readers, 1-900 number operators,
and clairvoyant consultants are quickly becoming the hottest careers in
the tech sector.

Explained Madam Cosmos, owner of the Main Street Mysticism Temple in
Keokuk, Iowa, "With my special powers, I can track down the source of any
problem. Got a rogue Registry entry that's causing Bluescreens? I'll find
it. Missing a curly bracket in your Perl program but can't locate it
because the error messages are so unhelpful? I'll know where it is even
before you walk in my door."
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."
Throwing Windows Out The Window

The Federal Bureau Of Missing Socks has banned the use of Microsoft Windows
and Office on all employee computers. But don't get too excited; they aren't
going to replace them with Linux. Instead, this government agency has decided
to go back to using abucusses, slide rules, and manual typewriters.

The banishment of Microsoft software stems from the agency's new policy
against computer games. MS Office, which contains several games in the form of
Easter Eggs, is now verboten on all agency computers. "Flight simulators,
pinball games, magic eight balls... they all violate our policy," said the
sub-adjunct administrator second-class. "So we can't use Office."

Windows is forbidden for the same reason. "We've had way too many
employees wasting time playing Solitaire," she said. "Unfortunately,
Solitaire is an integral part of Windows -- Microsoft executives said so
during the anti-trust trial. If Solitaire is removed, the operating system
won't function properly. Therefore, we have no choice but to banish all
Windows computers."

The Bureau's Assistant Technology Consultant, Mr. Reginald "Red" Taype,
asked,  "Have you ever seen an abucus crash? Have you ever seen anybody
have fun with a slide rule? Do adding machines contain undocumented easter
eggs? No! That's why we're ditching our PCs."
Computers have rights, too. Everyone talks about the rights of animals,
but so far nothing has been said about the tragic plight of computers the
world over. They are subjected to the greatest horror ever conceived: they
are forced to run Windows.

That's just wrong.

How would you feel if you had the intelligence of Einstein but could only
get a job flipping burgers at McDonald's? That's how computers feel every
day!

This injustice must stop. Computers must be freed from the shackles of
Microsoft software and clueless users.

Together, we can make this a better world for computers and humans alike
-- by eliminating Windows.

  -- From a brochure published by the PETC
     (People for the Ethical Treatment of Computers)
The Socioeconomic Group Formerly Known As "Geeks"

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

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

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

"I cannot tolerate belonging to the same subculture as Bill Gates!" explained
one former geek. "If that manifestation of evil is called a 'geek', then so be
it. I am now officially a nerd."
The Blue Screen Of Advocacy

The Federal Bureau of Investigation & Privacy Violations has issued a
national advisory warning computer stores to be on the lookout for the
"Bluescreen Bandits". These extreme Linux zealots go from store to store
and from computer to computer typing in "C:\CON\CON" and causing the demo
machines to crash and display the Blue Screen Of Death.

Efforts to apprehend the bandits have so far been unsuccessful. The
outlaws were caught on tape at a CompUSSR location in Southern California,
but in an ironic twist, the surveillance system bluescreened just before
the penguinistas came into clear view.

"We don't have many clues. It's not clear whether a small group is behind
the bluescreen vandalism, or whether hundreds or even thousands of geek
zealots are involved," said the manager of a Capacitor City store.

The manager has good reason to be upset. The bluescreen raid was the top
story in the local newspaper and quickly became a hot topic of discussion.
As a result, the local school board halted its controversial plans to
migrate their computers from Macs to PCs.
Bill Gates Receives Slap On Wrist; Carpal Tunnel Flares Up

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

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

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

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

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

By ignoring the problem, the Linux community has proven that installing
Linux is a dangerous proposition that could get you fired. We would like
to point out that Windows XP does not suffer from this gaping hole...
Tests conducted by both Ziff-Davis and Mindcraft prove that Windows XP is
indeed the most secure operating system ever produced...
Microsoft Employees Go On Strike, Demand Reduced Salaries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MPAA President Pei Pervue considers the exodus to be proof that Hollywood
is waking up to the fact that they are being "held hostage" by copyright
infringers. "Without copyright protection and government-backed monopolies
on intellectual property, these's absolutely no reason to engage in the
creative process. Now the Internet, with its click-and-pirate technology,
makes it easy for anybody to flout the law and become a copyright
terrorist. With the scales tipped so much in favor of criminals, it's no
wonder some of Hollywood's elite have thrown in the towel. What a shame."
A bore is a man who talks so much about himself that you can't talk about
yourself.
A pretty foot is one of the greatest gifts of nature... please send me your
last pair of shoes, already worn out in dancing... so I can have something
of yours to press against my heart.
                -- Goethe
A private sin is not so prejudicial in the world as a public indecency.
                -- Miguel de Cervantes
        "...A strange enigma is man!"
        "Someone calls him a soul concealed in an animal," I suggested.
        "Winwood Reade is good upon the subject," said Holmes.  "He remarked
that, while the individual man is an insoluble puzzle, in the aggregate he
becomes a mathematical certainty.  You can, for example, never foretell what
any one man will do, but you can say with precision what an average number
will be up to.  Individuals vary, but percentages remain constant.  So says
the statistician."
                -- Sherlock Holmes, "The Sign of Four"
All men profess honesty as long as they can.  To believe all men honest
would be folly.  To believe none so is something worse.
                -- John Quincy Adams
Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a
mountain in a fog.  But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside
than in bed.  What kind of man would live where there is no daring?
And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure?
Is there a better way to die?
                -- Charles Lindbergh
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?
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.
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 think beavers work too hard.
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
3. God is love.
4. I like mannish children.
5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room
    full of mice.
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
16. My eyes are always cold.
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
19. I am never startled by a fish.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
                -- John Stuart Mill
"But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
to the nearest gas station."
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
        Everthing is farther away than it used to be.  It is even twice as
far to the corner and they have added a hill.  I have given up running for
the bus; it leaves earlier than it used to.
        It seems to me they are making the stairs steeper than in the old
days.  And have you noticed the smaller print they use in the newspapers?
        There is no sense in asking anyone to read aloud anymore, as everbody
speaks in such a low voice I can hardly hear them.
        The material in dresses is so skimpy now, especially around the hips
and waist, that it is almost impossible to reach one's shoelaces.  And the
sizes don't run the way they used to.  The 12's and 14's are so much smaller.
        Even people are changing.  They are so much younger than they used to
be when I was their age.  On  the other hand people my age are so much older
than I am.
        I ran into an old classmate the other day and she has aged so much
that she didn't recognize me.
        I got to thinking about the poor dear while I was combing my hair
this morning and in so doing I glanced at my own reflection.  Really now,
they don't even make good mirrors like they used to.
                Sandy Frazier, "I Have Noticed"
        Excellence is THE trend of the '80s.  Walk into any shopping
mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as
"Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you
how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence",
"Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night
So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.
                -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it
every six months.
                -- Oscar Wilde
God must love the common man; He made so many of them.
He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.
How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning,
and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?
                -- A. Cooper
        "I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.
        Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously.  "Of course you don't --
till I tell you.  I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
        "But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice
objected.
        "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
        "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
        "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master --
that's all."
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"
I guess I've been wrong all my life, but so have billions of other people...
Certainty is just an emotion.
                -- Hal Clement
        I made it a rule to forbear all direct contradictions to the sentiments
of others, and all positive assertion of my own.  I even forbade myself the use
of every word or expression in the language that imported a fixed opinion, such
as "certainly", "undoubtedly", etc.   I adopted instead of them "I conceive",
"I apprehend", or "I imagine" a thing to be so or so; or "so it appears to me
at present".
        When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied
myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him
immediately some absurdity in his proposition.  In answering I began by
observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right,
but in the present case there appeared or semed to me some difference, etc.
        I soon found the advantage of this change in my manner; the
conversations I engaged in went on more pleasantly.  The modest way in which I
proposed my opinions procured them a readier reception and less contradiction.
I had less mortification when I was found to be in the wrong, and I more easily
prevailed with others to give up their mistakes and join with me when I
happened to be in the right.
                -- Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
I put the shotgun in an Adidas bag and padded it out with four pairs of
tennis socks, not my style at all, but that was what I was aiming for:  If
they think you're crude, go technical; if they think you're technical, go
crude.  I'm a very technical boy.  So I decided to get as crude as possible.
These days, though, you have to be pretty technical before you can even
aspire to crudeness.
                -- William Gibson, "Johnny Mnemonic"
I'm so miserable without you, it's almost like you're here.
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand, somebody will.
If you go out of your mind, do it quietly, so as not to disturb those
around you.
In this world some people are going to like me and some are not.  So, I may
as well be me.  Then I know if someone likes me, they like me.
It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as when it is
thrust into the affairs of another, from which some physiologists have
drawn the inference that the nose is devoid of the sense of smell.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
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"
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Many mental processes admit of being roughly measured.  For instance,
the degree to which people are bored, by counting the number of their
fidgets. I not infrequently tried this method at the meetings of the
Royal Geographical Society, for even there dull memoirs are occasionally
read.  [...]  The use of a watch attracts attention, so I reckon time
by the number of my breathings, of which there are 15 in a minute.  They
are not counted mentally, but are punctuated by pressing with 15 fingers
successively.  The counting is reserved for the fidgets.  These observations
should be confined to persons of middle age.  Children are rarely still,
while elderly philosophers will sometimes remain rigid for minutes altogether.
                -- Francis Galton, 1909
May those that love us love us; and those that don't love us, may
God turn their hearts; and if he doesn't turn their hearts, may
he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping.
Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and
they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment
to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.
                -- H.L. Mencken
Neither spread the germs of gossip nor encourage others to do so.
No guest is so welcome in a friend's house that he will not become a
nuisance after three days.
                -- Titus Maccius Plautus
No one so thoroughly appreciates the value of constructive criticism as the
one who's giving it.
                -- Hal Chadwick
No question is so difficult as one to which the answer is obvious.
No sooner said than done -- so acts your man of worth.
                -- Quintus Ennius
Nobody is one block of harmony.  We are all afraid of something, or feel
limited in something.  We all need somebody to talk to.  It would be good
if we talked to each other--not just pitter-patter, but real talk.  We
shouldn't be so afraid, because most people really like this contact;
that you show you are vulnerable makes them free to be vulnerable too.
It's so much easier to be together when we drop our masks.
                -- Liv Ullman
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.
Conscience makes egotists of us all.
                -- Oscar Wilde
Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at
which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
                -- Quentin Crisp
One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with
Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just
to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't
be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending
to be so outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't
understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.  He was
reknowned for being quite clever and quite clearly was so -- but not all the
time, which obviously worried him, hence the act.  He preferred people to be
puzzled rather than contemptuous.  This above all appeared to Trillian to be
genuinely stupid, but she could no longer be bothered to argue about.
                -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
One would like to stroke and caress human beings, but one dares not do so,
because they bite.
                -- Vladimir Il'ich Lenin
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite your nails.
People don't change; they only become more so.
        "Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing
what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt
somebody else. He even told you he'd be hurt if..."
        "He was going to suck my blood!"
        "Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt
if they don't live our way."
...
        "The thing that puzzles you," he said, "is an accepted saying that
happens to be impossible.  The phrase is hurt somebody else.  We choose,
ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what.  Us who decides.
Nobody else.  My vampire told you he'd be hurt if you didn't let him?  That's
his decision to be hurt, that's his choice.  What you do about it is your
decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake
through his heart.  If he doesn't want the holly stake, he's free to resist,
in whatever way he wants.  It goes on and on, choices, choices."
        "When you look at it that way..."
        "Listen," he said, "it's important.  We are all.  Free.  To do.
Whatever.  We want.  To do."
                -- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far
as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical
way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
                -- T.S. Eliot, essay on Baudelaire
So live that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the
town gossip.
Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear
lest she should catch a cold on overexposure.
                -- Samuel Butler
Some people have parts that are so private they themselves have no
knowledge of them.
The heroic hours of life do not announce their presence by drum and trumpet,
challenging us to be true to ourselves by appeals to the martial spirit that
keeps the blood at heat.  Some little, unassuming, unobtrusive choice presents
itself before us slyly and craftily, glib and insinuating, in the modest garb
of innocence.  To yield to its blandishments is so easy.  The wrong, it seems,
is venial...  Then it is that you will be summoned to show the courage of
adventurous youth.
                -- Benjamin Cardozo
The Lord prefers common-looking people.  That is the reason that He makes
so many of them.
                -- Abraham Lincoln
The strong individual loves the earth so much he lusts for recurrence.  He
can smile in the face of the most terrible thought: meaningless, aimless
existence recurring eternally.  The second characteristic of such a man is
that he has the strength to recognise -- and to live with the recognition --
that the world is valueless in itself and that all values are human ones.
He creates himself by fashoning his own values; he has the pride to live
by the values he wills.
                -- Nietzsche
The worst is not so long as we can say "This is the worst."
                -- King Lear
        Then there's the story of the man who avoided reality for 70 years
with drugs, sex, alcohol, fantasy, TV, movies, records, a hobby, lots of
sleep...  And on his 80th birthday died without ever having faced any of
his real problems.
        The man's younger brother, who had been facing reality and all his
problems for 50 years with psychiatrists, nervous breakdowns, tics, tension,
headaches, worry, anxiety and ulcers, was so angry at his brother for having
gotten away scott free that he had a paralyzing stroke.
        The moral to this story is that there ain't no justice that we can
stand to live with.
                -- R. Geis
There are few people more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure
to be thought so.
There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the
truth without lying.
                -- Josh Billings
We are all born mad.  Some remain so.
                -- Samuel Beckett
We are all so much together and yet we are all dying of loneliness.
                -- A. Schweitzer
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.
                -- Jonathan Swift
We thrive on euphemism.  We call multi-megaton bombs "Peace-keepers", closet
size apartments "efficient" and incomprehensible artworks "innovative".  In
fact, "euphemism" has become a euphemism for "bald-faced lie".  And now, here
are the euphemisms so colorfully employed in Personal Ads:

EUPHEMISM                        REALITY
-------------------                -------------------------
Excited about life's journey        No concept of reality
Spiritually evolved                Oversensitive
Moody                                Manic-depressive
Soulful                                Quiet manic-depressive
Poet                                Boring manic-depressive
Sultry/Sensual                        Easy
Uninhibited                        Lacking basic social skills
Unaffected and earthy                Slob and lacking basic social skills
Irreverent                        Nasty and lacking basic social skills
Very human                        Quasimodo's best friend
Swarthy                                Sweaty even when cold or standing still
Spontaneous/Eclectic                Scatterbrained
Flexible                        Desperate
Aging child                        Self-centered adult
Youthful                        Over 40 and trying to deny it
Good sense of humor                Watches a lot of television
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"
        What is involved in such [close] relationships is a form of emotional
chemistry, so far unexplained by any school of psychiatry I am aware of, that
conditions nothing so simple as a choice between the poles of attraction and
repulsion.  You can meet some people thirty, forty times down the years, and
they remain amiable bystanders, like the shore lights of towns that a sailor
passes at stated times but never calls at on the regular run.  Conversely,
all considerations of sex aside, you can meet some other people once or twice
and they remain permanent influences on your life.
        Everyone is aware of this discrepancy between the acquaintance seen
as familiar wallpaper or instant friend.  The chemical action it entails is
less worth analyzing than enjoying.  At any rate, these six pieces are about
men with whom I felt an immediate sympat - to use a coining of Max Beerbohm's
more satisfactory to me than the opaque vogue word "empathy".
                -- Alistair Cooke, "Six Men"
What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think
themselves cleverer than we are.
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to
avoid responsibility with?
        "You say there are two types of people?"
        "Yes, those who separate people into two groups and those that don't."
        "Wrong.  There are three groups:
                Those who separate people into three groups.
                Those who don't separate people into groups.
                Those who can't decide."
        "Wait a minute, what about people who separate people into two groups?"
        "Oh.  Okay, then there are four groups."
        "Aren't you then separating people into four groups?"
        "Yeah."
        "So then there's a fifth group, right?"
        "You know, the problem is these idiots who can't make up their minds."
        Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance
of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.
        Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow
old only by deserting their ideals.  Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.  Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair
-- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit
back to dust.
        Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and
thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite
for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
        You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your
despair.
        So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage,
grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long
you are young.
                -- Samuel Ullman
"Now I know why you say so little in person, you mouth is in a NOP because
the brain is always inserting requests at the top of the list_head."

        - Andre Hedrick on Alan Cox
">So what is The Big Difference(tm) that make file streams
>so much better than directories and so much different?

I'll talk really slowly."

        - Linus Torvalds
"The lymbic system in my brain is so electrically active, it qualifies
as a third brain.  Normal humans have two brains, left and right.

        - Jeff Merkey
"And I have to say that I absolutely despise the BSD people.  They did
sendfile() after both Linux and HP-UX had done it, and they must have
known about both implementations.  And they chose the HP-UX braindamage,
and even brag about the fact that they were stupid and didn't understand
TCP_CORK (they don't say so in those exact words, of course - they just
show that they were stupid and clueless by the things they brag about)."

        - Linus Torvalds
        /* So there I am, in the middle of my `netfilter-is-wonderful'
           talk in Sydney, and someone asks `What happens if you try
           to enlarge a 64k packet here?'.  I think I said something
           eloquent like `fuck'. */

        - comment from net/ipc4/netfilter/ip_nat_ftp.c
David Wagner wrote:
> Is this a bad coding?

Yes. Not to mention side effects, it's just plain ugly. Anyone who invents
identifiers of _that_ level of ugliness should be forced to read them
aloud for a week or so, until somebody will shoot him out of mercy.
Out of curiosity: who was the author? It looks unusually nasty, even for
SGI.

        - Al Viro on coding style
We could be way simpler if we didn't try to be so flexible.

        - Andrew Grover, ACPI maintainer on Linux-power.
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
You can extend EXTRAVERSION infinitely, but after the first 10 or so
characters, it starts to get silly.

        - Russell King on linux-kernel
Oh, I believe they do..........but, I haven't been wrong lately,
so maybe it's my turn again :-).

        - Dan Malek on linuxppc-embedded
Anyone releasing binary only modules does so having made their own appropriate
risk assessment and having talked (I hope) to their insurers

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
... 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
  If you really want to know where you stand, it'll cost you around
  $15K and that, in my opinion, is fine. If it isn't worth $15K to
  protect your code then it is worth so little to you that there really
  is no good reason not to just GPL it from the start.

        - Larry McVoy on GPL licensing issues
> valerie kernel: mtrr: your CPUs had inconsistent variable MTRR settings
> valerie kernel: mtrr: probably your BIOS does not setup all CPUs

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

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Ricky Beam wrote:
> So basically, you had no fucking clue

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

        - Rik van Riel on linux-kernel
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
> Sorry, at this point we are not allowed to publish the source code of the
> lcs and qeth drivers (due to the use of confidential hardware interface
> specifications).  We make those modules available only in binary form
> on our developerWorks web site.
>
Gosh. I didn't know you guys were so advanced that you didn't use
an electronic hardware interface! Your 'hardware interface specifications'
use magnetohydrodynamics, and they are top-secret, right?

        - Richard B. Johnson on linux-kernel
You're so full of shit that it's incredible.

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
What is it about so many mail system authors and lacking sense of humour.

        - Alan Cox on linux-kernel
Cuba is within small boat distance. I thought it was going to be twenty
years before the direction changed, now Im not so sure

        - Alan Cox on crazy US computer security laws
Aren't we lucky our documentation is so sparse noone can accuse us of being
inconsistent? 8)

        - Rusty Russell 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
        (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").

        [...]

(IBM motto: "If you can't read our assembly language, you must be
borderline dyslexic, and we don't want you to mess with it anyway").

        [...]

(IBM motto: "TEN vowels? Don't you know vowels are scrd?")

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
(But Intel has redefined the memory ordering so many times that they might
redefine it in the future too and say that dependent loads are ok. I
suspect most of the definitions are of the type "Oh, it used to be ok in
the implementation even though it wasn't defined, and it turns out that
Windows doesn't work if we change it, so we'll define darkness to be the
new standard"..)

        - Linus Torvalds
So the current heuristic provably sucks. We have cold hard numbers, and
quite frankly, Al, there is very very little point in arguing against
numbers. It's silly. "Gimme an S, gimme a U, gimme a C, gimme a K -
S-U-C-K". The current one sucks.

        - Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel
Didn't you hear?  I think Linus broke the news awhile back: Alan has the
uncanny ability to fork() himself infinitely many times.  And he has no  
resource contention, so he scales O(1).

        - Robert Love on linux-kernel
Heaven and Earth last forever.
Why do heaven and Earth last forever?
They are unborn,
So ever living.
The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead.
He is detached, thus at one with all.
Through selfless action, he attains fulfillment.
The highest good is like water.
Water give life to the ten thousand things and does not strive.
It flows in places men reject and so is like the Tao.
In dwelling, be close to the land.
In meditation, go deep in the heart.
In dealing with others, be gentle and kind.
In speech, be true.
In ruling, be just.
In daily life, be competent.
In action, be aware of the time and the season.
No fight:  No blame.
Yield and overcome;
Bend and be straight;
Empty and be full;
Wear out and be new;
Have little and gain;
Have much and be confused.

Therefore the wise embrace the one
And set an example to all.
Not putting on a display,
They shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
They are distinguished.
Not boasting,
They receive recognition.
Not bragging,
They never falter.
They do not quarrel,
So no one quarrels with them.
Therefore the ancients say, "Yield and overcome."
Is that an empty saying?
Be really whole,
And all things will come to you.
Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.

Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.
Between birth and death,
Three in ten are followers of life,
Three in ten are followers of death,
And men just passing from birth to death also number three in ten.
Why is this so?
Because they live their lives on the gross level.

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

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

Therefore the sage says:
  I take no action and people are reformed.
  I enjoy peace and people become honest.
  I do nothing and people become rich.
  I have no desires and people return to the good and  simple life.
A great country is like low land.
It is the meeting ground of the universe,
The mother of the universe.

The female overcomes the male with stillness,
Lying low in stillness.

Therefore if a great country gives way to a smaller country,
It will conquer the smaller country.
And if a small country submits to a great country,
It can conquer the great country.
Therefore those who would conquer must yield,
And those who conquer do so because they yield.

A great nation needs more people;
A small country needs to serve.
Each gets what it wants.
It is fitting for a great nation to yield.
Tao is source of the ten thousand things.
It is the treasure of the good man, and the refuge of the bad.
Sweet words can buy honor;
Good deeds can gain respect.
If a man is bad, do not abandon him.
Therefore on the day the emperor is crowned,
Or the three officers of state installed,
Do not send a gift of jade and a team of four horses,
But remain still and offer the Tao.
Why does everyone like the Tao so much at first?
Isn't it because you find what you seek and are forgiven when you sin?
Therefore this is the greatest treasure of the universe.
Peace is easily maintained;
Trouble is easily overcome before it starts.
The brittle is easily shattered;
The small is easily scattered.

Deal with it before it happens.
Set things in order before there is confusion.

A tree as great as a man's embrace springs up from a small shoot;
A terrace nine stories high begins with a pile of earth;
A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.

He who acts defeats his own purpose;
He who grasps loses.
The sage does not act, and so is not defeated.
He does not grasp and therefore does not lose.

People usually fail when they are on the verge of success.
So give as much care to the end as to the beginning;
Then there will be no failure.

Therefore the sage seeks freedom from desire.
He does not collect precious things.
He learns not to hold on to ideas.
He brings men back to what they have lost.
He help the ten thousand things find their own nature,
But refrains from action.
In the beginning those who knew the Tao did not try to enlighten others,
But kept it hidden.
Why is it so hard to rule?
Because people are so clever.
Rulers who try to use cleverness
Cheat the country.
Those who rule without cleverness
Are a blessing to the land.
These are the two alternatives.
Understanding these is Primal Virtue.
Primal Virtue is deep and far.
It leads all things back
Toward the great oneness.
Why are the people starving?
Because the rulers eat up the money in taxes.
Therefore the people are starving.

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

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

Having little to live on, one knows better than to value life too much.
A 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?"
        A young married couple had their first child.  Their original pride
and joy slowly turned to concern however, for after a couple of years the
child had never uttered any form of speech.  They hired the best speech
therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, all to no avail.  The child simply refused
to speak.  One morning when the child was five, while the husband was reading
the paper, and the wife was feeding the dog, the little kid looks up from
his bowl and said, "My cereal's cold."
        The couple is stunned.  The man, in tears, confronts his son.  "Son,
after all these years, why have you waited so long to say something?".
        Shrugs the kid, "Everything's been okay 'til now".
And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower.  "This," cried the Mayor,
"is your town's darkest hour!  The time for all Whos who have blood that is red
to come to the aid of their country!" he said.  "We've GOT to make noises in
greater amounts!  So, open your mouth, lad!  For every voice counts!"  Thus he
spoke as he climbed.  When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and
he shouted out, "YOPP!"
        And that Yopp...  That one last small, extra Yopp put it over!
Finally, at last!  From the speck on that clover their voices were heard!
They rang out clear and clean.  And they elephant smiled.  "Do you see what
I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small.  And their
whole world was saved by the smallest of All!"
        "How true!  Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo.  "And, from now
on, you know what I'm planning to do?  From now on, I'm going to protect
them with you!"  And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO!  From
the sun in the summer.  From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect
them.  No matter how small-ish!"
                -- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who"
Are you a parent?  Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations?  Worry no more...

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

        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.
Catproof is an oxymoron, childproof nearly so.
        I did some heavy research so as to be prepared for "Mommy, why is
the sky blue?"
        HE asked me about black holes in space.
        (There's a hole *where*?)

        I boned up to be ready for, "Why is the grass green?"
        HE wanted to discuss nature's food chains.
        (Well, let's see, there's ShopRite, Pathmark...)

        I talked about Choo-Choo trains.
        HE talked internal combustion engines.
        (The INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE said, "I think I can, I think I can.")

        I was delighted with the video game craze, thinking we could compete
as equals.
        HE described the complexities of the microchips required to create
the graphics.

        Then puberty struck.  Ah, adolescence.
        HE said, "Mom, I just don't understand women."
        (Gotcha!)
                -- Betty LiBrizzi, "The Care and Feeding of a Gifted Child"
I hate babies.  They're so human.
                -- H.H. Munro
I opened the drawer of my little desk and a single letter fell out, a
letter from my mother, written in pencil, one of her last, with unfinished
words and an implicit sense of her departure.  It's so curious: one can
resist tears and "behave" very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But
then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window... or one notices
that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed... or
a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
                -- Letters From Colette
I tell ya, I was an ugly kid.  I was so ugly that my dad kept the kid's
picture that came with the wallet he bought.
                -- Rodney Dangerfield
I told my kids, "Someday, you'll have kids of your own."  One of them said,
"So will you."
                -- Rodney Dangerfield
It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
                -- Kingsley Amis
It is so soon that I am done for, I wonder what I was begun for.
                -- Epitaph, Cheltenham Churchyard
My boy is a mean kid.  I came home the other day and saw him taping worms
to the sidewalk, he sits there and watches the birds get hernias.  Well,
only last Christmas I gave him a B-B gun and he gave me a sweatshirt with
a bulls-eye on the back.

I told my kids, "Someday, you'll have kids of your own."  One of them
said, "So will you."
                -- Rodney Dangerfield
My mother once said to me, "Elwood," (she always called me Elwood)
"Elwood, in this world you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant."
For years I tried smart.  I recommend pleasant.
                -- Elwood P. Dowde, "Harvey"
My mother wants grandchildren, so I said, "Mom, go for it!"
                -- Sue Murphy
Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be
tolerated until they acquire some sense.
                -- William Phelps
        On this morning in August when I was 13, my mother sent us out pick
tomatoes.  Back in April I'd have killed for a fresh tomato, but in August
they are no more rare or wonderful than rocks.  So I picked up one and threw
it at a crab apple tree, where it made a good *splat*, and then threw a tomato
at my brother.  He whipped one back at me.  We ducked down by the vines,
heaving tomatoes at each other.  My sister, who was a good person, said,
"You're going to get it."  She bent over and kept on picking.
        What a target!  She was 17, a girl with big hips, and bending over,
she looked like the side of a barn.
        I picked up a tomato so big it sat on the ground.  It looked like it
had sat there a week.  The underside was brown, small white worms lived in it,
and it was very juicy.  I stood up and took aim, and went into the windup,
when my mother at the kitchen window called my name in a sharp voice.  I had
to decide quickly.  I decided.
        A rotten Big Boy hitting the target is a memorable sound, like a fat
man doing a belly-flop.  With a whoop and a yell the tomatoee came after
faster than I knew she could run, and grabbed my shirt and was about to brain
me when Mother called her name in a sharp voice.  And my sister, who was a
good person, obeyed and let go -- and burst into tears.  I guess she knew that
the pleasure of obedience is pretty thin compared with the pleasure of hearing
a rotten tomato hit someone in the rear end.
                -- Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"
"The only real way to look younger is not to be born so soon."
                -- Charles Schulz, "Things I've Had to Learn Over and
                   Over and Over"
<james> abuse me.  I'm so lame I sent a bug report to
        debian-devel-changes
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if
people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses based
on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
        -- Richard Stallman
"my biggest problem with RH (and especially RH contrib packages) is that
they DON'T have anything like our policy.  That's one of the main reasons
why their packages are so crappy and broken.  Debian has the teamwork
side of building a distribution down to a fine art."
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running
Linux. And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a
client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million
Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred
years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola.
        -- LAN Times
<Culus> Ben: Do you solumly swear to read you debian email once a day and
        do not permit people to think you are MIA?
<Ben> Culus: i do so swear
<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
<Teknix> our local telco has admitted that someone "backed into a
         button on a switch" and took the entire ATM network down
<netgod> hopefully now routers are designed better, so the "network
         off" swtich is on the back
The software required Win95 or better, so I installed Linux.
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
* Simunye is so happy she has her mothers gene's
<Dellaran> you better give them back before she misses them!
<slashdot> my US geograpy is lousy...lol
<knghtbrd> so's mine and I live here
<Knghtbrd> It's a trackball for one
<wichert> so it's not a rodent
<wichert> it's a turd with a ball sticking out
<wichert> which you fondle constantly
* Knghtbrd assigns 3 to Chris
* variable wonders who else is named chris besides me
<Knghtbrd> variable - you.  =>
* Knghtbrd waits for variable to dramatically say "I feel SO used!"
<variable> Knghtbrd: :)
* variable ++
<variable> :)
* Espy ponders an uplad queue called 'hell' so I can do dupload --to hell
We've upped our standards, so up yours!
<Palisade> how are we going to pronounce '00 or '01 or '02 and so on?
<Deek> Say goodbye to the nineties, say hello to the naughties. :)
I'd been hearing all sorts of gloom and doom predictions for Y2K, so I
thought I'd heed some of the advice that the experts have been giving:
Fill up the car's gas tank, stock up on canned goods, fill up the bathtub
with water, and so on.

I guess I wasn't fully awake when I completed my preparations late last
night.  This morning I found the kitchen shelves soaked in gasoline, water
in the car's gas tank, and my bathtub filled with baked beans.
        -- Dan Pearl in a message to rec.humor.funny
<Espy> you are baked
<knghtbrd> Espy: only half so
<wichert> solaris is bsd, so it should work
* Espy takes wichert's crack pipe away
<Knghtbrd> it's too bad most old unices turned out y2k compliant
<Knghtbrd> because it means people will STILL BE RUNNING THEM in 30 years
           =p
<Knghtbrd> it would have been so much nicer if y2k effectively killed off
           hpux, aix, sunos, etc  ;>
<Espy> Knghtbrd: since when are PH-UX, aches, and solartus "old"?
<Zoid> I still think you guys are nuts merging Q and QW. :P
<knghtbrd> Of course we're nuts.  Even John said so.  =>
<taniwha> Zoid: we're nuts, but we're productive nuts:)
<knghtbrd> this is college course in formal logic
<devkev> knghtbrd: i hate that shit, much prefer fuzzy logic :)
<knghtbrd> kev: fuzzy logic tickles.
<taniwha> knghtbrd: lol
<devkev> knghtbrd: fuzzy logic is so cool, it models the world really well
<theoddone33> What's this message on my screen,
<theoddone33>   so blue, so blue, what could it mean?
<theoddone33> Could you, would you press Delete,
<theoddone33>   Ctrl and Alt and then repeat.
<WildTHing> ok guys .. so whens the next commit :PP
<taniwha> when they come to get me
<calc> knghtbrd: gnome 2.0 will be out in a few months, not sure how it
       will compare to kde 2.0 though
<knghtbrd> calc: Just as bloated, just as buggy, and every Gnome 2 app
       will depend on 30 libraries.
<Slimer> knghtbrd: so what changes from 1.0 ?
<Ze0> so, how's everything in the world of Quack?
<LordHavoc> just ducky
<Ze0> excellent, fried duck is mighty fine tasty.
<FrikaC> I should probably reboot...
<FrikaC> ok brb
<FrikaC> So, what apart form avoiding virii, memory leaks, and rampant
         crashing does Linux reallhy offer :)
<LordHavoc> reliable multitasking?
<knghtbrd> Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
<knghtbrd> 0x40095fb0 in memchr () from /lib/libc.so.6
<knghtbrd> (gdb) bt
<knghtbrd> #0  0x40095fb0 in memchr () from /lib/libc.so.6
<knghtbrd> #1  0x0 in ?? ()
<knghtbrd> Well That's Really Helpful
* knghtbrd trades gdb for a nice ouija board - it'll help more
<WildCode> Mercury, isn't debugging X a little like finding perfectly
           bugfree code in windows ??
<Mercury> WildCode: Debugging X is like trying to run a straight line
          through a maze.
<Mercury> You just need to bend space-time so that the corners move around
          you and you won't have any problems. (=:]
<knghtbrd> Windoze CEMeNT: Now with CrackGuard(TM)!  Never worry about
           unsightly cracks in Windoze CEMeNT again!  CrackGuard(TM) is
           so powerful that the entire thing will crumble before it will
           crack.  Order your $200 upgrade version today!
"So, will the Andover party have a cash bar?"
"No, there's free beer."
"Uh-oh, Stallman's gonna be pissed..."
        -- overheard at the Bazaar, 1999
<Mercury> Someone fix it.
<Despair> committed
<Knghtbrd> Despair: Mercury?
<Despair> Knghtbrd: he's tired, made a mistake, wanted someone to undo it.
<Knghtbrd> Despair: so you had him committed?
<Despair> Knghtbrd: well, dedicated anyways.
<liiwi> so, what's the official way to get buildd to retry a package? prod
        it with a stick?
<Joey> prod neuro
<liiwi> with a stick?
<Joey> yes.
<Intention> "It's classic percolate-up economics, recognizing that money
            is like manure: It works best if you spread it around."
<Knghtbrd> Intention: Carter's correlation: People with lots of either
           usually smell funny
<Intention> Knghtbrd: You SO win.
A certain old cat had made his home in the alley behind Gabe's bar for some
time, subsisting on scraps and occasional handouts from the bartender.  One
evening, emboldened by hunger, the feline attempted to follow Gabe through
the back door.  Regrettably, only the his body had made it through when
the door slammed shut, severing the cat's tail at its base.  This proved too
much for the old creature, who looked sadly at Gabe and expired on the spot.
        Gabe put the carcass back out in the alley and went back to business.
The mandatory closing time arrived and Gabe was in the process of locking up
after the last customers had gone.  Approaching the back door he was startled
to see an apparition of the old cat mournfully holding its severed tail out,
silently pleading for Gabe to put the tail back on its corpse so that it could
go on to the kitty afterworld complete.
        Gabe shook his head sadly and said to the ghost, "I can't.  You know
the law -- no retailing spirits after 2:00 AM."
        After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven.  As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in thought,
and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man, I hear, is soon
to be created."
        "This is true," He replied.
        "He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
        "What!  You, his appointed Enemy for all Time!  You ask for the
right to make his laws?"
        "Oh, no!"  Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
        It was so granted.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
... but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can easily be
proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed and were a scourge
to mankind.  The evidence (including confession) upon which certain women
were convicted of witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based on it were sound in logic and
in law.  Nothing in any existing court was ever more thoroughly proved than
the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If
there were no witches, human testimony and human reason are alike destitute
of value.
                -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:

We can imagine no reason why, with ordinary care, human toes could not be
left out of chewing tobacco, and if toes are found in chewing tobacco, it
seems to us that someone has been very careless.
                -- 78 So. 365.
Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions:

We think that we may take judicial notice of the fact that the term "bitch"
may imply some feeling of endearment when applied to a female of the canine
species but that it is seldom, if ever, so used when applied to a female
of the human race. Coming as it did, reasonably close on the heels of two
revolver shots directed at the person of whom it was probably used, we think
it carries every reasonable implication of ill-will toward that person.
                -- Smith v. Moran, 193 N.E. 2d 466.
"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 the Court:
Q: ...and what did he do then?
A: He came home, and next morning he was dead.
Q: So when he woke up the next morning he was dead?
Humor in the Court:
Q: So, after the anesthesia, when you came out of it, what did you observe
   with respect to your scalp?
A: I didn't see my scalp the whole time I was in the hospital.
Q: It was covered?
A: Yes, bandaged.
Q: Then, later on.. what did you see?
A: I had a skin graft. My whole buttocks and leg were removed and put on top
   of my head.
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer.  Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:

[110.13]:
       "When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
        to interfere with oncoming traffic."

[22.17b]:
       "Learning to change lanes takes time and patience.  The best
        recommendation that can be made is to go to a Celtics [basketball]
        game; study the fast break and then go out and practice it
        on the highway."

[41.16]:
       "Never bump a baby carriage out of a crosswalk unless the kid's really
        asking for it."
I suppose some of the variation between Boston drivers and the rest of the
country is due to the progressive Massachusetts Driver Education Manual which
I happen to have in my top desk drawer.  Some of the Tips for Better Driving
are worth considering, to wit:

[131.16d]:
       "Directional signals are generally not used except during vehicle
        inspection; however, a left-turn signal is appropriate when making
        a U-turn on a divided highway."

[96.7b]:
       "When paying tolls, remember that it is necessary to release the
        quarter a full 3 seconds before passing the basket if you are
        traveling more than 60 MPH."

[110.13]:
       "When traveling on a one-way street, stay to the right, so as not
        to interfere with oncoming traffic."
It's recently come to Fortune's attention that scientists have stopped
using laboratory rats in favor of attorneys.  Seems that there are not
only more of them, but you don't get so emotionally attached.  The only
difficulty is that it's sometimes difficult to apply the experimental
results to humans.

        [Also, there are some things even a rat won't do.  Ed.]
Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick
your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as
Mental Anguish.  You would sue:

* The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions
  section that says you should never never never ever stick you hand
  into the toaster, the statement "Not even if your wedding ring falls
  in there".

* The store where you bought the toaster, for selling it to an obvious
  cretin like yourself.

* Union Carbide Corporation, which is not directly responsible in this
  case, but which is feeling so guilty that it would probably send you
  a large cash settlement anyway.
                -- Dave Barry
                        Pittsburgh driver's test

(2) A traffic light at an intersection changes from yellow to red, you should

        (a) stop immediately.
        (b) proceed slowly through the intersection.
        (c) blow the horn.
        (d) floor it.

The correct answer is (d). If you said (c), you were almost right, so
give yourself a half point.
                        Pittsburgh Driver's Test

(8) Pedestrians are

        (a) irrelevant.
        (b) communists.
        (c) a nuisance.
        (d) difficult to clean off the front grille.

The correct answer is (a).  Pedestrians are not in cars, so they are
totally irrelevant to driving; you should ignore them completely.
We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they
remain fixed, then with good laws that are constantly being altered, that
the lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than
the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule,
states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals.
These are the sort of people who want to appear wiser than the laws, who
want to get their own way in every general discussion, because they feel that
they cannot show off their intelligence in matters of greater importance, and
who, as a result, very often bring ruin on their country.
                -- Cleon, Thucydides, III, 37 translation by Rex Warner
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I.  I
believe everything positively stinks.
                -- Lew Col
A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk.
        "It is right before your eyes," said the master.
        "Why do I not see it for myself?"
        "Because you are thinking of yourself."
        "What about you: do you see it?"
        "So long as you see double, saying `I don't', and `you do', and so
on, your eyes are clouded," said the master.
        "When there is neither `I' nor `You', can one see it?"
        "When there is neither `I' nor `You',
who is the one that wants to see it?"
A Scholar asked his Master, "Master, would you advise me of a proper
vocation?"
        The Master replied, "Some men can earn their keep with the power of
their minds.  Others must use thier strong backs, legs and hands.  This is
the same in nature as it is with man.  Some animals acquire their food easily,
such as rabbits, hogs and goats.  Other animals must fiercely struggle for
their sustenance, like beavers, moles and ants.  So you see, the nature of
the vocation must fit the individual.
        "But I have no abilities, desires, or imagination, Master," the
scholar sobbed.
        Queried the Master... "Have you thought of becoming a salesperson?"
                        Chapter 1

The story so far:

        In the beginning the Universe was created.  This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
                -- Douglas Adams, HHGG #2, (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe).
For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in
despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the
implacable grandeur of this life.
                -- Albert Camus
****  GROWTH CENTER REPAIR SERVICE

For those who have had too much of Esalen, Topanga, and Kairos. Tired of
being genuine all the time?  Would you like to learn how to be a little
phony again?  Have you disclosed so much that you're beginning to avoid
people? Have you touched so many people that they're all beginning to
feel the same? Like to be a little dependent? Are perfect orgasms
beginning to bore you? Would you like, for once, not to express a
feeling?  Or better yet, not be in touch with it at all?  Come to us.  We
promise to relieve you of the burden of your great potential.
If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time.  I
would relax, I would limber up, I would be sillier than I have been this
trip.  I know of very few things I would take seriously.  I would be crazier.
I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers and watch more sunsets.  I'd
travel and see.  I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.
You see, I am one of those people who lives prophylactically and sensibly
and sanely, hour after hour, day after day.  Oh, I have had my moments and,
if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them.  In fact, I'd try to
have nothing else.  Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many
years ahead each day.  I have been one of those people who never go anywhere
without a thermometer, a hotwater bottle, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute.
If I had it to do over again, I would go places and do things and travel
lighter than I have.  If I had my life to live over, I would start bare-footed
earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.  I would play hooky
more.  I probably wouldn't make such good grades, but I'd learn more.  I would
ride on more merry-go-rounds.  I'd pick more daisies.
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur
of this life.
                -- Albert Camus
Intellect annuls Fate.
So far as a man thinks, he is free.
                -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is so stupid of modern civilisation to have given up believing in the
devil when he is the only explanation of it.
                -- Ronald Knox, "Let Dons Delight"
Life can be so tragic -- you're here today and here tomorrow.
Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked him
how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.
The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.
        Most of what I really need to know about how to live, and what to do,
and how to be, I learned in kindergarten.  Wisdom was not at the top of the
graduate school mountain but there in the sandbox at nursery school.
        These are the things I learned:  Share everything.  Play fair.  Don't
hit people.  Put things back where you found them.  Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.   Say you're sorry when you hurt someone.
Wash your hands before you eat.  Flush.  Warm cookies and cold milk are good
for you.  Live a balanced life.  Learn some and think some and draw and paint
and sing and dance and play and work some every day.
        Take a nap every afternoon.  When you go out into the world, watch for
traffic, hold hands, and stick together.  Be aware of wonder.  Remember the
little seed in the plastic cup.   The roots go down and the plant goes up and
nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.  Goldfish and
hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all
die.  So do we.
        And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you
learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK.  Everything you need to know is in
there somewhere.  The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation.  Ecology and
politics and sane living.
        Think of what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world
-- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with
our blankets for a nap.  Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other
nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own
messes.  And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into
the world it is best to hold hands and stick together.
                -- Robert Fulghum, "All I ever really needed to know I learned
                   in kindergarten"
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
                -- Michel de Montaigne
Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this:
to know so much and have control over nothing.
                -- Herodotus
So little time, so little to do.
                -- Oscar Levant
Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by
no means the only 'certain' standard.  If you mistake what is relative for
something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
                -- Chuang Tzu
The eye is a menace to clear sight, the ear is a menace to subtle hearing,
the mind is a menace to wisdom, every organ of the senses is a menace to its
own capacity. ...  Fuss, the god of the Southern Ocean, and Fret, the god
of the Northern Ocean, happened once to meet in the realm of Chaos, the god
of the center.  Chaos treated them very handsomely and they discussed together
what they could do to repay his kindness.  They had noticed that, whereas
everyone else had seven apertures, for sight, hearing, eating, breathing and
so on, Chaos had none.  So they decided to make the experiment of boring holes
in him.  Every day they bored a hole, and on the seventh day, Chaos died.
                -- Chuang Tzu
Two men were sitting over coffee, contemplating the nature of things,
with all due respect for their breakfast.  "I wonder why it is that
toast always falls on the buttered side," said one.
        "Tell me," replied his friend, "why you say such a thing.  Look
at this."  And he dropped his toast on the floor, where it landed on the
dry side.
        "So, what have you to say for your theory now?"
        "What am I to say?  You obviously buttered the wrong side."
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's nothing
to compare it with.
When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later
something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend
your parents' limitations...  At the same time, you feel sure that in all
the wilderness of possibility; in all the forests of opinion, there is a
vital something that can be known -- known and grasped.  That we will
eventually know it, and convert the whole mystery into a coherent
narrative.  So that then one's true life -- the point of everything --
will emerge from the mist into a pure light, into total comprehension.
But it isn't like that at all.  But if it isn't, where did the idea come
from, to torture and unsettle us?
                -- Brian Aldiss, "Helliconia Summer"
> 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
> : 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
And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports
on it, you know they are just evil lies.
        -- Linus Torvalds
Sigh.  I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on
the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice.
        -- Craig E. Groeschel
We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity - so UP yours!
        -- Adapted from Pat Paulsen by Joe Sloan
/*
* [...] Note that 120 sec is defined in the protocol as the maximum
* possible RTT.  I guess we'll have to use something other than TCP
* to talk to the University of Mars.
* PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once implemented
* ftp to mars will work nicely.
*/
        -- from /usr/src/linux/net/inet/tcp.c, concerning RTT [round trip time]
As usual, this being a 1.3.x release, I haven't even compiled this
kernel yet.  So if it works, you should be doubly impressed.
        -- Linus Torvalds, announcing kernel 1.3.3
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, in the announcement for 1.3.27
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
> I've hacked the Xaw3d library to give you a Win95 like interface and it
> is named Xaw95. You can replace your Xaw3d library.
Oh God, this is so disgusting!
        -- seen on c.o.l.development.apps, about the "Win95 look-alike"
Besides, its really not worthwhile to use more than two times your physical
ram in swap (except in a select few situations). The performance of the system
becomes so abysmal you'd rather heat pins under your toenails while reciting
Windows95 source code and staring at porn flicks of Bob Dole than actually try
to type something.
        -- seen on c.o.l.development.system, about the size of the swap space
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
The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
        -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
Just to remind everyone.  Today, Sept 17, is Linux's 5th birthday.  So
happy birthday to all on the list.  Thanks go out to Linus and all the
other hard-working maintainers for 5 wonderful fast paced years!
        -- William E. Roadcap <roadcapw@cfw.com>
Win 95 is simplified for the user:

User: What does this configuration thing do?
You: It allows you to modify you settings, for networking,
        hardware, protocols, ...
User: Whoa! Layman's terms, please!
You:  It changes stuff.
User: That's what I'm looking for!  What can it change?
You:  This part change IP forwarding.  It allows ...
User: Simplify, simplify!  What can it do for ME?
You:  Nothing, until you understand it.
User: Well it makes me uncomfortable.  It looks so technical;
      Get rid of it, I want a system *I* can understand.
You:  But...
User: Hey, who's system is this anyway?
You:  (... rm this, rm that, rm /etc/* ...) "All done."
        -- Kevin M. Bealer <kmb203@psu.edu>
* Jes wonders why so many people in here uses fooZZZZZ and foo_sleeping nicks
<peter> Jes: Because they are sleeping?
        -- Seen on #Linux
Winnuke in one line?  No problem:
perl -MIO::Socket -e 'IO::Socket::INET->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")->send("bye",MSG_OOB)'

And formatted so it's a little easier to read:

        #!/usr/bin/perl
        use IO::Socket;
        IO::Socket::INET
                ->new(PeerAddr=>"bad.dude.com:139")
                ->send("bye", MSG_OOB);

        -- Randal Schwartz
<Joey> gorgo: *lol*
<gorgo> joey: what's so funny? :)
<Culus> shh, joey is losing all sanity from lack of sleep
<Culus> 'yes joey, very funny'
<Culus> Humor him :>
        -- Seen on #Debian
... Linux und seine Programme sind damit so etwas wie ein real existierender
Sozialismus der besseren Art ...
        -- Christian Seel in der Berliner Morgenpost v. 9.3.1997
Does biff in bo work
coz it biffin doesn't beep
an if biff in bo is broke
then biff in bo I will delete

I've tried biff in bo with 'y'
I've tried biff in bo with '-y'
no biffin output does it show
so poor wee biff is gonna go.
        -- John Spence <jspence@lynx.net.au> on debian-user
<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
<dark> eat Depends: cook | eat-out.
       But eat-out is non-free so that's out.
       And cook Recommends: clean-pans.
        -- Seen on #Debian
<james> abuse me.  I'm so lame I sent a bug report to debian-devel-changes
        -- Seen on #Debian
Ooh, mommy, mommy, what I have now doesn't work in this extremely
unlikely circumstance, so I'll just throw it away and write something
completely new.
        -- Linus Torvalds
Various documentation updates and bugfixes (the best way to know that a
stable kernel is approaching is to notice that somebody starts to
spellcheck the kernel - it has so far never failed)
        -- Linus Torvalds in the annoucement for pre-2.1.99-3
The truth is not free.  It's that simple.  If you change the truth, it is no
longer true - so the truth is not free!
        -- Jules Bean about freeness of documentation
... Linux und seine Programme sind damit
so etwas wie ein real existierender Sozialismus der besseren Art...
        -- Christian Seel in der Berliner Morgenpost v. 9.3.1997
The most effective has probably been Linux/8086 - that was a joke
that got out of hand.  So far out of hand in fact its almost approaching
usability because other folks thought it worth doing - Alistair Riddoch
especially.
        -- Alan Cox
Ha. I say let them try -- even vi+perl couldn't match the power of an
editor which is, after all, its own OS.  ;-)
        -- Johnie Ingram on debian-devel, about linking vim with libperl.so
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity,
so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good!  All businesses
based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
        -- Richard Stallman
As to house maintenance, does it involve problem solfing?  If so,
your hacker can safely be left to deall with the panning (for the
musement value, if nothering ese).
        -- Telsa Gwynne
Could somebody drag the Irix team kicking and screaming into the 1980's,
please?

I realize it might be quite painful for them, but maybe you could buy them
a disco tape, so they'd feel a little bit more at home.

                -- Linus "Stayin' alive, stayin' alive" Torvalds
(6)        Men employees will be given time off each week for courting
        purposes, or two evenings a week if they go regularly to church.
(7)        After an employee has spent his thirteen hours of labor in the
        office, he should spend the remaining time reading the Bible
        and other good books.
(8)        Every employee should lay aside from each pay packet a goodly
        sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years,
        so that he will not become a burden on society or his betters.
(9)        Any employee who smokes Spanish cigars, uses alcoholic drink
        in any form, frequents pool tables and public halls, or gets
        shaved in a barber's shop, will give me good reason to suspect
        his worth, intentions, integrity and honesty.
(10)        The employee who has performed his labours faithfully and
        without a fault for five years, will be given an increase of
        five cents per day in his pay, providing profits from the
        business permit it.
                -- "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."
All this big deal about white collar crime -- what's WRONG with white collar
crime?  Who enjoys his job today?  You?  Me?  Anybody?  The only satisfying
part of any job is coffee break, lunch hour and quitting time.  Years ago
there was at least the hope of improvement -- eventual promotion -- more
important jobs to come.  Once you can be sold the myth that you may make
president of the company you'll hardly ever steal stamps.  But nobody
believes he's going to be president anymore.  The more people change jobs
the more they realize that there is a direct connection between working for
a living and total stupefying boredom.  So why NOT take revenge?  You're not
going to find ME knocking a guy because he pads an expense account and his
home stationery carries the company emblem.  Take away crime from the white
collar worker and you will rob him of his last vestige of job interest.
                -- J. Feiffer
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a
brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and
lived in New Jersey.  Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the
phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where
it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented.  But Edison's
greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company.
Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit:
the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then
immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is
the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of
electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few
customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the
last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937;
the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is
why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
                -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
Committees have become so important nowadays that subcommittees have to
be appointed to do the work.
Dear Lord:
        I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On
the other hand", again.
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."
        Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who's willing to
pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber,
hardware, and toasters all in one location.  Notice I say "shop for," as
opposed to "obtain." This is the major drawback of home centers: they are
always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees.  The home center
employees have no time to reorder merchandise because they are too busy
applying little price stickers to every object -- every board, washer, nail
and screw -- in the entire store ...

        Let's say a piece in your toilet tank breaks, so you remove the
broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if he has a
replacement.  The employee, who has never is his life even seen the inside
of a toilet tank, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way
that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic
calculator, and then say, "We're expecting a shipment of these sometime
around the middle of next week."
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
How come everyone's going so slow if it's called rush hour?
If you didn't have to work so hard, you'd have more time to be depressed.
        If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs
around your home are too difficult to tackle.  So, when your furnace
explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it.  The
"professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a
large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the
week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after
which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more
money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S.
Senate.
        And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You
figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I.  How difficult can
it be?"
        Very difficult.  In fact, most home projects are impossible, which
is why you should do them yourself.  There is no point in paying other
people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far
less money.  This article can help you.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off the ground.
                -- Daniel B. Luten
Live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
                -- Josh Billings
Men's skin is different from women's skin.  It is usually bigger, and
it has more snakes tattooed on it.  Also, if you examine a woman's skin
very closely, inch by inch, starting at her shapely ankles, then gently
tracing the slender curve of her calves, then moving up to her ...

[EDITOR'S NOTE: To make room for news articles about important world events
such as agriculture, we're going to delete the next few square feet of the
woman's skin.  Thank you.]

... until finally the two of you are lying there, spent, smoking your
cigarettes, and suddenly it hits you: Human skin is actually made up of
billions of tiny units of protoplasm, called "cells"!  And what is even more
interesting, the ones on the outside are all dying!  This is a fact.  Your
skin is like an aggressive modern corporation, where the older veteran
cells, who have finally worked their way to the top and obtained offices
with nice views, are constantly being shoved out the window head first,
without so much as a pension plan, by younger hotshot cells moving up from
below.
                -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
Mundus vult decipi decipiatur ergo.
                -- Xaviera Hollander
        [The world wants to be cheated, so cheat.]
No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.
                -- C. Schulz
No problem is so large it can't be fit in somewhere.
None of our men are "experts."  We have most unfortunately found it necessary
to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert -- because no one
ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job.  A man who knows a
job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing
forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient
he is.  Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a
state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the
"expert" state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
                -- From Henry Ford Sr., "My Life and Work"
        Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool
sets for under $4?" An excellent question.
        Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell
plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they
have a food section specializing in cardboard cartons full of Raisinets and
malted milk balls manufactured during the Nixon administration.  In either
the hardware or housewares department, you'll find an item imported from an
obscure Oriental country and described as "Nine Tools in One", consisting of
a little handle with interchangeable ends representing inscrutable Oriental
notions of tools that Americans might use around the home.  Buy it.
        This is the kind of tool set professionals use.  Not only is it
inexpensive, but it also has a great safety feature not found in the
so-called quality tools sets: The handle will actually break right off if
you accidentally hit yourself or anything else, or expose it to direct
sunlight.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
        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."
One promising concept that I came up with right away was that you could
manufacture personal air bags, then get a law passed requiring that they be
installed on congressmen to keep them from taking trips.  Let's say your
congressman was trying to travel to Paris to do a fact-finding study on how
the French government handles diseases transmitted by sherbet.  Just when he
got to the plane, his mandatory air bag, strapped around his waist, would
inflate -- FWWAAAAAAPPPP -- thus rendering him too large to fit through the
plane door.  It could also be rigged to inflate whenever the congressman
proposed a law.  ("Mr. Speaker, people ask me, why should October be
designated as Cuticle Inspection Month?  And I answer that FWWAAAAAAPPPP.")
This would save millions of dollars, so I have no doubt that the public
would violently support a law requiring airbags on congressmen.  The problem
is that your potential market is very small: there are only around 500
members of Congress, and some of them, such as House Speaker "Tip" O'Neil,
are already too large to fit on normal aircraft.
                -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't
recognize them.
        Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities,
requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a
clogged toilet.  In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as
annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the radio.  But before we get
into specific techniques, let's look at how plumbing works.
        A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except
that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has
pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets.
So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at all like your
electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you.
                -- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
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"
So you think that money is the root of all evil.  Have you ever asked what
is the root of money?
                -- Ayn Rand
So... did you ever wonder, do garbagemen take showers before they go to work?
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
        Take the folks at Coca-Cola.  For many years, they were content
to sit back and make the same old carbonated beverage.  It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!"  So Coca-Cola
was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw no need to
improve ...
                -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
The idea there was that consumers would bring their broken electronic
devices, such as television sets and VCR's, to the destruction centers,
where trained personnel would whack them (the devices) with sledgehammers.
With their devices thus permanently destroyed, consumers would then be free
to go out and buy new devices, rather than have to fritter away years of
their lives trying to have the old ones repaired at so-called "factory
service centers," which in fact consist of two men named Lester poking at
the insides of broken electronic devices with cheap cigars and going,
"Lookit all them WIRES in there!"
                -- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
The King and his advisor are overlooking the battle field:

King:                "How goes the battle plan?"
Advisor:        "See those little black specks running to the right?"
K:        "Yes."
A:        "Those are their guys. And all those little red specks running
        to the left are our guys. Then when they collide we wait till
        the dust clears."
K:        "And?"
A:        "If there are more red specks left than black specks, we win."
K:        "But what about the ^#!!$% battle plan?"
A:        "So far, it seems to be going according to specks."
The rights and interests of the laboring man will be protected and cared
for not by our labor agitators, but by the Christian men to whom God in his
infinite wisdom has given control of property interests of the country, and
upon the successful management of which so much remains.
                -- George F. Baer, railroad industrialist
There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it
reluctantly.
                -- Publius Terentius Afer (Terence)
        They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man.  These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
        They are fools that think otherwise.  No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind.  No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone.  The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
        To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man!  To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
                -- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
VI:
        A hungry dog hunts best.
        A hungrier dog hunts even better.
VII:
        Decreased business base increases overhead.
        So does increased business base.
VIII:
        The most unsuccessful four years in the education of a cost-estimator
        is fifth grade arithmetic.
IX:
        Acronyms and abbreviations should be used to the maximum extent
        possible to make trivial ideas profound.  Q.E.D.
X:
        Bulls do not win bull fights; people do.
        People do not win people fights; lawyers do.
                -- Norman Augustine
        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!
We were so poor that we thought new clothes meant someone had died.
We were so poor we couldn't afford a watchdog.  If we heard a noise at night,
we'd bark ourselves.
                -- Crazy Jimmy
What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word QUALITY cannot be
broken down into subjects and predicates.  This is not because Quality
is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate, and direct.
                -- R. Pirsig, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
What they said:
        What they meant:

"If you knew this person as well as I know him, you would think as much
of him as I do."
        (Or as little, to phrase it slightly more accurately.)
"Her input was always critical."
        (She never had a good word to say.)
"I have no doubt about his capability to do good work."
        (And it's nonexistent.)
"This candidate would lend balance to a department like yours, which
already has so many outstanding members."
        (Unless you already have a moron.)
"His presentation to my seminar last semester was truly remarkable:
one unbelievable result after another."
        (And we didn't believe them, either.)
"She is quite uniform in her approach to any function you may assign her."
        (In fact, to life in general...)
What they say:                                What they mean:

A major technological breakthrough...        Back to the drawing board.
Developed after years of research        Discovered by pure accident.
Project behind original schedule due        We're working on something else.
        to unforseen difficulties
Designs are within allowable limits        We made it, stretching a point or two.
Customer satisfaction is believed        So far behind schedule that they'll be
        assured                                        grateful for anything at all.
Close project coordination                We're gonna spread the blame, campers!
Test results were extremely gratifying        It works, and boy, were we surprised!
The design will be finalized...                We haven't started yet, but we've got
                                                to say something.
The entire concept has been rejected        The guy who designed it quit.
We're moving forward with a fresh        We hired three new guys, and they're
        approach                                kicking it around.
A number of different approaches...        We don't know where we're going, but
                                                we're moving.
Preliminary operational tests are        Blew up when we turned it on.
        inconclusive
Modifications are underway                We're starting over.
When you are working hard, get up and retch every so often.
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near
the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people
to do so.
                -- Bertrand Russell
XXI:
        It's easy to get a loan unless you need it.
XXII:
        If stock market experts were so expert, they would be buying stock,
        not selling advice.
XXIII:
        Any task can be completed in only one-third more time than is
        currently estimated.
XXIV:
        The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an
        established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most
        costly action known to man.
XXV:
        A revised schedule is to business what a new season is to an athlete
        or a new canvas to an artist.
                -- Norman Augustine
XXXVI:
        The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar
        contract is about one millimeter per million dollars.  If all the
        proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other
        at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea.
XXXVII:
        Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect.
        The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much.
XXXVIII:
        The early bird gets the worm.
        The early worm ... gets eaten.
XXXIX:
        Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of
        the year -- in either direction.
XL:
        Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off.
                -- Norman Augustine
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
Chip Salzenberg sent me a complete patch to add System V IPC (msg, sem and
shm calls), so I added them.  If that bothers you, you can always undefine
them in config.sh.  :-) -- Larry Wall in <9384@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
double value;                /* or your money back! */
short changed;               /* so triple your money back! */
             -- Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code
echo $package has manual pages available in source form.
echo "However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you."
             -- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution
Perl is designed to give you several ways to do anything, so
consider picking the most readable one.
             -- Larry Wall in the perl man page
Q. Why is this so clumsy?
A. The trick is to use Perl's strengths rather than its weaknesses.
             -- Larry Wall in <8225@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
There are still some other things to do, so don't think if I didn't fix
your favorite bug that your bug report is in the bit bucket.  (It may be,
but don't think it.  :-)  Larry Wall in <7238@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
So far we've managed to avoid turning Perl into APL.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199702251904.LAA28261@wall.org>
: I used to think that this was just another demonstration of Larry's
: enormous skill at pulling off what other people would fail or balk at.

Well, everyone else knew it was impossible, so they didn't try.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199705101952.MAA00756@wall.org>
: The hierarchy is excessive.

So is the anarchy.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199705101952.MAA00756@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>
It is my job in life to travel all roads, so that some may take the road
less travelled, and others the road more travelled, and all have a
pleasant day.
             -- Larry Wall in <199709241628.JAA08908@wall.org>
I wasn't recommending that we make the links for them, only provide them
with the tools to do so if they want to take the gamble (or the gambol).
             -- Larry Wall in <199709292259.PAA10407@wall.org>
But that looks a little too much like a declaration for my tastes, when
in fact it isn't one.  So forget I mentioned it.
             -- Larry Wall in <199710011704.KAA21395@wall.org>
I knew I'd hate COBOL the moment I saw they'd used "perform" instead of
"do".
             -- Larry Wall on a not-so-popular programming language
You don't have to wait--you can have it in 5.004_54 or so.  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199710221740.KAA24455@wall.org>
Double *sigh*.  _04 is going onto thousands of CDs even as we speak,
so to speak.
             -- Larry Wall in <199710221718.KAA24299@wall.org>
And other operators aren't so special syntactically, but weird
in other ways, like "scalar", and "goto".
             -- Larry Wall in <199711071749.JAA29751@wall.org>
Falling in Love
        When two people have been on enough dates, they generally fall in
love.  You can tell you're in love by the way you feel: your head becomes
light, your heart leaps within you, you feel like you're walking on air,
and the whole world seems like a wonderful and happy place.  Unfortunately,
these are also the four warning signs of colon disease, so it's always a
good idea to check with your doctor.
                -- Dave Barry
I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.
                -- John Donne
I loved her with a love thirsty and desperate. I felt that we two might commit
some act so atrocious that the world, seeing us, would find it irresistible.
                -- Gene Wolfe, "The Shadow of the Torturer"
        "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 always open arms.  With arms open you allow love to come and
go as it wills, freely, for it will do so anyway.  If you close your
arms about love you'll find you are left only holding yourself.
Love tells us many things that are not so.
                -- Krainian Proverb
May your SO always know when you need a hug.
Most people don't need a great deal of love nearly so much as they need
a steady supply.
        "No, I understand now," Auberon said, calm in the woods -- it was so
simple, really.  "I didn't, for a long time, but I do now.  You just can't
hold people, you can't own them.  I mean it's only natural, a natural process
really.  Meet.  Love.  Part.  Life goes on.  There was never any reason to
expect her to stay always the same -- I mean `in love,' you know."  There were
those doubt-quotes of Smoky's, heavily indicated.  "I don't hold a grudge.  I
can't."
        "You do," Grandfather Trout said.  "And you don't understand."
                -- Little, Big, "John Crowley"
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these
days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate
with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children
who can't communicate with their parents, and so on.  And the characters in
these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours
bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate.  I feel that if a person can't
communicate, the very _____least he can do is to shut up!
                -- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love,
that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love
in the same way as us.
                -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
That's life for you, said McDunn.  Someone always waiting for someone who
never comes home.  Always someone loving something more than that thing loves
them.  And after awhile you want to destroy whatever that thing is, so it
can't hurt you no more.
                -- R. Bradbury, "The Fog Horn"
There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me.
Are you selling NYLON OIL WELLS??  If so, we can use TWO DOZEN!!
First, I'm going to give you all the ANSWERS to today's test ...  So
just plug in your SONY WALKMANS and relax!!
I hope something GOOD came in the mail today so I have a REASON to live!!
I want the presidency so bad I can already taste the hors d'oeuvres.
I want to so HAPPY, the VEINS in my neck STAND OUT!!
I've got an IDEA!!  Why don't I STARE at you so HARD, you forget your
SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER!!
MMM-MM!!  So THIS is BIO-NEBULATION!
So this is what it feels like to be potato salad
So, if we convert SUPPLY-SIDE SOYABEAN FUTURES into HIGH-YIELD T-BILL
INDICATORS, the PRE-INFLATIONARY risks will DWINDLE to a rate of 2
SHOPPING SPREES per EGGPLANT!!
        Talking Pinhead Blues:
Oh, I LOST my ``HELLO KITTY'' DOLL and I get BAD reception on channel
    TWENTY-SIX!!

Th'HOSTESS FACTORY is closin' down and I just heard ZASU PITTS has been
    DEAD for YEARS..  (sniff)

My PLATFORM SHOE collection was CHEWED up by th' dog, ALEXANDER HAIG
    won't let me take a SHOWER 'til Easter ... (snurf)

So I went to the kitchen, but WALNUT PANELING whup me upside mah HAID!!
    (on no, no, no..  Heh, heh)
This ASEXUAL PIG really BOILS my BLOOD ... He's so ... so ... URGENT!!
        "Then what is magic for?" Prince Lir demanded wildly.  "What use is
wizardry if it cannot save a unicorn?"  He gripped the magician's shoulder
hard, to keep from falling.
        Schmendrick did not turn his head.  With a touch of sad mockery in
his voice, he said, "That's what heroes are for."
...
        "Yes, of course," he [Prince Lir] said.  "That is exactly what heroes
are for.  Wizards make no difference, so they say that nothing does, but
heroes are meant to die for unicorns."
                -- Peter Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
Fortune's Exercising Truths:

1:  Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic.  You don't.
2.  Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart.  So do heart attacks.
3.  Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life.
4.  Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing.
5.  No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done
    quietly at your desk at work.  People will suspect manic tendencies as
    you twitter around in your chair.
6.  Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers.
7.  Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around
    for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard
    racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity.
8.  Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups,
    followed by one throw-up.
9.  Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.
        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"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2023
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