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Adding reworked fortunes from the Fortuna fortune pack

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A book is the work of a mind, doing its work in the way that a mind deems best. That's dangerous. Is the work of some mere individual mind likely to serve the aims of collectively accepted compromises, which are known in the schools as 'standards'? Any mind that would audaciously put itself forth to work all alone is surely a bad example for the students, and probably, if not downright antisocial, at least a little off-center, self-indulgent, elitist. ... It's just good pedagogy, therefore, to stay away from such stuff, and use instead, if film-strips and rap-sessions must be supplemented, 'texts,' selected, or prepared, or adapted, by real professionals. Those texts are called 'reading material.' They are the academic equivalent of the 'listening material' that fills waiting-rooms, and the 'eating material' that you can buy in thousands of convenient eating resource centers along the roads.
-- The Underground Grammarian
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A definition of teaching: casting fake pearls before real swine.
-- Bill Cain, "Stand Up Tragedy"
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A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- G. B. Shaw
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A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.
-- John Ciardi
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A grammarian's life is always in tense.
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
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A mother mouse was taking her large brood for a stroll across the kitchen floor one day when the local cat, by a feat of stealth unusual even for its species, managed to trap them in a corner. The children cowered, terrified by this fearsome beast, plaintively crying, "Help, Mother! Save us! Save us! We're scared, Mother!"
Mother Mouse, with the hopeless valor of a parent protecting its children, turned with her teeth bared to the cat, towering huge above them, and suddenly began to bark in a fashion that would have done any Doberman proud. The startled cat fled in fear for its life.
As her grateful offspring flocked around her shouting "Oh, Mother, you saved us!" and "Yay! You scared the cat away!" she turned to them purposefully and declared, "You see how useful it is to know a second language?"
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A Parable of Modern Research:
Bob has lost his keys in a room which is dark except for one brightly lit corner.
"Why are you looking under the light, you lost them in the dark!"
"I can only see here."
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A pencil with no point needs no eraser.
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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.
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A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
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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)
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A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
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A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
-- Burt Bacharach
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A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
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A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
-- John Ciardi
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"A University without students is like an ointment without a fly."
-- Ed Nather, professor of astronomy at UT Austin
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About all some men accomplish in life is to send a son to Harvard.
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Abstract:
This study examined the incidence of neckwear tightness among a group of 94 white-collar working men and the effect of a tight business-shirt collar and tie on the visual performance of 22 male subjects. Of the white-collar men measured, 67% were found to be wearing neckwear that was tighter than their neck circumference. The visual discrimination of the 22 subjects was evaluated using a critical flicker frequency (CFF) test. Results of the CFF test indicated that tight neckwear significantly decreased the visual performance of the subjects and that visual performance did not improve immediately when tight neckwear was removed.
-- Langan, L.M. and Watkins, S.M. "Pressure of Menswear on the Neck in Relation to Visual Performance." Human Factors 29, #1 (Feb. 1987), pp. 67-71.
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Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.
-- Wallace Sayre
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Academicians care, that's who.
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=============== ALL FRESHMEN PLEASE NOTE ===============
To minimize scheduling confusion, please realize that if you are taking one course which is offered at only one time on a given day, and another which is offered at all times on that day, the second class will be arranged as to afford maximum inconvenience to the student. For example, if you happen to work on campus, you will have 1-2 hours between classes. If you commute, there will be a minimum of 6 hours between the two classes.
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An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
-- Benjamin Franklin
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Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
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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
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As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
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Briefly stated, the findings are that when presented with an array of data or a sequence of events in which they are instructed to discover an underlying order, subjects show strong tendencies to perceive order and causality in random arrays, to perceive a pattern or correlation which seems a priori intuitively correct even when the actual correlation in the data is counterintuitive, to jump to conclusions about the correct hypothesis, to seek and to use only positive or confirmatory evidence, to construe evidence liberally as confirmatory, to fail to generate or to assess alternative hypotheses, and having thus managed to expose themselves only to confirmatory instances, to be fallaciously confident of the validity of their judgments (Jahoda, 1969; Einhorn and Hogarth, 1978). In the analyzing of past events, these tendencies are exacerbated by failure to appreciate the pitfalls of post hoc analyses.
-- A. Benjamin
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British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can't there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.
-- Peter Ustinov
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... 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"
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Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two points.
-- M. M. Johnston
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Comparing information and knowledge is like asking whether the fatness of a pig is more or less green than the designated hitter rule."
-- David Guaspari
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Dear Freshman,
You don't know who I am and frankly shouldn't care, but unknown to you we have something in common. We are both rather prone to mistakes. I was elected Student Government President by mistake, and you came to school here by mistake.
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Dear Miss Manners:
My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between courses, is all right. Which is correct?
Gentle Reader:
For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is.
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Department chairmen never die, they just lose their faculties.
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Did you know the University of Iowa closed down after someone stole the book?
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Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.
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Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is what you get when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
-- Pete Seeger
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Do you think that illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?
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Education and religion are two things not regulated by supply and demand. The less of either the people have, the less they want.
-- Charlotte Observer, 1897
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Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
-- Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"
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Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
-- Daniel J. Boorstin
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Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.
-- Irwin Edman
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Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
-- B.F. Skinner
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Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around with royal-blue chickens.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
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Eloquence is logic on fire.
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Encyclopedia for sale by father. Son knows everything.
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Engineering: "How will this work?"
Science: "Why will this work?"
Management: "When will this work?"
Liberal Arts: "Do you want fries with that?"
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Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?
-- Clarence Darrow
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Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
-- Flannery O'Connor
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Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for even the greatest fool may ask more the the wisest man can answer.
-- C.C. Colton
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Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward.
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F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a drn!
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f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
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f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
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f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
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Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This is rarely harmful, because normally no-one reads such essays.
-- Robert Parker, quoted in "Murder Ink", ed. D. Wynn
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Going to church does not make a person religious, nor does going to school make a person educated, any more than going to a garage makes a person a car.
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Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
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Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths good theatre.
-- Gail Godwin
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Graduate life: It's not just a job. It's an indenture.
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Graduate students and most professors are no smarter than undergrads. They're just older.
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He that teaches himself has a fool for a master.
-- Benjamin Franklin
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"He was a modest, good-humored boy. It was Oxford that made him insufferable."
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He who writes with no misspelled words has prevented a first suspicion on the limits of his scholarship or, in the social world, of his general education and culture.
-- Julia Norton McCorkle
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[He] took me into his library and showed me his books, of which he had a complete set.
-- Ring Lardner
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Higher education helps your earning capacity. Ask any college professor.
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History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.
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History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.
-- Leo Tolstoy
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How do you explain school to a higher intelligence?
-- Elliot, "E.T."
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I am a bookaholic. If you are a decent person, you will not sell me another book.
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"I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it."
-- English Professor
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I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- Professor Lowd, English, Ohio University
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I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
-- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy, University of Tennessee at Knoxville
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I came out of twelve years of college and I didn't even know how to sew. All I could do was account -- I couldn't even account for myself.
-- Firesign Theatre
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I came to MIT to get an education for myself and a diploma for my mother.
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I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.
-- Blaise Pascal
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"I have to convince you, or at least snow you ..."
-- Prof. Romas Aleliunas, CS 435
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I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner
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I think your opinions are reasonable, except for the one about my mental instability.
-- Psychology Professor, Farifield University
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"I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage."
-- English Professor, Providence College
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If any man wishes to be humbled and mortified, let him become president of Harvard.
-- Edward Holyoke
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If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
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If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
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If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
-- Tom Robbins
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If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
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If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge. The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils precisely the attractions the study has for himself. The marking is a system for schools, not for the college; for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work to put on a professor.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
-- Lily Tomlin
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If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
-- Wittgenstein
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If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment market is glutted.
-- Marguerite Emmons
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If you are too busy to read, then you are too busy.
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If you can't read this, blame a teacher.
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If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions.
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If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.
-- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
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If you took all the students that felt asleep in class and laid them end to end, they'd be a lot more comfortable.
-- "Graffiti in the Big Ten"
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"If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything."
-- A. L.
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Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.
-- Franklin K. Dane
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Ignorance is when you don't know anything and somebody finds it out.
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Ignorance must certainly be bliss or there wouldn't be so many people so resolutely pursuing it.
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Illiterate? Write today, for free help!
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In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi, Junior, what are you up to?"
"I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit.
"Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible! No one will publish such rubbish!"
"Well, follow me and I'll show you."
They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a wolf. "Hello, little buddy, what are we doing these days?"
"I'm writing the 2'nd chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves."
"Are you crazy? Where's your academic honesty?"
"Come with me and I'll show you."
As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion, sitting, picking his teeth and belching, next to some furry, bloody remnants of the wolf and the fox.
The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
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In California, Bill Honig, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, said he thought the general public should have a voice in defining what an excellent teacher should know. "I would not leave the definition of math," Dr. Honig said, "up to the mathematicians."
-- The New York Times, October 22, 1985
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Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
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Iowa State -- the high school after high school!
-- Crow T. Robot
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It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *only* by amusing oneself that one can learn."
-- Edward Kasner and James R. Newman
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It has long been an article of our folklore that too much knowledge or skill, or especially consummate expertise, is a bad thing. It dehumanizes those who achieve it, and makes difficult their commerce with just plain folks, in whom good old common sense has not been obliterated by mere book learning or fancy notions. This popular delusion flourishes now more than ever, for we are all infected with it in the schools, where educationists have elevated it from folklore to Article of Belief. It enhances their self-esteem and lightens their labors by providing theoretical justification for deciding that appreciation, or even simple awareness, is more to be prized than knowledge, and relating (to self and others), more than skill, in which minimum
competence will be quite enough.
-- The Underground Grammarian
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It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking about what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the numbers of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
-- Alfred North Whitehead
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It's grad exam time...
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Inside your desk you'll find a listing of the DEC/VMS operating system in IBM 1710 machine code. Show what changes are necessary to convert this code into a UNIX Berkeley 7 operating system. Prove that these fixes are bug free and run correctly. You should gain at least 150% efficiency in the new system. (You should take no more than 10 minutes on this question.)
MATHEMATICS
If X equals PI times R^2, construct a formula showing how long it would take a fire ant to drill a hole through a dill pickle, if the length-girth ratio of the ant to the pickle were 98.17:1.
GENERAL KNOWLEDGE
Describe the Universe. Give three examples.
MEDICINE
You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. (You have 15 minutes.)
HISTORY
Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially, but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious and philisophical impact upon Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.
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It's is not, it isn't ain't, and it's it's, not its, if you mean it is. If you don't, it's its. Then too, it's hers. It isn't her's. It isn't our's either. It's ours, and likewise yours and theirs.
-- Oxford University Press, Edpress News
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Joe Cool always spends the first two weeks at college sailing his frisbee.
-- Snoopy
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Learned men are the cisterns of knowledge, not the fountainheads.
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Learning at some schools is like drinking from a firehose.
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Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
-- Confucius
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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
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Most seminars have a happy ending. Everyone's glad when they're over.
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My father, a good man, told me, "Never lose your ignorance; you cannot replace it."
-- Erich Maria Remarque
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Never have so many understood so little about so much.
-- James Burke
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Never let your schooling interfere with your education.
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No discipline is ever requisite to force attendance upon lectures which are really worth the attending.
-- Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations"
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No matter who you are, some scholar can show you the great idea you had was had by someone before you.
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No wonder you're tired! You understood so much today.
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Normally our rules are rigid; we tend to discretion, if for no other reason than self-protection. We never recommend any of our graduates, although we cheerfully provide information as to those who have failed their courses.
-- Jack Vance, "Freitzke's Turn"
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Not only is this incomprehensible, but the ink is ugly and the paper is from the wrong kind of tree.
-- Professor, EECS, George Washington University
I'm looking forward to working with you on this next year.
-- Professor, Harvard, on a senior thesis.
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`O' LEVEL COUNTER CULTURE
Timewarp allowed: 3 hours. Do not scrawl situationalist graffiti in the margins or stub your rollups in the inkwells. Orange may be worn. Credit will be given to candidates who self-actualise.
(1) Compare and contrast Pink Floyd with Black Sabbath and say why neither has street credibility.
(2) "Even Buddha would have been hard pushed to reach Nirvana squatting on a juggernaut route." Consider the dialectic of inner truth and inner city.
(3) Discuss degree of hassle involved in paranoia about being sucked into a black hole.
(4) "The Egomaniac's Liberation Front were a bunch of revisionist ripoff merchants." Comment on this insult.
(5) Account for the lack of references to brown rice in Dylan's lyrics.
(6) "Castenada was a bit of a bozo." How far is this a fair summing up of western dualism?
(7) Hermann Hesse was a Pisces. Discuss.
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"OK, now let's look at four dimensions on the blackboard."
-- Dr. Joy
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OK, so you're a Ph.D. Just don't touch anything.
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One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs -- but it is amazing how many eggs one can break without making a decent omelette.
-- Professor Charles P. Issawi
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"Plaese porrf raed."
-- Prof. Michael O'Longhlin, S.U.N.Y. Purchase
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Practice is the best of all instructors.
-- Publilius
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Princeton's taste is sweet like a strawberry tart. Harvard's is a subtle taste, like whiskey, coffee, or tobacco. It may even be a bad habit, for all I know.
-- Prof. J.H. Finley '25
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Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's Chem Eng. 130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a phenomenal 30%.
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Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of one's own.
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Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
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Reporter: "How did you like school when you were growing up, Yogi?"
Yogi Berra: "Closed."
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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.
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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
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Some scholars are like donkeys, they merely carry a lot of books.
-- Folk saying
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"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
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Spelling is a lossed art.
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Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar without his duck ...
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Teachers have class.
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The 'A' is for content, the 'minus' is for not typing it. Don't ever do this to my eyes again.
-- Professor Ronald Brady, Philosophy, Ramapo State College
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The alarm clock that is louder than God's own belongs to the roommate with the earliest class.
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The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
-- J. Frank Dobie, "A Texan in England"
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The avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D.
-- Nelson Algren, "Writers at Work"
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"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
-- T.H. White, "The Once and Future King"
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The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to school.
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The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness.
-- Robert M. Hutchins
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The end of the world will occur at three p.m., this Friday, with symposium to follow.
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The future is a race between education and catastrophe.
-- H.G. Wells
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The important thing is not to stop questioning.
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The man who has never been flogged has never been taught.
-- Menander
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The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing.
-- Andre Maurois (Emile Herzog)
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The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn.
-- Earl Warren
That men do not learn very much from history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
-- Aldous Huxley
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
-- Georg Hegel
HISTORY: Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view.
-- Chad C. Mulligan, "The Hipcrime Vocab"
%
The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.
-- Hegel
I know guys can't learn from yesterday ... Hegel must be taking the long view.
-- John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar"
%
The problem with graduate students, in general, is that they have to sleep every few days.
%
The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is a constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read.
-- Alberto Moravia
%
The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.
-- Christopher Morley
%
"The student in question is performing minimally for his peer group and is an emerging underachiever."
%
The sum of the intelligence of the world is constant. The population is, of course, growing.
%
The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.
-- Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Dispossessed"
%
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
%
The three best things about going to school are June, July, and August.
%
The Tree of Learning bears the noblest fruit, but noble fruit tastes bad.
%
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
%
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library books!
%
The world is full of people who have never, since childhood, met an open doorway with an open mind.
-- E.B. White
%
There are no answers, only cross-references.
-- Weiner
%
This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
-- Winston Churchill
%
Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these only gave life, those the art of living well.
-- Aristotle
%
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Berlioz
%
To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one's education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.
-- Epictetus
%
To craunch a marmoset.
-- Pedro Carolino, "English as She is Spoke"
%
To teach is to learn twice.
-- Joseph Joubert
%
To teach is to learn.
%
Try not to have a good time ... This is supposed to be educational.
-- Charles Schulz
%
Trying to get an education here is like trying to get a drink from a fire hose.
%
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.
-- Henry Kissinger
%
Walt: Dad, what's gradual school?
Garp: Gradual school?
Walt: Yeah. Mom says her work's more fun now that she's teaching gradual school.
Garp: Oh. Well, gradual school is someplace you go and gradually find out that you don't want to go to school anymore.
-- The World According To Garp
%
"We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
-- Vroomfondel
%
We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.
-- George Will
%
We're fantastically incredibly sorry for all these extremely unreasonable things we did. I can only plead that my simple, barely-sentient friend and myself are underprivileged, deprived and also college students.
-- Waldo D.R. Dobbs
%
"We're running out of adjectives to describe our situation. We had crisis, then we went into chaos, and now what do we call this?" said Nicaraguan economist Francisco Mayorga, who holds a doctorate from Yale.
-- The Washington Post, February, 1988
The New Yorker's comment:
At Harvard they'd call it a noun.
%
What does education often do? It makes a straight cut ditch of a free meandering brook.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%
What I Did During My Fall Semester
On the first day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
On the second day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
Then I hung out in front of the Dover.
On the third day of my fall semester, I got up.
Then I went to the library to find a thesis topic.
I found a thesis topic:
How to keep people from hanging out in front of the Dover.
-- Sister Mary Elephant, "Student Statement for Black Friday"
%
What makes you think graduate school is supposed to be satisfying?
-- Erica Jong, "Fear of Flying"
%
What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.
-- Raymond Aron, "The Opium of the Intellectuals"
%
What we do not understand we do not possess.
-- Goethe
%
What's page one, a preemptive strike?
-- Professor Freund, Communication, Ramapo State College
%
When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.
-- Woody Allen
%
Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean, "not really."
-- Dave Parnas
%
Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?
-- Karl Kraus
%
"Whom are you?" said he, for he had been to night school.
-- George Ade
%
Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
%
You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.
-- H.H. Munro
%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger
%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.
-- Alfred Kahn
%
"You should, without hesitation, pound your typewriter into a plowshare, your paper into fertilizer, and enter agriculture"
-- Business Professor, University of Georgia
%
Your education begins where what is called your education is over.
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1893 The ideal brain tonic
1900 Drink Coca-Cola -- delicious and refreshing -- 5 cents at all soda fountains
1905 Is the favorite drink for LADIES when thirsty -- weary -- despondent
1905 Refreshes the weary, brightens the intellect and clears the brain
1906 The drink of QUALITY
1907 Good to the last drop
1907 It satisfies the thirst and pleases the palate
1907 Refreshing as a summer breeze. Delightful as a Dip in the Sea
1908 The Drink that Cheers but does not inebriate
1917 There's a delicious freshness to the taste of Coca-Cola
1919 It satisfies thirst
1919 The taste is the test
1922 Every glass holds the answer to thirst
1922 Thirst knows no season
1925 Enjoy the sociable drink
-- Coca-Cola slogans
%
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
%
A couple of kids tried using pickles instead of paddles for a Ping-Pong game. They had the volley of the Dills.
%
A farm in the country side had several turkeys, it was known as the house of seven gobbles.
%
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart that looks at her watch.
-- James Beard
%
A new chef from India was fired a week after starting the job. He kept favoring curry.
%
A waist is a terrible thing to mind.
-- Ziggy
%
A wife started serving chopped meat, Monday hamburger, Tuesday meat loaf, Wednesday tartar steak, and Thursday meatballs. On Friday morning her husband snarled, "How now, ground cow?"
%
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"
%
Actually, my goal is to have a sandwich named after me.
%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?" asked the father of his little son.
"Diet."
%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%
As he had feared, his orders had been forgotten and everyone had brought the potato salad.
%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
-- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%
Be careful when you bite into your hamburger.
-- Derek Bok
%
BOO! We changed Coke again! BLEAH! BLEAH!
%
Boycott meat -- suck your thumb.
%
Carob works on the principle that, when mixed with the right combination of fats and sugar, it can duplicate chocolate in color and texture. Of course, the same can be said of dirt.
%
Cheese -- milk's leap toward immortality.
-- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play"
%
Chinese saying: "He who speak with forked tongue, not need chopsticks."
%
Consider the following axioms carefully:
"Everything's better when it sits on a Ritz."
and
"Everything's better with Blue Bonnet on it."
What happens if one spreads Blue Bonnet margarine on a Ritz cracker? The thought is frightening. Is this how God came into being? Try not to consider the fact that "Things go better with Coke".
%
Dear Mister Language Person: I am curious about the expression, "Part of this complete breakfast". The way it comes up is, my 5-year-old will be watching TV cartoon shows in the morning, and they'll show a commercial for a children's compressed breakfast compound such as "Froot Loops" or "Lucky Charms", and they always show it sitting on a table next to some actual food such as eggs, and the announcer always says: "Part of this complete breakfast". Don't that really mean, "Adjacent to this complete breakfast", or "On the same table as this complete breakfast"? And couldn't they make essentially the same claim if, instead of Froot Loops, they put a can of shaving cream there, or a dead bat?
Answer: Yes.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
Death before dishonor. But neither before breakfast.
%
Did you hear that Captain Crunch, Sugar Bear, Tony the Tiger, and Snap, Crackle and Pop were all murdered recently...
Police suspect the work of a cereal killer!
%
Dieters live life in the fasting lane.
%
Dinner is ready when the smoke alarm goes off.
%
Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon.
%
Do not worry about which side your bread is buttered on: you eat BOTH sides.
%
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
%
During the American Revolution, a Britisher tried to raid a farm. He stumbled across a rock on the ground and fell, whereupon an agressive Rhode Island Red hopped on top. Seeing this, the farmer commented, "Chicken catch a Tory!"
%
Eat as much as you like -- just don't swallow it.
-- Harry Secombe's diet
%
Eat drink and be merry! Tommorrow you may be in Utah.
%
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow they may make it illegal.
%
Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we diet.
%
Eat right, stay fit, and die anyway.
%
"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may work."
%
Eating chocolate is like being in love without the aggravation.
%
Even a blind pig stumbles upon a few acorns.
%
Even a cabbage may look at a king.
%
Every time I lose weight, it finds me again!
%
Everything I like is either illegal, immoral or fattening.
-- Alexander Woollcott
%
Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
-- Ingmar Bergman
%
Fat Liberation: because a waist is a terrible thing to mind.
%
Fat people of the world unite, we've got nothing to lose!
%
Food for thought is no substitute for the real thing.
-- Walt Kelly, "Potluck Pogo"
%
For those of you who have been unfortunate enough to never have tasted the 'Great Chieftain O' the Pudden Race' (i.e. haggis) here is an easy to follow recipe which results in a dish remarkably similar to the above mentioned protected species.
Ingredients:
1 Sheep's Pluck (heart, lungs, liver) and bag
2 teacupsful toasted oatmeal
1 teaspoonful salt
8 oz. shredded suet
2 small onions
1/2 teaspoonful black pepper
Scrape and clean bag in cold, then warm, water. Soak in salt water overnight. Wash pluck, then boil for 2 hours with windpipe draining over the side of pot. Retain 1 pint of stock. Cut off windpipe, remove surplus gristle, chop or mince heart and lungs, and grate best part of liver (about half only). Parboil and chop onions, mix all together with oatmeal, suet, salt, pepper and stock to moisten. Pack the mixture into bag, allowing for swelling. Boil for three hours, pricking regularly all over. If bag not available, steam in greased basin covered by greaseproof paper and cloth for
four to five hours.
%
Fortune's Contribution of the Month to the Animal Rights Debate:
I'll stay out of animals' way if they'll stay out of mine.
"Hey you, get off my plate"
-- Roger Midnight
%
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, He made so many of them.
%
GREAT MOMENTS IN HISTORY (#7): November 23, 1915
Pancake make-up is invented; most people continue to prefer syrup.
%
Has anyone ever tasted an "end"? Are they really bitter?
%
Has your family tried 'em?
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Heavens, they're tasty and expeditious!
They're made from whole wheat, to give shy persons
the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.
POWDERMILK BISCUITS
Buy them ready-made in the big blue box with the picture of
the biscuit on the front, or in the brown bag with the dark
stains that indicate freshness.
%
Have a taco.
-- P.S. Beagle
%
Home on the Range was originally written in beef-flat.
%
Hors d'oeuvres -- a ham sandwich cut into forty pieces.
-- Jack Benny
%
"How did you spend the weekend?" asked the pretty brunette secretary of her blonde companion.
"Fishing through the ice," she replied.
"Fishing through the ice? Whatever for?"
"Olives."
%
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 brake for chezlogs!
%
I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that M&Ms really DO melt in your hand.
-- Peter Oakley
%
I don't care for the Sugar Smacks commercial. I don't like the idea of a frog jumping on my Breakfast.
-- Lowell, Chicago Reader 10/15/82
%
I don't care where I sit as long as I get fed.
-- Calvin Trillin
%
I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking.
-- Katherine Cebrian
%
I don't have an eating problem. I eat. I get fat. I buy new clothes. No problem.
%
"I don't like spinach, and I'm glad I don't, because if I liked it I'd eat it, and I just hate it."
-- Clarence Darrow
%
I have never been one to sacrifice my appetite on the altar of appearance.
-- A.M. Readyhough
%
I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.
-- Thoreau
%
I just ate a whole package of Sweet Tarts and a can of Coke. I think I saw God.
-- B. Hathrume Duk
%
I never met a piece of chocolate I didn't like.
%
I never pray before meals -- my mom's a good cook.
%
"I thought you were trying to get into shape."
"I am. The shape I've selected is a triangle."
%
I'm hungry, time to eat lunch.
%
I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks.
-- Totie Fields
%
If at first you fricasee, fry, fry again.
%
If food be the music of love, eat up, eat up.
%
If puns were deli meat, this would be the wurst.
%
If you are what you eat, does that mean Euell Gibbons really was a nut?
%
If you put your supper dish to your ear you can hear the sounds of a restaurant.
-- Snoopy
%
If you see an onion ring -- answer it!
%
If you stew apples like cranberries, they taste more like prunes than rhubarb does.
-- Groucho Marx
%
If you waste your time cooking, you'll miss the next meal.
%
If you're going to America, bring your own food.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
If your bread is stale, make toast.
%
In Mexico we have a word for sushi: bait.
-- Josi Simon
%
Is there life before breakfast?
%
It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.
-- Marcus Porcius Cato
%
IT MAKES ME MAD when I go to all the trouble of having Marta cook up about a hundred drumsticks, then the guy at Marineland says, "You can't throw that chicken to the dolphins. They eat fish."
Sure they eat fish if that's all you give them! Man, wise up.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
%
It was a brave man that ate the first oyster.
%
It would be nice if the Food and Drug Administration stopped issuing warnings about toxic substances and just gave me the names of one or two things still safe to eat.
-- Robert Fuoss
%
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.
%
Just a few of the perfect excuses for having some strawberry shortcake. Pick one.
(1) It's less calories than two pieces of strawberry shortcake.
(2) It's cheaper than going to France.
(3) It neutralizes the brownies I had yesterday.
(4) Life is short.
(5) It's somebody's birthday. I don't want them to celebrate alone.
(6) It matches my eyes.
(7) Whoever said, "Let them eat cake." must have been talking to me.
(8) To punish myself for eating dessert yesterday.
(9) Compensation for all the time I spend in the shower not eating.
(10) Strawberry shortcake is evil. I must help rid the world of it.
(11) I'm getting weak from eating all that healthy stuff.
(12) It's the second anniversary of the night I ate plain broccoli.
%
Killing turkeys causes winter.
%
Kissing don't last, cookery do.
-- George Meredith
%
Kitchen activity is highlighted. Butter up a friend.
%
Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow, and when I woke up the pillow was gone.
-- Tommy Cooper
%
Last week's pet, this week's special.
%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%
Life is like a bowl of soup with hairs floating on it. You have to eat it nevertheless.
-- Flaubert
%
"Life is like a buffet; it's not good but there's plenty of it."
%
Life is like a tin of sardines. We're, all of us, looking for the key.
-- Beyond the Fringe
%
Life is like an egg stain on your chin -- you can lick it, but it still won't go away.
%
Life is like an onion: you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it.
-- James Huneker
%
Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.
-- Storm Jameson
%
Life without caffeine is stimulating enough.
-- Sanka Ad
%
Living here in Rio, I have lots of coffees to choose from. And when you're on the lam like me, you appreciate a good cup of coffee.
-- "Great Train Robber" Ronald Biggs' coffee commercial
%
Lobster:
Everyone loves these delectable crustaceans, but many cooks are squeamish about placing them into boiling water alive, which is the only proper method of preparing them. Frankly, the easiest way to eliminate your guilt is to establish theirs by putting them on trial before they're cooked. The fact is, lobsters are among the most ferocious predators on the sea floor, and you're helping reduce crime in the reefs. Grasp the lobster behind the head, look it right in its unmistakably guilty eyestalks and say, "Where were you on the night of the 21st?", then flourish a picture of a
scallop or a sole and shout, "Perhaps this will refresh that crude neural apparatus you call a memory!" The lobster will squirm noticeably. It may even take a swipe at you with one of its claws. Incorrigible. Pop it into the pot. Justice has been served, and shortly you and your friends will be, too.
-- Dave Barry, "Cooking: The Art of Using Appliances and
Utensils into Excuses and Apologies"
%
Man who arrives at party two hours late will find he has been beaten to the punch.
%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water 2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
Cinnamon
Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
-- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box
%
Most people eat as though they were fattening themselves for market.
-- E.W. Howe
%
Mountain Dew and doughnuts... because breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
%
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
-- Orson Welles
%
My favorite sandwich is peanut butter, baloney, cheddar cheese, lettuce and mayonnaise on toasted bread with catsup on the side.
-- Senator Hubert Humphrey
%
My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies.
%
Never drink coke in a moving elevator. The elevator's motion coupled with the chemicals in coke produce hallucinations. People tend to change into lizards and attack without warning, and large bats usually fly in the window. Additionally, you begin to believe that elevators have windows.
%
Never eat anything bigger than your head.
%
Never eat more than you can lift.
-- Miss Piggy
%
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.
-- Channing Pollock
%
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charlie Brown
%
Now that you've read Fortune's diet truths, you'll be prepared the next time some housewife or boutique-owner-turned-diet-expert appears on TV to plug her latest book. And, if you still feel a twinge of guilt for eating coffee cake while listening to her exhortations, ask yourself the following questions:
(1) Do I dare trust a person who actually considers alfalfa sprouts a food?
(2) Was the author's sole motive in writing this book to get rich exploiting the forlorn hopes of chubby people like me?
(3) Would a longer life be worthwhile if it had to be lived as prescribed ... without French-fried onion rings, pizza with double cheese, or the occasional Mai-Tai? (Remember, living right doesn't really make you live longer, it just *seems* like longer.)
That, and another piece of coffee cake, should do the trick.
%
Peanut Blossoms
4 cups sugar 16 tbsp. milk
4 cups brown sugar 4 tsp. vanilla
4 cups shortening 14 cups flour
8 eggs 4 tsp. soda
4 cups peanut butter 4 tsp. salt
Shape dough into balls. Roll in sugar and bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 375 F. for 10-12 minutes. Immediately top each cookie with a Hershey's kiss or star pressing down firmly to crack cookie. Makes a heck of a lot.
%
Pete: Waiter, this meat is bad.
Waiter: Who told you?
Pete: A little swallow.
%
Peter's hungry, time to eat lunch.
%
Preserve wildlife -- pickle a squirrel today!
%
Prunes give you a run for your money.
%
Put a pot of chili on the stove to simmer. Let it simmer. Meanwhile, broil a good steak. Eat the steak. Let the chili simmer. Ignore it.
-- Recipe for chili from Allan Shrivers, former governor of Texas.
%
Put cats in the coffee and mice in the tea!
%
Remember, DESSERT is spelled with two `s's while DESERT is spelled with one, because EVERYONE wants two desserts, but NO ONE wants two deserts.
-- Miss Oglethorp, Gr. 5, PS. 59
%
RULES OF EATING -- THE BRONX DIETER'S CREED
(1) Never eat on an empty stomach.
(2) Never leave the table hungry.
(3) When traveling, never leave a country hungry.
(4) Enjoy your food.
(5) Enjoy your companion's food.
(6) Really taste your food. It may take several portions to accomplish this, especially if subtly seasoned.
(7) Really feel your food. Texture is important. Compare, for example, the texture of a turnip to that of a brownie. Which feels better against your cheeks?
(8) Never eat between snacks, unless it's a meal.
(9) Don't feel you must finish everything on your plate. You can always eat it later.
(10) Avoid any wine with a childproof cap.
(11) Avoid blue food.
-- Richard Smith, "The Bronx Diet"
%
Sacred cows make great hamburgers.
%
Save gas, don't eat beans.
%
Seeing is deceiving. It's eating that's believing.
-- James Thurber
%
So much food; so little time!
%
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
-- Thoreau
%
The basic menu item, in fact the ONLY menu item, would be a food unit called the "patty," consisting of -- this would be guaranteed in writing -- "100 percent animal matter of some kind." All patties would be heated up and then cooled back down in electronic devices immediately before serving. The Breakfast Patty would be a patty on a bun with lettuce, tomato, onion, egg, Ba-Ko-Bits, Cheez Whiz, a Special Sauce made by pouring ketchup out of a bottle and a little slip of paper stating: "Inspected by Number 12." The Lunch or Dinner Patty would be any Breakfast Patties that didn't get sold in the morning. The Seafood Lover's Patty would be any patties that were starting to emit a serious aroma. Patties that were too rank even to be Seafood Lover's Patties would be compressed into wads and sold as "Nuggets."
-- Dave Barry, "'Mister Mediocre' Restaurants"
%
The black bear used to be one of the most commonly seen large animals because in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks they lived off of garbage and tourist handouts. This bear has learned to open car doors in Yosemite, where damage to automobiles caused by bears runs into the tens of thousands of dollars a year. Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult, because as one biologist put it, "There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to show up at the steam fitters' picnic.
%
The cow is nothing but a machine which makes grass fit for us people to eat.
-- John McNulty
%
THE DAILY PLANET
SUPERMAN SAVES DESSERT!
Plans to "Eat it later"
%
The early bird gets the coffee left over from the night before.
%
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry, and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question "How can we eat?" the second by "Why do we eat?" and the third by "Where shall we have lunch?".
-- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
%
The Kosher Dill was invented in 1723 by Joe Kosher and Sam Dill. It is the single most popular pickle variety today, enjoyed throughout the free world by man, woman and child alike. An astounding 350 billion kosher dills are eaten each year, averaging out to almost 1/4 pickle per person per day. New York Times food critic Mimi Sheraton says "The kosher dill really changed my life. I used to enjoy eating McDonald's hamburgers and drinking Iron City Lite, and then I encountered the kosher dill pickle. I realized that there was far more to haute cuisine then I'd ever imagined. And now, just look at me."
%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the klutz said,
"Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
%
The most exquisite peak in culinary art is conquered when you do right by a ham, for a ham, in the very nature of the process it has undergone since last it walked on its own feet, combines in its flavor the tang of smoky autumnal woods, the maternal softness of earthy fields delivered of their crop children, the wineyness of a late sun, the intimate kiss of fertilizing rain, and the bite of fire. You must slice it thin, almost as thin as this page you hold in your hands. The making of a ham dinner, like the making of a gentleman, starts a long, long time before the event.
-- W.B. Courtney, "Reflections of Maryland Country Ham",
from "Congress Eate It Up"
%
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
-- Calvin Trillin
%
"The National Association of Theater Concessionaires reported that in 1986, 60% of all candy sold in movie theaters was sold to Roger Ebert."
-- D. Letterman
%
The number of feet in a yard is directly proportional to the success of the barbecue.
%
The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice.
%
The only thing better than love is milk.
%
The reason it's called "Grape Nuts" is that it contains "dextrose", which is also sometimes called "grape sugar," and also because "Grape Nuts" is catchier, in terms of marketing, than "A Cross Between Gerbil Food and Gravel," which is what it tastes like.
-- Dave Barry, "Tips for Writer's"
%
The scene: in a vast, painted desert, a cowboy faces his horse.
Cowboy: "Well, you've been a pretty good hoss, I guess. Hardworkin'. Not the fastest critter I ever come acrost, but..."
Horse: "No, stupid, not feed*back*. I said I wanted a feed*bag*.
%
The trouble with eating Italian food is that five or six days later you're hungry again.
-- George Miller
%
The way to a man's stomach is through his esophagus.
%
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.
-- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour
%
There are times when truth is stranger than fiction and lunch time is one of them.
%
There are twenty-five people left in the world, and twenty-seven of them are hamburgers.
-- Ed Sanders
%
There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle.
-- G.K. Chesterton
%
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
There's always free cheese in a mousetrap.
%
There's nothing like the face of a kid eating a Hershey bar.
%
Thirteen at a table is unlucky only when the hostess has only twelve chops.
-- Groucho Marx
%
This is Betty Frenel. I don't know who to call but I can't reach my Food-a-holics partner. I'm at Vido's on my second pizza with sausage and mushroom. Jim, come and get me!
%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%
... This striving for excellence extends into people's personal lives as well. When '80s people buy something, they buy the best one, as determined by (1) price and (2) lack of availability. Eighties people buy imported dental floss. They buy gourmet baking soda. If an '80s couple goes to a restaurant where they have made a reservation three weeks in advance, and they are informed that their table is available, they stalk out immediately, because they know it is not an excellent restaurant. If it were, it would have an enormous crowd of excellence-oriented people
like themselves waiting, their beepers going off like crickets in the night. An excellent restaurant wouldn't have a table ready immediately for anybody below the rank of Liza Minnelli.
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
%
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"
%
Tom's hungry, time to eat lunch.
%
Too Late
A large number of turkies [sic] went to San Francisco yesterday by the two o'clock boats. If their object in going down was to participate in the Thanksgiving festivities of that city, they would arrive "the day after the affair," and of course be sadly disappointed thereby.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, November 29, 1861
%
Two peanuts were walking through the New York. One was assaulted.
%
Vegetables are what food eats.
Fruit are vegetables that fool you by tasting good.
Fish are fast moving vegetables.
Mushrooms are what grows on vegetables when food's done with them.
-- Meat Eater's Credo, according to Jim Williams
%
Vegeterians beware! You are what you eat.
%
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
(Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
%
Wake up and smell the coffee.
-- Ann Landers
%
What foods these morsels be!
%
What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.
-- Titus Lucretius Carus
%
What is important is food, money and opportunities for scoring off one's enemies. Give a man these three things and you won't hear much squawking out of him.
-- Brian O'Nolan, "The Best of Myles"
%
When a person goes on a diet, the first thing he loses is his temper.
%
When all else fails, EAT!!!
%
When my brain begins to reel from my literary labors, I make an occasional cheese dip.
-- Ignatius Reilly
%
"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
%
When you're dining out and you suspect something's wrong, you're probably right.
%
Where do you go to get anorexia?
-- Shelley Winters
%
While it may be true that a watched pot never boils, the one you don't keep an eye on can make an awful mess of your stove.
-- Edward Stevenson
%
Whoever tells a lie cannot be pure in heart -- and only the pure in heart
can make a good soup.
-- Ludwig Van Beethoven
%
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?
%
Without coffee he could not work, or at least he could not have worked in the way he did. In addition to paper and pens, he took with him everywhere as an indispensable article of equipment the coffee machine, which was no less important to him than his table or his white robe.
-- Stefan Zweigs, Biography of Balzac
%
Without ice cream life and fame are meaningless.
%
You can always tell the Christmas season is here when you start getting incredibly dense, tinfoil-and-ribbon- wrapped lumps in the mail. Fruitcakes make ideal gifts because the Postal Service has been unable to find a way to damage them. They last forever, largely because nobody ever eats them. In fact, many smart people save the fruitcakes they receive and send them back
to the original givers the next year; some fruitcakes have been passed back and forth for hundreds of years.
The easiest way to make a fruitcake is to buy a darkish cake, then pound some old, hard fruit into it with a mallet. Be sure to wear safety glasses.
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
You don't sew with a fork, so I see no reason to eat with knitting needles.
-- Miss Piggy, on eating Chinese Food
%
You first parents of the human race... who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you have done for a truffled turkey?
-- Brillat-savarin, "Physiologie du Gout"
%
You know you have a small apartment when Rice Krispies echo.
-- S. Rickly Christian
%
You know you're a little fat if you have stretch marks on your car.
-- Cyrus, Chicago Reader 1/22/82
%
You must dine in our cafeteria. You can eat dirt cheap there!!!!
%
You should tip the waiter $10, minus $2 if he tells you his name, another $2 if he claims it will be His Pleasure to serve you and another $2 for each "special" he describes involving confusing terms such as "shallots," and $4 if the menu contains the word "fixin's." In many restaurants, this means the waiter will actually owe you money. If you are traveling with a child aged six months to three years, you should leave an additional amount equal to twice the bill to compensate for the fact that they will have to take the banquette out and burn it because the cracks are wedged solid with gobbets made of partially chewed former restaurant rolls saturated with baby spit.
In New York, tip the taxicab driver $40 if he does not mention his hemorrhoids.
-- Dave Barry, "The Stuff of Etiquette"
%
Your mind is the part of you that says, "Why'n'tcha eat that piece of cake?" ... and then, twenty minutes later, says, "Y'know, if I were you, I wouldn't have done that!"
-- Steven and Ondrea Levine
%
data/etc/fortunes/Fortunes
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A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
%
A few hours grace before the madness begins again.
%
A gift of a flower will soon be made to you.
%
A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.
Buy the negatives at any price.
%
A tall, dark stranger will have more fun than you.
%
A visit to a fresh place will bring strange work.
%
A visit to a strange place will bring fresh work.
%
A vivid and creative mind characterizes you.
%
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
%
Accent on helpful side of your nature. Drain the moat.
%
Advancement in position.
%
After your lover has gone you will still have PEANUT BUTTER!
%
Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change.
%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%
All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly.
%
Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
%
An avocado-tone refrigerator would look good on your resume.
%
An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Are you a turtle?
%
Are you ever going to do the dishes? Or will you change your major to biology?
%
Are you making all this up as you go along?
%
Are you sure the back door is locked?
%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%
Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance.
%
Avoid gunfire in the bathroom tonight.
%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%
Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
%
Be careful! Is it classified?
%
Be careful! UGLY strikes 9 out of 10!
%
Be cautious in your daily affairs.
%
Be cheerful while you are alive.
-- Phathotep, 24th Century B.C.
%
Be different: conform.
%
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so get used to it.
%
Be security conscious -- National defense is at stake.
%
Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.
%
Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.
%
Better hope the life-inspector doesn't come around while you have your life in such a mess.
%
Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
%
Beware of a tall black man with one blond shoe.
%
Beware of a tall blond man with one black shoe.
%
Beware of Bigfoot!
%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%
Beware the one behind you.
%
Blow it out your ear.
%
Break into jail and claim police brutality.
%
Bridge ahead. Pay troll.
%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%
Caution: Keep out of reach of children.
%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
%
Change your thoughts and you change your world.
%
Cheer Up! Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
%
Chess tonight.
%
Chicken Little only has to be right once.
%
Chicken Little was right.
%
Cold hands, no gloves.
%
Communicate! It can't make things any worse.
%
Courage is your greatest present need.
%
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
%
Do not overtax your powers.
%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%
Do nothing unless you must, and when you must act -- hesitate.
%
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
%
Do what comes naturally. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
%
Domestic happiness and faithful friends.
%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%
Don't get stuck in a closet -- wear yourself out.
%
Don't get to bragging.
%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%
Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
%
Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
%
Don't look now, but the man in the moon is laughing at you.
%
Don't look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder.
%
Don't plan any hasty moves. You'll be evicted soon anyway.
%
Don't read any sky-writing for the next two weeks.
%
Don't read everything you believe.
%
Don't relax! It's only your tension that's holding you together.
%
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
%
Don't worry so loud, your roommate can't think.
%
Don't Worry, Be Happy.
-- Meher Baba
%
Don't worry. Life's too long.
-- Vincent Sardi, Jr.
%
Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
%
Don't you wish you had more energy... or less ambition?
%
Everything that you know is wrong, but you can be straightened out.
%
Everything will be just tickety-boo today.
%
Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
%
Exercise caution in your daily affairs.
%
Expect a letter from a friend who will ask a favor of you.
%
Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
%
Fine day for friends.
So-so day for you.
%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%
Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai sword-wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Oh, and have a nice day!
-- Bryce Nesbitt '84
%
Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
%
Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.
%
Give him an evasive answer.
%
Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to a new town.
%
Give your very best today. Heaven knows it's little enough.
%
Go to a movie tonight. Darkness becomes you.
%
Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
%
Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
%
Good day to deal with people in high places; particularly lonely stewardesses.
%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%
Good news from afar can bring you a welcome visitor.
%
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%
Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
new lover.
%
Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
%
Hope that the day after you die is a nice day.
%
If you can read this, you're too close.
%
If you learn one useless thing every day, in a single year you'll learn 365 useless things.
%
If you sow your wild oats, hope for a crop failure.
%
If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow!
%
If your life was a horse, you'd have to shoot it.
%
In the stairway of life, you'd best take the elevator.
%
Increased knowledge will help you now. Have mate's phone bugged.
%
Is that really YOU that is reading this?
%
Is this really happening?
%
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 may or may not be worthwhile, but it still has to be done.
%
It was all so different before everything changed.
%
It's a very UNlucky week in which to be took dead.
-- Churchy La Femme
%
It's all in the mind, ya know.
%
It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong direction.
%
Just because the message may never be received does not mean it is not worth sending.
%
Just to have it is enough.
%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%
Keep it short for pithy sake.
%
Lady Luck brings added income today. Lady friend takes it away tonight.
%
Learn to pause -- or nothing worthwhile can catch up to you.
%
Let me put it this way: today is going to be a learning experience.
%
Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
%
"Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
-- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
%
Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
%
Long life is in store for you.
%
Look afar and see the end from the beginning.
%
Love is in the offing. Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%
Make a wish, it might come true.
%
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%
Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
%
Never give an inch!
%
Never look up when dragons fly overhead.
%
Never reveal your best argument.
%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't have a lucky day this year.
%
Obviously the only rational solution to your problem is suicide.
%
Of course you have a purpose -- to find a purpose.
%
People are beginning to notice you. Try dressing before you leave the house.
%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%
Questionable day.
Ask somebody something.
%
Reply hazy, ask again later.
%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%
Ships are safe in harbor, but they were never meant to stay there.
%
Slow day. Practice crawling.
%
Snow Day -- stay home.
%
So this it it. We're going to die.
%
So you're back... about time...
%
Someone is speaking well of you.
%
Someone is speaking well of you.
How unusual!
%
Someone whom you reject today, will reject you tomorrow.
%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%
Stay the curse.
%
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
%
The time is right to make new friends.
%
The whole world is a tuxedo and you are a pair of brown shoes.
-- George Gobel
%
There is a 20% chance of tomorrow.
%
There is a fly on your nose.
%
There was a phone call for you.
%
There will be big changes for you but you will be happy.
%
Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
%
Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
%
This life is yours. Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.
%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
%
Time to be aggressive. Go after a tattooed Virgo.
%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
%
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
%
Today is the last day of your life so far.
%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
%
Today is what happened to yesterday.
%
Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
%
Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest.
%
Tomorrow, this will be part of the unchangeable past but fortunately, it can still be changed today.
%
Tomorrow, you can be anywhere.
%
Tonight you will pay the wages of sin; Don't forget to leave a tip.
%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%
Truth will out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
%
Try the Moo Shu Pork. It is especially good today.
%
Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
%
Try to have as good a life as you can under the circumstances.
%
Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you.
%
Tuesday After Lunch is the cosmic time of the week.
%
Tuesday is the Wednesday of the rest of your life.
%
What happened last night can happen again.
%
While you recently had your problems on the run, they've regrouped and are making another attack.
%
Write yourself a threatening letter and pen a defiant reply.
%
You are a bundle of energy, always on the go.
%
You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
%
You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
%
You are always busy.
%
You are as I am with You.
%
You are capable of planning your future.
%
You are confused; but this is your normal state.
%
You are deeply attached to your friends and acquaintances.
%
You are destined to become the commandant of the fighting men of the department of transportation.
%
You are dishonest, but never to the point of hurting a friend.
%
You are fairminded, just and loving.
%
You are farsighted, a good planner, an ardent lover, and a faithful friend.
%
You are fighting for survival in your own sweet and gentle way.
%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%
You are magnetic in your bearing.
%
You are not dead yet. But watch for further reports.
%
You are number 6! Who is number one?
%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%
You are scrupulously honest, frank, and straightforward. Therefore you have few friends.
%
You are sick, twisted and perverted. I like that in a person.
%
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
%
You are standing on my toes.
%
You are taking yourself far too seriously.
%
You are the only person to ever get this message.
%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
this sort of trash.
%
You attempt things that you do not even plan because of your extreme stupidity.
%
You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.
%
You can do very well in speculation where land or anything to do with dirt is concerned.
%
You can rent this space for only $5 a week.
%
You could live a better life, if you had a better mind and a better body.
%
You definitely intend to start living sometime soon.
%
You dialed 5483.
%
You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy.
%
You don't become a failure until you're satisfied with being one.
%
You enjoy the company of other people.
%
You feel a whole lot more like you do now than you did when you used to.
%
You fill a much-needed gap.
%
You get along very well with everyone except animals and people.
%
You had some happiness once, but your parents moved away, and you had to leave it behind.
%
You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music.
%
You have a deep interest in all that is artistic.
%
You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable and trustworthy.
A pity that it's totally undeserved.
%
You have a strong appeal for members of the opposite sex.
%
You have a strong appeal for members of your own sex.
%
You have a strong desire for a home and your family interests come first.
%
You have a truly strong individuality.
%
You have a will that can be influenced by all with whom you come in contact.
%
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
%
You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.
%
You have an unusual equipment for success. Be sure to use it properly.
%
You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to metal objects which are not fastened down.
%
You have an unusual understanding of the problems of human relationships.
%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%
You have Egyptian flu: you're going to be a mummy.
%
You have had a long-term stimulation relative to business.
%
You have literary talent that you should take pains to develop.
%
You have many friends and very few living enemies.
%
You have no real enemies.
%
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%
You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets wrinkled.
%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
%
You have the power to influence all with whom you come in contact.
%
You learn to write as if to someone else because NEXT YEAR YOU WILL BE "SOMEONE ELSE."
%
You like to form new friendships and make new acquaintances.
%
You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
%
You look tired.
%
You love peace.
%
You love your home and want it to be beautiful.
%
You may be gone tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that you weren't here today.
%
You may be infinitely smaller than some things, but you're infinitely larger than others.
%
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
%
You may get an opportunity for advancement today. Watch it!
%
You may worry about your hair-do today, but tomorrow much peanut butter will be sold.
%
You need more time; and you probably always will.
%
You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll be dead.
%
You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.
%
You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach.
%
You now have Asian Flu.
%
You own a dog, but you can only feed a cat.
%
You plan things that you do not even attempt because of your extreme caution.
%
You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
%
You prefer the company of the opposite sex, but are well liked by your own.
%
You recoil from the crude; you tend naturally toward the exquisite.
%
You seek to shield those you love and you like the role of the provider.
%
You shall be rewarded for a dastardly deed.
%
You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
if they are dead.
%
You should go home.
%
You single-handedly fought your way into this hopeless mess.
%
You teach best what you most need to learn.
%
You too can wear a nose mitten.
%
You two ought to be more careful--your love could drag on for years and years.
%
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
%
You will always have good luck in your personal affairs.
%
You will attract cultured and artistic people to your home.
%
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%
You will be advanced socially, without any special effort on your part.
%
You will be aided greatly by a person whom you thought to be unimportant.
%
You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
%
You will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
%
You will be awarded a medal for disregarding safety in saving someone.
%
You will be awarded some great honor.
%
You will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize... posthumously.
%
You will be called upon to help a friend in trouble.
%
You will be dead within a year.
%
You will be divorced within a year.
%
You will be given a post of trust and responsibility.
%
You will be held hostage by a radical group.
%
You will be honored for contributing your time and skill to a worthy cause.
%
You will be imprisoned for contributing your time and skill to a bank robbery.
%
You will be married within a year, and divorced within two.
%
You will be married within a year.
%
You will be misunderstood by everyone.
%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%
You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier.
%
You will be run over by a beer truck.
%
You will be run over by a bus.
%
You will be singled out for promotion in your work.
%
You will be successful in love.
%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%
You will be surrounded by luxury.
%
You will be the last person to buy a Chrysler.
%
You will be the victim of a bizarre joke.
%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
%
You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.
%
You will be winged by an anti-aircraft battery.
%
You will become rich and famous unless you don't.
%
You will contract a rare disease.
%
You will engage in a profitable business activity.
%
You will experience a strong urge to do good; but it will pass.
%
You will feel hungry again in another hour.
%
You will forget that you ever knew me.
%
You will gain money by a fattening action.
%
You will gain money by a speculation or lottery.
%
You will gain money by an illegal action.
%
You will gain money by an immoral action.
%
You will get what you deserve.
%
You will give someone a piece of your mind, which you can ill afford.
%
You will have a long and boring life.
%
You will have a long and unpleasant discussion with your supervisor.
%
You will have domestic happiness and faithful friends.
%
You will have good luck and overcome many hardships.
%
You will have long and healthy life.
%
You will hear good news from one you thought unfriendly to you.
%
You will inherit millions of dollars.
%
You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.
%
You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
%
You will live to see your grandchildren.
%
You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door mayonnaise salesman.
%
You will meet an important person who will help you advance professionally.
%
You will never know hunger.
%
You will not be elected to public office this year.
%
You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.
%
You will outgrow your usefulness.
%
You will overcome the attacks of jealous associates.
%
You will pass away very quickly.
%
You will pay for your sins. If you have already paid, please disregard this message.
%
You will pioneer the first Martian colony.
%
You will probably marry after a very brief courtship.
%
You will reach the highest possible point in your business or profession.
%
You will receive a legacy which will place you above want.
%
You will remember something that you should not have forgotten.
%
You will soon forget this.
%
You will soon meet a person who will play an important role in your life.
%
You will step on the night soil of many countries.
%
You will stop at nothing to reach your objective, but only because your brakes are defective.
%
You will triumph over your enemy.
%
You will visit the Dung Pits of Glive soon.
%
You will win success in whatever calling you adopt.
%
You will wish you hadn't.
%
You work very hard. Don't try to think as well.
%
You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry.
%
You would if you could but you can't so you won't.
%
You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow.
%
You'll be called to a post requiring ability in handling groups of people.
%
You'll be sorry...
%
You'll feel devilish tonight. Toss dynamite caps under a flamenco dancer's heel.
%
You'll feel much better once you've given up hope.
%
You'll never be the man your mother was!
%
You'll never see all the places, or read all the books, but fortunately,
they're not all recommended.
%
You'll wish that you had done some of the hard things when they were easier
to do.
%
You're a card which will have to be dealt with.
%
You're almost as happy as you think you are.
%
You're at the end of the road again.
%
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%
You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life."
%
You're definitely on their list. The question to ask next is what list it is.
%
You're growing out of some of your problems, but there are others that you're growing into.
%
You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
%
You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny.
%
You're working under a slight handicap. You happen to be human.
%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%
Your aim is high and to the right.
%
Your aims are high, and you are capable of much.
%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
thing he tells you.
%
Your best consolation is the hope that the things you failed to get weren't really worth having.
%
Your boss climbed the corporate ladder, wrong by wrong.
%
Your boss is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
%
Your boyfriend takes chocolate from strangers.
%
Your business will assume vast proportions.
%
Your business will go through a period of considerable expansion.
%
Your depth of comprehension may tend to make you lax in worldly ways.
%
Your domestic life may be harmonious.
%
Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
%
Your goose is cooked.
(Your current chick is burned up too!)
%
Your heart is pure, and your mind clear, and your soul devout.
%
Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
%
Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
%
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
%
Your love life will be... interesting.
%
Your lover will never wish to leave you.
%
Your lucky color has faded.
%
Your lucky number has been disconnected.
%
Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
%
Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of good news soon.
%
Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of new developments.
%
Your motives for doing whatever good deed you may have in mind will be misinterpreted by somebody.
%
Your nature demands love and your happiness depends on it.
%
Your object is to save the world, while still leading a pleasant life.
%
Your own qualities will help prevent your advancement in the world.
%
Your present plans will be successful.
%
Your reasoning is excellent -- it's only your basic assumptions that are wrong.
%
Your reasoning powers are good, and you are a fairly good planner.
%
Your sister swims out to meet troop ships.
%
Your society will be sought by people of taste and refinement.
%
Your step will soil many countries.
%
Your supervisor is thinking about you.
%
Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.
%
Your temporary financial embarrassment will be relieved in a surprising manner.
%
Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
%
data/etc/fortunes/Goedel
+140
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3M, under the Scotch brand name, manufactures a fine adhesive for art and display work. This product is called "Craft Mount". 3M suggests that to obtain the best results, one should make the bond "while the adhesive is wet, aggressively tacky." I did not know what "aggressively tacky" meant until I read today's fortune.
[And who said we didn't offer equal time, huh? Ed.]
%
Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:
(1) None. (Moses didn't have an ark).
(2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
(3) I don't know.
(4) Who cares?
(5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3). Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk, Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
(6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of Papyrus Books).
%
Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
%
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as
difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
-- R. Emerson
-- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
(whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
[to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
misconstrue all these misquotations?!?" Ed.]
%
Chocolate chip.
%
DELETE A FORTUNE!
Don't some of these fortunes just drive you nuts?!
Wouldn't you like to see some of them deleted from the system?
You can! Just mail to `fortune' with the fortune you hate most, and we'll make sure it gets expunged.
%
Did you know about the -o option of the fortune program? It makes a selection from a set of offensive and/or obscene fortunes. Why not try it, and see how offended you are? The -a ("all") option will select a fortune at random from either the offensive or inoffensive set, and it is suggested that "fortune -a" is the command that you should have in your .profile or .cshrc. file.
%
Do not read this fortune under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%
For 20 dollars, I'll give you a good fortune next time ...
%
For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz.
%
Fortune's current rates:
Answers .10
Long answers .25
Answers requiring thought .50
Correct answers $1.00
Dumb looks are still free.
%
Generic Fortune.
%
Ginger snap.
%
Has anyone realized that the purpose of the fortune cookie program is to defuse project tensions? When did you ever see a cheerful cookie, a non-cynical, or even an informative cookie?
Perhaps inadvertently, we have a channel for our aggressions. This still begs the question of whether the cookie releases the pressure or only serves to blunt the warning signs.
Long live the revolution!
Have a nice day.
%
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.
%
I know you believe you understand what you think this fortune says, but I'm not sure you realize that what you are reading is not what it means.
%
If it's Tuesday, this must be someone else's fortune.
%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%
If this fortune didn't exist, somebody would have invented it.
%
If you wish to live wisely, ignore sayings -- including this one.
%
Ignore previous fortune.
%
In which level of metalanguage are you now speaking?
%
(null cookie; hope that's ok)
%
Oatmeal raisin.
%
Oreo.
%
Pardon this fortune. Database under reconstruction.
%
Pick another fortune cookie.
%
Please ignore previous fortune.
%
Since before the Earth was formed and before the sun burned hot in space, cosmic forces of inexorable power have been working relentlessly toward this moment in space-time -- your receiving this fortune.
%
Sorry, no fortune this time.
%
The fortune program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%
There is no such thing as fortune. Try again.
%
This fortune cookie program out of order. For those in desperate need, please use the program "randchar". This program generates random characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come up with something profound. It will, however, take it no time at all to be more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%
This Fortune Examined By INSPECTOR NO. 2-14
%
This fortune intentionally left blank.
%
This fortune intentionally not included.
%
This fortune intentionally says nothing.
%
This fortune is dedicated to your mother, without whose invaluable assistance last night would never have been possible.
%
This fortune is encrypted -- get your decoder rings ready!
%
This fortune is false.
%
This fortune is inoperative. Please try another.
%
This fortune soaks up 47 times its own weight in excess memory.
%
This fortune was brought to you by the people at Hewlett-Packard.
%
This fortune would be seven words long if it were six words shorter.
%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THE FORTUNE PROGRAM
If you like the fortune program, why not support it now with your contribution of a pithy fortunes, clean or obscene? We cannot continue without your support. Less than 14% of all fortune users are contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free ride. We can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks mean less money for fortunes, and unless user contributions increase to make up the difference, the fortune program will have to shut down between midnight and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen. Mail your fortunes right now to "fortune". Just type in your favorite pithy saying. Do it now before you forget. Our target is 300 new fortunes by the end of the week. Don't miss out. All fortunes will be acknowledged. If you contribute 30 fortunes or more, you will receive a free subscription to "The Fortune Hunter", our monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or more, you will receive a free "Fortune Hunter" coffee mug ....
%
This is your fortune.
%
Vanilla wafer.
%
Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters.
%
WARNING:
Reading this fortune can affect the dimensionality of your mind, change the curvature of your spine, cause the growth of hair on your palms, and make a difference in the outcome of your favorite war.
%
We interrupt this fortune for an important announcement...
%
What does it mean if there is no fortune for you?
%
When you're not looking at it, this fortune is written in FORTRAN.
%
You will think of something funnier than this to add to the fortunes.
%
data/etc/fortunes/Humorists
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A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.
-- Groucho Marx
%
A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture. You don't have to go. You'll just be walking down the street and... ooohh, that's much better.
-- Steven Wright
%
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 lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths.
-- Steven Wright
%
A MODERN FABLE
Aesop's fables and other traditional children's stories involve allegory far too subtle for the youth of today. Children need an updated message with contemporary circumstance and plot line, and short enough to suit today's minute attention span.
The Troubled Aardvark
Once upon a time, there was an aardvark whose only pleasure in life was driving from his suburban bungalow to his job at a large brokerage house in his brand new 4x4. He hated his manipulative boss, his conniving and unethical co-workers, his greedy wife, and his snivelling, spoiled children. One day, the aardvark reflected on the meaning of his life and his career and on the unchecked, catastrophic decline of his nation, its pathetic excuse for leadership, and the complete ineffectiveness of any personal effort he could make to change the status quo. Overcome by a wave of utter depression and self-doubt, he decided to take the only course of action that would bring him greater comfort and happiness: he drove to the mall and bought imported consumer electronics goods.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Invest in foreign consumer electronics manufacturers.
-- Tom Annau
%
A possum must be himself, and being himself he is honest.
-- Walt Kelly
%
"A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!"
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Giant Rat of Summatra"
%
Accidents cause History.
If Sigismund Unbuckle had taken a walk in 1426 and met Wat Tyler, the Peasant's Revolt would never have happened and the motor car would not have been invented until 2026, which would have meant that all the oil could have been used for lamps, thus saving the electric light bulb and the whale, and nobody would have caught Moby Dick or Billy Budd.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.
-- Woody Allen
%
All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store... with a pricing gun... She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store."
-- Steven Wright
%
And now for something completely different.
%
And now for something completely the same.
%
"Are you sure you're not an encyclopedia salesman?"
No, Ma'am. Just a burglar, come to ransack the flat."
-- Monty Python
%
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
%
Being Ymor's right-hand man was like being gently flogged to death with scented bootlaces.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
%
Bernard Shaw is an excellent man; he has not an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him either.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
"Boy, life takes a long time to live."
-- Steven Wright
%
Bozo is the Brotherhood of Zips and Others. Bozos are people who band together for fun and profit. They have no jobs. Anybody who goes on a tour is a Bozo. Why does a Bozo cross the street? Because there's a Bozo on the other side. It comes from the phrase vos otros, meaning others. They're the huge, fat, middle waist. The archetype is an Irish drunk clown with red hair and nose, and pale skin. Fields, William Bendix. Everybody tends to drift toward Bozoness. It has Oz in it. They mean well. They're straight-looking except they've got inflatable shoes. They like their comforts. The Bozos have learned to enjoy their free time, which is all the time.
-- Firesign Theatre, "If Bees Lived Inside Your Head"
%
But I always fired into the nearest hill or, failing that, into blackness. I meant no harm; I just liked the explosions. And I was careful never to kill more than I could eat.
-- Raoul Duke
%
"But I don't like Spam!!!!"
%
"But I don't want to go on the cart..."
"Oh, don't be such a baby!"
"But I'm feeling much better..."
"No you're not... in a moment you'll be stone dead!"
-- Monty Python, "The Holy Grail"
%
Comedy, like Medicine, was never meant to be practiced by the general public.
%
Death didn't answer. He was looking at Spold in the same way as a dog looks at a bone, only in this case things were more or less the other way around.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
%
Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.
-- C. Schulz
%
Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?
-- Steven Wright
%
Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schulz
%
Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.
-- Woody Allen
%
Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
-- Tom Stoppard
%
Ever since prehistoric times, wise men have tried to understand what, exactly, make people laugh. That's why they were called "wise men." All the other prehistoric people were out puncturing each other with spears, and the wise men were back in the cave saying: "How about: Would you please take my wife? No. How about: Here is my wife, please take her right now. No How about: Would you like to take something? My wife is available. No. How about ..."
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
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"
%
Faster, faster, you fool, you fool!
-- Bill Cosby
%
First, a few words about tools.
Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.
-- Steven Wright
%
From the moment I picked your book up until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx, from "The Book of Insults"
%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
%
He asked me if I knew what time it was -- I said yes, but not right now.
-- Steven Wright
%
"Here's something to think about: How come you never see a headline like `Psychic Wins Lottery'?"
-- Jay Leno
%
Hey, what do you expect from a culture that drives on parkways and parks on driveways?
-- Gallagher
%
High Priest: Armaments Chapter One, verses nine through twenty-seven:
Bro. Maynard: And Saint Attila raised the Holy Hand Grenade up on high saying, "Oh Lord, Bless us this Holy Hand Grenade, and with it smash our enemies to tiny bits." And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and stoats, and orangutans, and breakfast cereals, and lima bean-
High Priest: Skip a bit, brother.
Bro. Maynard: And then the Lord spake, saying: "First, shalt thou take out the holy pin. Then shalt thou count to three. No more, no less. Three shall be the number of the counting, and the number of the counting shall be three. Fou* shalt thou not count, and neither count thou two, excepting that thou then goest on to three. Five is RIGHT OUT. Once the number three, being the third number be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade towards thy foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall snuff it. Amen.
All: Amen.
-- Monty Python, "The Holy Hand Grenade"
%
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
-- William Gilbert
%
Humorists always sit at the children's table.
-- Woody Allen
%
I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.
-- Ogden Nash, "Everybody's Mind to Me a Kingdom Is"
%
I am getting into abstract painting. Real abstract -- no brush, no canvas, I just think about it. I just went to an art museum where all of the art was done by children. All the paintings were hung on refrigerators.
-- Steven Wright
%
I am two with nature.
-- Woody Allen
%
I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.
-- Dave Barry
%
"I assure you the thought never even crossed my mind, lord."
"Indeed? Then if I were you I'd sue my face for slander."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
%
I base my fashion taste on what doesn't itch.
-- Gilda Radner
%
I bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house.
-- Steven Wright
%
I cannot overemphasize the importance of good grammar.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II."
-- Dave Barry, "An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar"
%
"I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still ..."
-- Steven Wright
%
I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I don't deserve this award, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
-- Jack Benny
%
I don't get no respect.
%
I don't kill flies, but I like to mess with their minds. I hold them above globes. They freak out and yell "Whooa, I'm *way* too high."
-- Bruce Baum
%
I don't want to live on in my work, I want to live on in my apartment.
-- Woody Allen
%
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 my driver's license photo taken out of focus on purpose. Now when I get pulled over the cop looks at it (moving it nearer and farther, trying to see it clearly)... and says, "Here, you can go."
-- Steven Wright
%
I got this powdered water -- now I don't know what to add.
-- Steven Wright
%
I got tired of listening to the recording on the phone at the movie theater, so I bought the album.
-- Steven Wright
%
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.
-- Steven Wright
%
I went to the theater and the sign said adults $5 children $2.50. I told them I wanted 2 boys and a girl.
-- Steven Wright
%
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 hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day cause that means it's going to be up all night.
-- Steven Wright
%
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 have a friend whose a billionaire. He invented Cliff's notes. When I asked him how he got such a great idea he said, "Well first I... I just... to make a long story short..."
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a hobby. I have the world's largest collection of sea shells. I keep it scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you've seen some of it.
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a map of the United States. It's actual size. I spent last summer folding it. People ask me where I live, and I say, "E6".
-- Steven Wright
%
I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died.
-- Richard Diran
%
I have a switch in my apartment that doesn't do anything. Every once in a while I turn it on and off. On and off. On and off. One day I got a call from a woman in France who said "Cut it out!"
-- Steven Wright
%
I have an existential map. It has "You are here" written all over it.
-- Steven Wright
%
I just got out of the hospital after a speed reading accident. I hit a bookmark.
-- Steven Wright
%
I know the answer! The answer lies within the heart of all mankind! The answer is twelve? I think I'm in the wrong building.
-- Charles Schulz
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I look at life as being cruise director on the Titanic. I may not get there, but I'm going first class.
-- Art Buchwald
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"I love Saturday morning cartoons, what classic humour! This is what entertainment is all about ... Idiots, explosives and falling anvils."
-- Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson
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I met my latest girl friend in a department store. She was looking at clothes, and I was putting Slinkys on the escalators.
-- Steven Wright
%
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception.
-- Groucho Marx
%
I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone.
-- Steven Wright
%
I put contact lenses in my dog's eyes. They had little pictures of cats on them. Then I took one out and he ran around in circles.
-- Steven Wright
%
I put instant coffee in a microwave and almost went back in time.
-- Steven Wright
%
"I said I hope it is a good party," said Galder, loudly.
"AT THE MOMENT IT IS," said Death levelly. "I THINK IT MIGHT GO DOWNHILL VERY QUICKLY AT MIDNIGHT."
"Why?"
"THAT'S WHEN THEY THINK I'LL BE TAKING MY MASK OFF."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.
-- Steven Wright
%
I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than most western countries.
-- George Burns
%
I sold my memoirs of my love life to Parker Brothers -- they're going to make a game out of it.
-- Woody Allen
%
I stayed up all night playing poker with tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
-- 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 tell ya, gambling never agreed with me. Last week I went to the track and they shot my horse with the opening gun.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
Well, just last week I was at a Chinese restaurant and when I opened my fortune cookie I found the guy's check sitting at the next table. I said, "Hey, buddy, I got your check", he said, "Thanks."
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
-- Firesign Theatre
%
I thought there was something fishy about the butler. Probably a Pisces, working for scale.
-- Firesign Theatre, "The Further Adventures of Nick Danger"
%
I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia.
-- Woody Allen
%
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."
-- Steven Wright
%
In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above... so I never have to go upstairs.
-- Steven Wright
%
I just bought a microwave fireplace... You can spend an evening in front of it in only eight minutes.
-- Steven Wright
%
I used to live in a house by the freeway. When I went anywhere, I had to be going 65 MPH by the end of my driveway.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was pulled over for speeding today. The officer said, "Don't you know the speed limit is 55 miles an hour?" And I said, "Yes, but I wasn't going to be out that long."
-- Steven Wright
%
I put a new engine in my car, but didn't take the old one out. Now my car goes 500 miles an hour.
-- Steven Wright
%
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was at this restaurant. The sign said "Breakfast Anytime." So I ordered French Toast in the Rennaissance.
-- 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"
%
I was in Vegas last week. I was at the roulette table, having a lengthy argument about what I considered an Odd number.
-- Steven Wright
%
I was the best I ever had.
-- Woody Allen
%
"I went into a general store, and they wouldn't sell me anything specific".
-- Steven Wright
%
"I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any questions. I said, "Yes, just one. If you're in a car traveling at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen? He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work for him then.
-- Steven Wright
%
"I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums."
-- Steven Wright
%
I woke up this morning and discovered that everything in my apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact replica. I told my roommate, "Isn't this amazing? Everything in the apartment has been stolen and
replaced with an exact replica." He said, "Do I know you?"
-- Steven Wright
%
I worked in a health food store once. A guy came in and asked me, "If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet?"
-- Steven Wright
%
I'd horsewhip you if I had a horse.
-- Groucho Marx
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I'd like to be buried Indian-style -- where they put you up on a high rack above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even feel it.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
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I'd never join any club that would have the likes of me as a member.
-- Groucho Marx
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I'll be comfortable on the couch. Famous last words.
-- Lenny Bruce
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I'm going to Boston to see my doctor. He's a very sick man.
-- Fred Allen
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I'm going to give my psychoanalyst one more year, then I'm going to Lourdes.
-- Woody Allen
%
I'm going to live forever, or die trying!
-- Spider Robinson
%
I'm not afraid of death -- I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-- Woody Allen
%
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
-- Groucho Marx
%
If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry.
-- Dave Barry
%
If only Dionysus were alive! Where would he eat?
-- Woody Allen
%
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
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If you live to the age of a hundred you have it made because very few people die past the age of a hundred.
-- George Burns
%
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
%
If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
-- Woody Allen
%
If you've done six impossible things before breakfast, why not round it off with dinner at Milliway's, the restaurant at the end of the universe?
-- Douglas Adams, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
%
In like a dimwit, out like a light.
-- Pogo
%
Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
-- Steven Wright
%
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"
%
It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
-- Woody Allen
%
It isn't necessary to have relatives in Kansas City in order to be unhappy.
-- Groucho Marx
%
It looked like something resembling white marble, which was probably what it was: something resembling white marble.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy"
%
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it.
-- Steven Wright
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It's hard to get ivory in Africa, but in Alabama the Tuscaloosa.
-- Groucho Marx
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It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-- Woody Allen
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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
%
Last year we drove across the country. We switched on the driving every half mile. We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip. I don't remember what it was.
-- Steven Wright
%
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
-- Woody Allen, "Annie Hall"
%
Life is wasted on the living.
-- The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe.
%
Like you, I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's place in the Scheme of Things. Here are just a few:
Q -- Is there life after death?
A -- Definitely. I speak from personal experience here. On New Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian", then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful headache. Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead. I guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
-- Dave Barry
%
Man 1: Ask me the what the most important thing in telling a good joke is.
Man 2: OK, what is the most impo --
Man 1: TIMING!
%
"Many have seen Topaxci, god of the Red Mushroom, and they earn the name of shaman," he said. Some have seen Skelde, spirit of the smoke, and they are called sorcerers. A few have been privileged to see Umcherrel, the soul of the forest, and they are known as spirit masters, but none have seen a box with hundreds of legs that looked at them without eyes, and they are known as idio--"
The interruption was caused by a sudden screaming noise and a flurry of snow and sparks that blew the fire across the dark hut; there was a brief blurred vision and then the opposite wall was blasted aside and the apparition vanished.
There was a long silence. Then a slightly shorter silence. Then the old shaman said carefully, "You didn't just see two men go through upside down on a broomstick, shouting and screaming at each other, did you?"
The boy looked at him levelly. "Certainly not," he said.
The old man heaved a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness for that," he said. "Neither did I."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
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 brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of the entire earth on it. On the back it said: "Wish you were here".
-- Steven Wright
%
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
%
Nirvana? That's the place where the powers that be and their friends hang out.
-- Zonker Harris
%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!
%
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
-- Walt Kelly
%
Obviously the subject of death was in the air, but more as something to be avoided than harped upon.
Possibly the horror that Zaphod experienced at the prospect of being reunited with his deceased relatives led on to the thought that they might just feel the same way about him and, what's more, be able to do something about helping to postpone this reunion.
-- Douglas Adams
%
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
-- Larry Gelbart
%
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx
%
Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.
-- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%
"Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time."
-- Steven Wright
%
Rincewind formed a mental picture of some strange entity living in a castle made of teeth. It was the kind of mental picture you tried to forget. Unsuccessfully.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
Romeo wasn't bilked in a day.
-- Walt Kelly, "Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo"
%
Showing up is 80% of life.
-- Woody Allen
%
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.
%
Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future.
-- Pogo, by Walt Kelly
%
The basic idea behind malls is that they are more convenient than cities. Cities contain streets, which are dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in. Malls, on the other hand, have parking lots, which are also dangerous and crowded and difficult to park in, but -- here is the big difference -- in mall parking lots, THERE ARE NO RULES. You're allowed to do anything. You can drive as fast as you want in any direction you want. I was once driving in a mall parking lot when my car was struck by a pickup truck being driven backward by a squat man with a tattoo that said "Charlie" on his forearm, who got out and explained to me, in great detail, why the accident was my fault, his reasoning being that he was violent and muscular, whereas I was neither. This kind of reasoning is legally valid in mall parking lots.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.
-- W. C. Fields
%
The best way to make a fire with two sticks is to make sure one of them is a match.
-- Will Rogers
%
The buffalo isn't as dangerous as everyone makes him out to be. Statistics prove that in the United States more Americans are killed in automobile accidents than are killed by buffalo.
-- Art Buchwald
%
The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagara is esteemed, by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature.
-- Benjamin Franklin.
%
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
Most importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a non-hitchhiker discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, washcloth, flask, gnat spray, space suit, etc., etc. Furthermore, the non-hitchhiker will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that he may have "lost". After all, any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
The other day I... uh, no, that wasn't me.
-- Steven Wright
%
"The pyramid is opening!"
"Which one?"
"The one with the ever-widening hole in it!"
-- Firesign Theater, "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You're Not Anywhere At All"
%
The Three Major Kind of Tools
1) Tools for hittings things to make them loose or to tighten them up or jar their many complex, sophisticated electrical parts in such a manner that they function perfectly. (These are your hammers, maces, bludgeons, and truncheons.)
2) Tools that, if dropped properly, can penetrate your foot. (Awls)
3) Tools that nobody should ever use because the potential danger is far greater than the value of any project that could possibly result. (Power saws, power drills, power staplers, any kind of tool that uses any kind of power more advanced than flashlight batteries.)
-- Dave Barry, "The Taming of the Screw"
%
There's no easy quick way out, we're gonna have to live through our whole lives, win, lose, or draw.
-- Walt Kelly
%
There's so much plastic in this culture that vinyl leopard skin is becoming an endangered synthetic.
-- Lily Tomlin
%
Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.
-- Will Rogers
%
This land is full of trousers!
this land is full of mausers!
And pussycats to eat them when the sun goes down!
-- Firesign Theater
%
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.
%
Twenty Percent of Zero is Better than Nothing.
-- Walt Kelly
%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly
%
We is confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Walt Kelly, "Pogo"
%
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
-- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
%
"What shall we do?" said Twoflower.
"Panic?" said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabretoothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying "What a magnificent brute!" and "Here, pussy."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
What's another word for "thesaurus"?
-- Steven Wright
%
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?"
-- Steven Wright
%
When I was little, I went into a pet shop and they asked how big I'd get.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
%
When I woke up this morning, my girlfriend asked if I had slept well. I said, "No, I made a few mistakes."
-- Steven Wright
%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards -- no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%
Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
-- Steven Wright
%
Will Rogers never met you.
%
Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity. If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your head. If you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick.
-- Steven Wright
%
Would you *really* want to get on a non-stop flight?
-- George Carlin
%
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
-- Steven Wright
%
"You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!"
"Why, what did she tell you?"
"I don't know, I didn't listen."
-- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%
You may already be a loser.
-- Form letter received by Rodney Dangerfield.
%
You'd better beat it. You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.
-- Groucho Marx
%
You're a good example of why some animals eat their young.
-- Jim Samuels to a heckler
Ah, yes. I remember my first beer.
-- Steve Martin to a heckler
When your IQ rises to 28, sell.
-- Professor Irwin Corey to a heckler
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A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other.
%
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg
%
A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
%
A kid'll eat the middle of an Oreo, eventually.
%
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".
%
About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in favor of the plain people is the stork.
%
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they escaped teething.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
%
Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look like you ...
-- Gilda Radner
%
After watching an extremely attractive maternity-ward patient earnestly thumbing her way through a telephone directory for several minutes, a hospital orderly finally asked if he could be of some help.
"No, thanks," smiled the young mother, "I'm just looking for a name for my baby."
"But the hospital supplies a special booklet that lists hundreds of first names and their meanings," said the orderly.
"That won't help," said the woman, "my baby already has a first name."
%
And he climbed with the lad up the Eiffelberg Tower. "This," cried the Mayor, "is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red to come to the aid of their country!" he said. "We've GOT to make noises in greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!" Thus he spoke as he climbed. When they got to the top, the lad cleared his throat and he shouted out, "YOPP!"
And that Yopp... That one last small, extra Yopp put it over! Finally, at last! From the speck on that clover their voices were heard! They rang out clear and clean. And they elephant smiled. "Do you see what I mean?" They've proved they ARE persons, no matter how small. And their whole world was saved by the smallest of All!"
"How true! Yes, how true," said the big kangaroo. "And, from now on, you know what I'm planning to do? From now on, I'm going to protect them with you!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "ME TOO! From the sun in the summer. From rain when it's fall-ish, I'm going to protect them. No matter how small-ish!"
-- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who"
%
Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a whole week.
%
Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never tried taking candy from a baby.
-- Robin Hood
%
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...
Do as I say, not as I do.
Do me a favour and don't tell me about it. I don't want to know.
What did you do *this* time?
If it didn't taste bad, it wouldn't be good for you.
When I was your age...
I won't love you if you keep doing that.
Think of all the starving children in India.
If there's one thing I hate, it's a liar.
I'm going to kill you.
Way to go, clumsy.
If you don't like it, you can lump it.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Go away. You bother me.
Why? Because life is unfair.
That's a nice drawing. What is it?
Children should be seen and not heard.
You'll be the death of me.
You'll understand when you're older.
Because.
Wipe that smile off your face.
I don't believe you.
How many times have I told you to be careful?
Just beacuse.
%
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.
%
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
You wouldn't understand.
You ask too many questions.
In order to be a man, you have to learn to follow orders.
That's for me to know and you to find out.
Don't let those bullies push you around. Go in there and stick up for yourself.
You're acting too big for your britches.
Well, you broke it. Now are you satisfied?
Wait till your father gets home.
Bored? If you're bored, I've got some chores for you.
Shape up or ship out.
%
Article the Third:
Where a crime of the kidneys has been committed, the accused should enjoy the right to a speedy diaper change. Public announcements and guided tours of the aforementioned are not necessary.
Article the Fourth:
The decision to eat strained lamb or not should be with the "feedee" and not the "feeder". Blowing the strained lamb into the feeder's face should be accepted as an opinion, not as a declaration of war.
Article the Fifth:
Babies should enjoy the freedom to vocalize, whether it be in church, a public meeting place, during a movie, or after hours when the lights are out. They have not yet learned that joy and laughter have to last a lifetime and must be conserved.
-- Erma Bombeck, "A Baby's Bill of Rights"
%
Beat your son every day; you may not know why, but he will.
%
Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us.
-- Henrik Tikkanen
%
Billy: Mom, you know that vase you said was handed down from generation to generation?
Mom: Yes?
Billy: Well, this generation dropped it.
%
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%
Catching his children with their hands in the new, still wet, patio, the father spanked them. His wife asked, "Don't you love your children?" "In the abstract, yes, but not in the concrete."
%
Catproof is an oxymoron, childproof nearly so.
%
Children are like cats, they can tell when you don't like them. That's when they come over and violate your body space.
%
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
%
Children are unpredictable. You never know what inconsistency they're going to catch you in next.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
%
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives.
-- Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
%
Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
-- Phyllis Diller
There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
-- Quentin Crisp
%
Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.
%
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
-- Robert Heinlein
%
Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children, neither will you.
%
For adult education nothing beats children.
%
For children with short attention spans: boomerangs that don't come back.
%
FORTUNE REMEMBERS THE GREAT MOTHERS: #5
"And, and, and, and, but, but, but, but!"
-- Mrs. Janice Markowsky, April 8, 1965
%
FORTUNE REMEMBERS THE GREAT MOTHERS: #6
"Johnny, if you fall and break your leg, don't come running to me!"
-- Mrs. Emily Barstow, June 16, 1954
%
Get Revenge! Live long enough to be a problem for your children!
%
-- Gifts for Children --
This is easy. You never have to figure out what to get for children, because they will tell you exactly what they want. They spend months and months researching these kinds of things by watching Saturday morning cartoon show advertisements. Make sure you get your children exactly what they ask for, even if you disapprove of their choices. If your child thinks he wants Murderous Bob, the Doll with the Face You Can Rip Right Off, you'd better get it. You may be worried that it might help to encourage your child's antisocial tendencies, but believe me, you have not seen antisocial tendencies until you've seen a child who is convinced that he or she did not get the right gift.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
%
Give a small boy a hammer and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.
%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%
Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
-- Martin Mull
%
How sharper than a serpent's tooth is a sister's "See?"
-- Linus Van Pelt
%
"Humpf!" Humpfed a voice! "For almost two days you've run wild and insisted on chatting with persons who've never existed. Such carryings-on in our peaceable jungle! We've had quite enough of you bellowing bungle! And I'm here to state," snapped the big kangaroo, "That your silly nonsensical game is all through!" And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, "Me, too!"
"With the help of the Wickersham Brothers and dozens of Wickersham Uncles and Wickersham Cousins and Wickersham In-Laws, whose help I've engaged, You're going to be roped! And you're going to be caged! And, as for your dust speck... Hah! That we shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of Beezle-Nut oil!"
-- Dr. Seuss "Horton Hears a Who"
%
I BET WHEN NEANDERTHAL KIDS would make a snowman, someone would always end up saying, "Don't forget the thick heavy brows." Then they would get embarrassed because they remembered they had the big hunky brows too, and they'd get mad and eat the snowman.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
%
I called my parents the other night, but I forgot about the time difference. They're still living in the fifties.
-- Strange de Jim
%
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 know what "custody" [of the children] means. "Get even." That's all custody means. Get even with your old lady.
-- Lenny Bruce
%
I love children. Especially when they cry -- for then someone takes them away.
-- Nancy Mitford
%
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
%
I used to think I was a child; now I think I am an adult -- not because I no longer do childish things, but because those I call adults are no more mature than I am.
%
I was born because it was a habit in those days, people didn't know anything else ... I was not a Child Prodigy, because a Child Prodigy is a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up.
-- Will Rogers
%
If a child annoys you, quiet him by brushing his hair. If this doesn't work, use the other side of the brush on the other end of the child.
%
If parents would only realize how they bore their children.
-- G.B. Shaw
%
If pregnancy were a book they would cut the last two chapters.
-- Nora Ephron, "Heartburn"
%
If the very old will remember, the very young will listen.
-- Chief Dan George
%
If you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
-- Bette Davis
%
If your mother knew what you're doing, she'd probably hang her head and cry.
%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%
It is better to remain childless than to father an orphan.
%
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
%
It must have been some unmarried fool that said "A child can ask questions that a wise man cannot answer"; because, in any decent house, a brat that starts asking questions is promptly packed off to bed.
-- Arthur Binstead
%
It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
%
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
%
Kids always brighten up a house; mostly by leaving the lights on.
%
Kids have *never* taken guidance from their parents. If you could travel back in time and observe the original primate family in the original tree, you would see the primate parents yelling at the primate teenager for sitting around and sulking all day instead of hunting for grubs and berries like dad primate. Then you'd see the primate teenager stomp up to his branch and slam the leaves.
-- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do"
%
Lies! All lies! You're all lying against my boys!
-- Ma Barker
%
Life does not begin at the moment of conception or the moment of birth. It begins when the kids leave home and the dog dies.
%
Life is like a diaper -- short and loaded.
%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer
%
May you have many beautiful and obedient daughters.
%
May you have many handsome and obedient sons.
%
MEMORIES OF MY FAMILY MEETINGS still are a source of strength to me. I remember we'd all get into the car -- I forget what kind it was -- and drive and drive.
I'm not sure where we'd go, but I think there were some bees there. The smell of something was strong in the air as we played whatever sport we played. I remember a bigger, older guy whom we called "Dad." We'd eat some stuff or not and then I think we went home.
I guess some things never leave you.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
%
Microwaves frizz your heir.
%
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 BB 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 family history begins with me, but yours ends with you.
-- Iphicrates
%
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one.
-- Groucho Marx
%
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
%
My mother was a test tube; my father was a knife.
-- Friday
%
My parents went to Niagara Falls and all I got was this crummy life.
%
Nature makes boys and girls lovely to look upon so they can be tolerated until they acquire some sense.
-- William Phelps
%
Never have children, only grandchildren.
-- Gore Vidal
%
Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
Never raise your hand to your children -- it leaves your midsection unprotected.
-- Robert Orben
%
Never trust a child farther than you can throw it.
%
No house is childproofed unless the little darlings are in straitjackets.
%
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
-- Florida Scott-Maxwell
%
Nobody suffers the pain of birth or the anguish of loving a child in order for presidents to make wars, for governments to feed on the substance of their people, for insurance companies to cheat the young and rob the old.
-- Lewis Lapham
%
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"
%
One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.
-- George Herbert
%
One of the disadvantages of having children is that they eventually get old enough to give you presents they make at school.
-- Robert Byrne
%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%
Out of the mouths of babes does often come cereal.
%
Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn't have much of anything to do with it.
%
Please, Mother! I'd rather do it myself!
%
Reinhart was never his mother's favorite -- and he was an only child.
-- Thomas Berger
%
Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
Snow and adolescence are the only problems that disappear if you ignore them long enough.
%
Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
-- Sam Levenson
%
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when they grow up, they won't be able to edge a car onto a freeway.
%
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
%
That all men should be brothers is the dream of people who have no brothers.
-- Charles Chincholles, "Pensees de tout le monde"
%
The average income of the modern teenager is about 2 a.m.
%
The courtroom was pregnant (pun intended) with anxious silence as the judge solemnly considered his verdict in the paternity suit before him. Suddenly, he reached into the folds of his robes, drew out a cigar and ceremoniously handed it to the defendant.
"Congratulations!" declaimed the jurist. "You have just become a father!"
%
The denunciation of the young is a necessary part of the hygiene of older people, and greatly assists in the circulation of the blood.
-- Logan Pearsall Smith
%
The fact that boys are allowed to exist at all is evidence of a remarkable Christian forbearance among men.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.
-- Clarence Darrow
%
The full impact of parenthood doesn't hit you until you multiply the number of your kids by thirty-two teeth.
%
The future is a myth created by insurance salesmen and high school counselors.
%
The good die young -- because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good.
-- John Barrymore
%
The idea is to die young as late as possible.
-- Ashley Montague
%
The modern child will answer you back before you've said anything.
-- Laurence J. Peter
%
"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"
%
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
%
The real reason large families benefit society is because at least a few of the children in the world shouldn't be raised by beginners.
%
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of four and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all the answers.
%
"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."
-- C. S. Lewis, "The Chronicles of Narnia"
%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
%
There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate.
%
Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy.
%
Troubles are like babies; they only grow by nursing.
%
Two parent drops spent months teaching their son how to be part of the ocean. After months of training, the father drop commented to the mother drop, "We've taught our boy everything we know, he's fit to be tide."
%
We are all born charming, fresh and spontaneous and must be civilized before we are fit to participate in society.
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly
Correct Behaviour"
%
We are the people our parents warned us about.
%
What really shapes and conditions and makes us is somebody only a few of us ever have the courage to face: and that is the child you once were, long before formal education ever got its claws into you -- that impatient, all-demanding child who wants love and power and can't get enough of either and who goes on raging and weeping in your spirit till at last your eyes are closed and all the fools say, "Doesn't he look peaceful?" It is those pent-up, craving children who make all the wars and all the horrors and all the art and all the beauty and discovery in
life, because they are trying to achieve what lay beyond their grasp before they were five years old.
-- Robertson Davies, "The Rebel Angels"
%
What's done to children, they will do to society.
%
When childhood dies, its corpses are called adults.
-- Brian Aldiss
%
When I was 16, I thought there was no hope for my father. By the time I was 20, he had made great improvement.
%
When you were born, a big chance was taken for you.
%
Why do they call it baby-SITTING when all you do is run after them?
%
Why not have an old-fashioned Christmas for your family this year? Just picture the scene in your living room on Christmas morning as your children open their old-fashioned presents.
Your 11-year-old son: "What the heck is this?"
You: "A spinning top! You spin it around, and then eventually it falls down. What fun! Ha, ha!"
Son: "Is this a joke? Jason Thompson's parents got him a computer with two disk drives and 128 kilobytes of random-access memory, and I get this cretin TOP?"
Your 8-year-old daughter: "You think that's bad? Look at this."
You: "It's figgy pudding! What a treat!"
Daughter: "It looks like goat barf."
-- Dave Barry, "Simple, Homespun Gifts"
%
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
-- Franklin P. Jones
%
"You can't expect a mother to be with a small child all the time," Margaret Mead once remarked, with her usual good sense, but in 1978 she shocked feminists by snapping that women don't really have children to put them in day care twelve hours a day, either.
-- Caroline Bird, "The Two Paycheck Marriage"
%
You can't hug a child with nuclear arms.
%
Your responsibility as a parent is not as great as you might imagine. You need not supply the world with the next conqueror of disease or major motion picture star. If your child simply grows up to be someone who does not use the word "collectible" as a noun, you can consider yourself an unqualified success.
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Social Studies"
%
Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%
Youth is the trustee of posterity.
%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
%
Youth. It's a wonder that anyone ever outgrows it.
%
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A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing into trees. At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same forest, with identical results. They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing.
"Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally," apologized the rabbit.
"That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same problem!"
"All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do you think you could help me find out?"
"I'll try," said the snake. He gently coiled himself around the rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail and long ears. You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!"
"Great!" said the rabbit. "Thanks, I really owe you one!"
"Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either. Do you suppose you could try and tell me?"
The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake. "Well, you're low, cold and slimey..." And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have no balls. You must be an attorney!"
%
A 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."
%
A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
-- Ben Franklin
%
A doctor was stranded with a lawyer in a leaky life raft in shark-infested waters. The doctor tried to swim ashore but was eaten by the sharks. The lawyer, however, swam safely past the bloodthirsty sharks. "Professional courtesy," he explained.
%
A Dublin lawyer died in poverty and many barristers of the city subscribed to a fund for his funeral. The Lord Chief Justice of Orbury was asked to donate a shilling. "Only a shilling?" exclaimed the man. "Only a shilling to bury an attorney? Here's a guinea; go and bury twenty of them."
%
A friend of mine won't get a divorce, because he hates lawyers more than he hates his wife.
%
A housewife, an accountant and a lawyer were asked to add 2 and 2.
The housewife replied, "Four!".
The accountant said, "It's either 3 or 4. Let me run those figures through my spread sheet one more time."
The lawyer pulled the drapes, dimmed the lights and asked in a hushed voice, "How much do you want it to be?"
%
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost
%
A lawyer named Strange was shopping for a tombstone. After he had made his selection, the stonecutter asked him what inscription he would like on it. "Here lies an honest man and a lawyer," responded the lawyer.
"Sorry, but I can't do that," replied the stonecutter. "In this state, it's against the law to bury two people in the same grave. However, I could put ``here lies an honest lawyer'', if that would be okay."
"But that won't let people know who it is" protested the lawyer.
"Certainly will," retorted the stonecutter. "people will read it and exclaim, "That's Strange!"
%
A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and exceptional ability in that particular field."
%
A Los Angeles judge ruled that "a citizen may snore with immunity in his own home, even though he may be in possession of unusual and exceptional ability in that particular field."
%
A man walked into a bar with his alligator and asked the bartender, "Do you serve lawyers here?".
"Sure do," replied the bartender.
"Good," said the man. "Give me a beer, and I'll have a lawyer for my 'gator."
%
A New York City judge ruled that if two women behind you at the movies insist on discussing the probable outcome of the film, you have the right to turn around and blow a Bronx cheer at them.
%
A New York City ordinance prohibits the shooting of rabbits from the rear of a Third Avenue street car -- if the car is in motion.
%
A Riverside, California, health ordinance states that two persons may not kiss each other without first wiping their lips with carbolized rosewater.
%
A small town that cannot support one lawyer can always support two.
%
According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of the returns."
%
According to Kentucky state law, every person must take a bath at least once a year.
%
After 35 years, I have finished a comprehensive study of European comparative law. In Germany, under the law, everything is prohibited, except that which is permitted. In France, under the law, everything is permitted, except that which is prohibited. In the Soviet Union, under the law, everything is prohibited, including that which is permitted. And in Italy, under the law, everything is permitted, especially that which is prohibited.
-- Newton Minow, Speech to the Association of American Law Schools, 1985
%
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"
%
An amendment to a motion may be amended, but an amendment to an amendment to a motion may not be amended. However, a substitute for an amendment to and amendment to a motion may be adopted and the substitute may be amended.
-- The Montana legislature's contribution to the English language.
%
An attorney was defending his client against a charge of first-degree murder. "Your Honor, my client is accused of stuffing his lover's mutilated body into a suitcase and heading for the Mexican border. Just north of Tijuana a cop spotted her hand sticking out of the suitcase. Now, I would like to stress that my client is *not* a murderer. A sloppy packer, maybe..."
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An English judge, growing weary of the barrister's long-winded summation, leaned over the bench and remarked, "I've heard your arguments, Sir Geoffrey, and I'm none the wiser!" Sir Geoffrey responded, "That may be, Milord, but at least you're better informed!"
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And then there was the lawyer that stepped in cow manure and thought he was melting...
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Another day, another dollar.
-- Vincent J. Fuller, defense lawyer for John Hinckley,
upon Hinckley's acquittal for shooting President Ronald
Reagan.
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Anti-trust laws should be approached with exactly that attitude.
%
Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp.
%
Attorney General Edwin Meese III explained why the Supreme Court's Miranda decision (holding that subjects have a right to remain silent and have a lawyer present during questioning) is unnecessary: "You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect."
-- U.S. News and World Report, 10/14/85
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Be frank and explicit with your lawyer ... it is his business to confuse the issue afterwards.
%
Behold the warranty -- the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away.
%
Being a miner, as soon as you're too old and tired and sick and stupid to do your job properly, you have to go, where the very opposite applies with the judges.
-- Beyond the Fringe
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Between grand theft and a legal fee, there only stands a law degree.
%
... 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"
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Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and trousers that don't match.
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Certain passages in several laws have always defied interpretation and the most inexplicable must be a matter of opinion. A judge of the Court of Session of Scotland has sent the editors of this book his candidate which reads, "In the Nuts (unground), (other than ground nuts) Order, the expression nuts shall have reference to such nuts, other than ground nuts, as would but for this amending Order not qualify as nuts (unground) (other than ground nuts) by reason of their being nuts (unground)."
-- Guiness Book of World Records, 1973
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Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
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Diogenes went to look for an honest lawyer. "How's it going?", someone asked him, after a few days. "Not too bad", replied Diogenes. "I still have my lantern."
%
District of Columbia pedestrians who leap over passing autos to escape injury, and then strike the car as they come down, are liable for any damage inflicted on the vehicle.
%
Divorce is a game played by lawyers.
-- Cary Grant
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Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.
-- Roy G. Blount, Jr.
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Fights between cats and dogs are prohibited by statute in Barber, North Carolina.
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First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even Dial-A-Footballer. But the southeast Victorian town of Sale has produced one to top them all: Dial-A-Wombat.
It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a telephone call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a wombat in the phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said. Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety, members of the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a drunk. But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone booth. The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again, threw its bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a nearby scrub.
Then the officers received another message ... another wombat in another phone booth. There it was: *Another* angry wombat trapped in a telephone booth. The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary custody and released it, too, in the scrub. But on their way back to the station they happened to pass another telephone booth, and -- you guessed it -- another imprisoned wombat. After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a suspect, and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons. Their problem: they cannot find a law against placing wombats in telephone booths.
-- "Newcastle Morning Herald", NSW Australia, Aug 1980.
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Fortune Documents the Great Legal Decisions: It is a rule of evidence deduced from the experience of mankind and supported by reason and authority that positive testimony is entitled to more weight than negative testimony, but by the latter term is meant negative testimony in its true sense and not positive evidence of a negative, because testimony in support of a negative may be as positive as that in support of an affirmative.
-- 254 Pac. Rep. 472.
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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.
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Fortune's Law of the Week (this week, from Kentucky):
No female shall appear in a bathing suit at any airport in this State unless she is escorted by two officers or unless she is armed with a club. The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it apply to female horses.
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Fortune's nomination for All-Time Champion and Protector of Youthful Morals goes to Representative Clare E. Hoffman of Michigan. During an impassioned House debate over a proposed bill to "expand oyster and clam research," a sharp-eared informant transcribed the following exchange between our hero and Rep. John D. Dingell, also of Michigan.
DINGELL: There are places in the world at the present time where we are having to artificially propagate oysters and clams.
HOFFMAN: You mean the oysters I buy are not nature's oysters?
DINGELL: They may or may not be natural. The simple fact of the matter is that female oysters through their living habits cast out large amounts of seed and the male oysters cast out large amounts of fertilization ...
HOFFMAN: Wait a minute! I do not want to go into that. There are many teenagers who read The Congressional Record.
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Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #19:
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #29:
THE JUDGE: Now, as we begin, I must ask you to banish all present information and prejudice from your minds, if you have any ...
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Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:
Q: Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
A: No.
Q: What was he doing with the dog's ears?
A: Picking them up in the air.
Q: Where was the dog at this time?
A: Attached to the ears.
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Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #3:
Q: When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station?
MR. BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.
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Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #41:
Q: Now, Mrs. Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #52:
Q: What is your name?
A: Ernestine McDowell.
Q: And what is your marital status?
A: Fair.
%
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #7:
Q: What happened then?
A: He told me, he says, "I have to kill you because you can identify me."
Q: Did he kill you?
A: No.
%
Frankfort, Kentucky, makes it against the law to shoot off a policeman's tie.
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Getting kicked out of the American Bar Association is liked getting kicked out of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
-- Melvin Belli on the occcasion of his getting kicked out of the American Bar Association
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God decided to take the devil to court and settle their differences once and for all. When Satan heard of this, he grinned and said, "And just where do you think you're going to find a lawyer?"
%
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
-- Frank Herbert, "Children of Dune"
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He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
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"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"
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Horses are forbidden to eat fire hydrants in Marshalltown, Iowa.
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How do you insult a lawyer?
You might as well not even try. Consider: of all the highly trained and educated professions, law is the only one in which the prime lesson is that *winning* is more important than *truth*.
Once someone has sunk to that level, what worse can you say about them?
%
HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill., motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits. The Senate amendment was an amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill. The original Senate amendment was the conference agreement on the bill. Agreed to.
-- Albuquerque Journal
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Humor in the Court:
Q: Do you drink when you're on duty?
A: I don't drink when I'm on duty, unless I come on duty drunk.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q. And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral. O.K.? What school do you go to?
A. Oral.
Q. How old are you?
A. Oral.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q. And who is this person you are speaking of?
A. My ex-widow said it.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in New York?
A. I refuse to answer that question.
Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in Chicago?
A. I refuse to answer that question.
Q. Did you ever stay all night with this man in Miami?
A. No.
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Humor in the Court:
Q. Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?
A. No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q. Mrs. Jones, is your appearance this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
A. No. This is how I dress when I go to work.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q. Mrs. Smith, do you believe that you are emotionally unstable?
A. I should be.
Q. How many times have you comitted suicide?
A. Four times.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q. Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?
A. Because he was argumentary and he couldn't pronunciate his words.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q. Were you aquainted with the deceased?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Before or after he died?
%
Humor in the Court:
Q: (Showing man picture.) That's you?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And you were present when the picture was taken, right?
%
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: ...any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial instead of an attempted murder trial?
A: The victim lived.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q: Could you see him from where you were standing?
A: I could see his head.
Q: And where was his head?
A: Just above his shoulders.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q: Did you tell your lawyer that your husband had offered you indignities?
A: He didn't offer me nothing; he just said I could have the furniture.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q: Now, you have investigated other murders, have you not, where there was a victim?
%
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.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q: The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective witness, isn't it. You too were shot in the fracas?
A: No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval.
%
Humor in the Court:
Q: What is your relationship with the plaintiff?
A: She is my daughter.
Q: Was she your daughter on February 13, 1979?
%
I need another lawyer like I need another hole in my head.
-- Fratianno
%
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole.
-- Leo Kessler
%
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."
%
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:
[173.15b]: "When competing for a section of road or a parking space, remember that the vehicle in need of the most body work has the right-of-way."
[141.2a]: "Although it is altogether possible to fit a 6' car into a 6' parking space, it is hardly ever possible to fit a 6' car into a 5' parking space."
[105.31]: "Teenage drivers believe that they are immortal, and drive accordingly. Nevertheless, you should avoid the temptation to prove them wrong."
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I value kindness to human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper, and old men and women warmer in the winter, and happier in the summer.
-- Brendan Behan
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Idaho state law makes it illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing less than fifty pounds.
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If a jury in a criminal trial stays out for more than twenty-four hours, it is certain to vote acquittal, save in those instances where it votes guilty.
-- Joseph C. Goulden
%
If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience, it might well prolong his life.
-- Charles Darling, "Scintillae Juris, 1877
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"If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he next comes to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination."
-- Thomas De Quincey (1785 - 1859)
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If reporters don't know that truth is plural, they ought to be lawyers.
-- Tom Wicker
%
If there were a school for, say, sheet metal workers, that after three years left its graduates as unprepared for their careers as does law school, it would be closed down in a minute, and no doubt by lawyers.
-- Michael Levin, "The Socratic Method
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In "King Henry VI, Part II," Shakespeare has Dick Butcher suggest to his fellow anti-establishment rabble-rousers, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." That action may be extreme but a similar sentiment was expressed by Thomas K. Connellan, president of The Management Group, Inc. Speaking to business executives in Chicago and quoted in Automotive News, Connellan attributed a measure of America's falling productivity to an excess of attorneys and accountants, and a dearth of production experts. Lawyers and accountants "do not make the economic pie any bigger; they only figure out how the pie gets divided. Neither profession provides any added value to product."
According to Connellan, the highly productive Japanese society has 10 lawyers and 30 accountants per 100,000 population. The U.S. has 200 lawyers and 700 accountants. This suggests that "the U.S. proportion of pie-bakers and pie-dividers is way out of whack." Could Dick Butcher have been an efficiency expert?
-- Motor Trend, May 1983
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In Blythe, California, a city ordinance declares that a person must own at least two cows before he can wear cowboy boots in public.
%
In Boston, it is illegal to hold frog-jumping contests in nightclubs.
%
In Columbia, Pennsylvania, it is against the law for a pilot to tickle a female flying student under her chin with a feather duster in order to get her attention.
%
In Corning, Iowa, it's a misdemeanor for a man to ask his wife to ride in any motor vehicle.
%
In Denver it is unlawful to lend your vacuum cleaner to your next-door neighbor.
%
In Devon, Connecticut, it is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset.
%
In Greene, New York, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalks when a concert is on.
%
In Lexington, Kentucky, it's illegal to carry an ice cream cone in your pocket.
%
In Lowes Crossroads, Delaware, it is a violation of local law for any pilot or passenger to carry an ice cream cone in their pocket while either flying or waiting to board a plane.
%
In Memphis, Tennessee, it is illegal for a woman to drive a car unless there is a man either running or walking in front of it waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
%
In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
%
In Pocataligo, Georgia, it is a violation for a woman over 200 pounds and attired in shorts to pilot or ride in an airplane.
%
In Pocatello, Idaho, a law passed in 1912 provided that "The carrying of concealed weapons is forbidden, unless same are exhibited to public view."
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In Seattle, Washington, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon that is over six feet in length.
%
In Tennessee, it is illegal to shoot any game other than whales from a moving automobile.
%
In the olden days in England, you could be hung for stealing a sheep or a loaf of bread. However, if a sheep stole a loaf of bread and gave it to you, you would only be tried for receiving, a crime punishable by forty lashes with the cat or the dog, whichever was handy. If you stole a dog and were caught, you were punished with twelve rabbit punches, although it was hard to find rabbits big enough or strong enough to punch you.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer.
%
In West Union, Ohio, No married man can go flying without his spouse along at any time, unless he has been married for more than 12 months.
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It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of indulgence for infanticide. A question of interest, my dear Sir! The jury is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim of infanticide.
-- Edmond About
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It is against the law for a monster to enter the corporate limits of Urbana, Illinois.
%
It is illegal to drive more than two thousand sheep down Hollywood Boulevard at one time.
%
It is illegal to say "Oh, Boy" in Jonesboro, Georgia.
%
It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it.
-- Justice Robert H. Jackson
%
It is Texas law that when two trains meet each other at a railroad crossing, each shall come to a full stop, and neither shall proceed until the other has gone.
%
It seems these two guys, George and Harry, set out in a Hot Air balloon to cross the United States. After forty hours in the air, George turned to Harry, and said, "Harry, I think we've drifted off course! We need to find out where we are." Harry cools the air in the balloon, and they descend to below the cloud cover. Slowly drifting over the countryside, George spots a man standing below them and yells out, "Excuse me! Can you please tell me where we are?" The man on the ground yells back, "You're in a balloon, approximately fifty feet in the air!" George turns to Harry and says, "Well, that man *must* be a lawyer". Replies Harry, "How can you tell?". "Because the information he gave us is 100% accurate, and totally useless!" That's the end of The Joke, but for you people who are still worried about George and Harry: they end up in the drink, and make the front page of the New York Times: "Balloonists Soaked by Lawyer".
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It shall be unlawful for any suspicious person to be within the municipality.
-- Local ordinance, Euclid Ohio
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It's illegal in Wilbur, Washington, to ride an ugly horse.
%
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.]
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Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.
-- P.G. Wodehouse, "Louder and Funnier"
%
Just remember: when you go to court, you are trusting your fate to twelve people that weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty!
%
Kansas state law requires pedestrians crossing the highways at night to wear tail lights.
%
Kirkland, Illinois, law forbids bees to fly over the village or through any of its streets.
%
Know how to save 5 drowning lawyers? -- No? GOOD!
%
Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.
-- Otto von Bismarck
%
Legislation proposed in the Illinois State Legislature, May, 1907:
"Speed upon county roads will be limited to ten miles an hour unless the motorist sees a bailiff who does not appear to have had a drink in 30 days, when the driver will be permitted to make what he can."
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Let us remember that ours is a nation of lawyers and order.
%
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
%
... Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and legally ... impeccable!
%
Loud burping while walking around the airport is prohibited in Halstead, Kansas.
%
Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will someday become congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves.
-- Lenny Bruce
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Men often believe -- or pretend -- that the "Law" is something sacred, or at least a science -- an unfounded assumption very convenient to governments.
%
Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, are not allowed to purchase cap pistols; they may buy shotguns freely, however.
%
Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time.
%
NEVER swerve to hit a lawyer riding a bicycle -- it might be your bicycle.
%
New Hampshire law forbids you to tap your feet, nod your head, or in any way keep time to the music in a tavern, restaurant, or cafe.
%
Of *course* it's the murder weapon. Who would frame someone with a fake?
%
Old Barlow was a crossing-tender at a junction where an express train demolished an automobile and its occupants. Being the chief witness, his testimony was vitally important. Barlow explained that the night was dark, and he waved his lantern frantically, but the driver of the car paid no attention to the signal.
The railroad company won the case, and the president of the company complimented the old-timer for his story. "You did wonderfully," he said, "I was afraid you would waver under testimony."
"No sir," exclaimed the senior, "but I sure was afraid that durned lawyer was gonna ask me if my lantern was lit."
%
Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards."
-- H.L. Mencken, writing of William Jennings Bryan, counsel for the supporters of Tennessee's anti-evolution law at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
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... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H. Boyce," he hangs on to it, puts it on his legal stationery, even passes it to his son, rather than do what a lesser person would do, such as get it changed or kill himself.
-- Dave Barry, "This Column is Nothing but the Truth!"
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Pittsburgh driver's test
(10) Potholes are
(a) extremely dangerous.
(b) patriotic.
(c) the fault of the previous administration.
(d) all going to be fixed next summer.
The correct answer is (b). Potholes destroy unpatriotic, unamerican, imported cars, since the holes are larger than the cars. If you drive a big, patriotic, American car you have nothing to worry about.
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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
(3) When stopped at an intersection you should
(a) watch the traffic light for your lane.
(b) watch for pedestrians crossing the street.
(c) blow the horn.
(d) watch the traffic light for the intersecting street.
The correct answer is (d). You need to start as soon as the traffic light for the intersecting street turns yellow. Answer (c) is worth a half point.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
(4) Exhaust gas is
(a) beneficial.
(b) not harmful.
(c) toxic.
(d) a punk band.
The correct answer is (b). The meddling Washington eco-freak communist bureaucrats who say otherwise are liars. (Message to those who answered (d). Go back to California where you came from. Your kind are not welcome here.)
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Pittsburgh driver's test
(5) Your car's horn is a vital piece of safety equipment. How often should you test it?
(a) once a year.
(b) once a month.
(c) once a day.
(d) once an hour.
The correct answer is (d). You should test your car's horn at least once every hour, and more often at night or in residential neighborhoods.
%
Pittsburgh Driver's Test
(7) The car directly in front of you has a flashing right tail light but a steady left tail light. This means
(a) one of the tail lights is broken; you should blow your horn
to call the problem to the driver's attention.
(b) the driver is signaling a right turn.
(c) the driver is signaling a left turn.
(d) the driver is from out of town.
The correct answer is (d). Tail lights are used in some foreign countries to signal turns.
%
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.
%
Pittsburgh driver's test
(9) Roads are salted in order to
(a) kill grass.
(b) melt snow.
(c) help the economy.
(d) prevent potholes.
The correct answer is (c). Road salting employs thousands of persons directly, and millions more indirectly, for example, salt miners and rustproofers. Most important, salting reduces the life spans of cars, thus stimulating the car and steel industries.
%
She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook.
-- Tommy Manville
%
Sho' they got to have it against the law. Shoot, ever'body git high, they wouldn't be nobody git up and feed the chickens. Hee-hee.
-- Terry Southern
%
Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.
-- Montesquieu
%
Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
%
The animals are not as stupid as one thinks -- they have neither doctors nor lawyers.
-- L. Docquier
%
The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little Rock.
%
The City of Palo Alto, in its official description of parking lot standards, specifies the grade of wheelchair access ramps in terms of centimeters of rise per foot of run. A compromise, I imagine...
%
The difference between a lawyer and a rooster is that the rooster gets up in the morning and clucks defiance.
%
The District of Columbia has a law forbidding you to exert pressure on a balloon and thereby cause a whistling sound on the streets.
%
The judge fined the jaywalker fifty dollars and told him if he was caught again, he would be thrown in jail. Fine today, cooler tomorrow.
%
The justifications for drug testing are part of the presently fashionable debate concerning restoring America's "competitiveness." Drugs, it has been revealed, are responsible for rampant absenteeism, reduced output, and poor quality work. But is drug testing in fact rationally related to the resurrection of competitiveness? Will charging the atmosphere of the workplace with the fear of excretory betrayal honestly spur productivity? Much noise has been made about rehabilitating the worker using drugs, but to date the vast majority of programs end with the simple firing or the not hiring of the abuser. This practice may exacerbate, not alleviate, the nation's productivity problem. If economic rehabilitation is the ultimate goal of drug testing, then criteria abandoning the rehabilitation of the drug-using worker is the purest of hypocrisy and the worst of rationalization.
-- The concluding paragraph of "Constitutional Law: The ourth Amendment and Drug Testing in the Workplace," Tim Moore, Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, vol. 10, No. 3 (Summer 1987), pp. 762-768.
%
The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- Anatole France
%
The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own.
-- H.G. Wells
%
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
-- U.S. Constitution, Amendment 10. (Bill of Rights)
%
The primary requisite for any new tax law is for it to exempt enough voters to win the next election.
%
The state law of Pennsylvania prohibits singing in the bathtub.
%
The Worst Jury
A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the remotest clue what was happening.
The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any evidence at all and, when there was no reply, dismissed him.
The excitement which this caused was only equalled when a second juror revealed that he spoke not a word of English. A fluent French speaker, he exhibited great surprised when told, after two days, that he was hearing a murder trial.
The trial was abandoned when a third juror said that he suffered from both conditions, being simultaneously unversed in the English language and nearly as deaf as the first juror.
The judge ordered a retrial.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
There is a Massachusetts law requiring all dogs to have their hind legs tied during the month of April.
%
There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth.
-- Jean Giraudoux, "Tiger at the Gates"
%
There is no doubt that my lawyer is honest. For example, when he filed his income tax return last year, he declared half of his salary as 'unearned income.'
-- Michael Lara
%
"There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial: both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him during the trial."
-- David Letterman
%
There's no justice in this world.
-- Frank Costello, on the prosecution of "Lucky" Luciano by
New York district attorney Thomas Dewey after Luciano had
saved Dewey from assassination by Dutch Schultz (by ordering
the assassination of Schultz instead)
%
This product is meant for educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Void where prohibited. Some assembly may be required. Batteries not included. Contents may settle during shipment. Use only as directed. May be too intense for some viewers. If condition persists, consult your physician. No user-serviceable parts inside. Breaking seal constitutes acceptance of agreement. Not responsible for direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages resulting from any defect, error or failure to perform. Slippery when wet. For office use only. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Do not write below this line. Your cancelled check is your receipt. Avoid contact with skin. Employees and their families are not eligible. Beware of dog. Driver does not carry cash. Limited time offer, call now to insure prompt delivery. Use only in well-ventilated area. Keep away from fire or flame. Some equipment shown is optional. Price does not include taxes, dealer prep, or delivery. Penalty for private use. Call toll free before digging. Some of the trademarks mentioned in this product appear for identification purposes only. All models over 18 years of age. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Postage will be paid by addressee. Apply only to affected area. One size fits all. Many suitcases look alike. Edited for television. No solicitors. Reproduction strictly prohibited. Restaurant package, not for resale. Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. Decision of judges is final. This supersedes all previous notices. No other warranty expressed or implied.
%
Virginia law forbids bathtubs in the house; tubs must be kept in the yard.
%
We may not like doctors, but at least they doctor. Bankers are not ever popular but at least they bank. Policeman police and undertakers take under. But lawyers do not give us law. We receive not the gladsome light of jurisprudence, but rather precedents, objections, appeals, stays, filings and forms, motions and counter-motions, all at $250 an hour.
-- Nolo News, summer 1989
%
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
%
Welcome to Utah. If you think our liquor laws are funny, you should see our underwear!
%
What do you have when you have six lawyers buried up to their necks in sand? Not enough sand.
%
When alerted to an intrusion by tinkling glass or otherwise, 1) Calm yourself 2) Identify the intruder 3) If hostile, kill him. Step number 3 is of particular importance. If you leave the guy alive out of misguided softheartedness, he will repay your generosity of spirit by suing you for causing his subsequent paraplegia and seek to force you to support him for the rest of his rotten life. In court he will plead that he was depressed because society had failed him, and that he was looking for Mother Teresa for comfort and to offer his services to the poor. In that lawsuit, you will lose. If, on the other hand, you kill him, the most that you can expect is that a relative will bring a wrongful death action. You will have two advantages: first, there be only your story; forget Mother Teresa. Second, even if you lose, how much could the bum's life be worth anyway? A Lot less than 50 years worth of paralysis. Don't play George Bush and Saddam Hussein. Finish the job.
-- G. Gordon Liddy's "Forbes" column on personal security
%
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.
-- Christopher Morley
%
Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away?
-- Carl Sandburg
%
Why does New Jersey have more toxic waste dumps and California have more lawyers? New Jersey had first choice.
%
With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time they make a law it's a joke.
-- Will Rogers
data/etc/fortunes/Linux cookies
+367
View File
@@ -0,0 +1,367 @@
A Linux machine! because a 486 is a terrible thing to waste!
(By [email protected], Joe Sloan)
%
"Absolutely nothing should be concluded from these figures except that no conclusion can be drawn from them."
(By Joseph L. Brothers, Linux/PowerPC Project)
%
Actually, typing random strings in the Finder does the equivalent of filename completion.
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands: file completion vs. the Mac Finder.)
%
After watching my newly-retired dad spend two weeks learning how to make a new folder, it became obvious that "intuitive" mostly means "what the writer or speaker of intuitive likes".
(Bruce Ediger, [email protected], in comp.os.linux.misc, on X the intuitiveness of a Mac interface.)
%
"All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory..."
(By Larry Wall)
%
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, [email protected])
%
"...and scantily clad females, of course. Who cares if it's below zero outside"
(By Linus Torvalds)
%
"And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
> : 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 [email protected], Anthony Lovell, to Linus's remarks about porting)
%
Anyone who thinks UNIX is intuitive should be forced to write 5000 lines of code using nothing but vi or emacs. AAAAACK!
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs.)
%
"Are [Linux users] lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software?"
(By Matt Welsh)
%
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.)
%
Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux
(Unknown source)
%
Be warned that typing \fBkillall \fIname\fP may not have the desired effect on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
(From the killall manual page)
%
"Besides, I think [Slackware] sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?"
(By Patrick Volkerding)
%
But what can you do with it? -- ubiquitous cry from Linux-user partner.
(Submitted by Andy Pearce, [email protected])
%
"By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since sliced bread."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)
%
/*
* Oops. The kernel tried to access some bad page. We'll have to
* terminate things with extreme prejudice.
*/
die_if_kernel("Oops", regs, error_code);
(From linux/arch/i386/mm/fault.c)
%
"...Deep Hack Mode--that mysterious and frightening state of consciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
Dijkstra probably hates me
(Linus Torvalds, in kernel/sched.c)
%
DOS: n., A small annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS.
(from David Vicker's .plan)
%
/*
* [...] 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])
%
"Even more amazing was the realization that God has Internet access. I wonder if He has a full newsfeed?"
(By Matt Welsh)
%
>Ever heard of .cshrc?
That's a city in Bosnia. Right?
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands.)
%
Fatal Error: Found [MS-Windows] System -> Repartitioning Disk for Linux...
(By [email protected], Christopher Browne)
%
How do I type "for i in *.dvi do xdvi i done" in a GUI?
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of interfaces.)
%
"How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it."
(Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting)
%
I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS. Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F-117.
(By [email protected], Lawrence Foard)
%
I did this 'cause Linux gives me a woody. It doesn't generate revenue.
(Dave '-ddt->` Taylor, announcing DOOM for Linux)
%
Feel free to contact me (flames about my english and the useless of this driver will be redirected to /dev/null, oh no, it's full...).
(Michael Beck, describing the PC-speaker sound device)
%
"I don't know why, but first C programs tend to look a lot worse than first programs in any other language (maybe except for fortran, but then I suspect all fortran programs look like `firsts')"
(By Olaf Kirch)
%
"I once witnessed a long-winded, month-long flamewar over the use of mice vs. trackballs...It was very silly."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)
(Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)
%
"I would rather spend 10 hours reading someone else's source code than 10 minutes listening to Musak waiting for technical support which isn't."
(By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center)
%
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb. Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)
%
"I'm an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.."
(Linus Torvalds in response to a bug report.)
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
Disquieting ...
(Gonzalo Tornaria in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
We need to find some new terms to describe the rest of us mere mortals then.
(Craig Schlenter in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)
> I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find..
Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-).
(Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)
%
I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few months. I just love debugging ;-)
(Linus Torvalds)
%
Microsoft Corp., concerned by the growing popularity of the free 32-bit operating system for Intel systems, Linux, has employed a number of top programmers from the underground world of virus development. Bill Gates stated yesterday: "World domination, fast -- it's either us or Linus". Mr. Torvalds was unavailable for comment ...
([email protected] (Robert Manners), in comp.os.linux.setup)
%
if (argc > 1 && strcmp(argv[1], "-advice") == 0) {
printf("Don't Panic!\n");
exit(42);
}
(Arnold Robbins in the LJ of February '95, describing RCS)
%
+#if defined(__alpha__) && defined(CONFIG_PCI)
+ /*
+ * The meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Plus
+ * this makes the year come out right.
+ */
+ year -= 42;
+#endif
(From the patch for 1.3.2: (kernel/time.c), submitted by Marcus Meissner)
%
"If the future navigation system [for interactive networked services on the NII] looks like something from Microsoft, it will never work."
(Chairman of Walt Disney Television & Telecommunications)
%
"If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system."
(By Linus Torvalds)
%
"[In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less abusive.')"
(By Matt Welsh)
%
In most countries selling harmful things like drugs is punishable. Then how come people can sell Microsoft software and go unpunished?
(By [email protected], Hasse Skrifvars)
%
"It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
LILO, you've got me on my knees!
(from David Black, [email protected], with apologies to Derek and the Dominos, and Werner Almsberger)
%
Linux is obsolete
(Andrew Tanenbaum)
%
"Linux poses a real challenge for those with a taste for late-night hacking (and/or conversations with God)."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
Linux! Guerrilla UNIX Development Venimus, Vidimus, Dolavimus.
(By [email protected], Mark A. Horton KA4YBR)
%
"...[Linux's] capacity to talk via any medium except smoke signals."
(By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center)
%
linux: because a PC is a terrible thing to waste
([email protected] put this on Tshirts in '93)
%
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
(By [email protected], Mark Komarinski)
%
linux: the choice of a GNU generation
([email protected] put this on Tshirts in '93)
%
"Linux: the operating system with a CLUE... Command Line User Environment".
(seen in a posting in comp.software.testing)
%
lp1 on fire
(One of the more obfuscated kernel messages)
%
Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
NO (or Linux) is the answer.
(Taken from a .signature from someone from the UK, source unknown)
%
"MSDOS didn't get as bad as it is overnight -- it took over ten years of careful development."
(By [email protected])
%
"Never make any mistaeks."
(Anonymous, in a mail discussion about to a kernel bug report.)
%
Not me, guy. I read the Bash man page each day like a Jehovah's Witness reads the Bible. No wait, the Bash man page IS the bible. Excuse me...
(More on confusing aliases, taken from comp.os.linux.misc)
%
"Note that if I can get you to \"su and say\" something just by asking, you have a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it."
(By Paul Vixie, vixie-cron 3.0.1 installation notes)
%
Now I know someone out there is going to claim, "Well then, UNIX is intuitive, because you only need to learn 5000 commands, and then everything else follows from that! Har har har!"
(Andy Bates in comp.os.linux.misc, on "intuitive interfaces", slightly defending Macs.)
%
Now, it we had this sort of thing:
yield -a for yield to all traffic
yield -t for yield to trucks
yield -f for yield to people walking (yield foot)
yield -d t* for yield on days starting with t
...you'd have a lot of dead people at intersections, and traffic jams you wouldn't believe...
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands.)
%
"Oh, I've seen copies [of Linux Journal] around the terminal room at The Labs."
(By Dennis Ritchie)
%
"On a normal ascii line, the only safe condition to detect is a 'BREAK' - everything else having been assigned functions by Gnu EMACS."
(By Tarl Neustaedter)
%
"On the Internet, no one knows you're using Windows NT"
(Submitted by Ramiro Estrugo, [email protected])
%
Once upon a time there was a DOS user who saw Unix, and saw that it was good. After typing cp on his DOS machine at home, he downloaded GNU's unix tools ported to DOS and installed them. He rm'd, cp'd, and mv'd happily for many days, and upon finding elvis, he vi'd and was happy. After a long day at work (on a Unix box) he came home, started editing a file, and couldn't figure out why he couldn't suspend vi (w/ ctrl-z) to do a compile.
(By [email protected] (Erik Troan)
%
> > Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I
> > should use Linux over BSD?
>
> No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on
> creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it
> certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able
> to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the
> mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the
> name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too
> technical.
(Linus Torvalds' follow-up to a question about Linux)
%
Personally, I think my choice in the mostest-superlative-computer wars has to be the HP-48 series of calculators. They'll run almost anything. And if they can't, while I'll just plug a Linux box into the serial port and load up the HP-48 VT-100 emulator.
(By [email protected], Jeff Dege)
%
"Problem solving under linux has never been the circus that it is under AIX."
(By Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix)
%
quit When the quit statement is read, the bc processor
is terminated, regardless of where the quit state-
ment is found. For example, "if (0 == 1) quit"
will cause bc to terminate.
(Seen in the manpage for "bc". Note the "if" statement's logic)
%
Running Windows on a Pentium is like having a brand new Porsche but only be able to drive backwards with the handbrake on.
(Unknown source)
%
"sic transit discus mundi"
(From the System Administrator's Guide, by Lars Wirzenius)
%
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 chat program is in public domain. This is not the GNU public license. If it breaks then you get to keep both pieces.
(Copyright notice for the chat program)
%
> 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)
%
The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first.
(Arno Schaefer's .sig)
%
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
(Bruce Ediger, [email protected], in comp.os.linux.misc, on X interfaces.)
%
There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and those who can't. There is a constant pitched battle between the two.
(From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a)
%
"...Unix, MS-DOS, and Windows NT (also known as the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly)."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
"...very few phenomena can pull someone out of Deep Hack Mode, with two noted exceptions: being struck by lightning, or worse, your *computer* being struck by lightning."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
"Waving away a cloud of smoke, I look up, and am blinded by a bright, white light. It's God. No, not Richard Stallman, or Linus Torvalds, but God. In a booming voice, He says: "THIS IS A SIGN. USE LINUX, THE FREE UNIX SYSTEM FOR THE 386."
(Matt Welsh)
%
"We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds."
(Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam Linux Symposium)
%
We are MicroSoft. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
(Attributed to B.G., Gill Bates)
%
We are Pentium of Borg. Division is futile. You will be approximated.
(seen in someone's .signature)
%
We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity - so UP yours!
(Adapted from Pat Paulsen by Joe Sloan)
%
We come to bury DOS, not to praise it.
(Paul Vojta, [email protected], paraphrasing a quote of Shakespeare)
%
We use Linux for all our mission-critical applications. Having the source code means that we are not held hostage by anyone's support department.
(Russell Nelson, President of Crynwr Software)
%
"What you end up with, after running an operating system concept through these many marketing coffee filters, is something not unlike plain hot water."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
`When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".'
(By Linus Torvalds)
%
"Whip me. Beat me. Make me maintain AIX."
(By Stephan Zielinski)
%
"Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk ?"
Microsoft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!
(By [email protected], Felix von Leitner)
%
Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into super-edit-debug-compile mode?
(Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially
Emacs.)
%
Why use Windows, since there is a door?
(By [email protected], Andre Fachat)
%
"World domination. Fast"
(By Linus Torvalds)
%
..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar. Believe me. I speak from experience."
(By Matt Welsh)
%
"...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved linux kernel version."
(By Linus Torvalds)
%
data/etc/fortunes/Love
+465
View File
@@ -0,0 +1,465 @@
A career is great, but you can't run your fingers through its hair.
%
A kiss is a course of procedure, cunningly devised, for the mutual stoppage of speech at a moment when words are superfluous.
%
A woman was in love with fourteen soldiers. It was clearly platoonic.
%
Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and fans fires.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Absence in love is like water upon fire; a little quickens, but much extinguishes it.
-- Hannah More
%
Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.
%
All the passions make us commit faults; love makes us commit the most ridiculous ones.
-- La Rochefoucauld
%
Always there remain portions of our heart into which no one is able to enter, invite them as we may.
%
Bondage maybe, discipline never!
-- T.K.
%
Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason.
-- Lord Chesterfield
%
Don't despair; your ideal lover is waiting for you around the corner.
%
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
%
Falling in love is a lot like dying. You never get to do it enough to become good at it.
%
Finish the sentence below in 25 words or less:
"Love is what you feel just before you give someone a good ..."
Mail your answer along with the top half of your supervisor to:
P.O. Box 35
Baffled Greek, Michigan
%
Give me chastity and continence, but not just now.
-- St. Augustine
%
God is love, but get it in writing.
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%
"He did decide, though, that with more time and a great deal of mental effort, he could probably turn the activity into an acceptable perversion."
-- Mick Farren, "When Gravity Fails"
%
He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage -- he won't encounter many rivals.
-- Georg Lichtenberg, "Aphorisms"
%
Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
-- The Wizard of Oz
%
HEY KIDS! ANN LANDERS SAYS:
Be sure it's true when you say "I love you". It's a sin to tell a lie. Millions of hearts have been broken just because these words were spoken.
%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%
How much does she love you? Less than you'll ever know.
%
I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so.
-- John Donne
%
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary
relief to nymphomaniacs.
-- Larry Lee
%
I don't want people to love me. It makes for obligations.
-- Jean Anouilh
%
I love you more than anything in this world. I don't expect that will last.
-- Elvis Costello
%
I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.
-- Roy Croft
%
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 never loved another person the way I loved myself.
-- Mae West
%
I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. Well, what we have on our hands here is a dead shark.
-- Woody Allen
%
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
-- Mae West
%
I used to think romantic love was a neurosis shared by two, a supreme foolishness. I no longer thought that. There's nothing foolish in loving anyone. Thinking you'll be loved in return is what's foolish.
-- Rita Mae Brown
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I did my own thing and now I've got to undo it."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to floss my cat."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I have to stay home and see if I snore."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I never go out on days that end in `Y.'"
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I want to spend more time with my blender."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm attending the opening of my garage door."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm having all my plants neutered."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I'm taking punk totem pole carving."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but I've been scheduled for a karma transplant."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but it's my parakeet's bowling night."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but my favorite commercial is on TV."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the last time I went out, I never came back."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but the man on television told me to say tuned."
%
"I'd love to go out with you, but there are important world issues that need worrying about."
%
I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair.
-- Bette Davis, "Cabin in the Cotton"
%
"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"
%
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
-- Lily Tomlin
%
If Love Were Oil, I'd Be About A Quart Low
-- Book title by Lewis Grizzard
%
If only you knew she loved you, you could face the uncertainty of whether you love her.
%
If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, give me a call.
%
If you love someone, set them free.
If they don't come back, then call them up when you're drunk.
%
In a great romance, each person basically plays a part that the other really likes.
-- Elizabeth Ashley
%
In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.
-- Russell Baker
%
In love, she who gives her portrait promises the original.
-- Bruton
%
In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person.
-- Margaret Anderson
%
It is far better to be deceived than to be undeceived by those we love.
%
Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.
-- Rebecca West
%
Let us live!!!
Let us love!!!
Let us share the deepest secrets of our souls!!!
You first.
%
Let's just be friends and make no special effort to ever see each other again.
%
Let's not complicate our relationship by trying to communicate with each other.
%
Lonely is a man without love.
-- Englebert Humperdinck
%
Love -- the last of the serious diseases of childhood.
%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices the world has ever seen.
%
Love cannot be much younger than the lust for murder.
-- Sigmund Freud
%
Love conquers all things; let us too surrender to love.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
%
Love is a grave mental disease.
-- Plato
%
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 is being stupid together.
-- Paul Valery
%
Love is dope, not chicken soup. I mean, love is something to be passed around freely, not spooned down someone's throat for their own good by a Jewish mother who cooked it all by herself.
%
Love is in the offing.
-- The Homicidal Maniac
%
Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.
-- Bruce Lee
%
Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it.
-- Jerome K. Jerome
%
Love is never asking why?
%
Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
%
Love is sentimental measles.
%
Love is staying up all night with a sick child, or a healthy adult.
%
Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness.
-- M. Hirschfield
%
Love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself.
-- Saint Exupery
%
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
Love IS what it's cracked up to be.
%
Love is what you've been through with somebody.
-- James Thurber
%
Love isn't only blind, it's also deaf, dumb, and stupid.
%
Love means having to say you're sorry every five minutes.
%
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
-- Eric Segal, "Love Story"
That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
-- Ryan O'Neill, "What's Up Doc?"
%
Love tells us many things that are not so.
-- Krainian Proverb
%
May your SO always know when you need a hug.
%
"Maybe we should think of this as one perfect week... where we found each other, and loved each other... and then let each other go before anyone had to seek professional help."
%
Most people don't need a great deal of love nearly so much as they need a steady supply.
%
My cup hath runneth'd over with love.
%
"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"
%
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.
%
Of course it's possible to love a human being if you don't know them too well.
-- Charles Bukowski
%
Oh, love is real enough, you will find it some day, but it has one arch-enemy -- and that is life.
-- Jean Anouilh, "Ardele"
%
On a tous un peu peur de l'amour, mais on a surtout peur de souffrir ou de faire souffrir.
[One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.]
%
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
-- Rainer Rilke
%
One expresses well the love he does not feel.
-- J.A. Karr
%
People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
-- Ken Kesey
%
Really?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!
%
Sometime when you least expect it, Love will tap you on the shoulder... and ask you to move out of the way because it still isn't your turn.
-- N.V. Plyter
%
Sometimes love ain't nothing but a misunderstanding between two fools.
%
Sorry never means having your say to love.
%
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"
%
Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
%
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"
%
The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street...
%
The giraffe you thought you offended last week is willing to be nuzzled today.
%
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.
-- Blaise Pascal
%
The heart is wiser than the intellect.
%
The little pieces of my life I give to you, with love, to make a quilt to keep away the cold.
%
The magic of our first love is our ignorance that it can ever end.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%
The myth of romantic love holds that once you've fallen in love with the perfect partner, you're home free. Unfortunately, falling out of love seems to be just as involuntary as falling into it.
%
The only difference in the game of love over the last few thousand years is that they've changed trumps from clubs to diamonds.
-- The Indianapolis Star
%
The onset and the waning of love make themselves felt in the uneasiness experienced at being alone together.
-- Jean de la Bruyere
%
The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 A.M.
-- Charles Pierce
%
The person you rejected yesterday could make you happy, if you say yes.
%
The seven year itch comes from fooling around during the fourth, fifth, and sixth years.
%
The story of the butterfly:
"I was in Bogota and waiting for a lady friend. I was in love, a long time ago. I waited three days. I was hungry but could not go out for food, lest she come and I not be there to greet her. Then, on the third day, I heard a knock."
"I hurried along the old passage and there, in the sunlight, there was nothing."
"Just," Vance Joy said, "a butterfly, flying away."
-- Peter Carey, BLISS
%
The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core --
Scratch a lover and find a foe!
-- Dorothy Parker, "Ballad of a Great Weariness"
%
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
%
There are some micro-organisms that exhibit characteristics of both plants and animals. When exposed to light they undergo photosynthesis; and when the lights go out, they turn into animals. But then again, don't we all?
%
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
%
There is only one way to be happy by means of the heart -- to have none.
-- Paul Bourget
%
There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me.
%
Timing must be perfect now. Two-timing must be better than perfect.
%
To be loved is very demoralizing.
-- Katharine Hepburn
%
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
parts dead.
-- Bertrand Russell
%
Total strangers need love, too; and I'm stranger than most.
%
True happiness will be found only in true love.
%
Under deadline pressure for the next week. If you want something, it can wait. Unless it's blind screaming paroxysmally hedonistic...
%
We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.
-- Marie Ebner von Eschenbach
%
What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.
-- Charles Baudelaire
%
When your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.
-- Leonard Cohen, "Sisters of Mercy"
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but ...
-- I have to floss my cat.
-- I've dedicated my life to linguini.
-- I need to spend more time with my blender.
-- it wouldn't be fair to the other Beautiful People.
-- it's my night to pet the dog/ferret/goldfish.
-- I'm going downtown to try on some gloves.
-- I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products.
-- I'm going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise.
-- I have an appointment with a cuticle specialist.
-- I have some really hard words to look up.
-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I have to answer all of my "occupant" letters.
-- None of my socks match.
-- I'm having all my plants neutered.
-- I changed the lock on my door and now I can't get out.
-- My yucca plant is feeling yucky.
-- I'm touring China with a wok band.
-- My chocolate-appreciation class meets that night.
-- I'm running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student
named Basil Metabolism.
-- There are important world issues that need worrying about.
-- I'm going to count the bristles in my toothbrush.
-- I prefer to remain an enigma.
-- I think you want the OTHER Peggy/Cathy/Mike/whomever.
-- I feel a song coming on.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I have to draw "Cubby" for an art scholarship.
-- I have to sit up with a sick ant.
-- I'm trying to be less popular.
-- My bathroom tiles need grouting.
-- I'm waiting to see if I'm already a winner.
-- My subconscious says no.
-- I just picked up a book called "Glue in Many Lands" and I
can't seem to put it down.
-- My favorite commercial is on TV.
-- I have to study for my blood test.
-- I've been traded to Cincinnati.
-- I'm having my baby shoes bronzed.
-- I have to go to court for kitty littering.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I'm trying to see how long I can go without saying yes.
-- I'm attending the opening of my garage door.
-- The monsters haven't turned blue yet, and I have to eat more dots.
-- I'm converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian.
-- I have to fulfill my potential.
-- I don't want to leave my comfort zone.
-- It's too close to the turn of the century.
-- I have to bleach my hare.
-- I'm worried about my vertical hold knob.
-- I left my body in my other clothes.
%
Why I Can't Go Out With You:
I'd LOVE to, but...
-- I've got a Friends of the Lowly Rutabaga meeting.
-- I promised to help a friend fold road maps.
-- I've been scheduled for a karma transplant.
-- I'm staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture.
-- It's my parakeet's bowling night.
-- I'm building a plant from a kit.
-- There's a disturbance in the Force.
-- I'm doing door-to-door collecting for static cling.
-- I'm teaching my ferret to yodel.
-- My crayons all melted together.
%
"Why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing?"
-- Lloyd Cole and the Commotions
%
Without love intelligence is dangerous; without intelligence love is not enough.
-- Ashley Montagu
%
Wouldn't this be a great world if being insecure and desperate were a turn-on?
-- "Broadcast News"
%
Yeah, there are more important things in life than money, but they won't go out with you if you don't have any.
%
data/etc/fortunes/Magic
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A Thaum is the basic unit of magical strength. It has been universally established as the amount of magic needed to create one small white pigeon or three normal sized billiard balls.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
"A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit, let alone discuss with prospective clients. Still, the fact remains that there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another, completely immune to any direct magical spell. It is for this group of beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells. It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club near your person at all times."
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
%
An ancient proverb summed it up: when a wizard is tired of looking for broken glass in his dinner, it ran, he is tired of life.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
Chaos is King and Magic is loose in the world.
%
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they become soggy and hard to light.
Do not throw cigarette butts in the urinal, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
%
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."
%
Eight was also the Number of Bel-Shamharoth, which was why a sensible wizard would never mention the number if he could avoid it. Or you'll be eight alive, apprentices were jocularly warned. Bel-Shamharoth was especially attracted to dabblers in magic who, by being as it were beachcombers on the shores of the unnatural, were already half-enmeshed in his nets.
Rincewind's room number in his hall of residence had been 7a. He hadn't been surprised.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Sending of Eight"
%
"How do you know she is a unicorn?" Molly demanded. "And why were you afraid to let her touch you? I saw you. You were afraid of her."
"I doubt that I will feel like talking for very long," the cat replied without rancor. "I would not waste time in foolishness if I were you. As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them. As for your
second question --" Here he faltered, and suddenly became very interested in washing; nor would he speak until he had licked himself fluffy and then licked himself smooth again. Even then he would not look at Molly, but examined his claws.
"If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again."
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses. Oh, say the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association? To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation from a bunch of wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their mystical power being sort of drained out. Right, say the wizards, that just about does it, you and your leather posing pouches. "Oh yeah, say the the heroes, why don't you ..."
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
It is well known that *things* from undesirable universes are always seeking an entrance into this one, which is the psychic equivalent of handy for the buses and closer to the shops.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
It seems there's this magician working one of the luxury cruise ships for a few years. He doesn't have to change his routines much as the audiences change over fairly often, and he's got a good life. The only problem is the ship's parrot, who perches in the hall and watches him night after night, year after year. Finally, the parrot figures out how almost every trick works and starts giving it away for the audience. For example, when the magician makes a bouquet of flowers disappear, the parrot squawks "Behind his back! Behind his back!" Well, the magician is really annoyed at this, but there's not much he can do about it as the parrot is a ship's mascot and very popular with the passengers.
One night, the ship strikes some floating debris, and sinks without a trace. Almost everyone aboard was lost, except for the magician and the parrot. For three days and nights they just drift, with the magician clinging to one end of a piece of driftwood and the parrot perched on the other end. As the sun rises on the morning of the fourth day, the parrot walks over to the magician's end of the log. With obvious disgust in his voice, he snaps "OK, you win, I give up. Where did you hide the ship?"
%
Knowledge is power -- knowledge shared is power lost.
-- Aleister Crowley
%
Magic is always the best solution -- especially reliable magic.
%
No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife in the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.
%
Rincewind had generally been considered by his tutors to be a natural wizard in the same way that fish are natural mountaineers. He probably would have been thrown out of Unseen University anyway -- he couldn't remember spells and smoking made him feel ill.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
%
The default Magic Word, "Abracadabra", actually is a corruption of the Hebrew phrase "ha-Bracha dab'ra" which means "pronounce the blessing".
%
"The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and hoping when a rock or a club will do."
-- McCloctnik the Lucid
%
The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below the deepest cellar in the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, he is alive.
"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty to one -- and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd.
Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
-- Fritz Leiber, "The Swords of Lankhmar"
%
"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"
%
There are those who claim that magic is like the tide; that it swells and fades over the surface of the earth, collecting in concentrated pools here and there, almost disappearing from other spots, leaving them parched for wonder. There are also those who believe that if you stick your fingers up your nose and blow, it will increase your intelligence.
-- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VII
%
Unseen University had never admitted women, muttering something about problems with the plumbing, but the real reason was an unspoken dread that if women were allowed to mess around with magic they would probably be embarrassingly good at it ...
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"
%
Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.
-- Tom Robbins
%
"Verily and forsooth," replied Goodgulf darkly. "In the past year strange and fearful wonders I have seen. Fields sown with barley reap crabgrass and fungus, and even small gardens reject their artichoke hearts. There has been a hot day in December and a blue moon. Calendars are made with a month of Sundays and a blue-ribbon Holstein bore alive two insurance salesmen. The earth splits and the entrails of a goat were found tied in square knots. The face of the sun blackens and the skies have rained down soggy potato chips."
"But what do all these things mean?" gasped Frito.
"Beats me," said Goodgulf with a shrug, "but I thought it made good
copy."
-- Harvard Lampoon, "Bored of the Rings"
%
Watch Rincewind.
Look at him. Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for heterosexuality. Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic whose time-and-space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There. Graduates were usually destined for mageship at least, but Rincewind--after an unfortunate event--had left knowing only one spell and made a living of sorts around the town by capitalizing on an innate gift for languages. He avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his acquaintances in mind of a bright rodent.
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
%
What is a magician but a practising theorist?
-- Obi-Wan Kenobi
%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
%
When I say the magic word to all these people, they will vanish forever. I will then say the magic words to you, and you, too, will vanish -- never to be seen again.
-- Kurt Vonnegut Jr., "Between Time and Timbuktu"
%
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A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
1. DO NOT EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO SHARE YOUR DISCOMFORT.
Involvement with the patient's suffering might cause him to lose valuable scientific objectivity.
2. BE CHEERFUL AT ALL TIMES.
Your doctor leads a busy and trying life and requires all the gentleness and reassurance he can get.
3. TRY TO SUFFER FROM THE DISEASE FOR WHICH YOU ARE BEING TREATED.
Remember that your doctor has a professional reputation to uphold.
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
4. DO NOT COMPLAIN IF THE TREATMENT FAILS TO BRING RELIEF.
You must believe that your doctor has achieved a deep insight into the true nature of your illness, which transcends any mere permanent disability you may have experienced.
5. NEVER ASK YOUR DOCTOR TO EXPLAIN WHAT HE IS DOING OR WHY HE IS DOING IT.
It is presumptuous to assume that such profound matters could be explained in terms that you would understand.
6. SUBMIT TO NOVEL EXPERIMANTAL TREATMENT READILY.
Though the surgery may not benefit you directly, the resulting research paper will surely be of widespread interest.
%
A CODE OF ETHICAL BEHAVIOR FOR PATIENTS:
7. PAY YOUR MEDICAL BILLS PROMPTLY AND WILLINGLY.
You should consider it a privilege to contribute, however modestly, to the well-being of physicians and other humanitarians.
8. DO NOT SUFFER FROM AILMENTS THAT YOU CANNOT AFFORD.
It is sheer arrogance to contract illnesses that are beyond your means.
9. NEVER REVEAL ANY OF THE SHORTCOMINGS THAT HAVE COME TO LIGHT IN THE COURSE OF TREATMENT BY YOUR DOCTOR.
The patient-doctor relationship is a privileged one, and you have a
sacred duty to protect him from exposure.
10. NEVER DIE WHILE IN YOUR DOCTOR'S PRESENCE OR UNDER HIS DIRECT CARE.
This will only cause him needless inconvenience and embarrassment.
%
A distraught patient phoned her doctor's office. "Was it true," the woman inquired, "that the medication the doctor had prescribed was for the rest of her life?"
She was told that it was. There was just a moment of silence before the woman proceeded bravely on. "Well, I'm wondering, then, how serious my condition is. This prescription is marked `NO REFILLS'".
%
A doctor calls his patient to give him the results of his tests. "I have some bad news," says the doctor, "and some worse news." The bad news is
that you only have six weeks to live."
"Oh, no," says the patient. "What could possibly be worse than that?"
"Well," the doctor replies, "I've been trying to reach you since last Monday."
%
A woman physician has made the statement that smoking is neither physically defective nor morally degrading, and that nicotine, even when indulged to in excess, is less harmful than excessive petting."
-- Purdue Exponent, Jan 16, 1925
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A woman went into a hospital one day to give birth. Afterwards, the doctor came to her and said, "I have some... odd news for you."
"Is my baby all right?" the woman anxiously asked.
"Yes, he is," the doctor replied, "but we don't know how. Your son (we assume) was born with no body. He only has a head."
Well, the doctor was correct. The Head was alive and well, though no one knew how. The Head turned out to be fairly normal, ignoring his lack of a body, and lived for some time as typical a life as could be expected under the circumstances.
One day, about twenty years after the fateful birth, the woman got a phone call from another doctor. The doctor said, "I have recently perfected an operation. Your son can live a normal life now: we can graft a body onto his head!"
The woman, practically weeping with joy, thanked the doctor and hung up. She ran up the stairs saying, "Johnny, Johnny, I have a *wonderful* surprise for you!"
"Oh no," cried The Head, "not another HAT!"
%
After twelve years of therapy my psychiatrist said something that brought tears to my eyes. He said, "No hablo ingles."
-- Ronnie Shakes
%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
Aquavit is also considered useful for medicinal purposes, an essential ingredient in what I was once told is the Norwegian cure for the common cold. You get a bottle, a poster bed, and the brightest colored stocking cap you can find. You put the cap on the post at the foot of the bed,
then get into bed and drink aquavit until you can't see the cap. I've never tried this, but it sounds as though it should work.
-- Peter Nelson
%
As a general rule of thumb, never trust anybody who's been in therapy for more than 15 percent of their life span. The words "I am sorry" and "I am wrong" will have totally disappeared from their vocabulary. They will stab you, shoot you, break things in your apartment, say horrible things to your friends and family, and then justify this abhorrent behavior by saying:
"Sure, I put your dog in the microwave. But I feel *better* for doing it."
-- Bruce Feirstein, "Nice Guys Sleep Alone"
%
At the hospital, a doctor is training an intern on how to announce bad news to the patients. The doctor tells the intern "This man in 305 is going to
die in six months. Go in and tell him." The intern boldly walks into the room, over to the man's bedisde and tells him "Seems like you're gonna die!"
The man has a heart attack and is rushed into surgery on the spot. The doctor grabs the intern and screams at him, "What!?!? are you some kind of moron? You've got to take it easy, work your way up to the subject. Now this man in 213 has about a week to live. Go in and tell him, but, gently, you hear me, gently!"
The intern goes softly into the room, humming to himself, cheerily opens the drapes to let the sun in, walks over to the man's bedside, fluffs
his pillow and wishes him a "Good morning!" "Wonderful day, no? Say... guess who's going to die soon!"
%
Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door.
%
Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment.
%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried it.
-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%
Cure the disease and kill the patient.
-- Francis Bacon
%
Death has been proven to be 99% fatal in laboratory rats.
%
Dental health is next to mental health.
%
Ever notice that the word "therapist" breaks down into "the rapist"? Simple coincidence? Maybe...
%
For my son, Robert, this is proving to be the high-point of his entire life to date. He has had his pajamas on for two, maybe three days now. He has the sense of joyful independence a 5-year-old child gets when he suddenly realizes that he could be operating an acetylene torch in the coat closet and neither parent [because of the flu] would have the strength to object. He has been foraging for his own food, which means his diet consists entirely of "food" substances which are advertised only on Saturday-morning cartoon shows; substances that are the color of jukebox lights and that, for legal reasons, have their names spelled wrong, as in New Creemy Chok-'n'-Cheez Lumps o' Froot ("part of this complete breakfast").
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
%
Fortune's Exercising Truths:
1: Richard Simmons gets paid to exercise like a lunatic. You don't.
2. Aerobic exercises stimulate and speed up the heart. So do heart attacks.
3. Exercising around small children can scar them emotionally for life.
4. Sweating like a pig and gasping for breath is not refreshing.
5. No matter what anyone tells you, isometric exercises cannot be done quietly at your desk at work. People will suspect manic tendencies as you twitter around in your chair.
6. Next to burying bones, the thing a dog enjoys mosts is tripping joggers.
7. Locking four people in a tiny, cement-walled room so they can run around for an hour smashing a little rubber ball -- and each other -- with a hard racket should immediately be recognized for what it is: a form of insanity.
8. Fifty push-ups, followed by thirty sit-ups, followed by ten chin-ups, followed by one throw-up.
9. Any activity that can't be done while smoking should be avoided.
%
[From an announcement of a congress of the International Ontopsychology Association, in Rome]:
The Ontopsychological school, availing itself of new research criteria and of a new telematic epistemology, maintains that social modes do not spring from dialectics of territory or of class, or of consumer goods, or of means of power, but rather from dynamic latencies capillarized in millions of individuals in system functions which, once they have reached the event maturation, burst forth in catastrophic phenomenology engaging a suitable stereotype protagonist or duty marionette (general, president, political party, etc.) to consummate the act of social schizophrenia in mass genocide.
%
God is dead and I don't feel all too well either....
-- Ralph Moonen
%
"Good health" is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.
%
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman
%
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
%
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
-- Redd Foxx
%
His ideas of first-aid stopped short of squirting soda water.
-- P.G. Wodehouse
%
Human cardiac catheterization was introduced by Werner Forssman in 1929. Ignoring his department chief, and tying his assistant to an operating
table to prevent her interference, he placed a ureteral catheter into a vein in his arm, advanced it to the right atrium [of his heart], and walked upstairs to the x-ray department where he took the confirmatory x-ray film. In 1956, Dr. Forssman was awarded the Nobel Prize.
%
I get my exercise acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise.
-- Chauncey Depew
%
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for.
-- James Boren
%
"I keep seeing spots in front of my eyes."
"Did you ever see a doctor?"
"No, just spots."
%
If a person (a) is poorly, (b) receives treatment intended to make him better, and (c) gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health.
-- Sir Peter Medawar, "The Art of the Soluble"
%
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"
%
If you look like your driver's license photo, see a doctor. If you look like your passport photo, it's too late for a doctor.
%
It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produces a false impression.
-- Oscar Wilde.
%
It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.
-- Jackie Mason
%
It's not reality or how you perceive things that's important -- it's what you're taking for it...
%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is.
%
Laetrile is the pits.
%
My doctorate's in Literature, but it seems like a pretty good pulse to me.
%
Neurotics build castles in the sky,
Psychotics live in them,
And psychiatrists collect the rent.
%
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
New England Life, of course. Why do you ask?
%
page 46
...a report citing a study by Dr. Thomas C. Chalmers, of the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, which compared two groups that were being used to test the theory that ascorbic acid is a cold preventative. "The group on placebo who thought they were on ascorbic acid," says Dr. Chalmers, "had fewer colds than the group on ascorbic acid who thought they were on placebo."
page 56
The placebo is proof that there is no real separation between mind and body. Illness is always an interaction between both. It can begin in the mind and affect the body, or it can begin in the body and affect the mind, both of which are served by the same bloodstream. Attempts to treat most mental diseases as though they were completely free of physical causes and attempts to treat most bodily diseases as though the mind were in no way involved must be considered archaic in the light of new evidence about the way the human body functions.
-- Norman Cousins,
"Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient"
%
Paralysis through analysis.
%
Proper treatment will cure a cold in seven days, but left to itself, a cold will hang on for a week.
-- Darrell Huff
%
Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents' shortcomings.
-- Laurence J. Peter, "Peter's Principles"
%
Psychoanalysis is that mental illness for which it regards itself a therapy.
-- Karl Kraus
Psychiatry is the care of the id by the odd.
Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you.
-- C.G. Jung
%
Psychology. Mind over matter. Mind under matter? It doesn't matter. Never mind.
%
Pushing 30 is exercise enough.
%
Pushing 40 is exercise enough.
%
Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away.
-- Robert Orben
%
Sigmund's wife wore Freudian slips.
%
Some people need a good imaginary cure for their painful imaginary ailment.
%
Sometimes the best medicine is to stop taking something.
%
Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
%
Stress has been pinpointed as a major cause of illness. To avoid overload and burnout, keep stress out of your life. Give it to others instead. Learn the "Gaslight" treatment, the "Are you talking to me?" technique, and the "Do you feel okay? You look pale." approach. Start with negotiation and implication. Advance to manipulation and humiliation. Above all, relax and have a nice day.
%
The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
%
"... the Mayo Clinic, named after its founder, Dr. Ted Clinic ..."
-- Dave Barry
%
"The molars, I'm sure, will be all right, the molars can take care of themselves," the old man said, no longer to me. "But what will become of the bicuspids?"
-- The Old Man and his Bridge
%
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.
%
The real reason psychology is hard is that psychologists are trying to do the impossible.
%
The reason they're called wisdom teeth is that the experience makes you wise.
%
The secret of healthy hitchhiking is to eat junk food.
%
The trouble with heart disease is that the first symptom is often hard to deal with: death.
-- Michael Phelps
%
The Vet Who Surprised A Cow
In the course of his duties in August 1977, a Dutch veterinary surgeon was required to treat an ailing cow. To investigate its internal gases he inserted a tube into that end of the animal not capable of facial expression and struck a match. The jet of flame set fire first to some bales of hay and then to the whole farm causing damage estimate at L45,000. The vet was later fined L140 for starting a fire in a manner surprising to the magistrates. The cow escaped with shock.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
We have the flu. I don't know if this particular strain has an official name, but if it does, it must be something like "Martian Death Flu". You may have had it yourself. The main symptom is that you wish you had another setting on your electric blanket, up past "HIGH", that said "ELECTROCUTION".
Another symptom is that you cease brushing your teeth, because (a) your teeth hurt, and (b) you lack the strength. Midway through the brushing process, you'd have to lie down in front of the sink to rest for a couple of hours, and rivulets of toothpaste foam would dribble sideways out of your mouth, eventually hardening into crusty little toothpaste stalagmites that would bond your head permanently to the bathroom floor, which is how the police would find you.
You know the kind of flu I'm talking about.
-- Dave Barry, "Molecular Homicide"
%
"Welcome back for your 13th consecutive week, Evelyn. Evelyn, will you go into the auto-suggestion booth and take your regular place on the psycho-prompter couch?"
"Thank you, Red."
"Now, Evelyn, last week you went up to $40,000 by properly citing your rivalry with your sibling as a compulsive sado-masochistic behavior pattern which developed out of an early post-natal feeding problem."
"Yes, Red."
"But -- later, when asked about pre-adolescent oedipal phantasy repressions, you rationalized twice and mental blocked three times. Now, at $300 per rationalization and $500 per mental block you lost $2,100 off your $40,000, leaving you with a total of $37,900. Now, any combination of two more mental blocks and either one rationalization or three defensive projections will put you out of the game. Are you willing to go ahead?"
"Yes, Red."
"I might say here that all of Evelyn's questions and answers have been checked for accuracy with her analyst. Now, Evelyn, for $80,000 explain the failure of your three marriages."
"Well, I--"
"We'll get back to Evelyn in one minute. First a word about our product."
-- Jules Feiffer
%
When a lot of remedies are suggested for a disease, that means it can't be cured.
-- Anton Chekhov, "The Cherry Orchard"
%
Your digestive system is your body's Fun House, whereby food goes on a long, dark, scary ride, taking all kinds of unexpected twists and turns, being attacked by vicious secretions along the way, and not knowing until the last minute whether it will be turned into a useful body part or ejected into the Dark Hole by Mister Sphincter. We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.
-- Dave Barry, "Stay Fit & Healthy Until You're Dead"
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A crow perched himself on a telephone wire. He was going to make a long-distance caw.
%
A log may float in a river, but that does not make it a crocodile.
%
A pickup with three guys in it pulls into the lumber yard. One of the men gets out and goes into the office.
"I need some four-by-two's," he says.
"You must mean two-by-four's" replies the clerk.
The man scratches his head. "Wait a minute," he says, "I'll go check."
Back, after an animated conversation with the other occupants of the truck, he reassures the clerk, that, yes, in fact, two-by-fours would be acceptable.
"OK," says the clerk, writing it down, "how long you want 'em?"
The guy gets the blank look again. "Uh... I guess I better go check," he says.
He goes back out to the truck, and there's another animated conversation. The guy comes back into the office. "A long time," he says, "we're building a house".
%
A prediction is worth twenty explanations.
-- K. Brecher
%
A reverend wanted to telephone another reverend. He told the operator, "This is a parson to parson call."
%
A squeegee by any other name wouldn't sound as funny.
%
A young girl, Carmen Cohen, was called by her last name by her father, and her first name by her mother. By the time she was ten, didn't know if she was Carmen or Cohen.
%
According to my best recollection, I don't remember.
-- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo
%
Adults die young.
%
Age is a tyrant who forbids, at the penalty of life, all the pleasures of youth.
%
Agree with them now, it will save so much time.
%
Ah, the Tsar's bazaar's bizarre beaux-arts!
%
All phone calls are obscene.
-- Karen Elizabeth Gordon
%
All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.
-- Grant Wood
%
Am I ranting? I hope so. My ranting gets raves.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE:
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to end across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely awful.
%
AMAZING BUT TRUE:
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%
Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it.
%
An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.
-- Isaac Asimov
%
And I alone am returned to wag the tail.
%
Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to exactly the point of most pressure.
-- Milt Barber
%
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something.
%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%
Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the floor -- especially in the dark.
%
BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts...)
BE ALOOF! (There has been a recent population explosion of lerts.)
%
Before I knew the best part of my life had come, it had gone.
%
Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want.
%
Biggest security gap -- an open mouth.
%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic.
%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
%
Boy, that crayon sure did hurt!
%
Bushydo -- the way of the shrub. Bonsai!
%
But like the Good Book says... There's BIGGER DEALS to come!
%
By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.
-- Charles Spurgeon
%
CF&C stole it, fair and square.
-- Tim Hahn
%
Chapter VIII
Due to the convergence of forces beyond his comprehension, Salvatore Quanucci was suddenly squirted out of the universe like a watermelon seed, and never heard from again.
%
Confucius say too much.
-- Recent Chinese Proverb
%
Congratulations are in order for Tom Reid.
He says he just found out he is the winner of the 2021 Psychic of the Year award.
%
Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
%
Custer committed Siouxicide.
%
"Whatever the missing mass of the universe is, I hope it's not cockroaches!"
-- Mom
%
Death to all fanatics!
%
Depart in pieces, i.e., split.
%
Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the Czar won't see his face.
%
Did you hear about the model who sat on a broken bottle and cut a nice figure?
%
DID YOU KNOW:
That no-one ever reads these things?
%
"Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him."
-- John Barrymore's dying words
%
Dignity is like a flag. It flaps in a storm.
-- Roy Mengot
%
Dime is money.
%
Do not use that foreign word "ideals". We have that excellent native word "lies".
-- Henrik Ibsen, "The Wild Duck"
%
Do people know you have freckles everywhere?
%
Do students of Zen Buddhism do Om-work?
%
"Do you believe in intuition?"
"No, but I have a strange feeling that someday I will."
%
Do you have lysdexia?
%
Does a one-legged duck swim in a circle?
%
Don't force it, get a larger hammer.
-- Anthony
%
Don't guess -- check your security regulations.
%
Don't let your status become too quo!
%
Don't speak about Time, until you have spoken to him.
%
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac; you can always take something for it.
%
Dr. Jekyll had something to Hyde.
%
Dr. Livingston?
Dr. Livingston I. Presume?
%
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
%
Dreams are free, but there's a small charge for alterations.
%
Drop the vase and it will become a Ming of the past.
-- The Adventurer
%
Duckies are fun!
%
Ducks? What ducks??
%
During a fight, a husband threw a bowl of Jello at his wife. She had him arrested for carrying a congealed weapon. In another fight, the wife decked him with a heavy glass pitcher. She's a woman who conks to stupor.
%
Dyslexia means never having to say that you're ysror.
%
Dyslexics have more fnu.
%
DYSLEXICS OF THE WORLD, UNTIE!
%
"Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun."
-- Jeff Berner
%
Editing is a rewording activity.
%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
Events are not affected, they develop.
-- Sri Aurobindo
%
Ever wonder why fire engines are red?
Because newspapers are read too.
Two and Two is four.
Four and four is eight.
Eight and four is twelve.
There are twelve inches in a ruler.
Queen Mary was a ruler.
Queen Mary was a ship.
Ships sail the sea.
There are fishes in the sea.
Fishes have fins.
The Finns fought the Russians.
Russians are red.
Fire engines are always rush'n.
Therefore fire engines are red.
%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%
Every day it's the same thing -- variety. I want something different.
%
Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it.
%
Every time you manage to close the door on Reality, it comes in through the window.
%
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
-- Beckett
%
Everything bows to success, even grammar.
%
Everything can be filed under "miscellaneous".
%
Everything might be different in the present if only one thing had been different in the past.
%
Everything should be built top-down... except the first time.
%
Everything takes longer, costs more, and is less useful.
-- Erwin Tomash
%
Everything you know is wrong!
%
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
-- Aldous Huxley
%
Facts apart from their relationships are like labels on empty bottles.
-- Sven Italla
%
Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
%
Fats Loves Madelyn.
%
Finding out what goes on in the C.I.A. is like performing acupuncture on a rock.
-- New York Times, Jan. 20, 1981
%
Five bicycles make a volkswagen, seven make a truck.
-- Adolfo Guzman
%
Flame on!
-- Johnny Storm
%
Fly me away to the bright side of the moon ...
%
For a holy stint, a moth of the cloth gave up his woolens for lint.
%
For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.
-- Titus Lucretius Carus
%
Force it!!!
If it breaks, well, it wasn't working anyway...
No, don't force it, get a bigger hammer.
%
FORCE YOURSELF TO RELAX!
%
Forest fires cause Smokey Bears.
%
Fortune's graffiti of the week (or maybe even month):
Don't Write On Walls!
(and underneath)
You want I should type?
%
Fortune's Office Door Sign of the Week:
Incorrigible punster -- Do not incorrige.
%
"Found it," the Mouse replied rather crossly: "of course you know what 'it' means."
"I know what 'it' means well enough, when I find a thing," said the Duck: "it's generally a frog or a worm. The question is, what did the archbishop find?"
%
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
-- F. Kafka
%
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding.
-- H.H. Williams
%
General notions are generally wrong.
-- Lady M.W. Montagu
%
Give me a Plumber's friend the size of the Pittsburgh dome, and a place to stand, and I will drain the world.
%
Given my druthers, I'd druther not.
%
Gloffing is a state of mine.
%
Go away, I'm all right.
-- H.G. Wells' last words.
%
Go climb a gravity well!
%
God is Dead.
-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead.
-- God
%
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%
God was satisfied with his own work, and that is fatal.
-- Samuel Butler
%
Lord, please give me patience... and I want it right now!
%
Good news is just life's way of keeping you off balance.
%
Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.
%
Hard reality has a way of cramping your style.
-- Daniel Dennett
%
Have the courage to take your own thoughts seriously, for they will shape you.
-- Albert Einstein
%
"Have you lived here all your life?"
"Oh, twice that long."
%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous grass is a crack in your sidewalk?
%
"He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions."
%
He who spends a storm beneath a tree, takes life with a grain of TNT.
%
Hedonist for hire... no job too easy!
%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%
Help stamp out and abolish redundancy and repetition.
%
Here there be tygers.
%
"His eyes were cold. As cold as the bitter winter snow that was falling outside. Yes, cold and therefore difficult to chew..."
%
Honk if you hate bumper stickers that say "Honk if ..."
%
Honk if you love peace and quiet.
%
Housework can kill you if done right.
-- Erma Bombeck
%
How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all?
%
How come only your friends step on your new white sneakers?
%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%
I always wake up at the crack of ice.
-- Joe E. Lewis
%
I am the mother of all things, and all things should wear a sweater.
%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%
I couldn't possibly fail to disagree with you less.
%
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise.
%
I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%
"I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path."
-- Ronald Mabbitt
%
I don't wish to appear overly inquisitive, but are you still alive?
%
I feel sorry for your brain... all alone in that great big head...
%
"I found out why my car was humming. It had forgotten the words."
%
I hate quotations.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%
I hate trolls. Maybe I could metamorph it into something else -- like a ravenous, two-headed, fire-breathing dragon.
-- Willow
%
I have a terrible headache, I was putting on toilet water and the lid fell.
%
I have seen the Great Pretender and he is not what he seems.
%
I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it.
%
I hear the sound that the machines make, and feel my heart break, just for a moment.
%
I know it all. I just can't remember it all at once.
%
I know you think you thought you knew what you thought I said, but I'm not sure you understood what you thought I meant.
%
I know you're in search of yourself, I just haven't seen you anywhere.
%
I live the way I type; fast, with a lot of mistakes.
%
I love treason but hate a traitor.
-- Gaius Julius Caesar
%
"I only touch base with reality on an as-needed basis!"
-- Royal Floyd Mengot (Klaus)
%
[I plan] to see, hear, touch, and destroy everything in my path, including beets, rutabagas, and most random vegetables, but excluding yams, as I am absolutely terrified of yams...
Actually, I think my fear of yams began in my early youth, when many of my young comrades pelted me with same for singing songs of far-off lands and deep blue seas in a language closely resembling that of the common sow. My psychosis was further impressed into my soul as I reached adolescence, when, while skipping through a field of yams, light-heartedly tossing flowers into the stratosphere, a great yam-picking machine tore through the fields, pursuing me to the edge of the great plantation, where I escaped by diving into a great ditch filled with a mixture of water and pig manure, which may explain my tendency to scream, "Here come the Martians! Hide the eggs!" every time I have pork. But I digress. The fact remains that I cannot rationally
deal with yams, and pigs are terrible conversationalists.
%
I predict that today will be remembered until tomorrow!
%
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
%
I understand why you're confused. You're thinking too much.
-- Carole Wallach.
%
I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure.
%
I used to get high on life but lately I've built up a resistance.
%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%
I will make you shorter by the head.
-- Elizabeth I
%
I wouldn't be so paranoid if you weren't all out to get me!!
%
I'd be a poorer man if I'd never seen an eagle fly.
-- John Denver
[I saw an eagle fly once. Fortunately, I had my eagle fly swatter handy. Ed.]
%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%
"I'm dying," he croaked.
"My experiment was a success," the chemist retorted .
"You can't really train a beagle," he dogmatized.
"That's no beagle, it's a mongrel," she muttered.
"The fire is going out," he bellowed.
"Bad marksmanship," the hunter groused.
"You ought to see a psychiatrist," he reminded me.
"You snake," she rattled.
"Someone's at the door," she chimed.
"Company's coming," she guessed.
"Dawn came too soon," she mourned.
"I think I'll end it all," Sue sighed.
"I ordered chocolate, not vanilla," I screamed.
"Your embroidery is sloppy," she needled cruelly.
"Where did you get this meat?" he bridled hoarsely.
-- Gyles Brandreth, "The Joy of Lex"
%
I'm glad I was not born before tea.
-- Sidney Smith (1771-1845)
%
I'm going to raise an issue and stick it in your ear.
-- John Foreman
%
I'm not offering myself as an example; every life evolves by its own laws.
%
I'm not prejudiced, I hate everyone equally.
%
I'm not tense, just terribly, terribly alert!
%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life.
%
I'm so broke I can't even pay attention.
%
I've enjoyed just about as much of this as I can stand.
%
Idleness is the holiday of fools.
%
"If a camel flies, no one laughs if it doesn't get very far."
-- Paul White
%
If all men were brothers, would you let one marry your sister?
%
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
%
If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
%
If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!
-- Samuel Goldwyn
%
If I don't see you in the future, I'll see you in the pasture.
%
If I love you, what business is it of yours?
-- Johann van Goethe
%
If it doesn't smell yet, it's pretty fresh.
-- Dave Johnson, on dead seagulls
%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%
If it wasn't so warm out today, it would be cooler.
%
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.
%
If life isn't what you wanted, have you asked for anything else?
%
If rabbits' feet are so lucky, what happened to the rabbit?
%
If the ends don't justify the means, then what does?
-- Robert Moses
%
If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.
-- Doug Larson
[Not to mention, butterfly would be flutterby -- Ed.]
%
If the future isn't what it used to be, does that mean that the past is subject to change in times to come?
%
If the grass is greener on other side of fence, consider what may be fertilizing it.
%
If the meanings of "true" and "false" were switched, then this sentence would not be false.
%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances are 50-50 it will.
%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the same?
%
If you are going to walk on thin ice, you may as well dance.
%
If you can lead it to water and force it to drink, it isn't a horse.
%
If you do not think about the future, you cannot have one.
-- John Galsworthy
%
If you have nothing to do, don't do it here.
%
If you knew what to say next, would you say it?
%
If you know the answer to a question, don't ask.
-- Petersen Nesbit
%
If you stick your head in the sand, one thing is for sure, you're gonna get your rear kicked.
%
If you're right 90% of the time, why quibble about the remaining 3%?
%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%
Imagine what we can imagine!
-- Arthur Rubinstein
%
Immanuel doesn't pun, he Kant.
%
Immanuel Kant but Kubla Khan.
%
In case of fire, stand in the hall and shout "Fire!"
-- The Kidner Report
%
In my end is my beginning.
-- Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
%
In the war of wits, he's unarmed.
%
In this world, truth can wait; she's used to it.
%
Include me out.
%
Indecision is the true basis for flexibility.
%
Indifference will certainly be the downfall of mankind, but who cares?
%
Insomnia isn't anything to lose sleep over.
%
Is death legally binding?
%
Isn't air travel wonderful? Breakfast in London, dinner in New York, luggage in Brazil.
%
It has long been known that birds will occasionally build nests in the manes of horses. The only known solution to this problem is to sprinkle baker's yeast in the mane, for, as we all know, yeast is yeast and nest is nest, and never the mane shall tweet.
%
It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.
-- Emerson
%
It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck? One in a million, perhaps.
%
It is better to be bow-legged than no-legged.
%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an aardvark.
%
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
%
It is easier to run down a hill than up one.
%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind
%
It is very difficult to prophesy, especially when it pertains to the future.
%
It isn't easy being a Friday kind of person in a Monday kind of world.
%
It looks like blind screaming hedonism won out.
%
It occurred to me lately that nothing has occurred to me lately.
%
"It was a virgin forest, a place where the Hand of Man had never set foot."
%
It was one of those perfect summer days -- the sun was shining, a breeze was blowing, the birds were singing, and the lawn mower was broken ...
--- James Dent
%
It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty. Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever -- unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime.
-- Thomas Aldrich
%
It wasn't that she had a rose in her teeth, exactly. It was more like the rose and the teeth were in the same glass.
%
It would save me a lot of time if you just gave up and went mad now.
%
It'll be a nice world if they ever get it finished.
%
It's a .88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
-- Danny Vermin
%
It's amazing how much better you feel once you've given up hope.
%
It's not the fall that kills you, it's the landing.
%
It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.
-- Kim Hubbard
%
Join the march to save individuality!
%
Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.
-- Irene Peter
%
Just give Alice some pencils and she will stay busy for hours.
%
Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.
%
Kissing a fish is like smoking a bicycle.
%
Knocked, you weren't in.
-- Opportunity
%
Know what I hate most? Rhetorical questions.
-- Henry N. Camp
%
Language is a virus from another planet.
-- William Burroughs
%
Laughing at you is like drop kicking a wounded humming bird.
%
Lemmings don't grow older, they just die.
%
Let he who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.
%
Let me put it this way: today is going to be a learning experience.
%
Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
-- Ovid (43 B.C. - A.D. 18)
%
Let's remind ourselves that last year's fresh idea is today's cliche.
-- Austen Briggs
%
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
-- Paul Gauguin
%
Life is both difficult and time consuming.
%
Life is fraught with opportunities to keep your mouth shut.
%
Life is just a bowl of cherries, but why do I always get the pits?
%
Life is like an analogy.
%
Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.
-- G.B. Shaw
%
Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone.
%
Look! Before our very eyes, the future is becoming the past.
%
Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.
%
Love the sea? I dote upon it -- from the beach.
%
Luck can't last a lifetime, unless you die young.
-- Russell Banks
%
Man who falls in blast furnace is certain to feel overwrought.
%
Man who falls in vat of molten optical glass makes spectacle of self.
%
Man who sleep in beer keg wake up sticky.
%
May your camel be as swift as the wind.
%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force of a Thousand Caramels.
%
Memory should be the starting point of the present.
%
Microbiology Lab: Staph Only!
%
Mirrors should reflect a little before throwing back images.
-- Jean Cocteau
%
Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.
%
Most burning issues generate far more heat than light.
%
Most general statements are false, including this one.
-- Alexander Dumas
%
Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.
-- Arnold Bennett
%
Must be getting close to town -- we're hitting more people.
%
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
%
My, how you've changed since I've changed.
%
Never be afraid to tell the world who you are.
-- Anonymous
%
Never use "etc." -- it makes people think there is more where there is not or that there is not space to list it all, etc.
%
Never volunteer for anything.
-- Lackland
%
New members are urgently needed in the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Yourself. Apply within.
%
Nietzsche is pietzsche, but Schiller is killer, and Goethe is moethe.
%
No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up.
%
No matter how much you do you never do enough.
%
No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.
-- Nietzsche
%
Non-Determinism is not meant to be reasonable.
-- M.J. O'Donnell
%
Non-sequiturs make me eat lampshades.
%
Nostalgia is living life in the past lane.
%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%
Nothing can be done in one trip.
-- Snider
%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to get up.
%
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
%
Nothing lasts forever... where do I find nothing?
%
NOTICE:
-- THE ELEVATORS WILL BE OUT OF ORDER TODAY --
(The nearest working elevator is in the building across the street.)
%
Once I finally figured out all of life's answers, they changed the questions.
%
Operator, please trace this call and tell me where I am.
%
Our houseplants have a good sense of humous.
%
Over the years, I've developed my sense of deja vu so acutely that now I can remember things that *have* happened before.
%
Paranoid Club meeting this Friday. Now, just try to find out where!
%
Please remain calm, it's no use both of us being hysterical at the same time.
%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
-- Niels Bohr
%
Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.
-- Ogden Nash
%
%
Punning is the worst vice, and there's no vice versa.
%
Pyros of the world... IGNITE !!!
%
Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!
%
Reality -- what a concept!
-- Robin Williams
%
Remember that there is an outside world to see and enjoy.
-- Hans Liepmann
%
Remember, drive defensively! And of course, the best defense is a good offense!
%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get another chance later on.
%
Ring around the collar.
%
Rubber bands have snappy endings!
%
Safety Third.
%
Sailors in ships, sail on! Even while we died, others rode out the storm.
%
Santa's elves are just a bunch of subordinate Clauses.
%
Save the Whales -- Harpoon a Honda.
%
Save the whales! Collect the whole set!
%
See, these two penguins walked into a bar, which was really stupid, 'cause the second one should have seen it.
%
She has an alarm clock and a phone that don't ring -- they applaud.
%
"Sheriff, we gotta catch Black Bart."
"Oh, yeah? What's he look like?"
"Well, he's wearin' a paper hat, a paper shirt, paper pants and paper boots."
"What's he wanted for?"
"Rustling."
%
Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%
Solipsists of the World... you are already united.
-- Kayvan Sylvan
%
Some changes are so slow, you don't notice them. Others are so fast, they don't notice you.
%
Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car.
-- Evan Davis
%
Sooner or later you will pay for your sins.
(Those who have already paid may disregard this cookie).
%
Stamp out philately.
%
Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
%
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
%
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
%
The beauty of a pun is in the "Oy!" of the beholder.
%
The cart has no place where a fifth wheel could be used.
-- Herbert von Fritzlar
%
The day after tomorrow is the third day of the rest of your life.
%
The difference between this place and yogurt is that yogurt has a live culture.
%
The eagle may soar, but the weasel never gets sucked into a jet engine.
%
The fact that it works is immaterial.
-- L. Ogborn
%
The future isn't what it used to be. (It never was.)
%
The Martian Canals were clearly the Martian's last ditch effort!
%
The one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe.
%
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%
The pollution's at that awkward stage. Too thick to navigate and too thin to cultivate.
-- Doug Sneyd
%
The problem with any unwritten law is that you don't know where to go to erase it.
-- Glaser and Way
%
The sky is blue so we know where to stop mowing.
-- Judge Harold T. Stone
%
The whole world is a scab. The point is to pick it constructively.
-- Peter Beard
%
The world really isn't any worse. It's just that the news coverage is so much better.
%
There are no rules for March. March is spring, sort of, usually, March means maybe, but don't bet on it.
%
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces -- the third I can't remember.
-- Italo Svevo
%
There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead.
-- Lord Thomas Rober Dewar
%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you know nothing about.
%
There's no real need to do housework -- after four years it doesn't get any worse.
%
Think honk if you're a telepath.
%
This is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. And now you know why.
%
This sentence contradicts itself -- no actually it doesn't.
-- Douglas Hofstadter
%
To generalize is to be an idiot.
-- William Blake
%
"To vacillate or not to vacillate, that is the question ... or is it?"
%
Well, we'll really have a party, but we've gotta post a guard outside.
-- Eddie Cochran, "Come On Everybody"
%
What causes the mysterious death of everyone?
%
What color is a chameleon on a mirror?
%
"What did you do when the ship sank?"
"I grabbed a cake of soap and washed myself ashore."
%
What does "it" mean in the sentence "What time is it?"?
%
"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"
-- The Doctor
%
When a cow laughs, does milk come out of its nose?
%
When a fly lands on the ceiling, does it do a half roll or a half loop?
%
When things go well, expect something to explode, erode, collapse or just disappear.
%
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares?
%
Who dat who say "who dat" when I say "who dat"?
-- Hattie McDaniel
%
Why does a ship carry cargo and a truck carry shipments?
%
Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?
-- Lily Tomlin
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A help wanted add for a photo journalist asked the rhetorical question:
If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use?
-- Paul Harvey
%
A Hen Brooding Kittens
A friend informs us that he saw at the Novato ranch, Marin county, a few days since, a hen actually brooding and otherwise caring for three kittens! The gentleman upon whose premises this strange event is transpiring says the hen adopted the kittens when they were but a few days old, and that she has devoted them her undivided care for several weeks past. The young felines are now of respectable size, but they nevertheless follow the hen at
her cluckings, and are regularly brooded at night beneath her wings.
-- Sacramento Daily Union, July 2, 1861
%
A journalist, thrilled over his dinner, asked the chef for the recipe. Retorted the chef, "Sorry, we have the same policy as you journalists, we never reveal our sauce."
%
A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the paper reports "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs.
-- Audobon Society Magazine
%
A New Way of Taking Pills
A physician one night in Wisconsin being disturbed by a burglar, and having no ball or shot for his pistol, noiselessly loaded the weapon with small, hard pills, and gave the intruder a "prescription" which he thinks will go far towards curing the rascal of a very bad ailment.
-- Nevada Morning Transcript, January 30, 1861
%
A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure.
-- Arthure "Bugs" Baer
%
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."
%
"A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon."
-- Steel City News
%
A young girl once committed suicide because her mother refused her a new bonnet. Coroner's verdict: "Death from excessive spunk."
-- Sacramento Daily Union, September 13, 1860
%
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
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"
%
All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
%
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%
"... And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."
-- "Scoop" Nisker, KFOG radio reporter Preposterous Words
%
And that's the way it is...
-- Walter Cronkite
%
Earth Destroyed by Solar Flare -- film clips at eleven.
%
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
%
Everything you read in newspapers is absolutely true, except for that rare story of which you happen to have first-hand knowledge.
-- Erwin Knoll
%
FLASH!
Intelligence of mankind decreasing.
Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the ....
%
... Had this been an actual emergency, we would have fled in terror, and you would not have been informed.
%
I only know what I read in the papers.
-- Will Rogers
%
I read the newspaper avidly. It is my one form of continuous fiction.
-- Aneurin Bevan
%
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their time.
-- H. Truman
%
If I were to walk on water, the press would say I'm only doing it because I can't swim.
-- Bob Stanfield
%
If you lose your temper at a newspaper columnist, he'll get rich, or famous or both.
%
In a medium in which a News Piece takes a minute and an "In-Depth" Piece takes two minutes, the Simple will drive out the Complex.
-- Frank Mankiewicz
%
Isn't it conceivable to you that an intelligent person could harbor
two opposing ideas in his mind?
-- Adlai Stevenson, to reporters
%
Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
-- Oscar Wilde
%
Journalism is literature in a hurry.
-- Matthew Arnold
%
Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you're at it.
%
Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.
-- Frank Zappa
%
My father was a God-fearing man, but he never missed a copy of the New York Times, either.
-- E.B. White
%
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
-- Sam Brown, "The Washington Post", January 26, 1977
%
*** NEWSFLASH ***
Russian tanks steamrolling through New Jersey!!!! Details at eleven!
%
"No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of paper."
-- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was taken over by Rupert Murdoch
%
Of what you see in books, believe 75%. Of newspapers, believe 50%. And of TV news, believe 25% -- make that 5% if the anchorman wears a blazer.
%
Once Again From the Top
Correction notice in the Miami Herald: "Last Sunday, The Herald erroneously reported that original Dolphin Johnny Holmes had been an insurance salesman in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he had won the New York lottery in 1982 and lost the money in a land swindle, that he had been charged with vehicular homicide, but acquitted because his mother said she drove the car, and that he stated that the funniest thing he ever saw was Flipper spouting water on George Wilson. Each of these items was erroneous material published inadvertently. He was not an insurance salesman in Raleigh, did not win the lottery, neither he nor his mother was charged or involved in any way with vehicular homicide, and he made no comment about Flipper or George Wilson. The Herald regrets the errors."
-- "The Progressive", March, 1987
%
One of the signs of Napoleon's greatness is the fact that he once had a publisher shot.
-- Siegfried Unseld
%
People who are funny and smart and return phone calls get much better press than people who are just funny and smart.
-- Howard Simons, "The Washington Post"
%
Photographing a volcano is just about the most miserable thing you can do.
-- Robert B. Goodman
[Who has clearly never tried to use a PDP-10. Ed.]
%
Reporters like Bill Greider from the Washington Post and Him Naughton of the New York Times, for instance, had to file long, detailed,
and relatively complex stories every day -- while my own deadlines fell every two weeks -- but neither of them ever seemed in a hurry about
getting their work done, and from time to time they would try to console me about the terrible pressure I always seemed to be laboring under.
Any $100-an-hour psychiatrist could probably explain this problem to me, in thirteen or fourteen sessions, but I don't have time for that.
No doubt it has something to do with a deep-seated personality defect, or maybe a kink in whatever blood vessel leads into the pineal gland... On
the other hand, it might be something as simple & basically perverse as whatever instinct it is that causes a jackrabbit to wait until the last
possible second to dart across the road in front of a speeding car.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail"
%
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%
The American Dental Association announced today that most plaque tends to form on teeth around 4:00 PM in the afternoon.
Film at 11:00.
%
The most important service rendered by the press is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.
%
"The New York Times is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by the people who think they run the country. The
National Enquirer is read by the people who think Elvis is alive and running the country ..."
-- Robert J Woodhead
%
The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal
other people's ideas and phrases ... is also invaluable.
-- Nicolas Tomalin, "Stop the Press, I Want to Get On"
%
The world really isn't any worse. It's just that the news coverage is so much better.
%
"Then you admit confirming not denying you ever said that?"
"NO! ... I mean Yes! WHAT?"
"I'll put `maybe.'"
-- Bloom County
%
This is a test of the emergency broadcast system. Had there been an actual emergency, then you would no longer be here.
%
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been an actual emergency, do you really think we'd stick around to tell you?
%
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an actual life, you would have received further instructions as to what to do and where to go.
%
Warning: Listening to WXRT on April Fools' Day is not recommended for those who are slightly disoriented the first few hours after waking up.
-- Chicago Reader 4/22/83
%
You know the great thing about TV? If something important happens anywhere at all in the world, no matter what time of the day or night, you can always change the channel.
-- Jim Ignatowski
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"It is a relief and a joy when I see a regiment of hackers digging in to hold the line, and I realize, this city may survive--for now."
-- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"If a machine couldn't run a free operating system, we got rid of it."
-- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The straightforward and easy path was to join the proprietary software world, signing nondisclosure agreements and promising not to help my fellow hacker....I could have made money this way, and perhaps had fun programming (if I closed my eyes to how I was treating other people). But I knew that when my career was over, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had made the world ugly."
-- Richard Stallman (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"But the most reliable indication of the future of Open Source is its past: in just a few years, we have gone from nothing to a robust body of software that solves many different problems and is reaching the million-user count. There's no reason for us to slow down now."
-- Bruce Perens, on the future of Open Source software. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The reason for the success of this somewhat communist-sounding strategy, while the failure of communism itself is visible around the world, is that the economics of information are fundamentaly different from those of other products."
-- Bruce Perens, on Open Source software. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"It is easy to sympathize with the MIS staffs around the world, I mean who hasn't lost work due to Windows or a Microsoft application crashing?"
-- Chris DiBona, happy he's been using Linux and can avoid such things, from the introduction. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"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)
%
"I'm not saying that they were knowingly dishonest, perhaps they were simply stupid. "
-- Linus Torvalds, commenting on those who really thought Microkernels were wise. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly fast, the kernel, is inherently counter productive."
-- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly & 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.)
%
"Eric also holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and shoots pistols for relaxation, His favorite gun is the classic 1911-pattern .45 semiautomatic"
-- Chris DiBona on neo-renassaince Homo Heileinias Eric S. Raymond. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The world is beating a path to our door"
-- Bruce Perens, (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)
%
"Calling EMACS an editor is like calling the Earth a hunk of dirt."
-- Chris DiBona on Dirt (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"I am not convinced that they can write solid stable software. Proprietary software is already hobbled by it's secretive cathedral nature, but Microsoft seems to have a corner on incompetent programming as well."
-- Chris DiBona from the introduction. (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The funny thing is if you actually read those papers, you find that, while the researchers were applying thier optomizational tricks on a microkernel, in fact those same tricks could be applied to traditional kernels to accelerate thier execution."
-- 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)
%
"Nature abhors a Vacuum"
-- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"While not obviously a business-friendly licensem there are certain aspects of the GNU license which are attractive, believe it or not, for commercial purposes."
-- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The open-source approach is not a magic bullet for every type of software development project."
-- Brian Behlendorf on OSS (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"For something that does not exist, the Internet Engineering Task Force has has quite an impact."
-- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The basic publication series for te IETF is the RFC series. RPF once stood for 'Request for Comments,' but since documents published as RFCs have generally gone through an extensive review process before publication, RFC is now best known understood to mean 'RFC' "
-- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The IETF motto is 'rouch consesus and running code'"
-- Scott Bradner (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"Open Standars, Open Documents, and Open Source"
-- Scott Bradner (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)
%
"However, complexity is not always the enemy."
-- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"Suppose I want to take over the world. Simplicity says I should just take over the world by myself."
-- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"People get annoyed when you try to debug them."
-- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"Computers may be stupid, but they're always obedient. Well, almost always."
-- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"You know, how is The Force like duct tape? Answer: it has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together."
-- 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)
%
"There are a billion people in China. And I want them to be able to pass notes to each other written in Perl. I want them to be able to write poetry in Perl.
That is my vision of the Future. My chosen perspective."
-- Larry Wall (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"In a way they were right the basics of operating systems, and by extension the Linux kernel, were well understood by the early 70s; anything after that has been to some degree an exercise in self-gratification."
-- Linus Torvalds (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
"The move was on to 'Free the Lizard'"
-- Jim Hamerly and Tom Paquin (Open Sources, 1999 O'Reilly and Associates)
%
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A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
-- Ogden Nash
%
A little dog goes into a saloon in the Wild West, and beckons to the bartender. "Hey, bartender, gimme a whiskey."
The bartender ignores him.
"Hey bartender, gimme a whiskey!"
Still ignored.
"HEY BARMAN!! GIMME A WHISKEY!!"
The bartender takes out his six-shooter and shoots the dog in the leg, and the dog runs out the saloon, howling in pain.
Three years later, the wee dog appears again, wearing boots, jeans, chaps, a Stetson, gun belt, and guns. He ambles slowly into the saloon, goes up to the bar, leans over it, and says to the bartender, "I'm here t'git the man that shot muh paw."
%
About the only thing on a farm that has an easy time is the dog.
%
All intelligent species own cats.
%
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall be deemed to be a cat.
-- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London
%
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
-- R. Heinlein
%
"Anything else you wish to draw to my attention, Mr. Holmes ?"
"The curious incident of the stable dog in the nighttime."
"But the dog did nothing in the nighttime."
"That was the curious incident."
-- A. Conan Doyle, "Silver Blaze"
%
Auribus teneo lupum.
[I hold a wolf by the ears.]
[Boy, it *sounds* good. But what does it *mean*?]
%
Breeding rabbits is a hare raising experience.
%
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.
-- Garrison Keillor
%
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't make eight cats pull a sled through the snow.
%
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows, offer no angles to the wind.
%
Chihuahuas drive me crazy. I can't stand anything that shivers when it's warm.
%
"Contrary to popular belief, penguins are not the salvation of modern technology. Neither do they throw parties for the urban proletariat."
%
Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives.
-- Sue Murphy
%
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
%
Dogs just don't seem to be able to tell the difference between important people and the rest of us.
%
Everyone *knows* cats are on a higher level of existence. These silly humans are just to big-headed to admit their inferiority.
Just think what a nicer world this would be if it were controlled by cats.
You wouldn't see cats having waste disposal problems.
They're neat.
They keep reasonable hours. You *never* see a cat up before noon.
They know how to relax. Ever heard of a cat with an ulcer?
What are the chances of a cat starting a nuclear war? Pretty neglible. It's not that they can't, they just know that there are much better things to do with ones time. Like lie in the sun and sleep. Or go exploring the world.
%
For a man to truly understand rejection, he must first be ignored by a cat.
%
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... <beep>
%
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg
%
I love dogs, but I hate Chihuahuas. A Chihuahua isn't a dog. It's a rat with a thyroid problem.
%
If a can of Alpo costs 38 cents, would it cost $2.50 in Dog Dollars?
%
If anyone has seen my dog, please contact me at x2883 as soon as possible. We're offering a substantial reward. He's a sable collie, with three legs, blind in his left eye, is missing part of his right ear and the tip of his tail. He's been recently fixed. Answers to "Lucky".
%
If you are a police dog, where's your badge?
-- Question James Thurber used to drive his German Shepherd crazy.
%
"If you don't want your dog to have bad breath, do what I do: Pour a little Lavoris in the toilet."
-- Jay Leno
%
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"
%
In the eyes of my dog, I'm a man.
-- Martin Mull
%
It is not a good omen when goldfish commit suicide.
%
It's no use crying over spilt milk -- it only makes it salty for the cat.
%
Lost: gray and white female cat. Answers to electric can opener.
%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%
No animal should ever jump on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain he can hold his own in conversation.
-- Fran Lebowitz
%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%
PENGUINICITY!!
%
Raising pet electric eels is gaining a lot of current popularity.
%
"Shelter," what a nice name for for a place where you polish your cat.
%
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
-- Francis Bacon
[As anyone who has ever owned a puppy already knows. Ed.]
%
Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I feel very peculiar. I feel like I've just got to bite a cat! I feel like if I don't bite a cat before sundown, I'll go crazy! But then I just take a deep breath and forget about it. That's what is known as real maturity.
-- Snoopy
%
Speaking of purchasing a dog, never buy a watchdog that's on sale. After all, everyone knows a bargain dog never bites!
%
The difference between dogs and cats is that dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you.
%
The main problem I have with cats is, they're not dogs.
-- Kevin Cowherd
%
The only time a dog gets complimented is when he doesn't do anything.
-- C. Schulz
%
There are many intelligent species in the universe, and they all own cats.
%
There's no use in having a dog and doing your own barking.
%
To err is human,
To purr feline.
-- Robert Byrne
%
When man calls an animal "vicious", he usually means that it will attempt to defend itself when he tries to kill it.
%
When the fog came in on little cat feet last night, it left these little muddy paw prints on the hood of my car.
%
Who loves me will also love my dog.
-- John Donne
%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
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FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #13
A: Doc, Happy, Bashful, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, & Grumpy
Q: Who were the Democratic presidential candidates?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #15
A: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Q: What was the greatest achievement in taxidermy?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #19
A: To be or not to be.
Q: What is the square root of 4b^2?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #21
A: Dr. Livingston I. Presume.
Q: What's Dr. Presume's full name?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #31
A: Chicken Teriyaki.
Q: What is the name of the world's oldest kamikaze pilot?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #4
A: Go west, young man, go west!
Q: What do wabbits do when they get tiwed of wunning awound?
%
FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #5
A: The Halls of Montezuma and the Shores of Tripoli.
Q: Name two families whose kids won't join the Marines.
%
Knock, knock!
Who's there?
Sam and Janet.
Sam and Janet who?
Sam and Janet Evening...
%
Knucklehead: "Knock, knock"
Pee Wee: "Who's there?"
Knucklehead: "Little ol' lady."
Pee Wee: "Liddle ol' lady who?"
Knucklehead: "I didn't know you could yodel"
%
Q: "What is the burning question on the mind of every dyslexic existentialist?"
A: "Is there a dog?"
%
Q: Are we not men?
A: We are Vaxen.
%
Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
A: One per person.
%
Q: Heard about the <ethnic> who couldn't spell?
A: He spent the night in a warehouse.
%
Q: How can you tell when a Burroughs salesman is lying?
A: When his lips move.
%
Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
%
Q: How do you catch a unique rabbit?
A: Unique up on it!
Q: How do you catch a tame rabbit?
A: The tame way!
%
Q: How do you keep a moron in suspense?
%
Q: How do you know when you're in the <ethnic> section of Vermont?
A: The maple sap buckets are hanging on utility poles.
%
Q: How do you play religious roulette?
A: You stand around in a circle and blaspheme and see who gets struck by lightning first.
%
Q: How do you save a drowning lawyer?
A: Throw him a rock.
%
Q: How do you shoot a blue elephant?
A: With a blue-elephant gun.
Q: How do you shoot a pink elephant?
A: Twist its trunk until it turns blue, then shoot it with a blue-elephant gun.
%
Q: How do you stop an elephant from charging?
A: Take away his credit cards.
%
Q: How does a hacker fix a function which doesn't work for all of the elements in its domain?
A: He changes the domain.
%
Q: How does the Polish Constitution differ from the American?
A: Under the Polish Constitution citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, but under the United States constitution they are guaranteed freedom after speech.
-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
Q: How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
A: That's proprietary information. Answer available from AT&T on payment of license fee (binary only).
%
Q: How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two. One to assure everyone that everything possible is being done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
%
Q: How many college football players does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Only one, but he gets three credits for it.
%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them.
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%
Q: How many elephants can you fit in a VW Bug?
A: Four. Two in the front, two in the back.
Q: How can you tell if an elephant is in your refrigerator?
A: There's a footprint in the mayo.
Q: How can you tell if two elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: There's two footprints in the mayo.
Q: How can you tell if three elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: The door won't shut.
Q: How can you tell if four elephants are in your refrigerator?
A: There's a VW Bug in your driveway.
%
Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the lightbulb itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
%
Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. We'll fix it in software.
Q: How many system programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. The application can work around it.
Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. We'll document it in the manual.
Q: How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: None. The user can figure it out.
%
Q: How many Harvard MBA's does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Just one. He grasps it firmly and the universe revolves around him.
%
Q: How many IBM 370's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four, three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%
Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Fifteen. One to do it, and fourteen to write document number GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility, of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A:..... consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
%
Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for reporting that Electric Company hired a lightbulb-assassin to break the bulb in the first place.
%
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One. Only it's his light bulb when he's done.
%
Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of
the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the parties.
The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be limited to, the following. The party of the first part shall, with or without elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered non-negotiable. Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes. Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part shall have the option of beginning installation. Aforesaid installation shall occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in
step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable. The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
%
Q: How many marketing people does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I'll have to get back to you on that.
%
Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One and a half.
%
Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: None: The lightbulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.
%
Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: One. He gives it to six Marxists, thereby reducing the problem to the earlier joke.
%
Q: How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Seven. Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim that he's a doctor, not an electrician). Scotty, after checking around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains that he "canna" see in the dark. Kirk will make an emergency stop at the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something. Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured. As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand, Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must warp out of orbit. Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been given all lightbulbs they can carry. The new bulb is then inserted and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
%
Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has to really want to change.
%
Q: How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
%
Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
[Surrealist jokes just aren't my cup of fur. Ed.]
%
Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out of the way.
%
Q: How much does it cost to ride the Unibus?
A: 2 bits.
%
Q: How was Thomas J. Watson buried?
A: 9 edge down.
%
Q: Know what the difference between your latest project and putting wings on an elephant is?
A: Who knows? The elephant *might* fly, heh, heh...
%
Q: Minnesotans ask, "Why aren't there more pharmacists from Alabama?"
A: Easy. It's because they can't figure out how to get the little bottles into the typewriter.
%
Q: What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill?
A: "The elephants are coming over the hill."
Q: What did he say when saw them coming over the hill wearing sunglasses?
A: Nothing, for he didn't recognize them.
%
Q: What do agnostic, insomniac dyslexics do at night?
A: Stay awake and wonder if there's a dog.
%
Q: What do monsters eat?
A: Things.
Q: What do monsters drink?
A: Coke. (Because Things go better with Coke.)
%
Q: What do they call the alphabet in Arkansas?
A: The impossible dream.
%
Q: What do Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common?
A: The same middle name.
%
Q: What do you call 15 blondes in a circle?
A: A dope ring.
Q: Why do blondes put their hair in ponytails?
A: To cover up the valve stem.
%
Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal?
A: Diyathinkhesaurus.
Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal with a dog?
A: Diyathinkhesaurus Rex.
%
Q: What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?
A: A stick.
%
Q: What do you call a half-dozen Indians with Asian flu?
A: Six sick Sikhs (sic).
%
Q: What do you call a principal female opera singer whose high C is lower than those of other principal female opera singers?
A: A deep C diva.
%
Q: What do you call the money you pay to the government when you ride into the country on the back of an elephant?
A: A howdah duty.
%
Q: What do you call the scratches that you get when a female sheep bites you?
A: Ewe nicks.
%
Q: What do you get when you cross a mobster with an international standard?
A: You get someone who makes you an offer that you can't understand!
%
Q: What do you get when you cross the Godfather with an attorney?
A: An offer you can't understand.
%
Q: What do you have when you have a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?
A: Not enough sand.
%
Q: What do you say to a New Yorker with a job?
A: Big Mac, fries and a Coke, please!
%
Q: What do you say to a Puerto Rican in a three-piece suit?
A: Will the defendant please rise?
%
Q: What does friendship among Soviet nationalities mean?
A: It means that the Armenians take the Russians by the hand; the Russians take the Ukrainians by the hand; the Ukranians take the Uzbeks by the hand; and they all go and beat up the Jews.
%
Q: What does it say on the bottom of Coke cans in North Dakota?
A: Open other end.
%
Q: What is green and lives in the ocean?
A: Moby Pickle.
%
Q: What is orange and goes "click, click?"
A: A ball point carrot.
%
Q: What is printed on the bottom of beer bottles in Minnesota?
A: Open other end.
%
Q: What is purple and commutes?
A: A boolean grape.
%
Q: What is purple and commutes?
A: An Abelian grape.
%
Q: What is purple and concord the world?
A: Alexander the Grape.
%
Q: What is the difference between a duck?
A: One leg is both the same.
%
Q: What is the difference between Texas and yogurt?
A: Yogurt has culture.
%
Q: What is the sound of one cat napping?
A: Mu.
%
Q: What lies on the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
A: A nervous wreck.
%
Q: What looks like a cat, flies like a bat, brays like a donkey, and plays like a monkey?
A: Nothing.
%
Q: What's a light-year?
A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
%
Q: What's buried in Grant's tomb?
A: A corpse.
%
Q: What's hard going in and soft and sticky coming out?
A: Chewing gum.
%
Q: What's tan and black and looks great on a lawyer?
A: A doberman.
%
Q: What's the contour integral around Western Europe?
A: Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe!
Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they are removable!
Q: An English mathematician (I forgot who) was asked by his very religious colleague: Do you believe in one God?
A: Yes, up to isomorphism!
Q: What is a compact city?
A: It's a city that can be guarded by finitely many near-sighted policemen!
-- Peter Lax
%
Q: What's the difference betweeen USL and the Graf Zeppelin?
A: The Graf Zeppelin represented cutting edge technology for its time.
%
Q: What's the difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead lawyer in the road?
A: There are skid marks in front of the dog.
%
Q: What's the difference between a duck and an elephant?
A: You can't get down off an elephant.
%
Q: What's the difference between a JAP and a baby elephant?
A: About 10 pounds.
Q: How do you make them the same?
A: Force feed the elephant.
%
Q: What's the difference between a Mac and an Etch-a-Sketch?
A: You don't have to shake the Mac to clear the screen.
%
Q: What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?
A: One less drunk.
%
Q: What's the difference between Bell Labs and the Boy Scouts of America?
A: The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
%
Q: What's the difference between the 1950's and the 1980's?
A: In the 80's, a man walks into a drugstore and states loudly, "I'd like some condoms," and then, leaning over the counter, whispers, "and some cigarettes."
%
Q: What's the difference between USL and the Titanic?
A: The Titanic had a band.
%
Q: What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
A: A canary with the super-user password.
%
Q: What's yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
A: Zorn's Lemon.
%
Q: Where's the Lone Ranger take his garbage?
A: To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump!
Q: What's the Pink Panther say when he steps on an ant hill?
A: Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant...
%
Q: Who cuts the grass on Walton's Mountain?
A: Lawn Boy.
%
Q: Why did Menachem Begin invade Lebanon?
A: To impress Jodie Foster.
%
Q: Why did the astrophysicist order three hamburgers?
A: Because he was hungry.
%
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: He was giving it last rites.
%
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To see his friend Gregory peck.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
A: To get to the other slide.
%
Q: Why did the germ cross the microscope?
A: To get to the other slide.
%
Q: Why did the lone ranger kill Tonto?
A: He found out what "kimosabe" really means.
%
Q: Why did the programmer call his mother long distance?
A: Because that was her name.
%
Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
A: Because it was on the other side.
%
Q: Why do ducks have big flat feet?
A: To stamp out forest fires.
Q: Why do elephants have big flat feet?
A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
%
Q: Why do firemen wear red suspenders?
A: To conform with departmental regulations concerning uniform dress.
%
Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
%
Q: Why do people who live near Niagara Falls have flat foreheads?
A: Because every morning they wake up thinking "What *is* that noise? Oh, right, *of course*!
%
Q: Why do the police always travel in threes?
A: One to do the reading, one to do the writing, and the other keeps an eye on the two intellectuals.
%
Q: Why does Washington have the most lawyers per capita and New Jersey the most toxic waste dumps?
A: God gave New Jersey first choice.
%
Q: Why don't lawyers go to the beach?
A: The cats keep trying to bury them.
%
Q: Why don't Scotsmen ever have coffee the way they like it?
A: Well, they like it with two lumps of sugar. If they drink it at home, they only take one, and if they drink it while visiting, they always take three.
%
Q: Why haven't you graduated yet?
A: Well, Dad, I could have finished years ago, but I wanted my dissertation to rhyme.
%
Q: Why is Christmas just like a day at the office?
A: You do all of the work and the fat guy in the suit gets all the credit.
%
Q: Why is it that Mexico isn't sending anyone to the '84 summer games?
A: Anyone in Mexico who can run, swim or jump is already in LA.
%
Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?
A: That's the Law of Spline Demand.
%
Q: Why is Poland just like the United States?
A: In the United States you can't buy anything for zlotys and in Poland you can't either, while in the U.S. you can get whatever you want for dollars, just as you can in Poland.
-- being told in Poland, 1987
%
Q: Why should you always serve a Southern Carolina football man soup in a plate?
A: 'Cause if you give him a bowl, he'll throw it away.
%
Q: Why was Stonehenge abandoned?
A: It wasn't IBM compatible.
%
data/etc/fortunes/Songs & Poems
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A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree. Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific game. The player should estimate the distance the ball would have traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there, preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A [golf] ball sliced or hooked into the rough shall be lifted and placed in the fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the rough. Such veering right or left frequently results from friction between the face of the club and the cover of the ball and the player should not be penalized for the erratic behavior of the ball resulting from such uncontrollable physical phenomena.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
A boy scout troop went on a hike. Crossing over a stream, one of the boys dropped his wallet into the water. Suddenly a carp jumped, grabbed the wallet and tossed it to another carp. Then that carp passed it to another carp, and all over the river carp appeared and tossed the wallet back and forth.
"Well, boys," said the Scout leader, "you've just seen a rare case of carp-to-carp walleting."
%
A gambler's biggest thrill is winning a bet. His next biggest thrill is losing a bet.
%
A new 'chutist had just jumped from the plane at 10,000 feet, and soon discovered that all his lines were hopelessly tangled. At about 5,000 feet, still struggling, he noticed someone coming up from the ground at about the same speed as he was going towards the ground. As they passed each other at 3,000 feet, the 'chutist yells, "HEY! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PARACHUTES?"
The reply came, fading towards the end, "NO! DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT COLEMAN STOVES?"
%
A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore.
-- Yogi Berra
%
A putt that stops close enough to the cup to inspire such comments as "you could blow it in" may be blown in. This rule does not apply if the ball is more than three inches from the hole, because no one wants to make a travesty of the game.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
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
%
"Ain't that something what happened today. One of us got traded to Kansas City."
-- Casey Stengel, informing outfielder Bob Cerv he'd
been traded.
%
All bridge hands are equally likely, but some are more equally likely than others.
-- Alan Truscott
%
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-- Dave Barry
%
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's "Practical Gamekeeping."
-- Ed Zern, "Field and Stream" (Nov. 1959)
%
Anxious after the delay, Gruber doesn't waste any time getting the Koenig [a modified Porsche] up to speed, and almost immediately we are blowing off Alfas, Fiats, and Lancias full of excited Italians. These people love fast cars. But they love sport too and no passing encounter goes unchallenged. Nothing serious, just two wheels into your lane as you're bearing down on them at 130-plus -- to see if you're paying attention.
-- Road & Track article about driving two absurdly fast scars across Europe.
%
[Babe] Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching.
-- Tris Speaker, 1921
%
Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.
-- Yogi Berra in his rookie season.
%
Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is my choice for team captain. Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led off the bottom of the eighth with a walk. The next hitter banged a hard single to right field. Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and kept going, sliding safely into third base.
With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first. Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy took off for second and made it. Now we had runners at second and third.
I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy start to take a lead. All of a sudden, here he comes. He makes a great slide into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?" He looks up, and shouts, "Back to second if I can make it."
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
%
Check me if I'm wrong, Sandy, but if I kill all the golfers... they're gonna lock me up and throw away the key!
%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
%
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
%
Dallas Cowboys Official Schedule
Sept 14 Pasadena Junior High
Sept 21 Boy Scout Troop 049
Sept 28 Blind Academy
Sept 30 World War I Veterans
Oct 5 Brownie Scout Troop 041
Oct 12 Sugarcreek High Cheerleaders
Oct 26 St. Thomas Boys Choir
Nov 2 Texas City Vet Clinic
Nov 9 Korean War Amputees
Nov 15 VA Hospital Polio Patients
%
Decisions of the judges will be final unless shouted down by a really overwhelming majority of the crowd present. Abusive and obscene language may not be used by contestants when addressing members of the judging panel, or, conversely, by members of the judging panel when addressing contestants (unless struck by a boomerang).
-- Mudgeeraba Creek Emu-Riding and Boomerang-Throwing Assoc.
%
Don't let go of what you've got hold of, until you have hold of something else.
-- First Rule of Wing Walking
%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black.
Simply remove all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of the cube will now be the original color of the plastic underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this means the puzzle is solved.
-- Steve Rubenstein
%
Ever feel like life was a game and you had the wrong instruction book?
%
Ever feel like you're the head pin on life's bowling alley, and everyone's rolling strikes?
%
Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt.
-- Snoopy
%
Failed Attempts To Break Records
In September 1978 Mr. Terry Gripton, of Stafford, failed to break the world shouting record by two and a half decibels. "I am not surprised he failed," his wife said afterwards. "He's really a very quiet man and doesn't even shout at me."
In August of the same year Mr. Paul Anthony failed to break the record for continuous organ playing by 387 hours. His attempt at the Golden Fish Fry Restaurant in Manchester ended after 36 hours 10 minutes, when he was accused of disturbing the peace. "People complained I was too noisy," he said.
In January 1976 Mr. Barry McQueen failed to walk backwards across the Menai Bridge playing the bagpipes. "It was raining heavily and my drone got waterlogged," he said.
A TV cameraman thwarted Mr. Bob Specas' attempt to topple 100,000 dominoes at the Manhattan Center, New York on 9 June 1978. 97,500 dominoes had been set up when he dropped his press badge and set them off.
-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
%
Flying is the second greatest feeling you can have. The greatest feeling? Landing... Landing is the greatest feeling you can have.
%
Football builds self-discipline. What else would induce a spectator to sit out in the open in subfreezing weather?
%
Football combines the two worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
-- George F. Will, "Men At Work: The Craft of Baseball"
%
Football is a game designed to keep coalminers off the streets.
-- Jimmy Breslin
%
Fortune finishes the great quotations, #15
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." And while you're at it, throw in a couple of those Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.
%
FORTUNE'S FUN FACTS TO KNOW AND TELL: #14
The Baby Ruth candy bar was not named after George Herman "The Babe" Ruth, but after the oldest daughter of President Grover Cleveland.
%
From 0 to "what seems to be the problem officer" in 8.3 seconds.
-- Ad for the new VW Corrado
%
George's friend Sam had a dog who could recite the Gettysburg Address. "Let me buy him from you," pleaded George after a demonstration.
"Okay," agreed Sam. "All he knows is that Lincoln speech anyway."
At his company's Fourth of July picnic, George brought his new pet and announced that the animal could recite the entire Gettysburg Address. No one believed him, and they proceeded to place bets against the dog. George quieted the crowd and said, "Now we'll begin!" Then he looked at the dog. The dog looked back. No sound. "Come on, boy, do your stuff." Nothing. A disappointed George took his dog and went home.
"Why did you embarrass me like that in front of everybody?" George yelled at the dog. "Do you realize how much money you lost me?"
"Don't be silly, George," replied the dog. "Think of the odds we're gonna get on Labor Day."
%
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll invite himself over for dinner.
-- Calvin Keegan
%
Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
%
Harry is heavily into camping, and every year in the late fall, he makes us all go to Assateague, which is an island on the Atlantic Ocean famous for its wild horses. I realize that the concept of wild horses probably stirs romantic notions in many of you, but this is because you have never met any wild horses in person. In person, they are like enormous hooved rats. They amble up to your camp site, and their attitude is: "We're wild horses. We're going to eat your food, knock down your tent and poop on your shoes. We're protected by federal law, just like Richard Nixon."
-- Dave Barry, "Tenting Grandpa Bob"
%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
-- W. C. Fields
%
How can you think and hit at the same time?
-- Yogi Berra
%
I always turn to the sports pages first, which record people's accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man's failures.
-- Chief Justice Earl Warren
%
I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed.
-- Frank Deford, sports writer
%
I can't decide whether to commit suicide or go bowling.
-- Florence Henderson
%
I do not care if half the league strikes. Those who do will encounter quick retribution. All will be suspended, and I don't care if it wrecks the National League for five years. This is the United States of America and one citizen has as much right to play as another.
-- Ford Frick, National League President, reacting to a threatened strike by some Cardinal players in 1947 if Jackie Robinson took the field against St. Louis. The Cardinals backed down and played.
%
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 guess the Little League is even littler than we thought.
-- D. Cavett
%
I just know I'm a better manager when I have Joe DiMaggio in center field.
-- Casey Stengel
%
I like your game but we have to change the rules.
%
I never met a man I didn't want to fight.
-- Lyle Alzado, professional football lineman
%
I realize that today you have a number of top female athletes such as Martina Navratilova who can run like deer and bench-press Chevrolet trucks. But to be brutally frank, women as a group have a long way to go before they reach the level of intensity and dedication to sports that enables men to be such incredible jerks about it.
-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
%
I went to the race track once and bet on a horse that was so good that it took seven others to beat him!
%
I would be batting the big feller if they wasn't ready with the other one, but a left-hander would be the thing if they wouldn't have knowed it already because there is more things involved than could come up on the road, even after we've been home a long while.
-- Casey Stengel
%
I would rather say that a desire to drive fast sports cars is what sets man apart from the animals.
%
I'd rather push my Harley than ride a rice burner.
%
I'm a lucky guy, and I'm happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.
-- Yogi Berra at a dinner in his honor
%
I'm glad we don't have to play in the shade.
-- Golfer Bobby Jones on being told that it was 105 degrees in the shade.
%
I've only got 12 cards.
%
If a putt passes over the hole without dropping, it is deemed to have dropped. The law of gravity holds that any object attempting to maintain a position in the atmosphere without something to support it must drop. The law of
gravity supercedes the law of golf.
-- Donald A. Metz
%
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 people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
-- Doug Larson
%
If swimming is so good for your figure, how come whales look the way they do?
%
If you do your best the rest of the way, that takes care of everything. When we get to October 2, we'll add up the wins, and then we'll either all go into the playoffs, or we'll all go home and play golf. Both those things sound pretty good to me.
-- Sparky Anderson
%
If you don't know what game you're playing, don't ask what the score is.
%
If you sit down at a poker game and don't see a sucker, get up. You're the sucker.
%
If you want to see card tricks, you have to expect to take cards.
-- Harry Blackstone
%
If you're carrying a torch, put it down. The Olympics are over.
%
In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
%
In Brooklyn, we had such great pennant races, it made the World Series just something that came later.
-- Walter O'Malley, Dodgers owner
%
It gets late early out there.
-- Yogi Berra
%
It has long been known that one horse can run faster than another -- but which one? Differences are crucial.
-- Lazarus Long
%
It's like deja vu all over again.
-- Yogi Berra
%
It's not whether you win or lose but how you played the game.
-- Grantland Rice
%
It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you look playing the game.
%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%
Keep in mind always the four constant Laws of Frisbee:
(1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this force is technically termed "car suck").
(2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"
(3) The probability of a Frisbee hitting something is directly proportional to the cost of hitting it. For instance, a Frisbee will always head directly towards a policeman or a little old lady rather than the beat up Chevy.
(4) Your best throw happens when no one is watching; when the cute girl you've been trying to impress is watching, the Frisbee will invariably bounce out of your hand or hit you in the head and knock you silly.
%
Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.
-- Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead"
%
Life is a game of bridge -- and you've just been finessed.
%
Life is a game. In order to have a game, something has to be more important than something else. If what already is, is more important than what isn't, the game is over. So, life is a game in which what isn't, is more important than what is. Let the good times roll.
-- Werner Erhard
%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%
Look, we play the Star Spangled Banner before every game. You want us to pay income taxes, too?
-- Bill Veeck, Chicago White Sox
%
Love means nothing to a tennis player.
%
Mankind's yearning to engage in sports is older than recorded history, dating back to the time millions of years ago, when the first primitive man picked up a crude club and a round rock, tossed the rock into the air, and whomped the club into the sloping forehead of the first primitive umpire.
What inner force drove this first athlete? Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably, because you haven't had four beers.
-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
%
MARTA SAYS THE INTERESTING thing about fly-fishing is that it's two lives connected by a thin strand.
Come on, Marta, grow up.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
%
MARTA WAS WATCHING THE FOOTBALL GAME with me when she said, "You know most of these sports are based on the idea of one group protecting its territory from invasion by another group."
"Yeah," I said, trying not to laugh. Girls are funny.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
%
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.]
%
Most people's favorite way to end a game is by winning.
%
My first baseman is George "Catfish" Metkovich from our 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates team, which lost 112 games. After a terrible series against the New York Giants, in which our center fielder made three throwing errors and let two balls get through his legs, manager Billy Meyer pleaded, "Can somebody think of something to help us win a game?"
"I'd like to make a suggestion," Metkovich said. "On any ball hit to center field, let's just let it roll to see if it might go foul."
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
%
My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.
-- Muhammad Ali
%
Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
-- '76 Olympics
%
Never play pool with anyone named "Fats".
%
NEWS FLASH!!
Today the East German pole-vault champion became the West German pole-vault champion.
%
Nothing increases your golf score like witnesses.
%
Now there's three things you can do in a baseball game: you can win or you can lose or it can rain.
-- Casey Stengel
%
"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"
%
On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment -- halftime.
%
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.
%
One thought driven home is better than three left on base.
%
One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.
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Our [softball] team usually puts the other woman at second base, where the maximum possible number of males can get there on short notice to help out in case of emergency. As far as I can tell, our second basewoman is a pretty good baseball player, better than I am, anyway, but there's no way to know for sure because if the ball gets anywhere near her, a male comes barging over from, say, right field, to deal with it. She's been on the team for three seasons now, but the males still don't trust her. They know, deep in their souls, that if she had to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she probably would elect to save the infant's life, without ever considering whether there were men on base.
-- Dave Barry, "Sports is a Drag"
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P-K4
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Pedro Guerrero was playing third base for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1984 when he made the comment that earns him a place in my Hall of Fame. Second baseman Steve Sax was having trouble making his throws. Other players were diving, screaming, signaling for a fair catch. At the same time, Guerrero, at third, was making a few plays that weren't exactly soothing to manager Tom Lasorda's stomach. Lasorda decided it was time for one of his famous motivational meetings and zeroed in on Guerrero: "How can you play third base like that? You've gotta be thinking about something besides baseball. What is it?"
"I'm only thinking about two things," Guerrero said. "First, `I hope they don't hit the ball to me.'" The players snickered, and even Lasorda had to fight off a laugh. "Second, `I hope they don't hit the ball to Sax.'"
-- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game"
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Repel them. Repel them. Induce them to relinquish the spheroid.
-- Indiana University football cheer
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Reporter: "What would you do if you found a million dollars?"
Yogi Berra: "If the guy was poor, I would give it back."
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Rick: "How can you close me up? On what grounds?"
Renault: "I'm shocked! Shocked! To find that gambling is going on here."
Croupier (handing money to Renault): "Your winnings, sir."
Renault:"Oh. Thank you very much."
-- Casablanca
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Rube Walker: "Hey, Yogi, what time is it?"
Yogi Berra: "You mean now?"
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Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching. Working once a week, he might have lasted a long time and become a great star.
-- Tris Speaker, commenting on Babe Ruth's plan to change from being a pitcher to an outfielder.
Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
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Sailing is fun, but scrubbing the decks is aardvark.
-- Heard on Noahs' ark
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San Francisco has always been my favorite booing city. I don't mean the people boo louder or longer, but there is a very special intimacy. When they boo you, you know they mean *you*. Music, that's what it is to me. One time in Kezar Stadium they gave me a standing boo.
-- George Halas, professional football coach
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Several years ago, an international chess tournament was being held in a swank hotel in New York. Most of the major stars of the chess world were there, and after a grueling day of chess, the players and their entourages retired to the lobby of the hotel for a little refreshment. In the lobby, some players got into a heated argument about who was the brightest, the fastest, and the best chess player in the world. The argument got quite loud, as various players claimed that honor. At that point, a security guard in the lobby turned to another guard and commented, "If there's anything I just can't stand, it's chess nuts boasting in an open foyer."
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Show me a good loser in professional sports and I'll show you an idiot. Show me a good sportsman and I'll show you a player I'm looking to trade.
-- Leo Durocher
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So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.
-- Yogi Berra
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Son, someday a man is going to walk up to you with a deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. And he is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Ace of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ears. But son, do not bet this man, for you will end up with a ear full of cider.
-- Sky Masterson's Father
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Support Bingo, keep Grandma off the streets.
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Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
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Ten of the meanest cons in the state pen met in the corner of the yard to shoot some craps. The stakes were enormous, the tension palpable.
When his turn came to shoot, Dutsky nervously plunked down his entire wad, shook the dice and rolled. A smile crossed his face as a seven showed up, but it quickly changed to horror as third die slipped out of his sleeve and fell to the ground with the two others. No one said a word. Finally, Killer Lucci picked up the third die, put it in his pocket and handed the others to Dutsky.
"Roll 'em," Lucci said. "Your point is thirteen."
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Texas A&M football coach Jackie Sherrill went to the office of the Dean of Academics because he was concerned about his players' mental abilities. "My players are just too stupid for me to deal with them", he told the unbelieving dean. At this point, one of his players happened to enter the dean's office. "Let me show you what I mean", said Sherrill, and he told the player to run over to his office to see if he was in. "OK, Coach", the player replied, and was off. "See what I mean?" Sherrill asked. "Yeah", replied the dean. "He could have just picked up this phone and called you from here."
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That's the true harbinger of spring, not crocuses or swallows returning to Capistrano, but the sound of a bat on a ball.
-- Bill Veeck
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The duck hunter trained his retriever to walk on water. Eager to show off this amazing accomplishment, he asked a friend to go along on his next hunting trip. Saying nothing, he fired his first shot and, as the duck fell, the dog walked on the surface of the water, retrieved the duck and returned it to his master.
"Notice anything?" the owner asked eagerly.
"Yes," said his friend, "I see that fool dog of yours can't swim."
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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"
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The fellow sat down at a bar, ordered a drink and asked the bartender if he wanted to hear a dumb-jock joke.
"Hey, buddy," the bartender replied, "you see those two guys next to you? They used to be with the Chicago Bears. The two dudes behind you made the U.S. Olympic wrestling team. And for you information, I used to play
center at Notre Dame."
"Forget it," the customer said. "I don't want to explain it five times."
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The most serious doubt that has been thrown on the authenticity of the biblical miracles is the fact that most of the witnesses in regard to them were fishermen.
-- Arthur Binstead
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THE OLD POOL SHOOTER had won many a game in his life. But now it was time to hang up the cue. When he did, all the other cues came crashing go the floor.
"Sorry," he said with a smile.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
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The one sure way to make a lazy man look respectable is to put a fishing rod in his hand.
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The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball... You've got to start way down, at the bottom, when you're six or seven years old. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen. You've got to let it grow up with you, and if you're successful and you try hard enough, you're bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now.
-- Babe Ruth, in his 1948 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium
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The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it.
-- Dizzy Dean
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The real problem with hunting elephants is carrying the decoys.
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The surest way to remain a winner is to win once, and then not play any more.
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The University of California Bears announced the signing of Reggie Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall. Philbin is said to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says Philbin of his decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free ride."
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The urge to gamble is so universal and its practice so pleasurable that I assume it must be evil.
-- Heywood Broun
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The whole of life is futile unless you consider it as a sporting proposition.
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There's a couple of million dollars worth of baseball talent on the loose, ready for the big leagues, yet unsigned by any major league. There are pitchers who would win 20 games a season ... and outfielders [who] could hit .350, infielders who could win recognition as stars, and there's at least one catcher who at this writing is probably superior to Bill Dickey, Josh Gibson. Only one thing is keeping them out of the big leagues, the pigmentation of their skin. They happen to be colored.
-- Shirley Povich, 1941
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They also surf who only stand on waves.
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To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit, call it the target.
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Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
-- Finlay Peter Dunne, "Mr. Dooley's Philosophy"
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Two brothers, Mort and Bill, like to sail. While Bill has a great deal of experience, he certainly isn't the rigger Mort is.
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Two golfers were being held up as the twosome of women in front of them whiffed shots, hunted for lost balls and stood over putts for what seemed like hours.
"I'll ask if we can play through," Bill said as he strode toward the women. Twenty yards from the green, however, he turned on his heel and went back to where his companion was waiting.
"Can't do it," he explained, sheepishly. "One of them's my wife and the other's my mistress!"
"I'll ask," said Jim. He started off, only to turn and come back before reaching the green.
"What's wrong?" Bill asked.
"Small world, isn't it?"
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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
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When he got in trouble in the ring, [Ali] imagined a door swung open and inside he could see neon, orange, and green lights blinking, and bats blowing trumpets and alligators blowing trombones, and he could hear snakes screaming. Weird masks and actors' clothes hung on the wall, and if he stepped across the sill and reached for them, he knew that he was committing himself to destruction.
-- George Plimpton
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When I'm gone, boxing will be nothing again. The fans with the cigars and the hats turned down'll be there, but no more housewives and little men in the street and foreign presidents. It's goin' to be back to the fighter who comes to town, smells a flower, visits a hospital, blows a horn and says he's in shape. Old hat. I was the onliest boxer in history people asked questions like a senator.
-- Muhammad Ali
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When in doubt, lead trump.
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Winning isn't everything, but losing isn't anything.
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Winning isn't everything. It's the only thing.
-- Vince Lombardi
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Woman: "Is Yoo-Hoo hyphenated?"
Yogi Berra: "No, ma'am, its not even carbonated."
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