---------------------------------------------------------------------- donhenry@rentgrow4.ultranet.com (Asmith) Sun, 16 Jul 1995 21:55:46 GMT ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This weekend, a couple of weeks after uninstalling O/S2 Warp, which never ran properly on my machine thanks to IRQ's and poor IBM tech support, I discovered that some OS/2 files remained on my hard drive, specifically a OS/2 Multimedia file directory. I delited it. As I always do after I delete a file or directory, I ran DEFRAG, SCANDISK, and MSAV- WIN. When I ran Antivirus in the Windows environment, my system froze up after ancountering a file called COM2. Upon closer exploration, I discovered that two files, without extentions, COM2 and COM3, were placed in my c:\ root directory on the same date and time as my uninstall of OS/2. Today I called IBM in vain for answers. After explaining to their rather unknowledgable support person that I tried to delete these files trying the DEL, DELTREE, and changing the file attributes by using the ATTRIB commands, all without success, she suggested that I contact Microsoft, as she was unfamiliar with these files. However, it did seem as though files unique to OS/2, specifically TEDIT.HLP, CDFS.IFS, and TEDIT.HLP were also placed in the c:\ root directory by OS/2. I was able to successfully remove these files. I called Microsoft, and their technician was also unfamiliar with these file names., and he said that most likely the COM2 & COM 3 files causing this problem were somehow related to the uninstall of OS/2, as he had no idea what they were. Again, these seemingly useless files are somehow freezing my system when I run MSAV for Windows. I can run MSAV in DOS with no problems. When I try to view the attributes of these files within File Manager, my system again freezes. After all the nightmares I went through with OS/ 2 (now off my system for good). and anticipating Windows '95, any suggestions you could put on Usenet in response to this post would be appreciated. - Thanks, Art -------------------------------------------------------------- redmond+@cs.cmu.edu (Redmond English) 17 Jul 1995 12:43:09 GMT -------------------------------------------------------------- <...stuff about files COM 2 and COM3 being undeletable snipped...> Hello, I don't know if this will work on these specific files, but I find the easiest way to remove files with bogus names is to use the '?' wildcard where ever an oddity occurs. eg. to remove 'xyz 123. qq' I would type 'del xyz?123.?qq' Perhaps 'del CO???' might do the trick? In a pinch, I use the norton sector editor to hack the names to something more acceptable to DOS. This has never failed for me so far. Red/. ----------------------------------- !07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH (1) Alexander the Great was a great general. (2) Great generals are forewarned. (3) Forewarned is forearmed. (4) Four is an even number. (5) Four is certainly an odd number of arms for a man to have. (6) The only number that is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, Alexander the Great had an infinite number of arms. (1) Everything depends. (2) Nothing is always. (3) Everything is sometimes. $100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000, at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" 101 USES FOR A DEAD MICROPROCESSOR (1) Scarecrow for centipedes (2) Dead cat brush (3) Hair barrettes (4) Cleats (5) Self-piercing earrings (6) Fungus trellis (7) False eyelashes (8) Prosthetic dog claws . . . (99) Window garden harrow (pulled behind Tonka tractors) (100) Killer velcro 101. Currency 186,282 miles per second: It isn't just a good idea, it's the law! $3,000,000 355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation! 43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped 77. HO HUM -- The Redundant ------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme --- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife ------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are working ---O--- (6) on an accounting system, when you want to develop ---X--- (9) the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up hot dates --- --- (8) to nurse sick computers. What you need now is sex. Nine in the second place means: The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune. Six in the third place means: In former times men built altars to honor the Internal Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble! 99 blocks of crud on the disk, 99 blocks of crud! You patch a bug, and dump it again: 100 blocks of crud on the disk! 100 blocks of crud on the disk, 100 blocks of crud! You patch a bug, and dump it again: 101 blocks of crud on the disk! ... A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and no responsibility at the other. A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some woman out of a divorce. -- Don Quinn A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain. -- Mark Twain A billion here, a couple of billion there -- first thing you know it adds up to be real money. -- Everett McKinley Dirksen A bird in the bush usually has a friend in there with him. A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring. A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours. A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as well as afterward. A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes from the poor to protect them from each other. A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness. A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie. A city is a large community where people are lonesome together -- Herbert Prochnow A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain A closed mouth gathers no foot. A computer, to print out a fact, Will divide, multiply, and subtract. But this output can be No more than debris, If the input was short of exact. -- Gigo A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking. A CONS is an object which cares. -- Bernie Greenberg. A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats. -- Ben Franklin A crusader's wife slipped from the garrison And had an affair with a Saracen. She was not oversexed, Or jealous or vexed, She just wanted to make a comparison. A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it? A day without sunshine is like night. A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout in a fur coat. A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip. A disciple of another sect once came to Drescher as he was eating his morning meal. "I would like to give you this personality test", said the outsider, "because I want you to be happy." Drescher took the paper that was offered him and put it into the toaster -- "I wish the toaster to be happy too". A diva who specializes in risqu'e arias is an off-coloratura soprano ... A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The medical profession is clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat." The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void, and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God must have been an architect." The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this said, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?" A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of. -- Ogden Nash A dozen, a gross, and a score, Plus three times the square root of four, Divided by seven, Plus five time eleven, Equals nine squared plus zero, no more. A famous Lisp Hacker noticed an Undergraduate sitting in front of a Xerox 1108, trying to edit a complex Klone network via a browser. Wanting to help, the Hacker clicked one of the nodes in the network with the mouse, and asked "what do you see?" Very earnestly, the Undergraduate replied "I see a cursor." The Hacker then quickly pressed the boot toggle at the back of the keyboard, while simultaneously hitting the Undergraduate over the head with a thick Interlisp Manual. The Undergraduate was then Enlightened. A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -- Winston Churchill A fool must now and then be right by chance. A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education. -- G. B. Shaw A fool-proof method for sculpting an elephant: first, get a huge block of marble; then you chip away everything that doesn't look like an elephant. A formal parsing algorithm should not always be used. -- D. Gries A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet (sort of). A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James A lack of leadership is no substitute for inaction. A lady with one of her ears applied To an open keyhole heard, inside, Two female gossips in converse free -- The subject engaging them was she. "I think", said one, "and my husband thinks That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!" As soon as no more of it she could hear The lady, indignant, removed her ear. "I will not stay," she said with a pout, "To hear my character lied about!" -- Gopete Sherany A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing. A language that doesn't have everything is actually easier to program in than some that do. -- Dennis M. Ritchie A large number of installed systems work by fiat. That is, they work by being declared to work. -- Anatol Holt A Law of Computer Programming: Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you will find the programmers cannot write in English. A limerick packs laughs anatomical Into space that is quite economical. But the good ones I've seen So seldom are clean, And the clean ones so seldom are comical. A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing. A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon. Buy the negatives at any price. A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks. -- Lew Col A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit. The first thing he notices is that the arms are too long. "No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine." "But the collar is up around my ears!" "It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little ... no, a little more ... that's it." "But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in desperation. "Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There you go. Look in the mirror -- the suit fits perfectly." So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the street. Reba and Florence see him go by. "Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!" "Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit." -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" A man said to the Universe: "Sir, I exist!" "However," replied the Universe, "the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." -- Stephen Crane A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. A mathematician is a machine for converting coffee into theorems. A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy for the pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well, it's quite nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be better if ..." "If what?" asked the composer. "If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the elegy?" A new dramatist of the absurd Has a voice that will shortly be heard. I learn from my spies He's about to devise An unprintable three-letter word. A new koan: If you have some ice cream, I will give it to you. If you have no ice cream, I will take it away from you. It is an ice cream koan. A new supply of round tuits has arrived and are available from Mary. Anyone who has been putting off work until they got a "round tuit" now has no excuse for further procrastination. A nuclear war can ruin your whole day. A penny saved is ridiculous. A person is just about as big as the things that make them angry. A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms. -- George Wald A pig is a jolly companion, Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt -- A pig is a pal, who'll boost your morale, Though mountains may topple and tilt. When they've blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you, When they've turned on you, Tory and Whig, Though you may be thrown over by Tabby and Rover, You'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig, You'll never go wrong with a pig! -- Thomas Pynchon, "Gravity's Rainbow" A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld. A priest asked: What is Fate, Master? And he answered: It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for existence. It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their backs. It is that which has caused nations to build byways from City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and Weariness. And that is Fate? said the priest. Fate ... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master. That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what Freight was too. -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" A priest was walking along the cliffs at Dover when he came upon two locals pulling another man ashore on the end of a rope. "That's what I like to see", said the priest, "A man helping his fellow man". As he was walking away, one local remarked to the other, "Well, he sure doesn't know the first thing about shark fishing." A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. "A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on the basis of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching, an infinite series of incomprehensive answers calculated with micrometric precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable figures taken from inconclusive documents and carried out on instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of dubious reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department that was unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the first place." -- IEEE Grid newsmagazine A psychiatrist is a person who will give you expensive answers that your wife will give you for free. A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works. A real person has two reasons for doing anything ... a good reason and the real reason. A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult off-screen objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye strain in computer scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon cite the added concentration needed to "make sense" of such unnatural three dimensional objects ... A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery A Severe Strain on the Credulity As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one begins to doubt ... for after the rocket quits our air and really starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left. Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react ... Of course he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. -- New York Times Editorial, 1920 A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the blackboard -- Prof. Steiner A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. -- Mark Twain A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows. -- O'Henry A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam. A successful tool is one that was used to do something undreamed of by its author. -- S. C. Johnson A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the fuse by blowing first. A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn. A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. -- John Ciardi A UNIX saleslady, Lenore, Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more. She found a good way To combine work and play: She sells C shells by the seashore. A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. -- Tenessee Williams A very intelligent turtle Found programming UNIX a hurdle The system, you see, Ran as slow as did he, And that's not saying much for the turtle. A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous. "A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God. A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!! You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room! Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy. About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends. -- Herbert Hoover Absence makes the heart go wander. Absent, adj.: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances; defamed; slandered. Absentee, n.: A person with an income who has had the forethought to remove himself from the sphere of exaction. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Abstainer, n.: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Absurdity, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Accident, n.: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but absence of body is better. 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" According to my best recollection, I don't remember. -- Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless. Accordion, n.: A bagpipe with pleats. Accuracy, n.: The vice of being right Acid -- better living through chemistry. Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality. Acquaintance, n.: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" "Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing." Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the last act, I had everyone glued in their seats!" Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think of it!" 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" ADA, n.: Something you need only know the name of to be an Expert in Computing. Useful in sentences like, "We had better develop an ADA awareness." Admiration, n.: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Adolescence, n.: The stage between puberty and adultery. "Adopted kids are such a pain -- you have to teach them how to look like you ..." --- Gilda Radner Adore, v.: To venerate expectantly. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Adult, n.: One old enough to know better. After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi. -- P. J. O'Rourke After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be found on the bench. 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" After I run your program, let's make love like crazed weasels, OK? After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover has been removed. Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change. Afternoon, n.: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we wasted the morning. Air is water with holes in it Alas, I am dying beyond my means. -- Oscar Wilde, as he sipped champagne on his deathbed Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, Aleph-null bottles of beer, You take one down, and pass it around, Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall. Alex Haley was adopted! Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still waiting for a dial tone. Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it. -- Peggy Joyce "All flesh is grass" -- Isiah Smoke a friend today. All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy. All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy. All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own importance. "All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that keeps us sane." All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. -- Samuel Butler All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -- E. Rutherford All the big corporations depreciate their possessions, and you can, too, provided you use them for business purposes. For example, if you subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, a business-related newspaper, you can deduct the cost of your house, because, in the words of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger in a landmark 1979 tax decision: "Where else are you going to read the paper? Outside? What if it rains?" -- Dave Barry, "Sweating Out Taxes" "... all the modern inconveniences ..." -- Mark Twain All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed. -- Sean O'Casey All the world's a VAX, And all the coders merely butchers; They have their exits and their entrails; And one int in his time plays many widths, His sizeof being N bytes. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the Regent's arms. And then the whining schoolboy, with his Sun, And shining morning face, creeping like slug Unwillingly to school. -- A Very Annoyed PDP-11 All things are possible except skiing thru a revolving door. All true wisdom is found on T-shirts. All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around you. Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents, insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defense -- and you'll realize they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They all dress funny -- and they all succeed. Are you catching on? -- Dave Barry, "How to Dress for Real Success" Alliance, n.: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Alone, adj.: In bad company. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Although we modern persons tend to take our electric lights, radios, mixers, etc., for granted, hundreds of years ago people did not have any of these things, which is just as well because there was no place to plug them in. Then along came the first Electrical Pioneer, Benjamin Franklin, who flew a kite in a lighting storm and received a serious electrical shock. This proved that lighting was powered by the same force as carpets, but it also damaged Franklin's brain so severely that he started speaking only in incomprehensible maxims, such as "A penny saved is a penny earned." Eventually he had to be given a job running the post office. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be paid back. 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. Ambidextrous, adj.: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket or a left. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. -- Charlie McCarthy America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from barbarism to decadence without touching civilization. -- John O'Hara America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him, until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and changed its name to "America". -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" Amnesia used to be my favorite word, but then I forgot it. An American's a person who isn't afraid to criticize the President but is always polite to traffic cops. An effective way to deal with predators is to taste terrible. An elephant is a mouse with an operating system. An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose. -- A. P. Herbert An excellence-oriented '80s male does not wear a regular watch He wears a Rolex watch, because it weighs nearly six pounds and is advertised only in excellence-oriented publications such as Fortune and Rich Protestant Golfer Magazine. The advertisements are written in incomplete sentences, which is how advertising copywriters denote excellence: "The Rolex Hyperion. An elegant new standard in quality excellence and discriminating handcraftsmanship. For the individual who is truly able to discriminate with regard to excellent quality standards of crafting things by hand. Fabricated of 100 percent 24-karat gold. No watch parts or anything. Just a great big chunk on your wrist. Truly a timeless statement. For the individual who is very secure. Who doesn't need to be reminded all the time that he is very successful. Much more successful than the people who laughed at him in high school. Because of his acne. People who are probably nowhere near as successful as he is now. Maybe he'll go to his 20th reunion, and they'll see his Rolex Hyperion. Hahahahahahahahaha." -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" "... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar." -- Mark Twain An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it. An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him. "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a minute seems like an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful woman on your lap, an hour seems like a minute." The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?" -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better than no government at all. ... And malt does more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man -- A. E. Housman And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode. And this is a table ma'am. What in essence it consists of is a horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical columnar supports, which we call legs. The tables in this laboratory, ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the world. -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men" "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?" asked the father of his little son. "Diet." Angels we have heard on High Tell us to go out and Buy. -- Tom Leher Ankh if you love Isis. Anoint, v.: To grease a king or other great functionary already sufficiently slippery. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Another Glitch in the Call ------- ------ -- --- ---- (Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.) We don't need no indirection We don't need no flow control No data typing or declarations Did you leave the lists alone? Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone! Chorus: All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call. All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call. Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree. 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). Anthony's Law of Force: Don't force it; get a larger hammer. Anthony's Law of the Workshop: Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible corner of the workshop. Corollary: On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike your toes. Antonym, n.: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of. Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. -- Charles McCabe Any excuse will serve a tyrant. -- Aesop Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to sell it. ... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer, my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental. Any resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic. The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold them is left as an exercise for the reader. The question of the existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god coefficient. (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism is beyond the scope of this article.) Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger object. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Any woman is a volume if one knows how to read her. Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry. Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is probably parked. Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire. Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. -- Publilius Syrus Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house. -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. -- Samuel Goldwyn Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad. -- W. C. Fields Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Anything free is worth what you pay for it. Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate. Anything is good if it's made of chocolate. Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means the price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW" means the price went way up. Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked something. Aquadextrous, adj.: Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18) You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive. You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes over and over again. People think you are stupid. "Arguments with furniture are rarely productive." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19) You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are not very nice. Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse Armadillo: To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle Arnold's Laws of Documentation: (1) If it should exist, it doesn't. (2) If it does exist, it's out of date. (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the first two laws. Arthur's Laws of Love: (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you remind them of someone else. (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of yourself in person. Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum. As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error. -- Weisert As I was passing Project MAC, I met a Quux with seven hacks. Every hack had seven bugs; Every bug had seven manifestations; Every manifestation had seven symptoms. Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks, How many losses at Project MAC? As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. -- Oscar Wilde As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code. "As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500 programs -- a process that traditionally requires some debugging." --- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new computer system. As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs. -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949 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 As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there is always a future in Computer Maintenance. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free variable." 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" As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself." Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the Station-to-Station rate. Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the bathtub, it tolls for thee. Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell" for an answer. Ass, n.: The masculine of "lass". At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head under the exhaust of a bus until he revived. At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial challenge roughly comparable to herding cats. -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985 ... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand. -- J. B. White At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer. Atlee is a very modest man. And with reason. -- Winston Churchill Automobile, n.: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down pedestrians. Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" Avoid reality at all costs. Bacchus, n.: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for getting drunk. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Bagdikian's Observation: Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a ukelele. Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry: A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides by governors. Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare. Bank error in your favor. Collect $200. Barach's Rule: An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own physician. Barometer, n.: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Barth's Distinction: There are two types of people: those who divide people into two types, and those who don't. Baruch's Observation: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Basic, n.: A programming language. Related to certain social diseases in that those who have it will not admit it in polite company. Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your door. BE ALERT!!!! (The world needs more lerts ...) Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your face. -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorada" Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain Be different: conform. Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so get used to it. Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love" Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away. Beifeld's Principle: The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3) a better looking and richer male friend. Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone. "Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence" -- Time Bandits Besides the device, the box should contain: * Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING" * A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns. YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram cable. IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King without a major transmission overhaul? Because nobody cares, that's why." WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret. -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!" better !pout !cry better watchout lpr why santa claus town cat /etc/passwd >list ncheck list ncheck list cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist cat list | grep nice >giftlist santa claus town who | grep sleeping who | grep awake who | egrep 'bad|good' for (goodness sake) { be good } "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth Beware of low-flying butterflies. Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein "Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle" Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but nothing of interest is easy. Binary, adj.: Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes. Bipolar, adj.: Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo, New York Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels. BLISS is ignorance Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier. Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in plain sight. It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again. The legend has it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. In fact, he was arrested for drunk driving. The snakes left because people kept throwing up on them. Boling's postulate: If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it. Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom: Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so vividly manifests their lack of progress. Bombeck's Rule of Medicine: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. Boob's Law: You always find something in the last place you look. Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Boren's Laws: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble. Boss, n.: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers" also meant "an ornamental stud." Boston, n.: Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for finishing second in the Irish jig competition. Boy, n.: A noise with dirt on it. Bradley's Bromide: If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a committee -- that will do them in. Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this?" Brain fried -- Core dumped Brain, n.: The apparatus with which we think that we think. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]: To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" 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" Bride, n.: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may revitalize the corner saloon. British Israelites: The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel deported by Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721 B.C. ... They further believe that the future can be foretold by the measurements of the Great Pyramid, which probably means it will be big and yellow and in the hand of the Arabs. They also believe that if you sleep with your head under the pillow a fairy will come and take all your teeth. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" Broad-mindedness, n.: The result of flattening high-mindedness out. Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later Brook's Law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. Brooke's Law: Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool discovers something which either abolishes the system or expands it beyond recognition. Bubble Memory, n.: A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's intelligence. See also "vacuum tube". Bucy's Law: Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. Bug, n.: An aspect of a computer program which exists because the PROGRAMMER was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he wrote the program. Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed. -- Ray Simard Bug: Small living things that small living boys throw on small living girls. BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal. He's the brains of the outfit." GENERAL: "What does that make YOU?" BULLWINKLE: "What else? An executive..." -- Jay Ward Bumper sticker: "All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British manufacture" Bureaucrat, n.: A politician who has tenure. ... 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" ... 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" But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses. -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers" But scientists, who ought to know Assure us that it must be so. Oh, let us never, never doubt What nobody is sure about. -- Hilaire Belloc But soft you, the fair Ophelia: Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws, But get thee to a nunnery -- go! -- Mark "The Bard" Twain But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again. This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases. -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?" "But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge. Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge? What is a kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs, poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around? Have I explained yet about the bytes?" "But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable computers?" Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn; Less dear than army ants in apple pies Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn, Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit; Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose They suck, and like the double-breasted suit Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose, Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed; And stem the produce of thy waspish wits: Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed; Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits. Be off, I say; go bug somebody new, Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you. By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task completely overwhelm you. "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?!?"] Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there. They oftenwish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" C, n.: A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one, or anything else. It is either the best language available to the art today, or it isn't. -- Ray Simard Cabbage, n.: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as a man's head. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Cahn's Axiom: When all else fails, read the instructions. California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange. -- Fred Allen California, n.: From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot sex." -- Ed Moran Call on God, but row away from the rocks. -- Indian proverb "Calling J-Man Kink. Calling J-Man Kink. Hash missle sighted, target Los Angeles. Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept." "Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle." -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth "Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont." -- Clarence Darrow Canada Bill Jone's Motto: It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money. Supplement: A .44 magnum beats four aces. Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp. It's 2 cents for postage and 30 cents for storage. -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial Post Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain? Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes, A root or two, a torus and a node: The inverse of my verse, a null domain. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" CANCER (June 21 - July 22) You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting things off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself. Most welfare recipients are Cancer people. CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19) You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn of any importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for too long as they take root and become trees. Captain Penny's Law: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom. Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than expected. Carefully planned projects take four times longer to complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their planning to reduce the time it takes. Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.: The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it, then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education. -- Mark Twain Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health. CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh.. Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch. Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so, how many? Cerebus: I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel. Jaka: Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something Cerebus: If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy out of it? Jaka: Ugh! Cerebus: You don't like apricot brandy? -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret" 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" Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny-- Did you ever try buying then without money? -- Ogden Nash Character Density: the number of very weird people in the office. Chemicals, n.: Noxious substances from which modern foods are made. Chicago, n.: Where the dead still vote ... early and often! Chicken Little was right. Chicken Soup, n.: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment chicken soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners. Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's what parents were created for. -- Ogden Nash Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said. Chism's Law of Completion: The amount of time required to complete a government project is precisely equal to the length of time already spent on it. Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law: When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will. Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his time. Churchill's Commentary on Man: Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. Cigarette, n.: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of tobacco in between. Cinemuck, n.: The combination of popcorn, soda, and melted chocolate which covers the floors of movie theaters. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" Cleanliness is next to impossible. Cleveland still lives. God ____must be dead. "Cleveland? Yes, I spent a week there one day." Cloning is the sincerest form of flattery. Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think that I think, therefore I think that I am." -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Cold, adj.: When the local flashers are handing out written descriptions. Cold, adj.: When the politicians walk around with their hands in their own pockets. Collaboration, n.: A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the other fellow can spell. 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 Colvard's Logical Premises: All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it won't. Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary: This is especially true when dealing with someone you're attracted to. Grelb's Commentary Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you. Come, every frustum longs to be a cone, And every vector dreams of matrices. Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze: It whispers of a more ergodic zone. -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" Come, let us hasten to a higher plane, Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn, Their indices bedecked from one to _n, Commingled in an endless Markov chain! -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" Command, n.: Statement presented by a human and accepted by a computer in such a manner as to make the human feel as if he is in control. COMMENT Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania. -- Dorothy Parker Commitment, n.: Commitment can be illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -- Albert Einstein Computer programmers do it byte by byte Computer Science is merely the post-Turing decline in formal systems theory. Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are. Conceit causes more conversation than wit. -- LaRouchefoucauld Concept, n.: Any "idea" for which an outside consultant billed you more than $25,000. Condense soup, not books! Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff. -- Peter de Vries Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation. Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDED AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH HE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT? -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!" Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking -- H. L. Mencken Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good. Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number and then give it back to them. "Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass" Conversation, n.: A vocal competition in which the one who is catching his breath is called the listener. Conway's Law: In any organization there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired. Coronation, n.: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown skyhigh with a dynamite bomb. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Corrupt, adj.: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit. Corruption is not the #1 priority of the Police Commissioner. His job is to enforce the law and fight crime. -- P.B.A. President E. J. Kiernan Coward, n.: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Crash programs fail because they are based on the theory that, with nine women pregnant, you can get a baby a month. -- Wernher von Braun Crime does not pay ... as well as politics. -- A. E. Newman Critic, n.: A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Cynic, n.: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Cynic, n.: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a jaundiced eye. Darth Vader sleeps with a Teddywookie. Dawn, n.: The time when men of reason go to bed. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed. Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve. Success is also easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem. Work hard to improve. Dear Lord: I just want *___one* one-armed manager so I never have to hear "On the other hand", again. 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. Dear Miss Manners: Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from your face. Gentle Reader: Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on your face ... Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy. Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired. -- R. Geis Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings. Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down Decisionmaker, n.: The person in your office who was unable to form a task force before the music stopped. 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. Deck Us All With Boston Charlie Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower, alleygaroo! Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou. Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo! -- Walt Kelly "Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed. -- Randy Davis 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 MIGHT make sure it gets expunged. Deliberation, n.: The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" "Deliver yesterday, code today, think tomorrow." Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management. -- Senator Soaper Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. -- G. B. Shaw Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. -- H. L. Mencken Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. -- E. B. White Dentist, n.: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth, pulls coins out of one's pockets. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" DETERIORATA Go placidly amid the noise and waste, And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof. Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself, And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys. Know what to kiss -- and when. Remember that two wrongs never make a right, But that three do. Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD". Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment, And despite the changing fortunes of time, There is always a big future in computer maintenance. You are a fluke of the universe ... You have no right to be here. Whether you can hear it or not, the universe Is laughing behind your back. -- National Lampoon DeVries's Dilemma: If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't want hits the paper. Did you know ... That no-one ever reads these things? Did you know that clones never use mirrors? -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly. -- Elbert Hubbard "Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him." -- John Barrymore's dying words Different all twisty a of in maze are you, passages little. Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term. Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight. Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock. Disc space -- the final frontier! Disco is to music what Etch-A-Sketch is to art. Distress, n.: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a friend. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery? Do molecular biologists wear designer genes? Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them. Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon. Do not meddle in the affairs of troff, for it is subtle and quick to anger. Do not read this fortune under penalty of law. Violators will be prosecuted. (Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.)) Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight. Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each day as it comes. -- Donald Kaul Do something unusual today. Pay a bill. Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum. Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take the time to take the dirt out of them? "Do you think what we're doing is wrong?" "Of course it's wrong! It's illegal!" "I've never done anything illegal before." "I thought you said you were an accountant!" Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing. -- Dick Brandon Documentation is the castor oil of programming. Managers know it must be good because the programmers hate it so much. Don't abandon hope: your Tom Mix decoder ring arrives tomorrow. Don't be humble, you're not that great. -- Golda Meir Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say. Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today! Don't feed the bats tonight. Don't get suckered in by the comments -- they can be terribly misleading. Debug only code. -- Dave Storer Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -- Mark Twain 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 knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam. Don't let people drive you crazy when you know it's in walking distance. Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you. Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow. "Don't say yes until I finish talking." -- Darryl F. Zanuck Don't take life too seriously -- you'll never get out if it alive. Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective. "Don't tell me I'm burning the candle at both ends -- tell me where to get more wax!!" Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia. -- Charles Schultz Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them. Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in? Don: I didn't know you had a cousin Penelope, Bill! Was she pretty? W. C.: Well, her face was so wrinkled it looked like seven miles of bad road. She had so many gold teeth, Don, she use to have to sleep with her head in a safe. She died in Bolivia. Don: Oh Bill, it must be hard to lose a relative. W. C.: It's almost impossible. -- W. C. Fields, from "The Further Adventures of Larson E. Whipsnade and other Tarradiddles" Down with categorical imperative! "Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing." Drew's Law of Highway Biology: The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in front of your eyes. Drive defensively. Buy a tank. Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route! Ducharm's Axiom: If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize yourself as part of the problem. Ducharme's Precept: Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment. Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together ... -- Carl Zwanzig Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great leaders has been discontinued. Due to circumstances beyond your control, you are master of your fate and captain of your soul. During a grouse hunt in North Carolina two intrepid sportsmen were blasting away at a clump of trees near a stone wall. Suddenly a red-faced country squire popped his head over the wall and shouted, "Hey, you almost hit my wife." "Did I?" cried the hunter, aghast. "Terribly sorry. Have a shot at mine, over there." During the next two hours, the VAX will be going up and down several times, often with lin~po_~{po ~poz~ppo\~{ o n~po_~{o[po ~y oodsou>#w4k**n~po_~{ol;lkld;f;g;dd;po\~{o Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it. -- W. Somerset Maughm E Pluribus Unix Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends. /Earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can. /earth is 98% full ... please delete anyone you can. "Earth is a great, big funhouse without the fun." -- Jeff Berner 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 Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. -- John Kenneth Galbraith Economics, n.: Economics is the study of the value and meaning of J. K. Galbraith ... -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks. -- Adlai Stevenson Eggnog is a traditional holiday drink invented by the English. Many people wonder where the word "eggnog" comes from. The first syllable comes from the English word "egg", meaning "egg". I don't know where the "nog" comes from. To make eggnog, you'll need rum, whiskey, wine gin and, if they are in season, eggs... Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a damned fool. -- Bellamy Brooks Egotist, n.: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Ehrman's Commentary: 1. Things will get worse before they get better. 2. Who said things would get better? Eighty percent of air pollution comes from plants and trees. -- Ronald Reagan, famous movie star Eisenhower was very nice, Nixon was his only vice. -- C. Degen Eleanor Rigby Sits at the keyboard And waits for a line on the screen Lives in a dream Waits for a signal Finding some code That will make the machine do some more. What is it for? All the lonely users, where do they all come from? All the lonely users, why does it take so long? Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance. Electrocution, n.: Burning at the stake with all the modern improvements. Elevators smell different to midgets Emersons' Law of Contrariness: Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it. Encyclopedia Salesmen: Invite them all in. Nip out the back door. Phone the police and tell them your house is being burgled. -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac" Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless. Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop. -- Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary Entropy isn't what it used to be. Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. -- Jerome Lettvin Equal bytes for women. Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-m"umsige Burggoven Dir mohmen R"ath ausgraben. -- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass" Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it. -- Woody Allen Etymology, n.: Some early etymological scholars come up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root "mal" ("bad"), and "logy" ("study of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow." -- Mike Kellen Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to? -- Clarence Darrow "Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral." -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit" Even though they raised the rate for first class mail in the United States we really shouldn't complain -- it's still only 2 cents a day. Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to tell you just how busy they are. Every 4 seconds a woman has a baby. Our problem is to find this woman and stop her. Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it. Every creature has within him the wild, uncontrollable urge to punt. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. -- Dwight Eisenhower, April 16, 1953 Every Horse has an Infinite Number of Legs (proof by intimidation): Horses have an even number of legs. Behind they have two legs, and in front they have fore-legs. This makes six legs, which is certainly an odd number of legs for a horse. But the only number that is both even and odd is infinity. Therefore, horses have an infinite number of legs. Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere, there is a horse that has a finite number of legs. But that is a horse of another color, and by the [above] lemma ["All horses are the same color"], that does not exist. Every little picofarad has a nanohenry all its own. -- Don Vonada Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse. -- Miguel de Cervantes Every program has at least one bug and can be shortened by at least one instruction -- from which, by induction, one can deduce that every program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work. Every program has two purposes -- written and another for which it wasn't. Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits. Every solution breeds new problems. Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is no guarantee of eventual success. "Every time I think I know where it's at, they move it." Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. -- Beckett Everybody is somebody else's weirdo. -- Dykstra Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had to be taught how ___not to. So it is with the great programmers. Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what ____does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" Everyone talks about apathy, but no one ____does anything about it. Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which, unfortunately, no one we know belongs. Everything you know is wrong! Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -- R. Buckminster Fuller Everyting should be built top-down, except the first time. Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence", "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc. -- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence" Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike office water cooler. Excellent day to have a rotten day. Excellent time to become a missing person. Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. -- W. Somerset Maugham Excessive login or logout messages are a sure sign of senility. Expect the worst, it's the least you can do. Expense Accounts, n.: Corporate food stamps. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it. -- Olivier Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones Experience is the worst teacher. It always gives the test first and the instruction afterward. Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones. Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else. Experience varies directly with equipment ruined. F u cn rd ths u cnt spl wrth a dm! f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd. f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng. Fairy Tale, n.: A horror story to prepare children for the newspapers. Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move. Faith, n: That quality which enables us to believe what we know to be untrue. Fakir, n: A psychologist whose charismatic data have inspired almost religious devotion in his followers, even though the sources seem to have shinnied up a rope and vanished. Familiarity breeds attempt Families, when a child is born Want it to be intelligent. I, through intelligence, Having wrecked my whole life, Only hope the baby will prove Ignorant and stupid. Then he will crown a tranquil life By becoming a Cabinet Minister -- Su Tung-p'o Famous last words: Famous last words: 1) "Don't worry, I can handle it." 2) "You and what army?" 3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't be a cop." Famous last words: 1. Don't unplug it, it will just take a moment to fix. 2. Let's take the shortcut, he can't see us from there. 3. What happens if you touch these two wires tog-- 4. We won't need reservations. 5. It's always sunny there this time of the year. 6. Don't worry, it's not loaded. 7. They'd never (be stupid enough to) make him a manager. 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" Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. -- Oscar Wilde Fats Loves Madelyn Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions ... Fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn't have any children, neither will you. Festivity Level 1: Your guests are chatting amiably with each other, admiring your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing carols around the upright piano, sipping at their drinks and nibbling hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 2: Your guests are talking loudly -- sometimes to each other, and sometimes to nobody at all, rearranging your Christmas-tree ornaments, singing "I Gotta Be Me" around the upright piano, gulping their drinks and wolfing down hors d'oeuvres. Festivity Level 3: Your guests are arguing violently with inanimate objects, singing "I can't get no satisfaction," gulping down other peoples' drinks, wolfing down Christmas tree ornaments and placing hors d'oeuvres in the upright piano to see what happens when the little hammers strike. Festivity Level 4: Your guests, hors d'oeuvres smeared all over their naked bodies are performing a ritual dance around the burning Christmas tree. The piano is missing. You want to keep your party somewhere around level 3, unless you rent your home and own Firearms, in which case you can go to level 4. The best way to get to level 3 is egg-nog. Fifth Law of Applied Terror: If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your book. Corollary: If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you live. Fifth Law of Procrastination: Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing important to do. FIGHTING WORDS Say my love is easy had, Say I'm bitten raw with pride, Say I am too often sad -- Still behold me at your side. Say I'm neither brave nor young, Say I woo and coddle care, Say the devil touched my tongue -- Still you have my heart to wear. But say my verses do not scan, And I get me another man! -- Dorothy Parker Finagle's Creed: Science is true. Don't be misled by facts. Finagle's First Law: If an experiment works, something has gone wrong. Finagle's fourth Law: Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only makes it worse. Finagle's Second Law: No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c) believe it happened according to his own pet theory. Finagle's Third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake Corollaries: 1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it. 2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will see it immediately. Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can. Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy. First Law of Bicycling: No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the wind. First Law of Procrastination: Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e., the authority who imposed the deadline). First Law of Socio-Genetics: Celibacy is not hereditary. First Rule of History: History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat each other. Flappity, floppity, flip The mouse on the m"obius strip; The strip revolved, The mouse dissolved In a chronodimensional skip. FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh, when the little hand is on the .... Flon's Law: There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it is the least bit difficult to write bad programs. Flugg's Law: When you need to knock on wood is when you realize that the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum. For a good time, call (415) 642-9483 For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned. For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. -- H. L. Mencken For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill. -- R. Clopton "For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind." "Whose?" "MINE! HA-HA!" For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say "Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something. -- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. For some reason, this fortune reminds everyone of Marvin Zelkowitz. "For that matter, compare your pocket computer with the massive jobs of a thousand years ago. Why not, then, the last step of doing away with computers altogether?" -- Jehan Shuman For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. -- Abraham Lincoln For years a secret shame destroyed my peace -- I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece. But now I think a thought that brings me hope: Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope. -- Justin Richardson. Forgetfulness, n.: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience. Fortune's graffito of the week (or maybe even month): Don't Write On Walls! (and underneath) You want I should type? 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. FORTUNE'S PARTY TIPS #14 Tired of finding that other people are helping themselves to your good liquor at BYOB parties? Take along a candle, which you insert and light after you've opened the bottle. No one ever expects anything drinkable to be in a bottle which has a candle stuck in its neck. Fourth Law of Applied Terror: The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria. Corollary: Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course. Fourth Law of Revision: It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for you. Fresco's Discovery: If you knew what you were doing you'd probably be bored. Friends, Romans, Hipsters, Let me clue you in; I come to put down Caeser, not to groove him. The square kicks some cats are on stay with them; The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caeser. The cool Brutus Gave you the message: Caeser had big eyes; If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea, And, like, old Caeser really set them straight. Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat; So are they all, all cool cats, -- Come I to make this gig at Caeser's laying down. Frisbeetarianism, n.: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and gets stuck. Frobnicate, v.: To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from FROBNITZ. Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying "to frob a frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE, and TWEAK sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB connotes aimless manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; TWEAK connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a knob on an oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it he is probably tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the screen he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it. From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving, Whatever gods may be, That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea. -- Swinburne Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall over. Furbling, v.: Having to wander through a maze of ropes at an airport or bank even when you are the only person in line. -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets" Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. -- H. H. Williams Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening. G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my boy. One of these days a London producer will go into his office and say to his secretary, `Is there a play from Shaw this morning?' and when she says `No,' he will say, `Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish.' And that's your chance, my boy." Garbage In -- Gospel Out. Garter, n.: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country. -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary" Gauls! We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!! -- Adventures of Asterix. Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep". Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the difference: "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling." Obvious, isn't it? Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's just the point. It has to start with committed individuals and then grow ... Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to start driving on the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think not. -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish" "Gee, Mudhead, everyone at Morse Science High has an extracurricular activity except you." "Well, gee, doesn't Louise count?" "Only to ten, Mudhead." -- Firesign Theater GEMINI (May 21 - June 20) You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect too much for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are known for committing incest. GEMINI (May 21 to Jun. 20) Good news and bad news highlighted. Enjoy the good news while you can; the bad news