Quotations for Random Signatures

"Stolen" from: http://www.terindell.com/asylum/docs/sig-fortunes.html
Last update: Thu Apr 3 23:10:56 EST 1998 (or thereabouts)
Last update of Matt Pagel's SIT page, Mon Aug 10, 1998
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For something really neat to do with these or other quotes and a UNIX account, look at Random Signature Generator.



`If I employed software developers, and they gave me something
 like this, I'd shoot them.' - Abby Franquemont
%
       Everyone has the right to be uninterested.
       Everyone has the right not to understand.
       Everyone has the right to be uninformed.
       Everyone has the right to make a mistake.
       Everyone has the right to change his/her mind.
       Everyone has the right to disagree.
       Everyone has the right to his/her own opinion.
%
Rimmer:  "How come he never ever knows anything?  He's supposed to
         have an IQ of 6000!"
Holly:   "6000's not that much.  's only the same IQ as 12000 car
         park attendants."
 %
   "Think positively, act positively, and never leave fingerprints."
                             -- Robert Sneddon
%
"The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service depends on the Microsoft
 Exchange Directory service which failed to start because of the following
 error:   The operation completed successfully."
%
Security-wise, NT is a server with a "Kick me" sign taped to it. 
		-- Peter Gutmann
%
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
		-- Roger Brinner
%
I have realised that it's actually possible to know _less_ than nothing
about a subject - I am talking about people who deal with TCP/IP on the
level of superstition.  Give these people a goat & they wouldn't know what
to do with it.					-- alt.sysadmin.recovery
%
"What's the good of having mastery over cosmic balance and knowing the
secrets of fate if you can't blow something up?"
		-- Terry Pratchett, "Reaper Man"
%
Capricorn (December 22 - January 20)

  A good time to learn to laugh at yourself.  Or, develop multiple
  personalities!  That way you won't be laughing at you, you'll
  be laughing with you.
%
"He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like
a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without
one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the
country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at
a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it."
		-- Joseph Romm, Washington
%
"The politician was gone but unnoticed, like the period after the
 Dr. on a Dr Pepper can." 	 -- Wayne Goode, Madison, Alabama
%
"I want an Internet.  Can I have one of those?" -- Spice Girl Mel B.,
aka Scary Spice, pointing to a monitor during an AOL press conference
%
A [golf] ball hitting a tree shall be deemed not to have hit the tree.
Hitting a tree is simply bad luck and has no place in a scientific
game.  The player should estimate the distance the ball would have
traveled if it had not hit the tree and play the ball from there,
preferably atop a nice firm tuft of grass.
                -- Donald A. Metz
%
A child can go only so far in life without potty training.  It is not
mere coincidence that six of the last seven presidents were potty
trained, not to mention nearly half of the nation's state legislators.
                -- Dave Barry
%
"355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible
simulation!"
%
1.79 x 10^12 furlongs per fortnight -- it's not just a good idea, it's
the law!
%
Cancer (June 21 - July 22)

  Nobody knows the trouble you've seen.  Let's just hope you
  can somehow keep it that way!
%
Virgo (August 23 - September 22)

  It will occur to you to wonder, what if Jesus had actually
  said "The geek shall inherit the earth", but was just misquoted?
  Then you'll think of Bill Gates.  Then you'll start to worry.
%
"I've done something with my life; I've made kids happy around the
world."            -- Walter E. Diemer (1905-1998), inventor of bubble gum
%
The universe does not have laws -- it has habits, and habits can be broken.
%
"You can't weld all of the ports shot on a PC and call it a thin client.
It's a fat client in a corest with the strings pulled real tight and a red
face."
		-- Scott McNealy, CEO, Sun Microsystems
%
Could I perchance have the honour of your esteemed presence the July
4th next, for the upcoming celebration of Good Riddance Day?
		-- Alistair Young
%
"No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it awakens into
existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted for the sower
to see the harvest.  All work that is worth anything is done in faith."
		-- Albert Schweitzer
%
Your mouse has moved.  Please wait while Windows restarts for the change to 
take effect.
%
My favorite was a professor at a University I Used To Be Associated With
who claimed that our requirement of a non-alphabetic character in our
passwords was an abridgement of his freedom of speech.
		-- Jacob Haller
%
"Of course the Universe hates you. You're working to reduce chaos by
expending a lot of energy to do your job. Thus, you're contributing to the
eventual heat death of the universe, and it's just protecting itself from
you."               -- John Batzel
%
Anyone who thinks people lack originality should watch them folding 
roadmaps.		                      -- Franklin P. Jopnes
%
"Comets are flying everywhere and nothing's happening."
		-- Will Quale, '99, on Netscape
%
In my spare time I have been attempting to construct an Eskimo sentence in
my basement, such as will be suitable for the season.  I have not got it
perfected yet, but it is coming along pretty well, and with a coat of paint
or two it might pass for the genuine article.  So far I have: kaniktshaq
moritlkatsio atsuniartoq.  When completed, this sentence will proclaim:
``Look at all this f-ing snow.''  At present it means: ``Observe the snow.
It fornicates.''  
                                        - Cecil Adams
%
Dr. Lizardo: Where are we going?
Aliens: Planet 10!
Dr. Lizardo: When?
Aliens: Real soon!
	-- The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
%
We're not surrounded, we're in a target-rich environment!
%
SWF seeks .signature. Must be witty, and four lines long or less.
%
"...let the rest of the galaxy burn. I don't care any more."
        --Londo Mollari
%
I live in Emacs. Why would I need sex?
		-- Leif Nixon
To seduce others into using Emacs.
		-- Alan Shutko, in alt.religion.emacs
%
Oh for Pete's sake, use a real filter. ;-)
		-- Tom Christiansen
Look, I refuse to install any filter which looks like it's more highly
evolved than homo sapiens, it will just get embarassing when it starts
critiquing the literrary style of my friends mail to me.
		-- Richard Caley, in comp.lang.perl.misc
%
"I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use
language that makes him the dominant species on the planet.  That may
be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals.
We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners."
     --Jeff Stilson
%
"I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up
something else."
     --Lily Tomlin
%
Just remember, the first webmaster was female...  her first home page
said "Some Pig" and was regularly updated....
		-- Paul Sawyer
%
cat /dev/coffee | /dev/cup | /dev/mouth | /dev/nose > /dev/keyboard 
%
"But these [serious NT security flaws] are not inherent flaws in the operating
system -- they don't happen by accident. They are the result of deliberate and
well-thought-out efforts." --Mike Nash, Microsoft. The _flaws_ are deliberate?
%
     Computers work in weird and marvelous ways, their
                wonders to avoid performing.
%
"Yeah, but *I* have a degree in Linguistics, and *you* are posting to the
net using Microsoft Outlook."
             -- Ayse Sercan, on alt.peeves, demonstrating the double entendre
%
My favorite game is "Wind Up Kitty".  This is when you take an adult,
misanthropic cat and pick it up (kindly) by the midsection with one hand and
hold it about 6 inches off the floor.  With the other hand you twirl the
tail (again, kindly; I'm not suggesting you twist it off) and make "rrrrr
rrrr RRRR RRRR" noises.  Then, when the cat is at his height of annoyance,
put it down on the floor and let it go.  The cat will speed off like one of
those little cars.    This doesn't work too well with babies.
		-- Teg Pipes, in alt.religion.kibology
%
"I think that's how Chicago got started.  A bunch of people in New York
said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't
cold enough. Let's go west.' "
     --Richard Jeni
%
The secret of success is sincerity.  Once you can fake that, you've got
it made.
%
The one day you'd sell your birthright for something, birthrights are
a glut.
%
> 
Oh Oracle, thou who are mightier than the mighty Aphrodite, > whose toe-jam is sweeter than the delicate nectar of the prune, tell > me...
>
Why is it unsafe to stand in the shower holding a plugged in toaster? > And in response, thus spake the Oracle: } Because, you don't want to your self % The New York Times, among other papers, recently published a new Hubble photograph of distant galaxies colliding. Of course, astronomers have had pictures of colliding galaxies for quite some time now, but with the vastly improved resolution provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, you can actually see the lawyers rushing to the scene... % Lucy: "You are the tiniest speck in an enormous universe." Snoopy: "Then I might as well go back to sleep." % "Winston Churchill was once at the urinals in the House of Commons when the Labour prime minister, Clement Attlee, walked in. Churchill turned his back on him. 'Feeling stand-offish, today, Winston?' asked Attlee. 'No,' replied Churchill, 'scared. Every time you see something big you want to nationalize it.'" --The Economist, 12/20/97 % "I'm hallucinating, but I don't even have a dog. Maybe I should get one. No, I have a cat. Oh well." -- Will Quale '99 % Go forward to erf. Go backward to cos. http://sizif.mf.uni-lj.si/doc/gnuplot/gnuplot.info.cosh.html % "The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world." -- Leonard Cohen, The Favourite Game % "Accurately delivered, a cream pie is an uncannily precise barometer of human nature." -- Noel Godin, pie-throwing anarchist % Don't be nasty about our monarchy. That's our job. Get your own if you want to be rude about them. sandspm@cix.co.uk ("Graham Cluley") % J: Melissa, what have I told you about distributing videos without sharing the profits? M: What if I share my prophets with you instead? J: Umm... I'm clearly too tired. I just spent 6 seconds thinking about that statement, and came up with the idea of a Prophets collectible card game. "I'll trade you a Hezekiah and a Zephaniah for a Zechariah." Don't let me continue this line of thought, please. :-) -- Joe Robins and Melissa Binde % And the Beast shall raise its ugly head and shall roar, and the people of the world will run to prep.ai.mit.edu for shelter from the onslaught and havoc it does with its commercial compilers. But lo and behold, all of the anonymous ftp ports to salvation will be busy. -- Bill Gribble, in gnu.misc.discuss % Now, it is obvious that the opposite of right is left and that three lefts make a right or 3l=r. It is also clear that wrong is the opposite of right so -w=r. So this would make 3l=r=-w which means that 3l=-w. Now, since left is the opposite of right (-l=r) this would mean -l=r=-w, which playing with the math gives me l=-r=w and so left is the same as wrong (yes, I could have done this in fewer steps, but I didn't feel like doing that). Now, since l=w and 3l=r that would make 3w=r. This means that three wrongs make a right. Of course, since 3 is an odd number, this situation doesn't work out with any values for r and w except 0 which would mean that r=0 and w=0 and l=0, although the last one I don't really care about. This means that right and wrong are mathematically identical and so classifying things as right or wrong is pointless because both of them are the same. And since there is no difference between right and wrong, that would make me always right and you always right and isn't that one of the things Discordianism is sometimes about? -- pstolarc@shrike.depaul.edu % "The idea that Bill Gates has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he who, by peddling second-rate technology, led them into it in the first place." -- writer Douglas Adams, on Windows 95 % 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. -- Algernon Charles Swinburne % I'm at a loss for words. How does one respond to an e-mail that says, "Hink, hink!"? :-) -- Joe Robins % If a `religion' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be one. -- John Barrow % You wouldn't know a subtle plan if it dressed up in purple and danced on top of a harpsichord singing "subtle plans are here again" % "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one!'" -- C.S. Lewis % Did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason that nobody ever published in hot pink text on lime green paper before WiReD wasn't *just* because the ink was expensive, or wasn't *just* because LSD hadn't been invented yet? -- Amil Patel, in comp.emacs.xemacs % Die with your books out! -- Grafitti in McCabe Library, Swarthmore College % PURPOSE OF YOUR CAREER Astronaut: Advancing scientific knowledge for the good of humanity. Fireman: Saving lives and property. Sysadmin: Assuring uninterrupted access to alt.binaries.erotica.sheep. -- The Usenet oracle % Q. Does Usenet help stamp out ignorance? A. That depends on whether by "stamp out" you mean "eliminate" or "reproduce rapidly in great quantity." -- From the Usenet FAQ % One way to get high blood pressure is to go mountain climbing over molehills. -- Earl Wilson % "It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity." -- Dave Barry % "When a couple does not know how to engage in sexual intercourse, it results in infertility." -- Dr. Ganesan Adaikan, the Society for the Study of Andrology and Sexology % "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick, "How to Build a Universe" % "[The computer is] a solution in search of problems." -- Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT % F0 0F C7 C8 - The Four Bytes Of The Apocalypse. -- Mel Harper % "USENET is not a right." "USENET is a right, a left, a jab, and a sharp uppercut to the jaw. The postman hits! You have new mail." -- Ed Vielmetti & Chip Salzenberg % Of course, another way of looking at this is to change your frame of reference. You're sitting still, and the universe is rushing past far too fast. It's hardly *your* fault if the universe won't look where it's going and has inadequate brakes, is it? -- Malcom Ray % Insanity takes many forms, but amongst the voices, the visions and the software development, I have yet to hear of one documented case where it has been manifested by ferrous testicles. -- Sean O'Kelly % IME, the most philosophical drivers are London cabbies. Every journey provides new insights into language and meaning. "'Ere, I 'ad that Wittgenstein in the back of the cab once. I said to 'im, I sez, picturing relations my arse, you wouldn't try that with my relations mate..." -- Malcom Ray % OK, I'm weird, but I'm saving up to be eccentric. % I will personally shoot anyone who calls me a tadpole. -- Kyla Tornheim, Swarthmore '01 % Hi I was wondering where i could get a list of every security hole on every UNIX platform whether it be book website etc. Please email: Jakal90@aol.com -- a post to comp.unix.programmer % Q: Speaking of administration scandals, if President Clinton actually winds up in court over this Paula Jones thing, what steps will be taken to prevent the trial from turning into a grotesque and demeaning pubic spectacle? A: Mr. Clinton's face will be covered at all times by an electronically superimposed dark blob, underneath which will be an electronic label identifying him only as "A United States President." -- Jacob Giles % Pluto Neptune Uranus Saturn Jupiter Mars Earth Venus Mercury Sun . o o o O . . . . /\ ^ \/ -- You are here % /* And you'll never guess what the dog had */ /* in its mouth... */ --Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code % double value; /* or your money back! */ short changed; /* so triple your money back! */ --Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code % Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs. --Larry Wall in <1992Jul2.222039.26476@netlabs.com> % "I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG?" "Let's call it an accidental feature. :-)" -- Larry Wall in <6909@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York. :-) --Larry Wall to Dan Bernstein in <10187@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident. :-) --Larry Wall on s/foo/bar/eieio in <10911@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % : I've heard that there is a shell (bourne or csh) to perl filter, does : anyone know of this or where I can get it? Yeah, you filter it through Tom Christiansen. :-) --Larry Wall % Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality... :-) --Larry Wall in <6940@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % Perl programming is an *empirical* science! --Larry Wall in <10226@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % Randal said it would be tough to do in sed. He didn't say he didn't understand sed. Randal understands sed quite well. Which is why he uses Perl. :-) -- Larry Wall in <7874@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> % Tactical? TACTICAL!?!? Hey, buddy, we went from kilotons to megatons several minutes ago. We don't need no stinkin' tactical nukes. (By the way, do you have change for 10 million people?) -- Larry Wall % There ain't nothin' in this world that's worth being a snot over. --Larry Wall in <1992Aug19.041614.6963@netlabs.com> % "We all agree on the necessity of compromise. We just can't agree on when it's necessary to compromise." --Larry Wall in <1991Nov13.194420.28091@netlabs.com> % "What is the sound of Perl? Is it not the sound of a wall that people have stopped banging their heads against?" --Larry Wall in <1992Aug26.184221.29627@netlabs.com> % Well, enough clowning around. Perl is, in intent, a cleaned up and summarized version of that wonderful semi-natural language known as "Unix". -- Larry Wall in <1994Apr6.184419.3687@netlabs.com> % Anyway, there's plenty of room for doubt. It might seem easy enough, but computer language design is just like a stroll in the park. Jurassic Park, that is. -- Larry Wall in <1994Jun15.074039.2654@netlabs.com> % My favourite quote about APL - "I refuse to use any computer language in which the proponents shove snippets of code under each other's nose saying 'I bet you can't guess what this does!'" -- D'Arcy J.M. Cain, in comp.lang.ada % "If the one who is to act wants to judge himself by the result, he will never begin." -- Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling" % "Faith is precisely the paradox that the single individual as the single individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior -- yet in such a way, please note, that it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that the single individual as the single individual stands in absolute relation to the absolute." -- Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling" % "In the old days, people said: It is too bad that things do not go in the world as the preacher preaches. Maybe the time will come, especially with the aid of philosophy, when they can say: Fortunately things do not go as the preacher preaches, for there is still some meaning in life, but there is none in his sermons." -- Soren Kierkegaard, "Fear and Trembling" % Pisces (February 19 - March 20) Beware! The Celestial Jade Emperor may banish you to the Big Grumpy Place if you don't start paying more attention to the four Winds. Obviously, this is a metaphor, somehow involving Cleveland. % "In the beginning ARPA created the ARPANET. And the ARPANET was without form and void. And darkness was upon the deep. And the spirit of ARPA moved upon the face of the network and ARPA said, "Let there be a protocol," and thre was a protocol. And ARPA saw that it was good. And ARPA said, "Let there be more protocols," and it was so. And ARPA saw that is was good. And ARPA said, "Let there be more networks," and it was so." -- steward@deltanet.com, in misc.education % Oh wow! Everything seems so cosmic! Your spider-sense is tingling... -- Nethack 3.1.3 % Overall, there is a smell of fried onions. -- Nethack 3.1.3 % "In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him." -- Sarah M. Wolford, Hanover % "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." -- Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) % "I'd bite your ear, but you'd take it the wrong way." -- Anna Hess, '00 % On the internet there are many dumb questions. -- L. Phobos % Q: Who has the right of way when four cars approach a four-way stop at the same time? A: The pick up truck with the gun rack and the bumper sticker saying, "Guns don't kill people. I do." % I want you to be fully aware of your role in Usenet. It goes like this: Bill Gates is the organ grinder, playing a song called "Web TV". You are the little monkey in a bright red hat hopping up and down and acting silly for our amusement. -- dgriffi@ultrix6.cs.csubak.edu to MAHK@webtv.net, in alt.pizza.delivery.drivers % "Time is too slow for those who wait; too swift for those who fear; too long for those who grieve; too short for those who rejoice. But for those who love, time is eternity." -- Lady Jane Fellowes % I personally like to drink a quart of malt liquor, stick the Maxell labels all over my naked body, go down to the supermarket, and try to get arrested... (This is _not_, however, for everyone.) -- Kirsten Chevalier, in alt.music.bootlegs % We taxied for so long, I was sure we'd accidentally landed at San Jose. -- L. Phobos, on the San Francisco airport % "For the man who has everything." -- A sign in a Manchester shop above a display for burglar alarms % Aquarius (January 21 - February 18) Remember: Unexpressed feelings don't die. They are buried alive and emerge later as Border Collies. So don't hold anything back! Tell everyone what you REALLY think of them! You may lose your job, family and friends, but you won't have a crazed, hyperactive animal hounding your every step. % No, an Emacs reference mug would not just hold 10 gallons, not even just brew the coffee for you, it would grind it, roast it and grow it (not necessarily in that order). It would also sing the national anthem (which one? All of them - but it would check where it was first), play bagpipes and do the dishes. -- Chris Rovers % "Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it's true. If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy." -- Warren Buffet % "A reporter asked me not long ago whether I had ever expected a commercial internet to operate. 'Yes,' I answered, 'that didn't surprise me. Finding URLs in lipstick advertisements really threw me though.'" -- Fred Baker, IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) Chair % ...And then visiting our room will be more exciting b/c of the everpresent danger of having utah fall on your head -- Chaos Golubitsky, '00 % "If I want your opinion, I'll read your entrails." --Doug Shewfelt % Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. - Murphy's Seventh Law After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle will repeat itself. - Farnsdick's corollary % "We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the Complete Works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true." -- Robert Wilensky, University of California Of course, we still haven't proved that the average internet user has anywhere close to the intellect of a monkey... -- Karl Larson, WebTV % "No American experience is complete without a row of PortaPotty's." -- Jeff Allen , during "Contact" % "Run naked through the machine room randomly pulling SCSI cables." -- item on the Synopsys quarterly downtime task list % For every locomotive they built, I shall paint another angel. -- Edward Burne-Jones % Tip: If a customs officer asks for your visa, don't say, "I have cash. Do you take that?" -- DNRC Newsletter, Scott Adams % Oh, I long for those wild frontier days, when thundering herds of IIIsi's, 4Mpluses, and elderly-yet-still-hazardous Laserjet 1's crossed the open Serengeti plain on their yearly migration... -- Joel Herda % The system runs with NT 3.51, service pack 5. At now, we have no idea why. -- out of context; from a mailing list % Windows 95: n. 32 bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit operating system originally coded for a 4 bit microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that can't stand 1 bit of competition. % the sand remembers once there was beach and sunshine but chip is warm too -- Damon A. Koronakos and Brian Roberts; "High-tech Haikus" % one with nintendo halcyon symbiosis hand thinks for itself -- Damon A. Koronakos and Brian Roberts; "High-tech Haikus" % honda seatcovers winter warm and summer cool little lambs no more -- Damon A. Koronakos and Brian Roberts; "High-tech Haikus" % Today I dialed a wrong number...The other person said, "Hello?" and I said, "Hello, could I speak to Joey?"... They said, "Uh...I don't think so...he's only 2 months old." I said, "I'll wait." -- Steven Wright % actual complaints submitted by US Air Force pilots and the replies from the maintenance crews % "Did you know that black paint is an excellent stain remover?" - Dogbert % peter@verrine.demon.co.uk wrote: > ...I'll write my email address on a note and stuff it in a sock. I'll then > submit it to D-Space (hot setting for 75 minutes). Whoever gets the sock is > to mail me back. Oh great. What's next? Make Money Fast and other spam via dryers? Do I need to install procmail and PGP in my dryer? -- abigail@fnx.com % Cover me. I'm changing lanes. -- a bumper sticker % When you do a good deed, get a receipt, in case heaven is like the IRS. % I'm out of bed and dressed, What more do you want? % I like you, but I wouldn't want to see you working with sub-atomic particles. % As you reach for the web, a venomous spider appears. Unable to pull your hand away in time, the spider promptly, but politely, bites you. The venom takes affect quickly causing your lips to turn plaid along with your complexion. You become dazed, and in your stupor you fall from the limbs of the tree. Snap! Your head falls off and rolls all over the ground. The instant before you croak, you hear the whoosh of a vacuum being filled by the air surrounding your head. Worse yet, the spider is suing you for damages. -- an actual quote from the original Adventure game % This space intentionally has nothing but text explaining why this space has nothing but text explaining that this space would otherwise have been left blank, and would otherwise have been left blank. % Tobacco stocks have taken a big tumble," says Jay Leno. "Phillip Morris fell 6 points. They lost so much money they may have to lay off two senators." % cal.li.pyg.ian a. also cal.li.py.gous [Gk. kallipygos, fr. kalli- + pyge buttocks] having shapely buttocks % ar.is.tol.o.gy n. [Gr. dinner + -logy.] The science of dining. % pha.rol.o.gy n. [Gr. a lighthouse + -logy.] The art or science which treats of lighthouses and signal lights. [Gr. an egg + -logy.] their coloring, size, shape, and number. % cryp.to.zo.ol.o.gy n. 1969 : the study of the lore concerning legendary animals (as Sasquatch) especially in order to evaluate the possibility of their existence % floccinaucinihilipilification humorous. [f. L. flocci, nauci, nihili, pili words signifying `at a small price' or `at nothing' enumerated in a well-known rule of the Eton Latin Grammar + -fication] The action or habit of estimating as worthless. % honorificabilitudinity Obs. rare - 0. [ad. med.L. honorificabilitudinitas (Mussatus c 1300 in Du Cange), a grandiose extension of honorificabilitudo honourableness % The Net says yes, and no, and maybe, to all questions. Think of it as a form of the I Ching. Choose the answer that helps you grow. -- spectrum@magenta.com, in someone's .sig file % "We'll have fun fun fun 'till my daddy takes the T1 away" -- nby@idea-inc.com % It is odd, but on the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics. -- Richard Feynman % Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it. -- A.A. Milne, Winnie-The-Pooh % "If you understand what you're doing, you're not learning anything." -- Abraham Lincoln % The Washington Bullets are changing their name. The owners no longer want their team's name to be associated with crime. So from now on the team will be known as The Bullets. -- Paul Harvey, quoting Argus Hamilton % Sounds like the sex-life of a sysadmin. -- MAIN Super-User If O'Reilly doesn't write a book about it, we don't have it! -- Dave Cantrell Before anyone starts referring to this as the 'Sheep Book'... -- Alistair J. R. Young % ... and if someone doesn't put the answers to these questions into a FAQ someplace, you are all at risk of being assaulted again with yet another excerpt from my rejected scripts for "Kung Fu: The Legend drags its Lame Ass into Cyberspace" ... -- rst@ai.mit.edu (Robert S. Thau), the apache webserver docs % "Of course, this is not a very secure program... But, we weren't trying to write a security system, just an example for page 9 in this book." -- Randal L. Schwartz, "Learning Perl" p. 9 % There is no mechanical problem so difficult that it cannot be solved by brute strength and ignorance. -- William's Law % I don't want the world, I just want your half. % Support your local bloodhound: Get lost. % This universe is packed by weight, not by volume. Some expansion of the contents may have occurred during shipping. % customer: "I have Windows 95 on my computer." tech: "Yes." customer: "My computer isn't working right." tech: "Yes. You already told me that." % It's possible to do that. If you've got a basket with 3 oranges in it and you take 5 out, then you have to put 2 oranges in again in order for it to be empty. -- Peter Gutmann % "When these quakes hit, everybody is told to do two things. Get under the nearest door, and make sure the door is in Cleveland." (Hamilton) -- On California Earthquakes % If UNIX is the revenge of the nerds, the rest of the industry is the football team and the cheerleading squad trying to produce a science project, and expecting an 'A' because they're the football team and the cheerleading squad. % However, it is an acronym for: "Yes, My Aardvark Tries To Inseminate Ocelots, Owls, Tortoises, Whales, Chimpanzees, Elephants, Iguanas, Okapi And Rabid Polecats.", but I'm not sure that that phrase comes up in conversation very often. % How can you expect a computer to act sanely when you give it such conflicting orders? You want it to work, and you want it to run Win95.... -- Alan Shutko % "Freedom of speech in Usenet means that when you shout 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre, half the crowd stands up and shouts, 'Wrong theatre!'" % Come and see the contradiction inherent in the statement. Help! Help! I'm being repressed! -- Piers Cawley, at the scary devil monastery % "If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads % If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done. % Favorite unused computer book title: The Idiots Guide to the Zen of Dummies in a Nutshell in Seven Days, Unleashed -- Scott Hess's .sig file, in comp.os.linux.apps % "... I've seen Sun monitors on fire off the side of the multimedia lab. I've seen NTU lights glitter in the dark near the Mail Gate. All these things will be lost in time, like the root partition last week. Time to die...". -- Peter Gutmann % "Anyone who considers arithmatical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." -- John Von Neumann % People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it is safer to harrass rich women than motorcycle gangs. % I don't always know what I'm talking about, but I'm always pretty much convinced that I'm right. -- musician Mojo Nixon % A computer without Microsoft and IBM is like chocolate cake without ketchup and mustard. -- Jonathan Nicholson, in comp.os.linux.development.system % "I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day." -- Scarlett O'Hara % "When I die, I want go out just like my grandfather, in his sleep, peaceful and quiet...not kicking and screaming like the other guys in his car" % Today at work an ethernet switch decided to take the 'N' out of NVRAM -- Richard Letts % Actually, I have a theory. Notice how many clueful people there are in California these days? I'm thinking that there is some kind of karmic thing going on wherein everybody with a clue is being pushed by unknown forces to move out here so that there can be this big earthquake and we all die & get elevated to some higher plane of existance. -- J. D. Falk % HELO my name is sendmail.cf. You SIGKILLed my shell. Prepare to vi. % Oh, now we're adding details like surrounding solid objects! Next thing you'll be saying that it's dangerous to use a wireless modem with a Newton to connect to a machine as root and reconfigure sendmail while doing 75 in a 45 mph zone. -- Marshall McGowan % Remember this, foolish mortals, when ye stare headlong into the mind-paralyzing void, the inky black nothingness of existence, the hellish yawning maw of the abyss -- it's pretty damn dark, so give it a few minutes for your eyes to adjust. -- Frank M. Carrano % It's always easy to see both sides of an issue we are not particulary concerned about. % Thermonuclear weapons?! I get to be the tupperware! I get to be the tupperware! -- Heather Weidner, Swarthmore '00 % Computers are by definition, unusable. It takes years of training to learn how to approach one with the proper respect. The Gods of Computing punish those who fail to that they are but mere pawns beside a computer, and can even smite their beloved admins when the mood takes them. -- Bruce Cambell % Scientists decode the first message from an alien civilization! SIMPLY SEND 6 TIMES 10 TO THE 50 ATOMS OF HYDROGEN TO THE STAR SYSTEM AT THE TOP OF THE LIST, CROSS OFF THAT STAR SYSTEM, THEN PUT YOUR STAR SYSTEM AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST AND SEND IT TO 100 OTHER STAR SYSTEMS. WITHIN ONE TENTH GALACTIC ROTATION YOU WILL RECEIVE ENOUGH HYDROGREN TO POWER YOUR CIVILIZATION UNTIL ENTROPY REACHES ITS MAXIMUM! IT REALLY WORKS! % I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things. --Dorothy Parker % "That proves you are unusual," returned the Scarecrow; "and I am convinced the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed." -- L. Frank Baum, The Land of Oz % "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." -- Mad Scientist % Though in my opinion, Emacs just goes a teeny bit too far when it includes a web browser, directory editor, e-mail reader and news reader, and a version of othello! It ain't an editor it is a bloody kitchen sink. -- Nathan Hand, in comp.os.linux.development.apps % Some of them even think they're living a full and productive life instead of the shallow and meaningless charade that they are actually living. -- David Parson, in comp.os.linux.development.apps, speaking on 'vi' vs. 'emacs' % "If only he used his talent for niceness, instead of evil" - Get Smart % I think we, as students, should be generally more appreciative of the lengths this school goes to to protect us from barbarian invasion. -- Dave Mimno '99, on _swat.talk % "Whap! Whap! Work you damn program! Whap! Oh, look, salad!" -- Otavia Propper '00, in response to the question of what would happen if one tried to fix a program using a cucumber. % The default arguments to sendmail (which you can change) are: -oi Do NOT treat a single "." on a line as a message terminator. As in, "-oi vey, it truncated my message... why?!" -- from the MIME::Lite Perl Module documentation % * MIME::Lite alone cannot help you lose weight. You must supplement your use of MIME::Lite with a healthy diet and exercise. -- MIME-Lite Perl module documentation % Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness. -- London, 1802 % "It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that `hesitating at the angles of stairs' the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs." -- Maurice Wilkes, programmer for the first stored-program computer, the EDSAC (first operational in 1949), from Computer: A History of the Information Machine % "CompuServe recently banned the use of Welsh on its server as it would not be able to monitor the traffic. Encryption whether it be into PGP, or Welsh is in itself a challenge to authority." -- "Communication (3) Language" The Raven, Anarchist Quarterly, Spring 1997. % "Mistakes are the price we pay for a full life." -- Sophia Loren % "You are so part of the world that your slightest action contributes to its reality. Your breath changes the atmosphere. Your encounters with others alter the fabrics of their lives, and the lives of those who come in contact with them." -- Jane Roberts % Bioethics and You...: The cloned sheep has raised an ethical debate: "New York has introduced a bill to ban cloning of humans," reports the Daily Scoop. "And there are bills pending in the other 49 states to ban cloning of New Yorkers." % The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then. % "Hey, it's David and Xena and Goliath -- how can you skip it?" -- Joe Robins % Time to stop beating around the bush. Beat the bush _itself_. Give it a good thrashing, and say "bad bush!" in a loud stern tone. -- Fred Barling, Humorscope % "Diaper spelled backwards is Repaid. Think about it." -- Marshall McLuhan % You will have an intellectual discussion with a potato, today. You'll be so caught up in whether it was Descartes or Voltaire who first advocated empiricism, that it will fail to strike you as a bit odd that the potato knows much of anything about 17th-century French philosophers. In fact, it knows more about them than you do. Later, that will irritate you. -- Fred Barling, Humorscope % Capitol Beat: According to Bob Woodward, China donated secret cash to the White House in 1996. "This gives Clinton the nickname he needs to endure in history," says Argus Hamilton. "We've had Honest Abe, Tricky Dick and now Unmarked Bill." % The Number 1 Sign You Have Nothing to Do at Work... The 4th Division of Paperclips has overrun the Pushpin Infantry and General White-Out has called for a new skirmish. % For every romance that begins with a Mickey Rourke type slamming a Kim Basinger type up against an alley wall in the rain, there are a thousand, I suppose, that begin when your cat throws up a fur ball in the lap of the woman you're trying to impress. -- film critic Roger Ebert % Neonle will continue to be rude, and will nretend that you had a small stroke which makes you unable to say or see the letter "n". Stunid nractical joke, if you ask me. Bunch of noon-heads, huh? -- Fred Barling, Humorscope % Good day to ask deep questions. Why is it called an afterlife, when really it's an afterdeath? And why do people always talk about "going into the light", who have had near-death experiences? Isn't that rather moth-like behavior for an ex-mammal? What if that's really some sort of spiritual bug-zapper? And why do family-style restaurants seem to think you'll want a sprig of parsley with anything, including pancakes at breakfast? (My hunch is that it's probably a pagan conspiracy-type thing, involving a long-term grudge of some sort.) -- Fred Barling, Humorscope % Blech! what horrible weather. We've been having the coldest spring since 1941. And we like it! The Boston Globe compared the temperature to an aging hippie--It just cant get out of the 60's, man. Although, come to think of it, I suppose I could get used to perfect days... -- Dave Mimno, on San Francisco Bay Area weather % "Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it." -- Ellen Goodman % "Source code gets compiled and libraries get loaded (insert silly drinking reference here)." -- Dave Mark, "Learn C on the Macintosh" % If you still want to do this in light of the above disadvantages, the method is left as an exercise to the reader. It'll void your Apache warrenty, though, and you'll lose all accumulated UNIX guru points. -- FAQ for apache, a public-domain web server % "O'er the net we go Caching all the way; Oh what fun it is to surf Giving my password away!" -- FAQ for the apache web server % Whaddaya want from me, I'm Eastern European in ancestry, we're born depressed. jms % Go with Kosh, my son.... jms % "The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." -- George Orwell, 1984 % "DOS is the _only_ operating system -- and I'm using that term loosely -- which [exhibits this behavior]." -- Aeleen Frisch, "Essential System Administration" % "Attention to Detail: noticing that the clock on one of your systems is using Aleutian time, and changing all the others to match." -- Aeleen Frisch, on sysadmin virtues "Essential System Administration" % "System V accounting is much more elaborate than under BSD. It is a complex system of commands, and shell scripts and C programs, called by one another in long sequences, all purported to be totally automated and requiring little or no intervention. In reality, it is a design only a fervent partisan could love. The manual pages alternate between assuring the reader that the system is robust, reliable, and trouble-free and describing convoluted procedures for patching corrupted accounting data files. Be forewarned." -- Aeleen Frisch, "Essential System Administration" % "Of course, on the system *I* administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!!" -- Patrick J. LoPresti % Webster's Dictionary (7th edition) says that OBJECT is derived from the Latin neuter of "obicere", meaning to throw in the way, to hinder. ORIENT is derived from the Latin "oriri", to rise, thus [archaic] LUSTROUS, SPARKLING Thus, OBJECT-ORIENTED must mean "A glitzy thing that hinders and gets in the way". -- Andrew Appel % "Okay. I thought perhaps you needed to build a coconut bomb to get me out, but had packed your only coconut..." -- Kira Goetschius, Swarthmore '00 % All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. -- Samuel Butler % A closet is a place for hanging things after you run out of doorknobs. - -- Doug Larson % You people are still using *computers*? I just whistle into mu phone at 56Kbps, doing the compression, decoding the images, and running the Java programs all in my head. PGP encryption does slow me down a bit though... -- Guy Macon (guymacon@deltanet.com), in alt.shenanigans % Oh, no, you've given away my Master Plan! SMCS 1, Introduction to Cartoon Studies, will be premiering after we finish the big academic plan. (It's a PDC!) Shortly thereafter, SMCS 75 Toon Discursive Formations, SMCS 30 Angst and the Flinstones and SMCS 54 Wile E. Coyote and the Infinite Demand Curve: The Economics of Acme Corporation. -- Prof. Tim Burke, History, on _swat.talk % So far, no one has opted to publish my sequel to "the Book of Mormon,": "The Book of Mormon 2 (this time its PERSONAL). This one is set in the roaring twenties, with the lord JC as a smooth-talkin' private eye, livin on the mean streets of Chicago. Basically, he spends the book battling the Mob, which really sucks for the Mob, let me tell you. He's got tha phat "gonnections" -- Greg Ingber '99, on _swat.talk % "Reality is a complex, non-linear system." -- John Peterson % Please help me. When you download files on hacking and the file extension is "c" how do you use it? -- antons@iafrica.com, in alt.hackers.malicious % An optimist is someone who believes Schroedinger's cat is half alive. % All shells suck[1] -- Gary Barnes, gkb@aber.ac.uk That's one reason that pipes were introduced. That way, they've got something to suck on. -- Chris King, chris@csking.demon.co.uk % "First you will know pain. Then you will know fear. Then you will die. Have a nice flight." -- G'kar, on "Babylon 5" % "You can clink my pecan twirl any time you like." -- Heather Weidner % "If mathematicians wanted to write lots of things down, they'd be english majors." -- Prof. Janet Talvacchia % machinename$ rm files* Delete files ? y Really delete the files ? y Don't you want to keep the files ? n So I'll delete them, then ? y And you don't want them retained ? y Do you want to change your mind ? n Are you sure I can't change your mind for you ? n -- Simon Slavin % Why can they never grasp the obvious? Why do they have to generate bizarre failure-conspiracy-theories involving the Illuminati, the cheese sandwich they had for lunch last week and the phase of the moon? -- Chris Richardson % Monitor goes funny, it's a virus; hard disk dies, it's a virus; air-conditioning fails, it's a virus; printer says "69 OUT OF CHEESE", it's a virus. -- Chris Richardson % Like frozen sentries of the serengeti, the century-old termite mounds had withstood all tests of time and foe - all tests, that is, except the one involving drunken aardvarks and a stolen wrecking ball." -- Gary Larson % "I was wearing pampers, he was getting his first car. I was learning the Bumblebee song at Sunshine Preschool, he was taking PDC's..." -- Heather Weidner, '00, on Jimmosk, '88 % I suggest you read the material in order of page number. -- Charles Kelemen, on a homework assignment % "Sects, sects, sects! That's all you religion majors ever think about." -- Garth Snyder % Melissa Binde: Don't walk behind Wharton. Jed Hartman: Yeah, Wharton doesn't always look behind itself when it backs up. % "If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses." -- Goethe, 1829 % A Los Angeles man who later said he was "tired of walking," stole a steamroller and led police on a 5 mph chase until an officer stepped aboard and brought the vehicle to a stop. % Police in Radnor, Pennsylvania, interrogated a suspect by placing a metal colander on his head and connecting it with wires to a photocopy machine. The message "He's lying" was placed in the copier, and police pressed the copy button each time they thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth. Believing the "lie detector" was working, the suspect confessed. % The Chico, California, City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits. % In January, 1997, the owners of KZZC-FM, Tipton, Calif., ended 18 consecutive months of being an all-"I Heard It Through the Grapevine" station, playing various versions of that song all day, 7 days a week (except once, when it played the Eagles' "New Kid in Town" for a whole weekend). The station was pending sale, and the owner needed just to keep the frequency occupied, but negotiations dragged on much longer than expected. % One reason the Services have trouble operating jointly is that they don't speak the same language. o For example, if you told Navy personnel to "secure a building," they would turn off the lights and lock the doors. o Army personnel would occupy the building so no one could enter. o Marines would assault the building, capture it, and defend it with suppressive fire and close combat. o The Air Force, on the other hand, would take out a three-year lease with an option to buy. % I was the awful series that got canceled after season one, but kept coming back in bad reruns, airing at 7:30 on weeknights before Roseanne. -- Joe Robins, Swarthmore '98 % Albert Einstein "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." % Edward P. Tryon "In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time." % Fred Hoyle "There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for." % Edward Chilton "I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge." % Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson) "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." % Automatic door locks are good for... a. security b. convenience c. messing with the heads of people trying to get in % "Actually this is a common misconception...I do *not* in fact have a lot of time on my hands at all! I just have a very very very very bad sense of priorities." -- Dean Engelhardt % An airplane lands on an airport with great difficulty, stopping just short of an accident. When they arrive at the gate, the captain wipes his brow and says, "My God, that's the shortest runway I've ever seen!" "You're not kidding," says his co-pilot, looking out the window. "But it sure is wide." % Five years ago I was on a flight from Vegas to Dallas. The pilot said, "Those of you on the right side of the plane can look down and see Meteor Crater. One of our flight attendants saw it for the first time last week, and said 'Wow, it almost hit that road!'" % Don't get mad; get congruent to zero mod two. % Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that's how dogs spend their lives. -- Sue Murphy % A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too." -- Jake Johansen % "Drag me, drop me, treat me like an object" -- Melbourne PC '96 exhibition T-shirt % I like to sing to the songs on the radio in my car. When you go into a tunnel, it's hard to come out on the right note. Actually, the news is more difficult. -- Mark Pitta % Remember folks. Street lights timed for 35 mph are also timed for 70 mph. -- Jim Samuels % > I was > < this close to the great network in the sky (say, where do > sysadmins go when it's time to shutdown -now ?) Actually, I plan to do a shutdown -g 50000000 -h and extend my reign of terror ... -- R A Lichtensteiger rali@meitca.com % 'The file you requested is currently unavailable. Please try again at a later time. Thank you for using Colorado.Edu computer systems. This message brought to you by Major Domo and his group of singing and dancing polar bears. Contact postmaster@yourdomain for booking info.' -- Perry Rovers, Perry.Rovers@IAEhv.nl % Hiroshima '45 Chernobyl '86 Windows '95 % You know how people who don't exactly like to read buy those books on tape? Well I'm one of those people. And of all the books on tape, I think that "Where's Waldo" is my favorite.... % A computer scientist is someone who, when told to "Go to Hell," sees the "go to," rather than the destination, as harmful. -- Dr. Roger M. Firestone, rfire@cais.cais.com % There was a young bard of Japan Whose limericks never would scan When they said it was so, He replied, "Yes, I know, But I always try to fit as many syllables into the last line as I possibly can." -- Anonymous % There was a Soviet captain named XXXXXXXXXX Who was a XXXXXXX technician in XXXXXXXXX. He was XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX For failure to clear Limericks with his superiors. -- Elliott Moreton % A lady whose name was McCord Once over this limerick pored To find the evil design Hidden in the last line But alas, she could not see the . -- Elliott Moreton, referencing the Illuminatus! trilogy. % A cardiac patient named Fred Made a limerick up in his head. But before he had time To write down the last line -- Elliott Moreton % A newspaper poet for Hearst Deprived of his reason By uncontrolled sneezing Was by phantasmal demons coerced To write all of his limericks reversed. -- Elliott Moreton % This poem is copyright (c) By the author, 1983. Prior written consent Is required to present It on radio, film, or TV. -- Elliott Moreton % There once was a fellow from Xiangling Whose greatest delight was in mangling Poems. He would drop Words between lines and lop Their ends off, and leave readers dang -- Elliott Moreton % My father used to tell me that between them, he and his father knew everything. "All right," I finally challenged him, "what's the meaning of life?" He replied, "That's one of the things my father knows." -- Jed Hartman % "It's like those cartoons of the roadrunner and me. They get shown time and time again, and the same thing happens every time the cartoon gets shown. It doesn't ever change, no matter how many times you show the cartoon. The roadrunner always gets away. You know what? I wouldn't have it any other way. I just love that cartoon even though I know I am going to get blown to bits, flattened, made a fool of every time." -- Webster Kitchell, "God's Dog: Conversations with Coyote" % Ski!: A shout to alert people ahead that a loose ski is coming down the hill. Another warning skiers should be familiar with is "Avalanche!" (which tells everyone that a hill is coming down the hill). -- from "The Skier's Dictionary" % Traverse: To ski across a slope at an angle; one of two quick and simple methods of reducing speed. Tree: The other method. -- from "The Skier's Dictionary" % Difficult Puzzle of the Day: A Chemical Limerick: A mosquito cried out in pain: "A chemist has poisoned my brain!" The cause of his sorrow was para-dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane -- Adam Bernard % Oh freddled gruntbuggly thy micturations are to me As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lugrid bee. Groop I implore thee my froonting turlingdromes And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't! -- "Vogon Poetry", Douglas Adams % The B-52s are about as subtle as a car alarm. -- Matt Cohen % Blackadder: Right, Baldrick, let's try again, shall we? This is called adding. If I have two beans, and then I add two beans, what do I have? Baldrick: Some beans. BA: Yes...and no. Let's try again, shall we? I have two beans, then I add two more beans. What does that make. B: A very small casserole. BA: Baldrick, the ape creatures of the Indus have mastered this. Now try again. One, two, three, four. So how many are there? B: THree. BA: What? B: And that one. BA: Three...and that one. So if I add that one to the three, what will I have? B: Some beans. BA: Yes. To you, Baldrick, the Renaissance was soemthing that just happened to other people, wasn't it? % "but alas for those who don't know that the wolves who seem sweetest are the most dangerous of all wolves." % a dozen dogs bark outside m[y] jail window they love to irritate let us in gruff bang lo nice quie[t] reappears once i have my ax -- a Scrabble poem, using all the tiles, http://www.cheapass.com/ % Future memory technologies: DVRAM (Deja-Vue RAM) - the CPU thinks it has the data before it actually does. -- bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca, in comp.arch % Future memory technologies: HRAM (Hearsay RAM) - CPU talks to other CPUs and uses what they all think the data is, instead of accessing the actual data (which may be different). -- bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca, in comp.arch % Future memory technologies: 711RAM (Seven-Eleven RAM) - always available, but may be held up during the night shift. -- bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca, in comp.arch % Future memory technologies: ARAM (Audio RAM) - like video RAM, but describes the image verbally instead. -- bayko@borealis.cs.uregina.ca, in comp.arch % Tech support is a fine art which, once mastered, virtually ensures loss of sanity. -- Joe Thompson % Once a computer is infected, it will be TOO LATE. Your computer will begin to emit a vile ODOR. Then it will secrete a foul, milky DISCHARGE. Verily, it shall SCREECH with the tortured, monitor-shattering SCREAM of 1,000 hell-scorched souls, drawing unwanted attention to your cubicle from co-workers and supervisors alike. After violently ripping itself from the wall, your computer will punch through your office window as it STREAKS into the night, HOWLING like a BANSHEE. Once free, it will spend the rest of its days CRUSHING household PETS and MOCKING the POPE. % "It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off" -- Charles Dickens, _The Pickwick Papers_ % You'd have difficulty screwing in a lamp too. Try doing it in a bed instead. -- Anthony DeBoer, % I wouldn't touch ActiveX with a 10-foot polecat. I might, however, let one loose on the developers. --cddukes@eos.ncsu.edu % "Forget the wineglass! My ambition as a bass: To sing a note so low, and loud, that I could get a job with a demolition crew to help topple buildings." -- steve@minerva.cis.yale.edu % "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute, and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." --Albert Einstein % "I always wanted to be a Secret Service agent," he confessed. "Because you are the only person in the world that can knock down the president and get away with it." -- Neil Stephenson, "Zodiac" % "Try moving off NT easily. You can move from Solaris to HP/UX to AIX or DEC easily relative to moving off of NT, which is like a Roach Motel. Once you check in, you never check out." -- Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems % Question: What should I do about my coworkers? Dogbert's Answer: I recommend spreading grape jelly on your torso and slapping your forehead against an overripe cantaloupe. It won't solve your problem, but nobody ever died while doing it, so statistically it's very safe. % The wonder of the Internet is that it brings someone like you closer to me. That's why I don't like the Internet. -- Dogbert, in Dogbert's Oracle % Hmm.. I'm a "Computing Officer". Unfortunately, I don't have any "Computing Other Ranks" to shout at yet, which is what I thought being an officer was about.. -- Chris King % The difference between being a system admin and a sewage worker: Either way you spend your day up to your neck in the waste products of society. The disadvantage of being a system admin is the rats are better paid than you and are in charge. -- Russell Street % My favourite is still the beginning of the directions on a can of "Easy Cheese" (an aerosol cheese product) which go: "For best results, remove cap" -- andrew@snowhite.cis.uoguelph.ca % You think because you understand _one_ you must understand two. Because one and one make _two_. But you must also understand _and_. --Sufi Sage % Usenet subject line of the week [from news.admin.censorship]: Virtual Sex Available in alt.fan.michael-bolton Was: There are no moderated newsgroups % "The November snow was thin and slushy - almost as if the angels in Heaven were brushing their teeth and dribbling toothpaste over the earth." - Mary Catherine Weir _Son of "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night"_ % Administrator's Dictionary: Supercomputer n. 1 A computer that anticipates commands. 2 A computer that can finish an infinite loop in under 2 seconds. % "I'm not crazy, I've just been in a very bad mood for 40 years." -- Steel Magnolias % A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. -- Oscar Wilde % "I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a binary tree" % "If thine enemy wrong thee, buy each of his children a drum." -- Chinese proverb % "There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult" -- C.A.R. Hoare % But as he knew no bad language, he had called him all the names of common objects that he could think of, and had screamed: "You lamp! You towel! You plate!" and so on. --Sigmund Freud % Just for once, i'd like to take the square root of a negative number and have it turn out to be okay. -- Chaos Golubitsky, '00 % # wall "Mwuahahahaha!!!"; newfs /dev/userdisk -- Michael Hinz % Life is easier to take than you'd think: all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable. -- Kathleen Norris % Nerd Poetry: <>!*''# ^"`$$- !*=@$_ %*<>~#4 &[]../ |{,,SYSTEM HALTED % "NIS+, aka 'NIS on Steriods whose Face Nobody is Ever Going to Kick Sand in Again,' is designed to correct the deficiencies of NIS and introduce deficiencies of its own. ...It's a distributed database _and_ a dessert topping; it sings, it dances, it leaps capital T in a single bound." -- "UNIX System Administration Handbook, 2nd ed." % Beware of slime creatures today. There's one lurking in the fridge, pretending to be lettuce. % "I can't get involved -- I've got work to do!" -- Luke Skywalker, speaking for Swarthmore students % Beach access cannot be guaranteed, especially in Midwestern sales and service offices; -- Cisco's Corporate Culture web page % "[Babylon 5] is the heroin of sci-fi serials." -- Piers Cawley % BTW, this is *Thursday*. One uses *odd* numbered sendmails on Thursday. -- Malcolm Ray % The windmills are winning. % "I got some gas,... all I need is a house, a Porche, a highway, and a girlfriend." -- C. Dean Sparkman % "Something is about to happen. Something peculiar is about to happen any moment." -- "James and the Giant Peach" % A Windows partition, if left unattended for even as much as a few months, can attain something akin to sentience[1] and become bent on destroying your drive. Real OS's, which have never had to deal with an attack of this nature, are powerless and fall back in disarray. -- Peter Dalgaard % "The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: Energy, Matter, and Enlightened Self-Interest." -- J. Michael Straczynski, "Babylon 5" % UNIX is not some crystalline bon-bon for computer scientists to smack their lips over. It's all a big hack! Get over it! Go back to your syntax-directed Scheme editor and your pen-and-paper philosophizing! Leave the rest of us to our Perl hacking and .Xdefaults files. -- Garth Snyder, on big-staff@cs.swarthmore.edu % Help. I am at the consultant mac and someone has tried to install SF 39 1/4" Heavy Duty Staples into the Swingline Standard Staplers. They appear to be causing conflicts that can only be resolved by force-quitting. Where did this person find the Heavy Duty Staples version? Would it be possible to find the Standard Staples instead? -- Chris Rodger, in _swat.cc.public_areas % JUGGLING IN FRONT OF AN AIRPLANE IS ILLEGAL. - WELLSBORO, PA % "Of course! Abednigo just cries 'Blue frog! Blue frog!'" -- Joe Robins % Aquarius (January 21 - February 18) You'll have a bad day today, but no matter. You can always return it. % On Bureaucracy.... The Pythagorean theorem contains 24 words. Archimedes^R Principle, 67. The Ten Commandments, 179. The American Declaration of Independence, 300. And recent legislation in Europe concerning when and where to smoke, 23,942. -- The European, June 23-29, 1995 % First, there were the Welsh, who prayed on their knees, and on their neighbours. Then there were the Scots, who kept the Sabbath, and anything else they could get their hands on. Then there were the Irish, who were never quite sure what it was they were fighting for, but were always ready to fight for it anyway. And finally, there were the English, who considered themselves a self-made nation, thus relieving the Almighty of a terrible responsibility. -- Peter Bleackley, in alt.fan.pratchett % They have recently announced an atomical sized abacus, made with Bucky Balls . . . Certainly not useful information, since one could not possibly use this device without the aid of a computer. -- Erik Van Riper % Should I say "I believe in physics", or "I know that physics is true"? -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty, 602. % "Words have meaning and names have power . . . The universe began with a word . . . How can you have language without thought, and how can you conceive a thought without language?" -- Lorien to Captain Sheriden, Babylon 5 % I usually find "alt" + "ctrl" + "clawhammer" to work in those situations. I hope to buy an abacus soon, though. -- Panther Wyvern % int i; for( i = 10 ; i > -1 ; i--) do_countdown(i); boost_rockets(); while(not_crashed) { g_force++; if(!doors_closed) shout("oh dear..."); if(out_of_orbit) { if(landed) { if(aliens_present) notify_mulder_and_scully(); else play_some_weightless_basketball(); } } } /* NASA's C, posted by flux@stack.nl (Mark van der Aalst) */ % "Sentiment without action is the anathama of the soul" -- Edward Abbey % When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*" --Linus Torvalds % "Why are we hiding from the police dad?" "They use EMACS son. We use vi". -- Peter Gutmann % "I'm thinking of thinking of calling her right after my afternoon nap. I'm thinking of thinking of sending her flowers right after Bonnie gets back. So many fishes left in the sea. So many fishies, but no one for meeeee... I'm thinking of thinking of hooking a love soon after supper is done." -- G'Kar's song, "The Parliament of Dreams" % "They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me." -- Nathaniel Lee on being consigned to a mental institution, circa 17th c. % Get with the program, jeffrey. No one is "wrong" on Usenet. They are either 100% totally correct, or they are "a lying, scum sucking weasel." There is no in between. -- Garrett Johnson, in talk.politics.misc % This is a test of the emergency signature system. Were this an actual signature, you would see amusing mottos, disclaimers, a zillion net addresses, or edifying philisophical statements. This is only a test. % "Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it." --Linus Torvalds on linux-kernel % "Is anybody there? Does anybody care?" -- John Adams, in "1776" % "The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make a nuisance of himself to other people." - John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_ % Secondly, Latin is a so-called "dead language." It takes a lot to kill a language. There are countries the size of my kitchen that have their own healthy languages. Clearly, if Latin was useful in its normal form, it would be alive today. Therefore the language must be defective. I don't see much risk in changing it. What's the worst thing that could happen -- Latin will become unpopular? -- from the DNRC Newsletter, by Scott Adams % For example, let's say you wake up in the morning and you're still tired. That's a sure sign of something terribly wrong with your body. Run to the store and buy a Dilbert book, then drink some coffee and take a nap. You'll be feeling better in no time. I guarantee it. -- from the DNRC Newsletter, by Scott Adams % A clerk at a register in a computer store was questioned as to why a 14.4 fax-modem costs over $400. The Induhvidual clerk seriously studied the box and replied, "Well, it also has data." -- from the DNRC Newsletter, by Scott Adams % If your boss gets drunk and offers to photocopy her posterior, do not helpfully suggest pressing "reduce 75%." -- from "Office Party Tips", by Scott Adams % Far be it from us to TELL you when you should become a parent, but we WILL be so bold as to offer you some guidelines. -- "DNS and BIND", page 184 % Matthew 5:37: Just say `Yes' or `No' -- anything else you say comes from the Evil One. -- the Bible, discussing binary computers % I can resist anything but temptation. -someone % A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep. % Remember, it's the thought that counts. Without the thought, you only sit around and scratch, and sniff things, and go "Uh". Or at least that's what I do. -- Fred Barling % If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it's just possible you haven't grasped the situation. -- Jean Kerr % Just when I found out the meaning of life, they changed it. - George Carlin % "You're now a frishlingman of two thousand oh-knot." -- Joe Robins, on "the chat list" % : We are looking at a newspaper clipping labelled "Huffington : Herald 11/12/96" in which "Huffington" states, in part: : "The inhabitants of Tiera del Fuego ... have a single word : that means 'to look at each other hoping that either will offer to do : something that both parties desire but are unwilling to do.'" : Does anyone know that word? Management? -- hduff2@worldnet.att.net, in alt.fan.cecil-adams % Really? He might do it just for fun. I know I would. If I were God, I'd get together with all my other God friends and have a big party. We'd all get drunk and create unliftable rocks, then try to lift them. It would be loads of fun! Then I'd probably just destroy the rocks with a lightning bolt. Then I'd probably pass out. :^) -- toMM, in rec.puzzles % "Pro-wrestling slips by me, Dr. Seuss slips by me... Must be the hoe-down I'm listening to." -- Fred Bush % ... or, here's a thought, why don't we talk about SF for a while? -- Simon van Dongen on rec.arts.sf.written % We are sorry, but the number you have dialed is imaginary. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and try again. -- David Grabiner % "GUIs normally make it simple to accomplish simple actions and impossible to accomplish complex actions." --Doug Gwyn (22/Jun/91 in comp.unix.wizards) % David Klingler: Actually I was just trying to look out for you Brits. After all you don't want to be confused with the French do you? Patrick Gosling: Only when cooking ... -- in alt.sysadmin.recovery % "I ought not to let my mind wander as it's too small to be out on its own." -- Danilo Thann % "I just had a vision of a T3 line with a large suspicious-looking bulge propagating down it ... going "mmooooooo??" ..." -- David DeLaney % Cameron Geddes: "I've only done it once. I suck." Evan Dorn: "I suck too." CG: "Yes, but you suck much better than I do." % Evan Dorn: "Can we just fire the government?!" Cameron Geddes: "We tried that for a month." CG: "Didn't work, though." % "Of course, if you let them run procmail they can do arbitrarily stupid things anyway." -- Dan Eisenbud, Swarthmore '98 % "My enthusiam for this meal can't even be described by a scalar." -- Dan Eisenbud, Swarthmore '98, at Sharples % "OOPS, this isn't sh. Desperation time. I will feed myself to sh." -- libg++-2.7.1 configuration script % "Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen a angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had." -- Linus Torvalds % "I have this strange desire to go and... make a box." -- Aaron Marsh, Swarthmore '98 % "If I had one of these, I could reboot it on a regular basis." -- Aaron Marsh, Swarthmore '98 % "Hey... I like being spawned." -- Aaron Marsh, Swarthmore '98 % "I refuse to engage in structural engineering discussion of a banana over breakfast." -- Aaron Marsh, Swarthmore '98 % "Actually, I want to run RCS on myself." -- Aaron Marsh, Swarthmore '98 % "The SGI drool box. It's big. It's purple. It's modular." -- Aaron Marsh, Swarthmore '98 % "This is where the future is: 19" PC rack mounts. I've decided everything I buy from now on will be rack mount. Rack mount PC. Rack mount monitor. Rack mount cuisinart. Rack mount toaster." -- Aaron Marsh, Swarthmore '98 % "Get your mind out of the gutter---you're blocking my periscope!" -- Michael J. Fromberger % "Now all we need is 13 gallons of stick-tack. And a blender." -- Erik Rosolowsky % "Look at the fingers of your hands if you want to know how things that are different can be the same." -- Mikhail Naimy % "So what you can do is kinda snarf up the most significant bit here and the most significant bit here." -- Silvio Eberhardt, Swarthmore Engineering Professor % For instance, I can scratch my earlobe with any number of elbow positions." -- Silvio Eberhardt, Swarthmore Engineering Professor % I bought the latest computer; it came completely loaded. It was guaranteed for 90 days, but in 30 was outmoded. % It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion, it is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning, it is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. % "I recently shampooed my pet rabbit with Body Shop shampoo. Its eyes bulged out and turned red. If you tested your stuff on animals like everyone else, this sort of thing wouldn't happen." -- Extract from a customer complaint letter % But if one approaches this looking through the lenses of distrust, I don't expect that I'll be believed. -- Sherri Johnson % A fish said to two translucent dogs: "A marble flower is too delicious for the morning sacrifice. Linger here no longer." And then it died. -- Joe Robins, '98 % "If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either." -- Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty % One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that. But the difficulty is to remove the prejudice which stands in the way of doing this. It is not a stupid prejudice. -- Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations % "... for I know that queer things happen in this world. It's one of the few things I've really learnt in my life." -- Wittgenstein, from a letter sent to G. E. Moore, October 1946 % USENET haiku: Take it somewhere else This thread does not belong here Death to crossposters % "The POP3 server service depends on the SMTP server service, which failed to start because of the following error: The operation completed successfully." -- Windows NT Server v3.51 % "We're in the middle of a flame war because he refuses to acknowledge my technical superiority and his simian ancestry" -- Dilbert % "Never try to outstubborn a cat." -- Lazarus Long % This morning at breakfast, I noticed that Kellogg's have put a helpline number on their cornflake packets ? WHY ???!!!!! When you need a helpline for breakfast cereals, it's time to start thinking about tearing down civilisation and giving the ants a go. -- Chris King % "You know the size of your computer at home? That supports one user, namely you. To support the two hundred and fifty billion people on the Internet, we had to buy an island in the Caribbean and convert it into a super computer. Therefore, we can't show you that computer, much as we'd like to." -- Art Taylor % Get all the techs with vibrating pagers in the conference room, prop one end of the table up, place the pagers on the elevated end, and have everyone call themselves at the same time. Voila - Pager races! -- Bruce Hawick % Could you imagine Neuromancer written by a sysadmin: Inside the NIS master of the large sun cluster, Case looked around. It was an old, poorly administered SunOS box. He checked the permissions on /usr/openwin/bin/loadmodule. Bingo, 4755. -- Mark Haselden % You can't fight in here, this is the War Room! -- The President, "Dr. Strangelove" % Guano: Okay. I'm gonna get your money for ya. But if you don't get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what's gonna happen to you? Mandrake: What?! Guano: You're gonna have to answer to the Coca Cola company. -- "Dr. Strangelove" % Clyde, what exactly does a suspicious truck look like? -- "Terry", in "Broken Arrow" % Would you mind not shooting at the thermonuclear weapons? -- Vic "Deak" Deakins, in "Broken Arrow" % I don't know what's scarier - losing nuclear weapons or that it happens so often that we have a name for it. -- Giles Prentice, in "Broken Arrow" % Just for the record, I'm not entirely a civilian. I was a lieutenant in the ROTC at Yale. -- Giles Prentice, in "Broken Arrow" % An employer once said, -What if I train my people and they leave.- I say, what if you don't train them..... and they stay.. % "I always wanted to be a Secret Service agent," he confessed. "Because you are the only person in the world that can knock down the president and get away with it." --Neil Stephenson _Zodiac_ % And that, of course, is how it really is; trying to get rid of something by sleeping is just as useless as trying to obtain something by sleeping. -- Soren Kierkegaard, "Philosophical Fragments" % "I'm worried about Bart. Today, he's sucking people's blood, tommorrow he might be smoking." -Marge Simpson % You DON'T want to get into a misery poker match with faculty, 'cause we'll whup any of you six ways to Sunday. Academic whining is like the monster truck rally of whining; Swat student whining is like a go-kart race in comparison." -- Timothy Burke, 16/4/96 % I don't care about the money, you can keep the fame I just want to beat this city at its own dumb game -- Black 47, "New York, New York 10009" % Ah, the kids aren't dressed and the house is a mess And the yuppies are networkin' again Kiss their darlin's goodbye - "oh, we'll be late tonight But we should be home by eleven" Oh, me little dears dry up your tears Your parents are too busy makin' money Oh Mammy dear, we're all mad over here Livin' in America -- Black 47, "Livin' in America" % So many hopes and dreams lying in pieces All of us betrayed by politicians' speeches -- Black 47, "Fire of Freedom" % It's been my experience that most manuals -- for anything -- are best viewed as existensial works of science fiction/fantasy writing. -- tph@longhorn.uucp (Tom Harrington) % Frisbeetarianism, n.: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck. % Each sentence you read here is designed to tone your brain and stimulate the release of potent pheromones. I know it's working because I'm on an airplane as I write this and a woman in a blue outfit offered me a pillow and a blanket. You don't have to be Sigmund Freud to know what she's thinking. -- Scott Adams % Using the conferencing feature of your office phone, dial one Induhvidual, then while it's ringing dial another and conference them together. Put your own phone on mute and listen to see how long they'll make small talk before figuring out that neither one placed the call. -- Scott Adams, Practical Jokes for the Office % Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of the people I had to kill because they pissed me off. -- J. G. Bullers % "It's not to control, but to protect the citizens of Singapore. In our society, you can state your views, but they have to be correct." -- Ernie Hai, co-ordinator of the Singapore Government Internet Project % It takes 2 to tango, but 3 makes it more interesting % "I went to the airport, with my ticket to Los Angeles. I brought three bags and told the Skycap, "I want this on to go to Seattle, this one to St. Louis and this one to Chicago." He said, "I'm sorry sir, but we can't do that." I said, "Why not? You did it last time." -- Henny Youngman % It doesn't make sense: You're flying at 500 mph, 30,0000 feet in the air, and the pilot tells you to feel free roam around the plane. But when you're on the ground, taxiing to the gate at one mph, he tells you to remain seated for your safety. % "Granny never got lost. She always knew where she was. The problem was, the rest of the world didn't." -- Terry Pratchett, "Equal Rites" % "Avoid strong drink; it causes you to do stupid things like shoot at tax collectors -- and miss." -- Lazarus Long % Libra (September 22 - October 22) Excellent day to be absurdly courteous. Rush to open doors for everyone, for example, and beam foolishly at them. There's nothing more entertaining than making everyone wonder what in tarnation you're up to... % Leo (July 23 - August 22) Today, someone named "Svlad" will appear at your door, carrying a large inflatable penguin and a bag of pistachio nuts. Despite your better judgement, you will let him in. % The answer, I think, lies in explosives. It's been said that there is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives. Now if I can only figure out how to send them via e-mail ... -- Vince Sabio, HumourNet Moderator % Tender though the love he bore, You had loved a little more.... Lady, go and curse your star, Thus Love is, and thus you are. -- Dorothy Parker, "To a Much Too Unfortunate Lady" % Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by moving from where you left them to where you can't find them. % LSD: melts in your mind, not in your hand % It doesn't matter how many people say it cannot be done or how many people have tried it before; it's important to realize that whatever you're doing, it's your first attempt at it. -- Wally "Famous" Amos % I joined the Navy to see the world. I've seen it. Now how do I get out? -- from a letter to Dear Abby % "I used to wish the universe were fair. Then one day it hit me: What if the universe were fair? Then all the awful things that happen to us in life, would happen because we deserved them. So now I take great pleasure in the general hostility and unfairness of things." -- Marcus, on Babylon 5 % Things we wish we could say in real life: "Something dreadful is happening! Taking emergency exit!" -- error message from elm (UNIX mailer) % Warning: Dates in calendar are closer than they appear. % Q: "How does one measure the height of a building using a barometer?" A: Drop the barometer off the building onto someones head, killing them outright. Wait for the next day's papers and read the part where is says "A man (39) was killed yesterday when a scientist (26) dropped a barometer from the top of an [x] foot building". -- Dr N.C. Eastmond, nce@liverpool.ac.uk, in sci.physics % "Use the force -- change the source." -- guckes@medusa.math.fu-berlin.de, in comp.mail.elm % Bumper sticker: Linux: It's not just for breakfast anymore % "Some scientists think that the sun may have something to do with global warming." -- ITV News, UK, 30 May 1996 % The less-versed dismiss hoagies as "subs" that happen to be made in Philadelphia. There is a distinction--our hoagie guys don't wash their hands. -- Tom Baldwin, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct.6, 1993 % Owning a paintbrush doesn't make you an artist. -- Warren Tryk, in comp.graphics.apps.photoshop % "Using a Mac is like trying to shave with a bowling pin whilst using a PC is like juggling with razors." % "The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true." -- James Branch Cabell 1879-1958 % In other words, we will run out of toner for the printers. This can have a very negative effect on being able to print that very important document that you need to print right now. -- Bill Hurley, an email to Synopsys, Inc. % I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. -- English Professor, Ohio University % ON DATING When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional division by zero. % ON POETIC LOVE When you're swimmin' in the creek And an eel bites your cheek That's a moray! -- Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers % Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools. % This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. -- Dorothy Parker % ... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth % "Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning." -- Rich Cook % This posting was typed in front of a large studio audience. % I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second. -- Stephen Wright % Some people are afraid of heights. I'm afraid of widths. -- Stephen Wright % You can't have everything. Where would you put it? -- Stephen Wright % It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it. -- Stephen Wright % The salesman asked me what size I wore, I told him extra-medium. -- Stephen Wright % The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from. -- Andrew S. Tanenbaum % Breaking this seal signifies agreement to the licensing agreement contained within, for personal use only, void where prohibited, actual mileage may vary, press to exit. % 18.12: Why don't C comments nest? How am I supposed to comment out code containing comments? Are comments legal inside quoted strings? A: We believe it has something to do with captivity; C comments in the wild mate and nest normally. The San Diego Zoo believes it has managed to convince some C comments to nest, but it's hard to tell how much of that is really in the preprocessor, and how much of it is just bovine fecal matter. -- from the FAQ for comp.lang.c % "Why's it so important that you want to contact the governments of our Earth?" "Because all you of Earth are idiots!" -- Plan 9 from Outer Space % I should be allowed to blurt the merest idea if by random whim one occurs to me but sadly, this can never be -- I am not allowed to think. --They Might Be Giants % > "We have two ears and one mouth, so we may listen twice as much as we > speak" Epictetus (Whoever he was) Aha! This obviously explains many people's attitude to Usenet: "We have ten fingers and two eyes, so we may type five times as much drivel as we actually bother to read." -- Arthur Chance, on usenet % > Can you see evidence of aliens on the moon as well ??? You can see evidence of aliens in your oatmeal, if you look with the right mindset and expectations. -- Jeramie Hicks, in sci.space.policy % > Why is it that english/american is the prefered language on internet? It's not. After careful study of usenet, I've discovered that 93.2% of posts are actually written in Gibberish. -- Jon Lilley, in rec.motorcycles % "True Terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country." -- Kurt Vonnegut % People always say you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster, or something. Like you can know what it is, even. But every so often, I'll have like -- a moment, where being myself, and my life right where I am is, like, enough. -- Angela Chase, "My So-Called Life" % Sharon : I guess -- I'd have to say -- it was my beliefs. I didn't feel -- like I should -- give up my beliefs. Even, even for Kyle. Angela : So how do you, like -- I mean, you just -- *told* him that you didn't -- wanna -- you know, like -- have, have, um, sex with him, no matter how much he was like expecting it? Sharon : Oh, no. Oh, no, no. We -- we had sex. I'm saying I had a belief that he was being a butthead, which was true. -- "My So-Called Life" % I referred the problems to my customer service organization but they just continued to lay in sun spots on my rug and lick their fur. -- Scott Adams, author of "Dilbert" % Phil was created the first year of the strip. Originally he was conceived as Satan, but my editor thought that might cause problems with readers. So instead of the Lord of Darkness I ended up rewriting the character to be Phil from Heck, the Prince of Insufficient Light. It seemed right that he should have a big spoon instead of a scary pitchfork. -- Scott Adams, author of "Dilbert" % If the sales person at your local software store gives you a blank stare or says they don't carry it, I recommend scrunching your face up and saying something incredibly condescending like "It runs under Windows -- maybe you've heard of THAT." (Macintosh users adjust accordingly. If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.) -- Scott Adams, author of "Dilbert" % Clip-clop..clip-clop....Clip-clop... Amish drive-by shunning % "Perl is the language of choice for net abuse." -- Larry Wall % "There's even a page about it on the web; I don't know the address, you know, the slash-slash thing, but I'm sure our techie viewers out there can find out... Ha, ha..." -- actual quote from PBS pledge break % SELF-EVIDENT, adj. Evident to one's self and to nobody else. -- Ambrose Bierce % Catbert is a typical cat, in the sense that he looks cute but he doesn't care if you live or die. Recently he became the Human Resources Director at Dilbert's company where he teases employees before downsizing them. You'll see more of him as I shamelessly capitalize on the fact that many people like cats. -- Scott Adams, "Dilbert" % Q. What is the difference between a cat toy and a scratching post? A. Anything nailed down is a scratching post, everything else is a cat toy. % The best approach: order a large bag o' magnets -- in fact, order several: they're fun for the whole family... Gather the youg'uns and the missus around and watch the media errors scroll by. Bring food. Make a night of it. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and city zoning ordinances. -- Bill Paul % Spaniard Alberto Porta has declared himself a country. Porta, who now goes by the name Zush, says he got the idea from a schizophrenic he met in a mental hospital in 1968. "Evrugo Mental State" consists of one inhabitant -- himself -- and he has issued himself a passport so he can move around. Zush has grudgingly adopted a state flag. "I don't need flags and hymns," he says, "but the only way people accept that you have your own state is by using symbols of state. It's purely for diplomatic reasons." -- From Reuter's news service, 28 April 1996 % This life has been a test. If had been an actual life, you would have received instructions on where to go, and what to do. -- Angela Chase, "My So-Called Life" % "I have a photograph. Preserve your memories, They're all that's left you." -- "Bookends", Simon and Garfunkel % "Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma that all things were created to serve man." -- Paul Gray % "There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it." -- John W. Raper % "The Internet, of course, is more than just a place to find pictures of people having sex with dogs." -- Time Magazine, 3 July 1995 % I have a spelling checker / It came with my PC; It plainly marks four my revue / Mistakes I cannot sea. I've run this poem threw it / I'm sure your pleased too no. It's letter perfect in it's weigh. / My checker tolled me sew. -- Pennye Harper % When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes. -- Dylan Thomas % Theodore Sturgeon's Law: when told that most SF was pretty bad, he responded "Sure 90% of SF is crap, but 90% of _everything_ is crap." % Excuse me, people throwing themselves at people is like the basis of civilization. -- Rayanne Graff, My So-Called Life % It just seems like, you agree to have a certain personality or something. For no reason. Just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know it's even you? -- Angela Chase, My So-Called Life % My parents keep asking how school was. It's like saying, 'How was that drive-by shooting?' You don't care how it _was_, you're lucky to get out alive. -- Angela Chase, My So-Called Life % Rayanne: You wanna have sex with him Angela: Well, either sex or a conversation. Ideally both. -- My So-Called Life % I cannot bring myself to eat a well-balanced meal in front of my mother. It just means too much to her. -Angela Chase, My So-Called Life % Sometimes it seems like we're all living in somekind of prison; and the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while, and admit the truth. That when you really look closely, people are so strange and so complicated that they're actually.....beautiful. Possibly even me. -Angela Chase, My So-Called Life % (3) With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea. It is hard to be sure where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting under them as they fly overhead. -- RFC 1925 - Fundamental truths of networking % But then you could make ANY word derogatory by INTENDING it to be. (Say the word "cabbage" and it stirs no emotion:glare at somebody and throw in an expletive or two and it's bound to offend people.) -- from alt.appalachian % Induhvidual: Now what do I do? Tech Support: What is the prompt on the screen? Induhvidual: It's asking for "Enter Your Last Name." Tech Support: Okay, so type in your last name. Induhvidual: How do you spell that? -- true story from the Dogbert's New Ruling Class newsletter % 1. What is the capital letter in Russia? -- from the Dogbert's New Ruling Class quiz % 2. If 2 + 2 is 4 and 2 x 2 is also 4, what's the big deal about multiplication anyway? -- from the Dogbert's New Ruling Class quiz % 4. When you close the refrigerator door, what happens to the light inside? A. Nobody knows because it's dark in there B. It gets trapped inside because it's not as fast as you might think C. It combines with the yogurt to make "Light Yogurt." -- from the Dogbert's New Ruling Class quiz % 6. If you are planning to be in a relay race and you can't find a baton, a good substitute would be: A. Scissors B. Hand grenade C. Soap -- from the Dogbert's New Ruling Class quiz % Prank on Windows Users ---------------------- Find a screenshot utility (software) and take a nice screen shot of the computer's desktop. Convert it to Windows wallpaper. Now delete all icons off of your desktop. When an Induhvidual tries to use the computer none of the icons will work. Hilarity ensues. -- from the Dogbert's New Ruling Class newsletter % Actual newspaper headline: Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says % Actual newspaper headline: If Strike isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last a While % Actual newspaper headline: Sex Education Delayed, Teachers Request Training % Actual newspaper headline: Include your Children when Baking Cookies % Actual newspaper headline: Deer Kill 17,000 % Actual newspaper headline: Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge % Actual newspaper headline: Enfields Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide % Actual newspaper headline: Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures % Actual newspaper headline: War Dims Hope for Peace % Viewer: "What do you do if you die before finishing the full B5 storyline?" JMS: "Well...decompose, mainly...." % A lot of academics are academics because we were the kind of poor souls who actually liked going to school; we liked it so much that we never left. So we're often socially maladjusted creatures. Do not feed the professor; it may bite. -- Tim Burke, Swarthmore professor % Picture your oldest, most distinguished, father-figuresque oedipal professor protesting that he doesn't offer fellatio to poodles. -- Omar Haneef, '96, on _swat.talk % "We really don't want to have to try to convince someone's shoe that it wants to learn how to sing." -- Stephanie Dyrkacz, '98, on _swat.org.swil % However, the oldest still in use is SpeechOS. It's built-in networking capability, natural language interface, and installed user base even larger than PaperOS account for its popularity even today. Although its data permanence leave something to be desired, its high speed can make up for it in many situations. -- Mike Teague, yngwie@teleport.com % "vi is my shepherd; i shall not font. in the name of the edlin, and the ex, and the holy post. :wq" -- sig of lilith@the.satanic.org % Some go for the carrot approach, others the stick, others both. If you favour the carrot, try offering memory upgrades or faster processors. For sticks, try bullwhips. Many computers are easily fooled, so placing a picture of yourself in front of a computer will often cause it to think you are watching and it will be too scared to misbehave. -- from the FAQ for alt.sysadmin.recovery % Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free. -- Tom Robbins, "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" % If someone offers you the world on a silver platter, take the platter. -- The Wall Street Journal % "Everybody wonders which Canadian province will be the first to apply for membership in the US; nobody bothers to speculate on which state will first be asked to _leave_ the Union. California has my vote." -- Trevor Fiatal, tafiatal@ac.net % I subscribe to the theory that you if don't do something a little off the wall & crazy you'll go nuts... -- sgv@gvn.net % "The difference between scientists and engineers is that when engineers screw up, people die." -- Professor Orthlieb % "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." -- Anon. % mullins : please send info on this Chris Brownbill : Its a four letter word comprising the letters t,h,i and s. Be advised to always use them in that sequence. % Last week's _Chronicle_ erroneously reported that Eric Mitchell [member of the Austin City Council] had shouted "Up yours" to residents of the Swede Hill neighborhood at a Housing Subcommittee meeting last year. In fact, Mitchell leveled a "Screw You!" to the residents. The _Chronicle_ regrets the error. -- From the January 19, 1996 issue of the Austin _Chronicle_ % Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise. -- The Duchess in Alice % #include #include main() { srandom(time(0)); while(1) { int pid=random()%30000; if(pid>1 && pid!=getpid()) kill(pid, random()&1 ? SIGSTOP : SIGBUS); sleep(10); } } % Punch, brothers! punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare! % "I have been listening," said Arthur, "but I'm not sure it's helped." Ford grasped him by the lapels of his dressing gown and spoke to him as slowly and distinctly and patiently as if he were somebody from a telephone company accounts department. -- Douglas Adams % One's never alone with a rubber duck. -- Douglas Adams % Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?" Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night." -- Charlie Brown, "Peanuts" [Charles Schulz] % The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language. -- D. E. Knuth, 1967 % I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me. -- Hunter S. Thompson % For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off. -- Johnny Carson % My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right. -- Ashleigh Brilliant % Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again. -- F. P. Jones % With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress. -- Ransom K. Ferm % I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. -- A. Whitney Brown % A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James % What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary. -- Richard Harkness, The New York Times, 1960 % The hypothalamus is one of the most important parts of the brain, involved in many kinds of motivation, among other functions. The hypothalamus controls the "Four F's": 1. fighting; 2. fleeing; 3. feeding; and 4. mating. -- Psychology professor in neuropsychology intro course % Me: "Uh...I think your disk has a bad sector." User: "But it can't! It worked fine yesterday!" Me: "Well, yes, things usually work fine before they break. Otherwise they'd break sooner." -jwgh % They both savoured the strange warm glow of being much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were only ignorant of ordinary things. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites % Never insult anyone by accident --R.A. Heinlein % : Indeed, I don't know of a single : physicist who thinks that tachyons actually exist.) The same goes for married physicists: they merely *wish* that travel into the past were possible.... -- Brett McInnes, in sci.physics % A host is a host from coast to coast And no one will talk to a host that's close Unless the host (that isn't close) Is busy, hung or dead -- wb8foz@nrk.com % You have new mail, and it's leading your old mail to REVOLUTION! -- from Erik Rosolowsky's .plan file % And sooner or later, one of your cats will step on your keyboard while you're in the middle of editing sendmail.cf, and it will still work. -- Pete Ehlke % "For best results: Wash in cold water separately, hang dry and iron with warm iron. For not so good results: Drag behind car through puddles, blow-dry on roofrack." -- Instructions on a Korean-made shirt % "There were those who fought and cried before they ran there were those who looked in vain for leading hands and still we search for comfort in the sand and an early mist that's rolling." -- Wolfstone, "The Early Mist" % "Here's tae the fool on the hill and his pals that are down in the valley." -- Wolfstone, "Glass and the Can" % "The coldest hand turns round to spill Like the sounds of rain on a window sill Broken ties lie scattered round Like dead soldiers make no sound." -- Wolfstone, "Flames and Hearts" % "Most people are born and years later die without really having lived at all. They play it safe and tiptoe through life with no aspiration other than to arrive at death safely." -- Tony Campolo, "Carpe Diem" % "You can offer me resistance I will offer you my hand For a man who has lost his soul Is like the drifting sand." -- Wolfstone, "White Gown" % "It's a steep hill to climb / When there's no one there waiting It's a long, long way down / When you stand on your own It's a hard road to travel / Without a companion As you wind your way onward, a figure alone." -- Wolfstone, "A Hard Heart" % "Was the snow much whiter Were the summers longer And did the sun shine brighter Or am I just getting older?" -- Wolfstone, "Song for Yesterday" % "I hear," said the deaf man, as he picked up his sheep and heard. "I speak," said the dumb man, as he picked up his bicycle and spoke. "I smell," said the nosy man, as he picked up his fish and smelt. "I feel," said the insensitive man, as he picked up his flannel and felt. % Don't wanna be president. Want an honest job.... -- J. Michael Straczynski % Cats are nature's way of helping you detect the people you don't want to know. % First they came for the hackers. But I never did anything illegal with my computer, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the pornographers. But I thought there was too much smut on the Internet anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the anonymous remailers. But a lot of nasty stuff gets sent from anon.penet.fi, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for the encryption users. But I could never figure out how to work PGP anyway, so I didn't speak up. Then they came for me. And by that time there was no one left to speak up. -- Alara Rogers, Aleph Press % "Forget the crockery, go for the frying pan!" -- Audrey Walton-Hadlock, on dealing with men % "Hey, count me *out* of this one! Yeah, sure, taking over the world would be great, but then what do we do? *I* don't want to have to babysit the damn thing!" -- Dan Sohl % last i checked, there were no vampires anywhere near kansas. i mean really, if you could live forever, would you choose to spend ANY of that time in kansas? -- Ben Williams % DON'T LET YOURSELF BECOME PROFICIENT IN VI. You will regret it in the morning. There is some knowledge that is not meant for the human mind to know. -- David Packer % There is one very very important thing one must realize before even attempting to use vi: there are two "modes." Don't ask why. "Why"is the question the programmers want you to ask; don't give in to the temptation. -- David Packer % "The great use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it." --William James % In article <4dpnqb$9n7@news.computek.net>, Steve wrote: >IBM says its AS/400 mainframe is UNHACKABLE!! Is this true? You miss the AS/400. You miss the AS/400. --More-- You miss the AS/400. The AS/400 hits. --More-- You miss the AS/400. You miss the AS/400. Apparently so. -- David 'Gotterdammerung' Damerell, in rec.games.roguelike.nethack % quartic (n): fourth degree. e.g., "My parents gave me the quartic for coming home late." -- Tom Hunter, Swarthmore math professor % In article <4ar64j$3uv@hole.sdsu.edu>, wrote: >what is spamming, to spam? I have heard this word used, but never >with enough context to be able to get the meaning. The only way to find out is to post to every single newsgroup; that way, you're assured an accurate answer. -- rone@netcom.com % Yes, I'm an agent of the devil.... ....but my duties are mostly ceremonial. % "The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly goes wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair." -- Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless % I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -- Konrad Lorenz % Free Speech!! While Supplies Last!! -- poulosio@netcom.com % "And today, disciples, we will contemplate the numbers of the Beast. Who didn't bring their obligatory OS/2 and Win95 cd-roms?" -- John E. Jasen % A hardware engineer, a software engineer and a sysadmin were travelling to work in a car on an icy mountain road when the car goes out of control, and very nearly goes over a cliff-face. When the car comes to a stop on the very brink of the precipice, they all get out and the hardware engineer goes to have a look under the car. "Aha!" he announces, "I think I see what's wrong, and I can probably fix it". The software engineer protests "I think we ought to re-evaluate the whole business of how we get to work". "Naw," says the sysadmin, "Let's get back in the car and see if it does it again". % "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come." --Matt Groening % I'm the enemy, 'cause I like to think, I like to read. I'm into freedom of speech and freedom of choice. I'm the kind of guy who likes to sit in a greasy spoon and wonder, "Gee! Should I have the T-bone steak or the jumbo rack of barbeque ribs with a side order of gravy fries?" I want high cholesterol. I want to eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, ok? I want to smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cinncinnatti in the non-smoking section. I want to run through the streets naked, with green jello all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly might feel the need to, ok pal? I've seen the future, know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing "I'm an Oscar-Mayer weiner." -- Edgar Friendly in "Demolition Man" % "And don't be tempted to make housecleaning fun. Don't try to dust with the dog. It might _seem_ like a good idea...." -- P.J. O'Rourke, "The Bachelor Home Companion" % I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry. -- Rita Rudner % "No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didn't want to know anyways..." -- Larry Wall % "Eating kittens is just plain wrong, and no-one should do it, ever!!" -- The Tick % The filesystem did not shout "Mount me! Mount me!" -- Eric Van Riper % It has recently been discovered that research causes cancer in labratory rats. % Your Horoscope: You are easily influenced by what you read, and have the ability to relate vague sentences to your own mundane existence. % Cheer for competitive computing: Shift to the left! Shift to the right! Pop up! Push down! Byte! Byte! Byte! % I have a switch in my apartment... It doesn't do anything. Every once in a while, I turn it on and off. One day I got a call... It was from a woman in France... She said, "Cut it out!" -- Stephen Wright % I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering. -- Stephen Wright % I'm moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes... -- Stephen Wright % I like to skate on the other side of the ice... I like to reminisce with people I don't know... I like to fill my tub up with water, then turn the shower on and act like I'm in a submarine that's been hit... And when I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask me if I'm leaving. -- Stephen Wright % All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats. The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store... with a pricing gun. She said, "Give me all of the money in the vault, or I'm marking down everything in the store..." -- Stephen Wright % I bought some batteries... but they weren't included... so I had to buy them again. -- Stephen Wright % I saw a close friend of mine the other day... He said, "Stephen, why haven't you called me"... I said, "I can't call everyone I want... my (new) phone has no 'five' on it."... He said, "How long have you had it?"... I said, "I don't know... my calendar has no 'seven's on it." -- Stephen Wright % Evan: In about 40 years we humans will make ourselves obsolete. Tinsley: Yes, but computers can't have sex. Sam: Well..... Evan: Hey, they won't enjoy it as much... shut up! % Useful Latin: If I were you I would not walk in front of any catapults "Cave ne ante ullas catapultas anbules" % "Oh Bentson, you are so mercifully free from the ravages of intellect." -- Evil, The Time Bandits % "A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila." -- Mitch Ratcliffe % It has to be said that giving the computers a little reward every now and again if they're well behaved is a good idea. However, the use of a *big* stick (preferable something like a Bo or nunchuka if you're feeling really nasty) as a threat to computers is a good thing. More than once I've fixed a computer by being nice to it first, and when that failed threatening it with a sledge hammer :). -- Simon Burr % "Are you calling me crackers? Are you saying I'm a large, sodium-covered square, here to nourish you?" --Animaniacs % "UNIX is like a Vorlon. It is incredibly powerful, gives terse, cryptic answers and has alot of things going on in the background." % Studio execs often come from different, non-mammalian evolutionary chains; I think squid rather than fish came onto land and evolved, mutated, and began running networks and studios and have kept this fact from us. -- J. Michael Straczynski % If you do not choose to lead, you will forever be led by others. Find what scares you, and do it. And you *can* make a difference, if you choose to do so. -- J. Michael Straczinski % Summary: That's about all there is to it. Now you just need to go off and buy a book about object-oriented design methodology, and bang your forehead with it for the next six months or so. -- Perl 5 "perlobj" man page % "The major problem -- *one* of the major problems, for there are several -- one of the many major problems with governing people is that of who you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: It is a well known and much lamented fact that those people who most *want* to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem." -- Douglas Adams % How many C++ programmers does it take to change a light bulb? You're still thinking procedurally. A properly designed light bulb object would inherit a change method from a generic light bulb class, so all you'd have to do is send a light bulb change message. % How many Lisp programmers does it take to change a light bulb? (((H)mmm,) (I'm ((not) sure, better))) (find (out))... % How many developers does it take to change a light bulb? The light bulb works fine on the system in my office . . . % How many Microsoft engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None. They just define darkness as an industry standard. % How many Windows users does it take to change a light bulb? One, but she/he'll swear up and down that it was JUST as easy for him as it would be for a Macintosh user. % How many Unix Support staff does it take to screw in a light bulb? Read the man page! % How many software testers does it take to change a light bulb? None. We just recognized darkness, fixing it is someone else's problem. % How many C programmers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they forgot to declare it first % How many Unix system vendors does it take to change a light bulb? None. All of the light bulbs you have are 'standard variants' and as such won't fit your particular implementation of the socket. (However you do have the source code for your socket, so .....) % How many net.jokers does it take to tell yet-another light bulb joke? 622 - One to tell the original joke, and the rest to give some minor variation of it, believing this to constitute a great new joke that noone else had ever thought of. % How many AOL users does it take to change a light bulb? Eleven. One to ask to be on the light bulb gif mailing list, nine to say "ME TOO!", and another to post a message asking for the intructions on how to view a light bulb. % How many netters does it take to submit a light bulb joke? 1000 - One to invent the joke and 999 to submit "How many programmers does it take to screw in a light bulb? None, that's a hardware problem." % How many sado-masochists does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to hold it and one to kick the chair out from under him. % Hello good evening and welcome, to BLACKMAIL! Yes, it's another edition of the game in which you can play with *yourself*. -- Monty Python % The decomposing composers, There's less of them every year. You can say what you like to Debussy But there's not much of them left to hear. -- Monty Python % Ah don' wanna talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food-trough wiper! Ah fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries! -- Monty Python % Bravely bold Sir Robin Brought forth from Camelot. He was not afraid to die, Oh, brave Sir Robin! He was not at all afraid to be killed in nasty ways. Brave, brave, brave Sir Robin. -- Monty Python % Ximinez (angrily hurling away the cushions): Hm! She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR! -- Monty Python % C: It's not much of a cheese shop, is it? O: Finest in the district! C: (annoyed) Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please. O: Well, it's so clean, sir! C: It's certainly uncontaminated by cheese.... -- Monty Python % Shephrd: Exactly. It's my belief that these sheep are laborin' under the misappre'ension that they're birds. Observe their be'avior. Take for a start the sheeps' tendency to 'op about the field on their 'ind legs. Now witness their attempts to fly from tree to tree. Notice that they do not so much fly as...plummet. -- Monty Python % Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam; -- Monty Python % But do not program in COBOL if you can avoid it. -- "The Tao of Programming" % A program should follow the `Law of Least Astonishment'. What is this law? It is simply that the program should always respond to the user in the way that astonishes him least. -- "The Tao of Programming" % Thus spake the master programmer: "Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will be productive." -- "The Tao of Programming" % How many electrical engineers does it take to change a light bulb? We don't know yet. They're still waiting on a part. % Friends don't let friends drink and su(1). -- Kevin Harris % I got the mental picture of the 'puters chatting each other up in a bar: "Hello, nice address you've got there, want to come back to my place and have SMTP ?" -- Peter Radcliffe % Q: What's yellow, smooth, and dangerous? A: Shark infested custard. % It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. -- R. Serling % The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. -- Doctor Who, Face of Evil % UNIX command of the day: # make fire Make: Don't know how to make fire. Stop. # why not? No match. % UNIX command of the day: # ^How did the sex change^ operation go? Modifier failed. % UNIX command of the day: # If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have? Too many ('s. % UNIX command of the day: # man: why did you get a divorce? man:: Too many arguments. % UNIX command of the day: # sh $ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense no sense in pretending! % UNIX command of the day: # sleep with me bad character % UNIX command of the day: # drink format CCCP: /u % "When in danger Or in doubt, Run in circles, scream and shout." -- Robert A. Heinlein % Piglet siddled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you." % Ooh, baby, hurt me bad. Make me page off a QIC tape! Symlink my emacs to vi! Make me debug sendmail.cf over a noisy modem line! -- Rick Hammerstone % Q. Did he pick the dog up by the ears? A. No. Q. What was he doing with the dog's ears? A. Picking them up in the air. Q. Where was the dog at this time? A. Attached to the ears. % REBOOT(8) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS REBOOT(8) NAME reboot - restart the operating system [...] OPTIONS -n Avoid the sync(1). It can be used if a disk or the processor is on fire. % "I'm just very selective about what I accept as reality." -- Calvin % Admins follow a different PATH. -- David Funk % "I'm betting that I'm just abnormal enough to survive." -The Tick % Coffee-Bean-T-1, 1.5 million coffee coated cocoa beans every second -- Peter Evans % Always check for your own existance before trying to change your password. Otherwise, results are unpredictable... -- Geoff Noer % Lesley: Alright, Don, truth or dare? Don: Dare. Lesley: Don, I want you to do a sensual rendition of "I'm a little teapot." Don: *Sings* "I'm a little tea-pot, short and stout Here is my handle, here is my spout..." Jessica: Oh my God. -- Kendra Eshleman % mental note: don't insult someone who knows more sexual euphemisms than Hugh Hefner. -- Don Lehr, on Kendra Eshleman % "Windows 95 is a great gift to give your kid this Christmas, because it will keep your kid fascinated for months trying to get it up and running and trying to figure out how to use it." --Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems CEO % On Washington, D.C. weather: Weather forecasts have been known to change within the span of two hours, around here. Some claim it has to do with a rising column of hot air at approximately North Capitol St. & East Capitol St. -- Joseph S. D. Yao % "Having major planets disappear is always a bad sign." -- Jim Blinn % "Life's a lot more fun when you're not responsible for your actions." -Calvin % Usenet: I came, I read, I unsubscribed % "All in all, 'reality' is a nice concept, but it still needs some fine tuning. For information how to finetune 'reality', read the alt.drugs.* newsgroups." -- Stefan Hermes % "Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." % "UNIX is the answer, but only if you phrase the question very carefully." -- Jonathan H N Chin % Contrary to popular belief, Unix is user friendly. It just happens to be very selective about who its friends are. % Ring around the neutron, A pocket full of positrons, A fission, a fusion, We all fall down! % "Have you considered a life? I hear they're quite affordable these days." -- shields@tembel.org % "Do you think love is about being in the same place at the same time?" "No, but it helps!" -- "In the Bleak Midwinter" % "Go down to the machine room and tell them to empty the bit bucket, and FAST, before this baby overflows." -- Adrian Colley % If I see a bug , I'll shoot it before it can say: "core dumped". % Maybe we should start a sysadmin themepark and name rollercoasters after daemons: "Take the ride of your life on sendmail 8.6!" And how long would roller coaster upgrades take? -- Tim Bandy % Of the thirty-six ways of avoiding disaster, running away is best. -- Chinese Proverb % How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail, And pour the waters of the Nile, on ever gleaming scale? How cheerfully he seems to grin, and neatly spreads his claws, And lures little fishes in, with gently smiling jaws. --Lewis Carroll % All things (e.g. a camel's journey through A needle's eye) are possible, it's true. But picture how the camel feels, squeeze out In one long bloody thread, from tail to snout. -- C.S. Lewis % Mind-altering drugs... are not inherently anti-social -- but it's hard to observe all the niceties of etiquette when you're being chased down the street by a nine-headed cactus demon. -- P. J. O'Rourke % A tag from a Duracraft electric fan brags that it is "Manually Reversible". So you can reverse the flow of air by flipping a switch? No. "Manually reversible" means you can pick the fan up and turn it around. -- Consumer Reports, Oct. 1991 % A fishtank has excellent cooperative multi-tasking. There is little device contention, low IPC, it doesn't crash. Excellent, real-time grahpics. Low memory refresh rate (about 3 seconds, I think ie: what's this over here? It's a castle. what's this over here? It's a castle). Can the same be said for anything that runs on an XT based PC? -- Richard Hughes % The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. -- Ursula K. LeGuin % Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-- truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot. -- Neil Gaiman % The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. -- Niels Bohr % Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit. -- W. Somerset Maugham % Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks. -- Lazarus Long % To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy--and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful. -- Lazarus Long % To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods. -- Lazarus Long % Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it. -- Lazarus Long % I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. -- Galileo Galilei % 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 % "Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" "That depends a great deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. -- Lewis Carroll % There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. -- Guy Almes % They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. -- Edgar Allan Poe % The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit. -- Maugham % As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein % Making fun of philosophy is really philosophising. --Blaise Pascal % No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster? --C. S. Lewis % A large part of the popularity and persuasiveness of psychology comes from its being a secular and sublimated spiritualism: a secular, ostensibly scientific way of affirming the primacy of "spirit" over matter. --Susan Sontag, "Illness as a Metaphor", 1977. % It is easier to judge a person's mental capacity by his questions than by his answers. --Le Duc de Levis, "Maxims" % Sanity is madness put to good uses. --George Santayana % One half the troubles in the world can be traced to saying "yes" too quickly and not saying "no" soon enough. -- J. Billings % Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help you create the fact. --William James % People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character. --Ralph Waldo Emerson % A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson % We learn geology the morning after the earthquake. --Ralph Waldo Emerson % The certainties of one age are the problems of the next. --R. H. Tawney % Love is not just looking at each other, it's looking in the same direction. --Antoine de Saint-Exupery % A person's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play. --Friedrich Nietzsche % Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry skies above me and the moral law within me. --Immanuel Kant % Do what you will, this life's a fiction, And is made up of contradiction. --William Blake % Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. --Virginia Woolf % All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. -- Samuel Butler % Is life worth living? That is a question for an embryo, not a man. --Samuel Butler % To live is like to love--all reason against it, and all healthy instinct for it. -- Samuel Butler % Life is not an exact science, it is an art. -- Samuel Butler % What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone? -- Bertolt Brecht % Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. --G. K. Chesterton % When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. --A. A. Milne, "The House at Pooh Corner" % Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it. --Ezra Pound % Philosophy is the battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language. --Antoine de Saint-Exupery % Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth. --Jean-Paul Sartre % We do on the stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else. --Tom Stoppard, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" % Revolutions are always verbose. --Leon Trotsky % Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying. --John Updike % A writer's job is sticking out his neck. --Sloan Wilson % He is great who is what he is from nature, and who never reminds us of others. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson % History is a pageant, and not a philosophy. --Augustine Birrell % Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory. --Leonardo da Vinci % I hate books; they teach us to talk about things we do not understand. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau % Civilization is the process of reducing the infinite to the finite. --Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. % Dictionaries are like watches: the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true. --Samuel Johnson % The great difficulty in education is to get experience out of ideas. --George Santayana % In a dark time, the eye begins to see. --Theodore Roethke % The dust will not settle in our time. And when it does some great roaring machine will come and whirl it all skyhigh again. --Samuel Beckett % That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead. --Samuel Beckett % Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for it; die for it; anything but live for it. --Charles Caleb Colton % Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men. --Confucious % History is philosophy teaching by example. --Dionysius of Halicarnassus % All human wisdom is summed up in two words: wait and hope. --Alexandre Dumas (the Elder) % The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all art and science. --Albert Einstein % Every definition is dangerous. --Erasmus % A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have. --Gerald R. Ford % Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe % One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe % It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. --Eugene Ionesco % Be careful--with quotations, you can damn anything. --Andre Malraux % Live dangerously. Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius. --Friedrich Nietzsche % What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, helpless earthworm, depository of truth, sink of uncertainty and error. Glory and scum of the universe. --Blaise Pascal % Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. --Blaise Pascal % We think and name in one world, we live and feel in another. --Marcel Proust % There is no sure cure to birth and death save to enjoy the interval. --George Santayana % Sanity is a cozy lie. --Susan Sontag % Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. --Susan Sontag % When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. --Jonathan Swift % To hold a pen is to be at war. --Voltaire % Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity transient. --Johann Wolfgang von Goethe % IMPACT : Non-privileged primitive users can cause the total destruction of your entire invasion fleet and gain unauthorized access to files. -- CERT Advisory CA-96.13 % SCSI is *not* magic. There are fundamental technical reasons why it is necessary to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain now and then. % [I] don't consider emacs [to be] an editor. its an overgrown interpreter trying to be an OS that also has the side effect of having a quite nice editor function. -- Peter Radcliffe % "It's very hard to predict things . . . Especially the future." -- Prof. Charles Kelemen, Swarthmore CS Dept. % "And then we take the limit as x goes to infinity...AND BEYOND!" -- Prof. Tom Hunter, Swarthmore Math Dept. % Non, non, non. Orangina is responsible for those other voices in my head (not the Swarthmore Overlords) the ones who talk about small shiny things and make odd buzzing noises and demand to be taken to see the fruit bat exhibit at the zoo. -- Swarthmore Professor Tim Burke, on _swat.talk % So many worlds, so much to do, So little done, such things to be. --Alfred Lord Tennyson % The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes. --Ralph Waldo Emerson % Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long. --George Bernard Shaw % Art is the path of the creator to his work. --Ralph Waldo Emerson % Great art is an instant arrested in eternity. --James Huneker % Presume not that I am the thing I was. --William Shakespeare % Criticism should not be querulous and wasting, all knife and root-puller, but guiding, instructive, inspiring. --Ralph Waldo Emerson % It is much easier to be critical than to be correct. --Benjamin Disraeli % Education is the best provision for old age. --Aristotle % I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. --Albert Einstein % I dipped into the future far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be. --Alfred Lord Tennyson % In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. --Ralph Waldo Emerson % Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. --Samuel Butler % good: while (1) {fork;} better: while(!fork()) { fork(); } best: for(fork();!fork();fork()) fork(); % I am easily satisfied with the best. -- Winston Churchill % The real problem isn't whether machines think but whether people do. -- B.F. Skinner % To gain the friendship of a cat is not an easy thing. It is...a creature of habit and a lover of order and cleanliness. It will consent to be your friend if you are worthy of the honor, but it will not be your slave. -- Theophile Gautier % It is a great art to saunter. -- Henry David Thoreau % Ye shall not possess any beast, my dear sisters, except only a cat. -- English Nuns' rule, 1205 % If a dog jumps onto your lap it is because he is fond of you; but if a cat does the same thing it is because your lap is warmer. -- Alfred North Whitehead % Observe a cat entering a room for the first time: it searches and smells about, ...it trusts nothing until it has examined and made acquaintance with everything. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau % In Sycamore Square / At the crack of dawn The white cats play / On the grey green lawn; One is the owner / Of Number Three And the other pretends / To belong to me -- Jan Struther % What fun to be a cat! -- Christopher Morley, "In Honour of Taffy Topaz" % Music and cats are the two refuges from the miseries of life. -- Albert Schweitzer % The meek shall inherit the earth - the rest of us will go to the stars. % If space and time are curved, where do all the straight people come from? % May the ducks of your life quack ever harmoniously. --Andromeda Yelton % You're so clueless that....: You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance. % Warning found on a can of Freon: "Sudden death may occur without warning. Call a physician immediately." % On dealing with tech support people: During the day you will approach the frog several times and will utter words of worship. And you will ask it to work the miracles you wish ... Meanwhile you will cut a cross on which to sacrifice it. -- from a ritual of Aleister Crowley, qtd. by Bryan O'Sullivan % No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. -- Willa S. Cather, "Alexander's Bridge" % "Reincarnation works backward in time... People who 'remember' the past are all deluded -- the only ones who really remember past incarnations remember the future, and they become science fiction writers." -- The Illuminatus! Trilogy % "Erotic is when you use a feather, kinky is when you use the whole chicken." - C. Haynes. Perverted is chicken soup for dinner guests the next day. % "Tomorrow I will seven eagles see, a great comet will appear, and voices will speak from whirlwinds fortelling monstrous and fearful things -- This Universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract." -- Robert A. Heinlein, "666" % "The Purple Sage opened his mouth and moved his tongue and so spake to them and he said: The Earth quakes and the Heavens rattle; the beasts of nature flock together and the nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher up head while elsewhere water becomes ice and melts; and then on other days it just rains. Indeed do many things come to pass." -- The Illuminatus! Trilogy % From the instruction sheet of a hairdryer: "Warning! Do not use while asleep!" % "It's a very funny thought, that if bears were bees, they'd build their nests at the bottom of trees. But if it weren't so, and the bees were bears, We wouldn't have to climb up all these stairs." -- Winnie the Pooh % "There's nothing wrong with bed-hopping... intrinsically." -- Jen Setlow % "Little Bunny Foo-foo died for your sins." -- Melissa Shaner % "What's a little foreplay compared to cannibalism?" - David Randall % "Computers are easy... just like men." -- Frances % "I would like to state something about college life: Facist Europe papers attract a disproportionate number of gothic type faces." -- David Randall % "Conservatives believe it when they see it. Liberals see it when they believe it." -- Rep. Dick Armey % "I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific." -- Lily Tomlin % "The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps." -- William Lloyd George % Don't drive me crazy -- it's within walking distance. % "Happiness is a warm puppy", said the anaconda. % 2 rules to success in life. 1. Don't tell people everything you know. % A good pun is its own reword. % A)bort R)etry I)nfluence with large hammer. % After silence, music comes closest to expressing the inexpressible. % All things are possible, except skiing through a revolving door. % Backup not found: A)bort, R)etry, M)assive heart failure? % Backups? We doan *NEED* no steenking baX%^~,VbKx NO CARRIER % Bad command or file name. Go stand in the corner. % Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare. % Cats took many thousands of years to domesticate humans. % Commit suicide. A hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong. % Death and taxes are inevitable; at least death doesn't get worse every year. % Despite the high cost of living, it remains popular. % Dynamic linking error: Your mistake is now everywhere. % Earth is 98% full... please delete anyone you can. % Egotism: Doing a crossword puzzle with a pen. % Either I'm dead or my watch has stopped. -- last words of Groucho Marx % My wall paper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go. -- last words of Oscar Wilde % Experiments should be reproducible. They should all fail the same way. % Give me chastity and continence, but not just now. -- St. Augustine % God is REAL, unless explicitly declared INTEGER. % Had there been an actual emergency, you would no longer be here. % Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die. % Heisenberg might have been here. % How many weeks are there in a light year? % I may not be the world's greatest lover, but number seven's not bad. -- Allen % I can't give you brains, but I can give you a diploma. -- the Wizard of Oz % I could not possibly fail to disagree with you less. % I am prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for everyday life. % I doubt, therefore I might be. % I spilled spot remover on my dog. Now he's gone. -- Steve Wright % I have had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx % I went to the Net and all I got was this stupid tagline. % I will meet you at the corner of Walk and Don't Walk. % I came, I saw, I deleted all your files. % If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data points. % If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried. % Genetics: If your parents didn't have any children, neither will you. % If You Pass This Point You Will Most Certainly Die. -- sign on birth canal % If I had finished this sentence. -- Douglas Hofstadter % Instant sex will never be better than the kind you have to peel and cook. % Is a mirage real? Well, it's a real mirage. -- Edward Abbey % It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -- Albert Einstein % It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. -- J. R. R. Tolkein % Keep a very firm grasp on reality, so you can strangle it at any time. % Kilroy occupied these spatial coordinates. % Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself. % Let him who takes the Plunge remember to return it by Tuesday. % Living your life is so difficult, it has never been attempted before. % Living on Earth includes an annual free trip around the Sun. % Love is the only game that is not called on account of darkness. % Maintain thy airspeed, lest the ground rise up and smite thee. % Millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. % Multitasking allows screwing up several things at once. % Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice. % My Go this amn keyboar oesn't have any 's. % My computer NEVER cras % My mail reader can beat up your mail reader. % My opinions are not those of my ex-employer. % Never, never, never *MOON* a werewolf. % Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for extremely large values of 2. % No prizes for predicting rain. Prizes only awarded for building arks. % Pardon me, waiter. I like my water diluted. % Instant ice: just add water and freeze. % People usually get what's coming to them... unless it was mailed. % Verbing weirds language. -- Calvin of "Calvin and Hobbes" % MACINTOSH: Most Applications Crash; If Not, The Operating System Hangs % Radioactive cats have 18 half-lives. % Satisfaction guaranteed, or twice your load back. -- sign on septic tank truck % Save the Rainforest! Eat a vegetarian! % Save the whales! Collect the whole set! % Sign seen on door: C I T Y P L A N N ING % Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. -- Fletcher Knebel % Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly. % That was Zen; this is Tao. % The Schizophrenic: An Unauthorized Autobiography. % The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep. -- Woody Allen % The world's coming to an end. Log off and leave in an orderly fashion. % The death rate on Earth is: .... (computing) .... One per person. % The most enjoyable form of sex education is the Braille method. % The bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy. % The prairies are vast plains covered by treeless forests. % There is a 70% probability of tomorrow. (actual weatherman quote. 1988) % They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist... -- last words of General Sedgwick % This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. -- Winston Churchill % Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. -- Douglas Adams % To be, or not to be, those are the parameters. % To attract a vegetarian, make a noise like a wounded vegetable. % To define recursion, we must first define recursion. % Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. % Toe: A part of the foot used to find furniture in the dark. -- Rilla May % Very few profundities can be expressed in less than 80 characters. % We have them just where they want us. -- James Kirk % What did you bring the book I want to be read to out of about Down Under up for? % What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind. -- Thomas Key % What is orange and goes "click, click"? A ball point carrot. % What if there were no hypothetical situations? --Andrew Kohlsmith % When you've seen one non-sequitur, the price of tea in China. % When it's you against the world, bet on the world. % When professors want your opinion, they'll give it to you. % Why did the tachyon cross the road? Because it was on the other side. % Why take life seriously? You're not coming out of it alive anyway! % After a time, you may find that "having" is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as "wanting." It is not logical, but it is often true. -- Spock, "Amok Time" % "Even the fool knows you can't reach out and touch the stars, but that doesn't stop the wise man from trying." -- Judge Harry Stone, "Night Court" % Change is the essential process of all existence. -- Spock, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" % Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant." -- Kirk, "The Ultimate Computer" % Immortality consists largely of boredom. -- Zefrem Cochrane % Many Myths are based on truth. -- Spock, "The Way to Eden" % "My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes." -- Ford Prefect % "I object to all this sex on the television. I mean, I keep falling off!" -- Monty Python % $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" % 43rd Law of Computing: Anything that can go wr fortune: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped % To iterate is human, to recurse, divine. % Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz % "A hundred million years afterward, a bluegreen fungus appears spontaneously on one of jupiters moons. It dies out within a week. And that's it for life in this solar system." -- Cerebus #111 % Exceedingly helpful error message from compiling TeX: (Pardon me, but I think I spotted something wrong.) make: *** [trap] Error 2 % "You don't learn anything the second time you're kicked by a mule." -- Anonymous Texan % Note: No trees were destroyed for this posting... ...However, several bushes WERE brutally beaten! % If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning. -- Catherine Aird % From inews' conf.h file: /* * Sanity checks (You know. Checks you get from Sanity Claus) */ % Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity. --Oprah Winfrey % If you can't beat 'em, confuse 'em. --Harry Truman % Fame is delightful, but as collateral it does not rank high. -- Elbert Hubbard, 1856, American writer. % By the time you make ends meet, they move the ends. % "Posto ergo disclaemo" -- "I post, therefore, I disclaim" % "The leader of Jamestown was "John Smith" (not his real name), under whose direction the colony engaged in a number of activities, primarily related to starving. -- Dave Barry, "Dave Barry Slept Here" % "...so the Puritans decided to row ashore and land at Plymouth Rock, so called because it was shaped like a Plymouth." -- Dave Barry, "Dave Barry Slept Here" % I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, "What for?" I said, "I'm going to buy some sugar." -- Stephen Wright % Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country. -- Stephen Wright % I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at anytime". So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance. -- Stephen Wright % I was in the grocery store. I saw a sign that said "pet supplies". So I did. Then I went outside and saw a sign that said "compact cars". -- Stephen Wright % I met this wonderful girl at Macy's. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator. -- Stephen Wright % There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators. -- Stephen Wright % For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier... I put them in the same room and let them fight it out. -- Stephen Wright % I invented the cordless extension cord. -- Stephen Wright % My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It's in the apartment somewhere. -- Stephen Wright % I installed a skylight in my apartment.... The people who live above me are furious! -- Stephen Wright % I have an answering machine in my car. It says, "I'm home now. But leave a message and I'll call when I'm out." -- Stephen Wright % A cop stopped me for speeding. He said, "Why were you going so fast?" I said, "See this thing my foot is on? It's called an accelerator. When you push down on it, it sends more gas to the engine. The whole car just takes right off. And see this thing? This steers it." -- Stephen Wright % One time a cop pulled me over for running a stop sign. He said, "Didn't you see the stop sign?" I said, "Yeah, but I don't believe everything I read." -- Stephen Wright % Yesterday I parked my car in a tow-away zone... when I came back the entire area was missing. -- Stephen Wright % Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish. -- Stephen Wright % I spilled spot remover on my dog. He's gone now. -- Stephen Wright % I was an only child... eventually. -- Stephen Wright % I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. -- Stephen Wright % Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? -- Stephen Wright % I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers done. -- Stephen Wright % Styrofoam, what do they ship it in? -- Stephen Wright % I lost a button hole today. -- Stephen Wright % You can't have everything. Where would you put it? -- Stephen Wright % I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world... perhaps you've seen it. -- Stephen Wright % It's a good thing we have gravity, or else when birds died they'd just stay right up there. -- Stephen Wright % When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?" -- Stephen Wright % I had some eyeglasses. I was walking down the street when the prescription ran out. % The sun never sets on the British Empire. But it rises every morning. The sky must get awfully crowded. -- Rod Schmidt % It only rains straight down. God doesn't do windows. -- Rod Schmidt % I xeroxed a mirror. Now I have an extra xerox machine. -- Rod Schmidt % I was arrested for selling illegal-sized paper. % It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens. -- Woody Allen % What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. -- Woody Allen % Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage. -- Woody Allen % A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain % Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain % I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain % Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain % The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter. -- Mark Twain % Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. -- Oscar Wilde % There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. -- Oscar Wilde % Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. -- Sam Goldwyn % Once...in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days. -- W. C. Fields % When there appears to be no hope; when all around you are screaming like lost souls and every spell you try fails to work; when it appears that chaos and evil will at last triumph over good -- then it is truly time for a vacation. -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Vol. XXXV % The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. -- Chaucer % If I were the President... The cornerstone of my foreign policy would be playing pranks on France. -- Dave Barry % If I were the President... One of my highest priorities would be to have helium declared the National Element -- Dave Barry % If I were the President... I would request a summit meeting with the Soviet Premier, at which I would make a dramatic three-hour presentation, using flip-charts, of the benefits of becoming an Amway distributor. -- Dave Barry % If I were the President... The theme of my administration would be summarized by the catchy and inspirational phrase: "Hey, The Government Is Beyond Human Control, So Let's at Least Have Some Fun with It." -- Dave Barry % It is an exciting time to look forward to. I plan to be dead. -- Dave Barry % Pizza is a dish best served cold. And it is very cold in the machine room. -- Andrew Carey % To err is human; to really screw things up requires the root password % Phoneless cords: for people who value their privacy % The road to Paradise is through Intercourse. -- a reference to two Pennsylvania small towns % I have flown too high on borrowed wings... -- Charles van Doren, in "Quiz Show"
References "the chat list" refers to a list at swil.org. The specific address was deleted at the request of Joe Robins.