home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
CU Amiga Super CD-ROM 24
/
CU Amiga Magazine's Super CD-ROM 24 (1998)(EMAP Images)(GB)(Track 1 of 2)[!][issue 1998-07].iso
/
CUCD
/
Utilities
/
afortune
/
21.frt
/
21.frt
Wrap
Text File
|
1979-12-31
|
25KB
|
634 lines
¤
Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're
alive.
-- John Sloan
¤
Since we're all here, we must not be all there.
-- Bob "Mountain" Beck
¤
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
-- Winston Churchill
¤
Sixtus V, Pope from 1585 to 1590 authorized a printing of the Vulgate
Bible. Taking no chances, the pope issued a papal bull automatically
excommunicating any printer who might make an alteration in the text.
This he ordered printed at the beginning of the Bible. He personally
examined every sheet as it came off the press. Yet the published
Vulgate Bible contained so many errors that corrected scraps had to be
printed and pasted over them in every copy. The result provoked wry
comments on the rather patchy papal infallibility, and Pope Sixtus had
no recourse but to order the return and destruction of every copy.
¤
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added to,
or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the answer you
should have gotten.
¤
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes
to work.
¤
Slaves are generally expected to sing as well as to work ... I did not,
when a slave, understand the deep meanings of those rude, and
apparently incoherent songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I
neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. They told a
tale which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension: they
were tones, loud, long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of
souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a
testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from
chains.
-- Frederick Douglass
¤
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
(1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
check.
(2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
(3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.
¤
Slurm, n.:
The slime that accumulates on the underside of a soap bar when
it sits in the dish too long.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
¤
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
-- Fletcher Knebel
¤
Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
-- Fletcher Knebel
¤
Snacktrek, n.:
The peculiar habit, when searching for a snack, of constantly
returning to the refrigerator in hopes that something new will
have materialized.
-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
¤
So as your consumer electronics adviser, I am advising you to donate
your current VCR to a grate resident, who will laugh sardonically and
hurl it into a dumpster. Then I want you to go out and purchase a vast
array of 8-millimeter video equipment.
... OK! Got everything? Well, *too bad, sucker*, because while you
were gone the electronics industry came up with an even newer format
that makes your 8-millimeter VCR look as technologically advanced as
toenail dirt. This format is called "3.5 hectare" and it will not be
made available until it is outmoded, sometime early next week, by a
format called "Elroy", so *order yours now*.
-- Dave Barry, "No Surrender in the Electronics
Revolution"
¤
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in
praise of intelligence.
-- Bertrand Russell
¤
... so long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those
who wish to tyrranize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent,
and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious
and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.
-- Voltarine de Cleyre
¤
So Richard and I decided to try to catch [the small shark].
With a great deal of strategy and effort and shouting, we managed to
maneuver the shark, over the course of about a half-hour, to a sort of
corner of the lagoon, so that it had no way to escape other than to
flop up onto the land and evolve. Richard and I were inching toward
it, sort of crouched over, when all of a sudden it turned around and --
I can still remember the sensation I felt at that moment, primarily in
the armpit area -- headed right straight toward us.
Many people would have panicked at this point. But Richard and
I were not "many people." We were experienced waders, and we kept our
heads. We did exactly what the textbook says you should do when you're
unarmed and a shark that is nearly two feet long turns on you in water
up to your lower calves: We sprinted I would say 600 yards in the
opposite direction, using a sprinting style such that the bottoms of
our feet never once went below the surface of the water. We ran all
the way to the far shore, and if we had been in a Warner Brothers
cartoon we would have run right INTO the beach, and you would have seen
these two mounds of sand racing across the island until they bonked
into trees and coconuts fell onto their heads.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
¤
"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple
pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops
its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very
imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies,
and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top,
and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the
gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots."
-- Samuel Foote
¤
... So the documentary-makers stick with sharks. Generally, their
procedure is to scatter bleeding fish pieces around their boat, so as
to infest the waters. I would estimate that the primary food source of
sharks today is bleeding fish pieces scattered by people making
documentaries. Once the sharks arrive, they are generally fairly
listless. The general shark attitude seems to be: "Oh God, another
documentary." So the divers have to somehow goad them into attacking,
under the guise of Scientific Research. "We know very little about the
effect of electricity on sharks," the narrator will say, in a deeply
scientific voice. "That is why Todd is going to jab this Great White
in the testicles with a cattle prod." The divers keep this kind of
thing up until the shark finally gets irritated and snaps at them, and
then they act as though this was a totally unexpected and very
dangerous development, although clearly it is what they wanted all
along.
-- Dave Barry, "The Wonders of Sharks on TV"
¤
So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever
remember his Bible?
¤
Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
bound to occur.
¤
Software, n.:
Formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
¤
Some don't prefer the pursuit of happiness to the happiness of pursuit.
¤
Some men are alive simply because it is against the law to kill them.
-- Ed Howe
¤
Some of you ... may have decided that, this year, you're going to
celebrate it the old-fashioned way, with your family sitting around
stringing cranberries and exchanging humble, handmade gifts, like on
"The Waltons". Well, you can forget it. If everybody pulled that kind
of subversive stunt, the economy would collapse overnight. The
government would have to intervene: it would form a cabinet-level
Department of Holiday Gift-Giving, which would spend billions and
billions of tax dollars to buy Barbie dolls and electronic games, which
it would drop on the populace from Air Force jets, killing and maiming
thousands. So, for the good of the nation, you should go along with
the Holiday Program. This means you should get a large sum of money
and go to a mall.
-- Dave Barry, "Christmas Shopping: A Survivor's Guide"
¤
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity, and some
people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, "Catch-22"
¤
Some people have a way about them that seems to say: "If I have only
one life to live, let me live it as a jerk."
¤
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it hit
them on the head.
¤
Some people live life in the fast lane. You're in oncoming traffic.
¤
Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when
you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even
worse.
-- Avery
¤
Some points to remember [about animals]:
(1) Don't go to sleep under big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri,
hippopotamuses;
(2) Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the
front of your clothes;
(3) Don't pat certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs
you have just kicked.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
¤
Some primal termite knocked on wood.
And tasted it, and found it good.
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
-- Ogden Nash
¤
Some programming languages manage to absorb change but withstand
progress.
¤
Some programming languages manage to absorb change, but withstand
progress.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
¤
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so that the
pens will multiply instead of disappear.
¤
Someone will try to honk your nose today.
¤
"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and I'm
the only ashtray."
¤
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin
¤
"Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy? That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men
and women, such as are we all? And thus happily sent forth, at our
best, with good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are
we not God's Machineries of Joy?"
"If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
-- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
¤
Somewhere, just out of sight, the unicorns are gathering.
¤
Song Title of the Week:
"They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change
in me."
¤
Sooner or later you must pay for your sins. (Those who have already
paid may disregard this fortune).
¤
Sorry, no fortune this time.
¤
Sorry. I forget what I was going to say.
¤
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the
road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.
-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
¤
"Spare no expense to save money on this one."
-- Samuel Goldwyn
¤
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as
if he had lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the
question back at him.
¤
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.
Wow! wow! wow!
I speak severely to my boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! wow! wow!
-- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
¤
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
Because the paging thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
I speak severely to my VAX,
And boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
My jobs it always thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
¤
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
¤
Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
-- Dave Millman
¤
Speaking as someone who has delved into the intricacies of PL/I, I am
sure that only Real Men could have written such a machine-hogging,
cycle-grabbing, all-encompassing monster. Allocate an array and free
the middle third? Sure! Why not? Multiply a character string times a
bit string and assign the result to a float decimal? Go ahead! Free a
controlled variable procedure parameter and reallocate it before
passing it back? Overlay three different types of variable on the same
memory location? Anything you say! Write a recursive macro? Well,
no, but Real Men use rescan. How could a language so obviously
designed and written by Real Men not be intended for Real Man use?
¤
Speaking of Godzilla and other things that convey horror:
With a purposeful grimace and a Mongo-like flair
He throws the spinning disk drives in the air!
And he picks up a Vax and he throws it back down
As he wades through the lab making terrible sounds!
Helpless users with projects due
Scream "My God!" as he stomps on the tape drives, too!
Oh, no! He says Unix runs too slow! Go, go, DECzilla!
Oh, yes! He's gonna bring up VMS! Go, go, DECzilla!"
* VMS is a trademark of Digital Equipment Corporation
* DECzilla is a trademark of Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of Death, Inc.
-- Curtis Jackson
¤
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently
these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people
to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't
communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so
on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real
life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't
communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least
he can do is to Shut Up!
-- Tom Lehrer, "That Was the Year that Was"
¤
"Speed is subsittute fo accurancy."
¤
Speer's 1st Law of Proofreading:
The visibility of an error is inversely proportional to the
number of times you have looked at it.
¤
Spelling is a lossed art.
¤
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
¤
Spirtle, n.:
The fine stream from a grapefruit that always lands right in
your eye.
-- Sniglets, "Rich Hall & Friends"
¤
Spouse, n.:
Someone who'll stand by you through all the trouble you
wouldn't have had if you'd stayed single.
¤
"Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; Close Encounters is obscurantist
drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the
greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll
take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!"
-- Harlan Ellison
¤
Stay away from flying saucers today.
¤
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
¤
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
¤
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
another drink.
¤
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.
¤
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
¤
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd only
take a bath ...
¤
Stult's Report:
Our problems are mostly behind us. What we have to do now is
fight the solutions.
¤
Stupid, n.:
Losing $25 on the game and $25 on the instant replay.
¤
Stupidity got us into this mess -- why can't it get us out?
¤
Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.
¤
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your
editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain
¤
Subtlety is the art of saying what you think and getting out of the way
before it is understood.
¤
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
¤
Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the seminar
without his duck ...
¤
(Sung to the tune of "The Impossible Dream" from MAN OF LA MANCHA)
To code the impossible code,
To bring up a virgin machine,
To pop out of endless recursion,
To grok what appears on the screen,
To right the unrightable bug,
To endlessly twiddle and thrash,
To mount the unmountable magtape,
To stop the unstoppable crash!
¤
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
¤
Support wildlife -- vote for an orgy.
¤
Support your local police force -- steal!!
¤
Sure he's sharp as a razor ... he's a two-dimensional pinhead!
¤
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
¤
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
¤
Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S. Audit! Just type
in your name and social security number. Please remember that leaving
the room is punishable under law:
Name #
¤
Swahili, n.:
The language used by the National Enquirer to print their
retractions.
-- Johnny Hart
¤
Sweater, n.:
A garment worn by a child when its mother feels chilly.
¤
Swipple's Rule of Order:
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
¤
Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
¤
System/3! System/3!
See how it runs! See how it runs!
Its monitor loses so totally!
It runs all its programs in RPG!
It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
¤
Systems have sub-systems and sub-systems have sub-systems and so on ad
infinitum -- which is why we're always starting over.
-- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
¤
T: One big monster, he called TROLL.
He don't rock, and he don't roll;
Drink no wine, and smoke no stogies.
He just Love To Eat Them Roguies.
-- The Roguelet's ABC
¤
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a
hole in his head.
¤
Tact, n.:
The unsaid part of what you're thinking.
¤
Take everything in stride. Trample anyone who gets in your way.
¤
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting
enough cheese
-- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
¤
Take it easy, we're in a hurry.
¤
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it
needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
-- Kipling
¤
Take the folks at Coca-Cola. For many years, they were content to sit
back and make the same old carbonated beverage. It was a good
beverage, no question about it; generations of people had grown up
drinking it and doing the experiment in sixth grade where you put a
nail into a glass of Coke and after a couple of days the nail dissolves
and the teacher says: "Imagine what it does to your TEETH!" So
Coca-Cola was solidly entrenched in the market, and the management saw
no need to improve ...
-- Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"
¤
Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to
your execution is not generally understood by less advanced life forms,
and they'll call you crazy.
-- "Messiah's Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul"
¤
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
-- Euripides
¤
Talkers are no good doers.
-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
¤
Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
¤
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
determination and work like hell. Most people think you are
stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.
¤
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow behind
the tree."
-- Russell Long
¤
Taxes are going up so fast, the government is likely to price itself
out of the market.
¤
Taxes, n.:
Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get
an extension.
¤
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when he
grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway.
¤
Teamwork is essential -- it allows you to blame someone else.
¤
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means
for going backwards.
-- Aldous Huxley
¤
Telephone, n.:
An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the
advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
-- Ambrose Bierce
¤
Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,
Is those things arms, or is they legs?
I marvel at thee, Octopus;
If I were thou, I'd call me us.
-- Ogden Nash
¤
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop
writing.
-- R. Geis
¤
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
-- A. E. Housman
¤
"Termiter's argument that God is His own grandmother generated a
surprising amount of controversy among Church leaders, who on the one
hand considered the argument unsupported by scripture but on the other
hand were unwilling to risk offending God's grandmother."
-- Len Cool, "American Pie"
¤
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a
pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city
until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian .... To him is
ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe
because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical
fact, for he merely said:
"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because
it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain
because it is impossible."
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of
philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
¤
Test-tube babies shouldn't throw stones.
¤
Texas law forbids anyone to have a pair of pliers in his possession.
¤
"Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even
one which cannot be justified on any other grounds."
-- J. Finnegan, USC.
¤
"That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver"
-- Foghorn Leghorn
¤
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
¤
That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
¤
That woman speaks eight languages and can't say "no" in any of them.
-- Dorothy Parker
¤
The 80's -- when you can't tell hairstyles from chemotherapy.
¤
The [Ford Foundation] is a large body of money completely surrounded by
people who want some.
-- Dwight MacDonald
¤
The Abrams' Principle:
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
¤
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
-- Thomas Jefferson
¤
The Advertising Agency Song:
When your client's hopping mad,
Put his picture in the ad.
If he still should prove refractory,
Add a picture of his factory.
¤
... The Anarchists' [national] anthem is an international anthem that
consists of 365 raspberries blown in very quick succession to the tune
of "Camptown Races". Nobody has to stand up for it, nobody has to
listen to it, and, even better, nobody has to play it.
-- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
¤
The Arkansas legislature passed a law that states that the Arkansas
River can rise no higher than to the Main Street bridge in Little
Rock.
¤
The Army has carried the American ... ideal to its logical conclusion.
Not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, creed
and color, but also on ability.
-- T. Lehrer
¤
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.
-- Bill Murray
¤
The assertion that "all men are created equal" was of no practical use
in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the
Declaration not for that, but for future use.
-- Abraham Lincoln
¤