Usenet 1994 October/usenetsourcesnewsgroupsinfomagicoctober1994disk2.iso/games/volume1/fortune/part06/scene.ab

Text File | 1987-05-29 | 44KB | 1,272 lines

And as we stand on the edge of darkness
Let our chant fill the void
That others may know

    In the land of the night
    The ship of the sun
    Is drawn by
    The grateful dead.

        -- Tibetan "Book of the Dead," ca. 4000 BC.
%%
... and furthermore ... I don't like your trousers.
%%
And I heard Jeff exclaim,
As they strolled out of sight,
"Merry Christmas to all --
You take credit cards, right?"
        -- "Outsiders" comic
%%
... And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man
        -- A. E. Housman
%%
And on the seventh day, He exited from append mode.
%%
And so, men, we can see that human skin is an even more complex and
fascinating organ than we thought it was, and if we want to keep it
looking good, we have to care for it as though it were our own.  One
approach is to undergo a painful surgical procedure wherein your skin
is turned inside-out, so the young cells are on the outside, but then
of course you have the unpleasant side effect that your insides
gradually fill up with dead old cells and you explode.  So this
procedure is pretty much limited to top Hollywood stars for whom
youthful beauty is a career necessity, such as Elizabeth Taylor and
Orson Welles.
        -- Dave Barry, "Saving Face"
%%
"...and the fully armed nuclear warheads, are, of course, merely a
courtesy detail."
%%
And this is a table ma'am.  What in essence it consists of is a
horizontal rectilinear plane surface maintained by four vertical
columnar supports, which we call legs.  The tables in this laboratory,
ma'am, are as advanced in design as one will find anywhere in the
world.
        -- Michael Frayn, "The Tin Men"
%%
    "And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
    "Diet."
%%
And yet, seasons must be taken with a grain of salt, for they too have
a sense of humor, as does history.  Corn stalks comedy, comedy stalks
tragedy, and this too is historic.  And yet, still, when corn meets
tragedy face to face, we have politics.
        -- Dalglish, Larsen and Sutherland, "Root Crops and
           Ground Cover"
%%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
        -- Tom Lehrer
%%
Ankh if you love Isis.
%%
Anoint, v.:
    To grease a king or other great functionary already
    sufficiently slippery.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
        Another Glitch in the Call
        ------- ------ -- --- ----
    (Sung to the tune of a recent Pink Floyd song.)

We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?

    Hey!  Hacker!  Leave those lists alone!

Chorus:
    All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
    All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
%%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but
television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom
and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that
offers whiter teeth *___and* fresher breath.
        -- Dave Barry, "Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly
           Do"
%%
        Answers to Last Fortune's Questions:

(1) None.  (Moses didn't have an ark).
(2) Your mother, by the pigeonhole principle.
(3) I don't know.
(4) Who cares?
(5) 6 (or maybe 4, or else 3).  Mr. Alfred J. Duncan of Podunk,
    Montana, submitted an interesting solution to Problem 5.
(6) There is an interesting solution to this problem on page 1029 of my
    book, which you can pick up for $23.95 at finer bookstores and
    bathroom supply outlets (or 99 cents at the table in front of
    Papyrus Books).
%%
Anthony's Law of Force:
    Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
    Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
    corner of the workshop.

Corollary:
    On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
    your toes.
%%
Antonym, n.:
    The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%%
Any clod can have the facts, but having an opinion is an art.
        -- Charles McCabe
%%
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art.
        -- Charles McCabe
%%
Any dramatic series the producers want us to take seriously as a
representation of contemporary reality cannot be taken seriously as a
representation of anything -- except a show to be ignored by anyone
capable of sitting upright in a chair and chewing gum simultaneously.
        -- Richard Schickel
%%
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.
        -- Aesop
%%
Any father who thinks he's all important should remind himself that
this country honors fathers only one day a year while pickles get a
whole week.
%%
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise person to be able to
sell it.
%%
Any great truth can -- and eventually will -- be expressed as a cliche
-- a cliche is a sure and certain way to dilute an idea.  For instance,
my grandmother used to say, "The black cat is always the last one off
the fence."  I have no idea what she meant, but at one time, it was
undoubtedly true.
        -- Solomon Short
%%
Any philosophy that can be put in a nutshell belongs there.
        -- Sydney J. Harris
%%
... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the
existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god
coefficient.  (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)
%%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a larger
object.
%%
Any stone in your boot always migrates against the pressure gradient to
exactly the point of most pressure.
        -- Milt Barber
%%
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
        -- Rich Kulawiec
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
%%
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
        -- Arthur C. Clarke
%%
Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%%
Any two philosophers can tell each other all they know in two hours.
        -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
%%
Anybody can win, unless there happens to be a second entry.
%%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car is
probably parked.
%%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the fire.
%%
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is
supposed to be doing at the moment.
        -- Robert Benchley
%%
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
        -- Publilius Syrus
%%
Anyone can make an omelet with eggs.  The trick is to make one with
none.
%%
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he
is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not
make messes in the house.
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
        -- Samuel Goldwyn
%%
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
        -- W. C. Fields
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no
account be allowed to do the job.
        -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never
tried taking candy from a baby.
        -- Robin Hood
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Anything is good and useful if it's made of chocolate.
%%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't.  The label means the
price went up.  The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or "GREAT NEW"
means the price went way up.
%%
Anything that is good and useful is made of chocolate.
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%%
Aphorism, n.:
    A concise, clever statement.
Afterism, n.:
    A concise, clever statement you don't think of until too late.
        -- James Alexander Thom
%%
APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection.  It is the language of
the future for the problems of the past: it creates a new generation of
coding bums.
%%
"APL is a write-only language.  I can write programs in APL, but I
can't read any of them."
        -- Roy Keir
%%
Aquadextrous, adj.:
    Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off
    with your toes.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
    You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
    You lie a great deal.  On the other hand, you are inclined to
    be careless and impractical, causing you to make the same
    mistakes over and over again.  People think you are stupid.
%%
Arbitrary systems, pl.n.:
    Systems about which nothing general can be said, save "nothing
general can be said."
%%
ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE --
    FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE
%%
Are you a turtle?
%%
Are you a turtle?
%%
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
        -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
%%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
    You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt.  You
    are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice.  You are
    not very nice.
%%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your
shoes.
        -- Mickey Mouse
%%
Armadillo:
    To provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
    (1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
    (2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
    (3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
        first two laws.
%%
Around computers it is difficult to find the correct unit of time to
measure progress.  Some cathedrals took a century to complete.  Can you
imagine the grandeur and scope of a program that would take as long?
        -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
%%
Art is anything you can get away with.
        -- Marshall McLuhan.
%%
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
        -- Paul Gauguin
%%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
    (1) People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
        remind them of someone else.
    (2) The love letter you finally got the courage to send will be
        delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a fool of
        yourself in person.
%%
Artistic ventures highlighted.  Rob a museum.
%%
As a professional humorist, I often get letters from readers who are
interested in the basic nature of humor.  "What kind of a sick
perverted disgusting person are you," these letters typically ask,
"that you make jokes about setting fire to a goat?" ...
        -- Dave Barry, "Why Humor is Funny"
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
        -- Albert Einstein
%%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
        -- Weisert
%%
As I was going up Punch Card Hill,
    Feeling worse and worser,
There I met a C.R.T.
    And it drop't me a cursor.

C.R.T., C.R.T.,
    Phosphors light on you!
If I had fifty hours a day
    I'd spend them all at you.

        -- Uncle Colonel's Cursory Rhymes
%%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%%
As long as I am mayor of this city [Jersey City, New Jersey] the great
industries are secure.  We hear about constitutional rights, free
speech and the free press.  Every time I hear these words I say to
myself, "That man is a Red, that man is a Communist".  You never hear a
real American talk like that.
        -- Frank Hague (1896-1956)
%%
As long as the answer is right, who cares if the question is wrong?
%%
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its
fascination.  When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be
popular.
        -- Oscar Wilde
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
"As part of the conversion, computer specialists rewrote 1,500
programs; a process that traditionally requires some debugging."
        --- USA Today, referring to the IRS switchover to a new
            computer system.
%%
As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it
wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought.  Debugging had
to be discovered.  I can remember the exact instant when I realized
that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in
finding mistakes in my own programs.
        -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949
%%
As the poet said, "Only God can make a tree" -- probably because it's
so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.
        -- Woody Allen
%%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that there
is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a free
variable."
%%
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season.  There is a simple
memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time
to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A,
E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
        -- Sandra Boynton, "Chocolate: The Consuming Passion"
%%
As you know, birds do not have sexual organs because they would
interfere with flight.  [In fact, this was the big breakthrough for the
Wright Brothers.  They were watching birds one day, trying to figure
out how to get their crude machine to fly, when suddenly it dawned on
Wilbur.  "Orville," he said, "all we have to do is remove the sexual
organs!"  You should have seen their original design.]  As a result,
birds are very, very difficult to arouse sexually.  You almost never
see an aroused bird.  So when they want to reproduce, birds fly up and
stand on telephone lines, where they monitor telephone conversations
with their feet.  When they find a conversation in which people are
talking dirty, they grip the line very tightly until they are both
highly aroused, at which point the female gets pregnant.
        -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
           Teen Should Know"
%%
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.
%%
As Zeus said to Narcissus, "Watch yourself."
%%
ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS.
%%
Ask five economists and you'll get five different explanations (six if
one went to Harvard).
        -- Edgar R. Fiedler
%%
Ask not for whom the <CONTROL-G> tolls.
%%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to--Station rate.
%%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls ... if thou art in the
bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%%
Ask your boss to reconsider -- it's so difficult to take "Go to hell"
for an answer.
%%
"Asked by reporters about his upcoming marriage to a forty-two-year-old
woman, director Roman Polanski told reporters, `The way I look at it,
she's the equivalent of three fourteen-year-olds.'"
        -- David Letterman
%%
Ass, n.:
    The masculine of "lass".
%%
Associate with well-mannered persons and your manners will improve.
Run with decent folk and your own decent instincts will be
strengthened.  Keep the company of bums and you will become a bum.
Hang around with rich people and you will end by picking up the check
and dying broke.
        -- Stanley Walker
%%
At a recent meeting in Snowmass, Colorado, a participant from Los
Angeles fainted from hyperoxygenation, and we had to hold his head
under the exhaust of a bus until he revived.
%%
At any given moment, an arrow must be either where it is or where it is
not.  But obviously it cannot be where it is not.  And if it is where
it is, that is equivalent to saying that it is at rest.
        -- Zeno's paradox of the moving (still?) arrow
%%
At Group L, Stoffel oversees six first-rate programmers, a managerial
challenge roughly comparable to herding cats.
        -- The Washington Post Magazine, June 9, 1985
%%
... at least I thought I was dancing, 'til somebody stepped on my hand.
        -- J. B. White
%%
"At least they're ___________EXPERIENCED incompetents"
%%
At no time is freedom of speech more precious than when a man hits his
thumb with a hammer.
        -- Marshall Lumsden
%%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will
find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on
the computer.
%%
Atlanta makes it against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole
or street lamp.
%%
Atlee is a very modest man.  And with reason.
        -- Winston Churchill
%%
Authors (and perhaps columnists) eventually rise to the top of whatever
depths they were once able to plumb.
        -- Stanley Kaufman
%%
Automobile, n.:
    A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
    pedestrians.
%%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%%
"Avoid revolution or expect to get shot.  Mother and I will grieve, but
we will gladly buy a dinner for the National Guardsman who shot you."
        -- Dr. Paul Williamson, father of a Kent State student
%%
Bacchus, n.:
    A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an excuse for
    getting drunk.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bagbiter:
    1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually
intermittently.  2. adj.:  Failing hardware or software.  "This
bagbiting system won't let me get out of spacewar."  Usage: verges on
obscenity.  Grammatically separable; one may speak of "biting the
bag".  Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS, BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS,
CHOMPER, CHOMPING.
%%
Bagdikian's Observation:
    Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American
    newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion"
    on a ukelele.
%%
Baker's First Law of Federal Geometry:
    A block grant is a solid mass of money surrounded on all sides
    by governors.
%%
Ban the bomb.  Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Banectomy, n.:
    The removal of bruises on a banana.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Bank error in your favor.  Collect $200.
%%
Barach's Rule:
    An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
    physician.
%%
Bare feet magnetize sharp metal objects so they point upward from the
floor -- especially in the dark.
%%
Barometer, n.:
    An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we
    are having.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Barth's Distinction:
    There are two types of people: those who divide people into two
    types, and those who don't.
%%
Baruch's Observation:
    If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%%
Baseball is a skilled game.  It's America's game -- it, and high
taxes.
        -- Will Rogers
%%
Basic is a high level languish.
APL is a high level anguish.
%%
"BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of `Scientific Creationism'."
%%
Basic, n.:
    A programming language.  Related to certain social diseases in
    that those who have it will not admit it in polite company.
%%
Bathquake, n.:
    The violent quake that rattles the entire house when the water
    faucet is turned on to a certain point.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Be a better psychiatrist and the world will beat a psychopath to your
door.
%%
BE ALERT!!!!  (The world needs more lerts ...)
%%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would scarcely
get your Feet wet.  Fall not in Love, therefore: it will stick to your
face.
        -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
%%
Be braver -- you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
%%
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Be different: conform.
%%
Be free and open and breezy!  Enjoy!  Things won't get any better so
get used to it.
%%
Be security conscious -- National defense is at stake.
%%
Be wary of strong drink.  It can make you shoot at tax collectors and
miss
        -- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
%%
Bees are very busy souls
They have no time for birth controls
And that is why in times like these
There are so many Sons of Bees.
%%
    Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and
took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his
followers.
    One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and
there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She was contentedly grazing.
    "Tell me, you dumb beast," demanded the Priest in his
commanding voice, "why don't you do something worthwhile?  What is your
Purpose in Life, anyway?"
    Munching the tasty grass, The Sacred Chao replied "MU".  (The
Chinese ideogram for NO-THING.)
    Upon hearing this, absolutely nobody was enlightened.
    Primarily because nobody understood Chinese.
        -- Camden Benares, "Zen Without Zen Masters"
%%
Before Xerox, five carbons were the maximum extension of anybody's
ego.
%%
Begathon, n.:
    A multi-day event on public television, used to raise money so
you won't have to watch commercials.
%%
Behold the warranty ... the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh
away.
%%
Beifeld's Principle:
    The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
    receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression when
    he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his wife, (3)
    a better looking and richer male friend.
%%
"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!"  <huff, huff>
%%
"Being disintegrated makes me ve-ry an-gry!" <huff, huff>
%%
Bell Labs Unix -- Reach out and grep someone.
%%
Bennett's Laws of Horticulture:
    (1) Houses are for people to live in.
    (2) Gardens are for plants to live in.
    (3) There is no such thing as a houseplant.
%%
"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"
        -- Time Bandits
%%
Besides the device, the box should contain:

* Eight little rectangular snippets of paper that say "WARNING"

* A plastic packet containing four 5/17 inch pilfer grommets and two
  club-ended 6/93 inch boxcar prawns.

YOU WILL NEED TO SUPPLY: a matrix wrench and 60,000 feet of tram
cable.

IF ANYTHING IS DAMAGED OR MISSING: You IMMEDIATELY should turn to your
spouse and say: "Margaret, you know why this country can't make a car
that can get all the way through the drive-through at Burger King
without a major transmission overhaul?  Because nobody cares, that's
why."

WARNING: This is assuming your spouse's name is Margaret.
        -- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
%%
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole >town

cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus <north pole > town

who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {
    be good
}
%%
Better dead than mellow.
%%
Between 1950 and 1952, a bored weatherman, stationed north of Hudson
Bay, left a monument that neither government nor time can eradicate.
Using a bulldozer abandoned by the Air Force, he spent two years and
great effort pushing boulders into a single word.

It can be seen from 10,000 feet, silhouetted against the snow.
Government officials exchanged memos full of circumlocutions (no Latin
equivalent exists) but failed to word an appropriation bill for the
destruction of this cairn, that wouldn't alert the press and embarrass
both Parliament and Party.

It stands today, a monument to human spirit.  If life exists on other
planets, this may be the first message received from us.
        -- The Realist, November, 1964.
%%
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not
tried it."
        -- Donald Knuth
%%
Beware of computerized fortune-tellers!
%%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%%
Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers.
        -- Leonard Brandwein
%%
Beware of self-styled experts: an ex is a has-been, and a spurt is a
drip under pressure.
%%
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us.  "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way."
        -- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
%%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%%
Binary, adj.:
    Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes.
%%
"Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same
thing as division."
%%
Bipolar, adj.:
    Refers to someone who has homes in Nome, Alaska, and Buffalo,
    New York
%%
Birth, n.:
    The first and direst of all disasters.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
%%
Bizoos, n.:
    The millions of tiny individual bumps that make up a
    basketball.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
... bleakness ... desolation ... plastic forks ...
%%
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
%%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as
Wheels.
%%
BLISS is ignorance
%%
Blood flows down one leg and up the other.
%%
Blood is thicker than water, and much tastier.
%%
Blore's Razor:
    Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is
funnier.
%%
Board the windows, up your car insurance, and don't leave any booze in
plain sight.  It's St. Patrick's day in Chicago again.  The legend has
it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.  In fact, he was
arrested for drunk driving.  The snakes left because people kept
throwing up on them.
%%
Boling's postulate:
    If you're feeling good, don't worry.  You'll get over it.
%%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
    Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
    vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%%
Bombeck's Rule of Medicine:
    Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
%%
BOO!  We changed Coke again!  BLEAH!  BLEAH!
%%
Boob's Law:
    You always find something in the last place you look.
%%
Bore, n.:
    A guy who wraps up a two-minute idea in a two-hour vocabulary.
        -- Walter Winchell
%%
Bore, n.:
    A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Boren's Laws:
    (1) When in charge, ponder.
    (2) When in trouble, delegate.
    (3) When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Boss, n.:
    According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the Middle Ages
    the words "boss" and "botch" were largely synonymous, except
    that boss, in addition to meaning "a supervisor of workers"
    also meant "an ornamental stud."
%%
Boston State House is the hub of the Solar System.  You couldn't pry
that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crowbar.
        -- O. W. Holmes
%%
Boston, n.:
    Ludwig van Beethoven being jeered by 50,000 sports fans for
    finishing second in the Irish jig competition.
%%
Boy, n.:
    A noise with dirt on it.
%%
Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least
when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
        -- James Thurber
%%
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
        -- Kin Hubbard
%%
Brace yourselves.  We're about to try something that borders on the
unique: an actually rather serious technical book which is not only
(gasp) vehemently anti-Solemn, but also (shudder) takes sides.  I tend
to think of it as `Constructive Snottiness.'
        -- Mike Padlipsky, Foreword to "Elements of Networking
           Style"
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
    If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
    committee -- that will do them in.
%%
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving:
    When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more
    easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone
    Ranger have handled this?"
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
Brain, n.:
    The apparatus with which we think that we think.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Brain, v. [as in "to brain"]:
    To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of
    error in an opponent.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests,
since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Bride, n.:
    A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but may
revitalize the corner saloon.
%%
British Israelites:
    The British Israelites believe the white Anglo-Saxons of
    Britain to be descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel
    deported by Sargon of Assyria on the fall of Sumeria in 721
    B.C. ... They further believe that the future can be foretold
    by the measurements of the Great Pyramid, which probably means
    it will be big and yellow and in the hand of the Arabs.  They
    also believe that if you sleep with your head under the pillow
    a fairy will come and take all your teeth.
        -- Mike Harding, "The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac"
%%
Broad-mindedness, n.:
    The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%%
Brontosaurus Principle:
    Organizations can grow faster than their brains can manage them
in relation to their environment and to their own physiology:  when
this occurs, they are an endangered species.
        -- Thomas K. Connellan
%%
Brook's Law:
    Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%%
Brooke's Law:
    Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
    discovers something which either abolishes the system or
    expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Bubble Memory, n.:
    A derogatory term, usually referring to a person's
    intelligence.  See also "vacuum tube".
%%
Bucy's Law:
    Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%%
Bug, n.:
    An aspect of a computer program which exists because the
    programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when
    s/he wrote the program.

Fortunately, the second-to-last bug has just been fixed.
        -- Ray Simard
%%
Bugs, pl. n.:
    Small living things that small living boys throw on small
    living girls.
%%
BULLWINKLE: "You just leave that to my pal.  He's the brains of the
        outfit."
GENERAL:    "What does that make YOU?"
BULLWINKLE: "What else?  An executive..."
        -- Jay Ward
%%
Bumper sticker:

"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest British
manufacture"
%%
Bureaucrat, n.:
    A person who cuts red tape sideways.
        -- J. McCabe
%%
Bureaucrat, n.:
    A politician who has tenure.
%%
Bureaucrats cut red tape -- lengthwise.
%%
Burn's Hog Weighing Method:
    (1) Get a perfectly symmetrical plank and balance it across a
        sawhorse.
    (2) Put the hog on one end of the plank.
    (3) Pile rocks on the other end until the plank is again
        perfectly balanced.
    (4) Carefully guess the weight of the rocks.
        -- Robert Burns
%%
    ... But among the children of the Great Society there were
those whose skins were black.  And lo!  Their portion was niggardly,
and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat ...
    Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and
they called him King.  And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let my
people go to the front of the bus."
    But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all
deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass.  When ye shall prove
yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea, verily, like
unto a snowball in Hell."
        -- "The Begatting of a President"
%%
... But as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once existed
and were a scourge to mankind.  The evidence (including confession)
upon which certain women were convicted of witchcraft and executed was
without a flaw; it is still unimpeachable.  The judges' decisions based
on it were sound in logic and in law.  Nothing in any existing court
was ever more thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and
sorcery for which so many suffered death.  If there were no witches,
human testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
"But don't you worry, its for a cause -- feeding global corporations
paws."
%%
"But I don't like Spam!!!!"
%%
... But if we laugh with derision, we will never understand.  Human
intellectual capacity has not altered for thousands of years so far as
we can tell.  If intelligent people invested intense energy in issues
that now seem foolish to us, then the failure lies in our understanding
of their world, not in their distorted perceptions.  Even the standard
example of ancient nonsense -- the debate about angels on pinheads --
makes sense once you realize that theologians were not discussing
whether five or eighteen would fit, but whether a pin could house a
finite or an infinite number.
        -- S. J. Gould, "Wide Hats and Narrow Minds"
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of the
system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed,
analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
        -- Bruce Leverett, "Register Allocation in Optimizing
           Compilers"
%%
"But officer, I was only trying to gain enough speed so I could coast
to the nearest gas station."
%%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
        -- Hilaire Belloc
%%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery -- go!
        -- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%%
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who
was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal
education and lived in New Jersey.  Edison's first major invention in
1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of
American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was
invented.  But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he
invented the electric company.  Edison's design was a brilliant
adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends
electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the
electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant
part) sends it right back to the customer again.

This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch
of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since
very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely.
In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United
States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it
ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate
increases.
        -- Dave Barry, "What is Electricity?"
%%
"But this has taken us far afield from interface, which is not a bad
place to be, since I particularly want to move ahead to the kludge.
Why do people have so much trouble understanding the kludge?  What is a
kludge, after all, but not enough Ks, not enough ROMs, not enough RAMs,
poor quality interface and too few bytes to go around?  Have I
explained yet about the bytes?"
%%
... But we've only fondled the surface of that subject.
        -- Virginia Masters
%%
"But what we need to know is, do people want nasally-insertable
computers?"
%%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%%
By doing just a little every day, you can gradually let the task
completely overwhelm you.
%%
"By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.  In fact,
it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to
invent. (R. Emerson)"
        -- Quoted from a fortune cookie program
           (whose author claims, "Actually, stealing IS easier.")
           [to which I reply, "You think it's easy for me to
           misconstrue all these misquotations?!?"]
%%
By trying, we can easily learn to endure adversity -- another man's, I
mean.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to
point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very
fast.  People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are
often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people
from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B
that so many people from point A are so keen to get _____there.  They often
wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell
they wanted to be.
        -- Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
%%
C, n.:
    A programming language that is sort of like Pascal except more
    like assembly except that it isn't very much like either one,
    or anything else.  It is either the best language available to
    the art today, or it isn't.
        -- Ray Simard
%%
Cabbage, n.:
    A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and wise as
    a man's head.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Cahn's Axiom:
    When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange.
        -- Fred Allen
%%
California, n.:
    From Latin "calor", meaning "heat" (as in English "calorie" or
    Spanish "caliente"); and "fornia'" for "sexual intercourse" or
    "fornication."  Hence: Tierra de California, "the land of hot
    sex."
        -- Ed Moran
%%
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
        -- Indian proverb
%%
"Calling J-Man Kink.  Calling J-Man Kink.  Hash missile sighted, target
Los Angeles.  Disregard personal feelings about city and intercept."
%%
"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
        -- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%%
"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont."
        -- Clarence Darrow
%%
Campus sidewalks never exist as the straightest line between two
points.
        -- M. M. Johnston
%%
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
    It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

Supplement:
    A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%%
Canada Post doesn't really charge 32 cents for a stamp.  It's 2 cents
for postage and 30 cents for storage.
        -- Gerald Regan, Cabinet Minister, 12/31/83 Financial
           Post
%%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
        -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"
%%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
    You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
    problems.  They think you are a sucker.  You are always putting
    things off.  That's why you'll never make anything of
    yourself.  Most welfare recipients are Cancer people.
%%
Canonical, adj.:
    The usual or standard state or manner of something.  A true
story:  One Bob Sjoberg, new at the MIT AI Lab, expressed some
annoyance at the use of jargon.  Over his loud objections, we made a
point of using jargon as much as possible in his presence, and
eventually it began to sink in.  Finally, in one conversation, he used
the word "canonical" in jargon-like fashion without thinking.
    Steele: "Aha!  We've finally got you talking jargon too!"
    Stallman: "What did he say?"
    Steele: "He just used `canonical' in the canonical way."
%%
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
    You are conservative and afraid of taking risks.  You don't do
    much of anything and are lazy.  There has never been a
    Capricorn of any importance.  Capricorns should avoid standing
    still for too long as they take root and become trees.
%%
Captain Penny's Law:
    You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
    the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%%
Carelessly planned projects take three times longer to complete than
expected.  Carefully planned projects take four times longer to
complete than expected, mostly because the planners expect their
planning to reduce the time it takes.
%%
Carmel, New York, has an ordinance forbidding men to wear coats and
trousers that don't match.
%%
Carperpetuation (kar' pur pet u a shun), n.:
    The act, when vacuuming, of running over a string at least a
    dozen times, reaching over and picking it up, examining it,
    then putting it back down to give the vacuum one more chance.
        -- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"
%%
Cat, n.:
    Lapwarmer with built-in buzzer.
%%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
        -- Mark Twain
%%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%%
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh..
%%
Cecil, you're my final hope
Of finding out the true Straight Dope
For I have been reading of Schrodinger's cat
But none of my cats are at all like that.
This unusual animal (so it is said)
Is simultaneously alive and dead!
What I don't understand is just why he
Can't be one or the other, unquestionably.
My future now hangs in between eigenstates.
In one I'm enlightened, in the other I ain't.
If *you* understand, Cecil, then show me the way
And rescue my psyche from quantum decay.
But if this queer thing has perplexed even you,
Then I will *___and* I won't see you in Schrodinger's zoo.
        -- Randy F., Chicago, "The Straight Dope, a compendium
           of human knowledge" by Cecil Adams
%%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year.  Take an elephant to lunch.
%%
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the
center of the universe.  The premise is wrong, but the navigation
works.  An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
        -- Kelvin Throop III
%%
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and, if so,
how many?
%%
Cerebus:    I'd love to lick apricot brandy out of your navel.
Jaka:        Look, Cerebus-- Jaka has to tell you ... something
Cerebus:    If Cerebus had a navel, would you lick apricot brandy
        out of it?
Jaka:        Ugh!
Cerebus:    You don't like apricot brandy?
        -- Cerebus #6, "The Secret"
%%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a long
walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the flesh.  They
then point with pride to these practices as the cause of their sturdy
health and ripe years; the truth being that they are hearty and old,
not because of their habits, but in spite of them.  The reason we find
only robust persons doing this thing is that it has killed all the
others who have tried it.
        -- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
%%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny--
    Did you ever try buying then without money?
        -- Ogden Nash
%%
            Chapter 1

The story so far:

    In the beginning the Universe was created.  This has made a lot
of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
%%
Character Density, n.:
    The number of very weird people in the office.
%%
Checkuary, n.:
    The thirteenth month of the year.  Begins New Year's Day and
    ends when a person stops absentmindedly writing the old year on
    his checks.
%%
Chef, n.:
    Any cook who swears in French.
%%
Chemicals, n.:
    Noxious substances from which modern foods are made.
%%
Chicago law prohibits eating in a place that is on fire.
%%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #36:
    Never ever ask the tough looking gentleman wearing El Rukn
    headgear where he got his "pyramid powered pizza warmer".
        -- Chicago Reader 3/27/81
%%
Chicago Transit Authority Rider's Rule #84:
    The CTA has complimentary pop-up timers available on request
    for overheated passengers.  When your timer pops up, the driver
    will cheerfully baste you.
        -- Chicago Reader 5/28/82
%%
Chicago, n.:
    Where the dead still vote ... early and often!
%%
Chicken Little only has to be right once.
%%
Chicken Little was right.
%%
Chicken Soup, n.:
    An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of aureomycin,
    cocaine, interferon, and TLC.  The only ailment chicken soup
    can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
        -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
%%
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite every
effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Children are unpredictable.  You never know what inconsistency they're
going to catch you in next.
        -- Franklin P. Jones
%%